Tea flowers

Leo's brother was in Hong Kong and Taiwan a few weeks ago and came home with gifts for the family. Amongst the gifts were some little tiny, solid, tea leaf balls about 3/4" in diameter. He gave Leo two of them, and tonight we fixed one.

Now, these are very special tea balls. FIrst of all, they are very expensive—about $30 a piece, and that's in U.S. dollars. Second, they are practically magical: when immersed in hot water, these little balls begin to open up into beautiful tea "flowers." Each of them are hand-made, and the process is very labor intensive. They can only be obtained from Taiwan.

Since we wanted to watch the tea balls develop, we ended up using my French press coffee pot to steep the tea. We filled the pot with boiling water, then dropped the ball into the water, where it began to float on the water. Then, slowly, the ball began to sink; after a little while longer, we started to see little leaves begin to "open" up. As the whole ball began to open, suddenly a white shoot came from the middle and began to open into airy flowers. Once the whole thing was open, the base was like a green chrysanthemum with a shoot holding the whiteish, delicate flowers. Once it was fully steeped, we drank it, and it had a fine, jasmine aroma and taste.

Along with the tea, Leo fixed something called wagashi. This Japanese confection is a translucent jelly or "Jell-O" type item made from arrowroot molded in a bamboo shape. It comes with a plunger used to force the jelly out one end through a mesh that cuts the jelly into a series of long, worm-like threads. He separated the threads, then poured chilled plum wine over them to serve.

We have one of each still in the cupboards. Now we just need another occasion to prepare them.

The Dubliner, Washington, D.C.

After dining at Kelly's Irish Times in the Union Station neighborhood, we walked next door for dessert. The Dubliner An Irish Pub is always a popular, busy place. Their dining room was full and there was a line, so we opted to sit at a table in the bar. Sitting in the bar here can be challenging, since not only is the kitchen door in there (and hence a lot of waiter traffic), they often have loud, live bands playing. Wednesday night, though, the big noise source was the crowd gathered there to watch the Sugar Bowl and root for Notre Dame (what? In an Irish pub?).

Robert had a couple of Dewars scotch on the rocks and since I'm trying to watch my weight, I just had water. For our desserts, Robert ordered the Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake and I had the bread pudding with Irish whiskey sauce. They were both quite tasty, though we both noted a rather total absence of either Bailey's Irish cream or Irish whiskey taste to the desserts.

Kelly's Irish Times, Washington, D.C.

After our unexpected happy hour at the George up on Capitol Hill yesterday evening, Robert and I wandered towards Union Station and decided to have dinner at one of the Irish restaurants on the corner across from the station. Robert has been both places, but I've only eaten at The Dubliner before, so we opted to dine at Kelly's Irish Times, the former hangout of my friend, Georgetown law school alumna Chris.

The Irish Times is very much like a bar with food, and there really wasn't a whole lot that made me feel like I was in a specifically Irish place. It was the same with the menu. The choices were all very standard American bar-with-food choices.

While we split an order of poppers (mild jalapeño peppers stuffed with cream cheese, breaded, and deep-fried), Robert had a Guiness stout to drink. I never drink stouts or bitters—I think they're vile things—but Robert loves them. Ick. Robert ended up ordering a full rack of back back ribs with chips (a/k/a fries) and cole slaw and I had the fish and chips with cole slaw. Had to ask the waiter to bring a bottle of malt vinegar for the fish.....I guess they aren't Irish enough to remember, especially since the fish came with a great big plastic cup of tartare sauce. The fish was actually pretty good, not having a fishy flavor and not being too heavily breaded. Robert liked his ribs, too, but he was a good boy and requested a go box and put half the ribs in there to take home for another meal.

They don't serve dessert at the Irish Times, so we decided to go next door for a wee bit of sweet. See the next entry for more about dessert at The Dubliner.

Bistrot Lepic, Georgetown, D.C.

Happy New Year 2007!

Such a happy new year we had last night at Bistrot Lepic in Georgetown! Matt and I were lucky enough to be able to get a table for the late seating at the bistro, and we had a great time with wonderful food and lots of good champagne.

The chef created a lovely five course prix fixe menu at a surprisingly reasonable cost (I've spent the same amount here for two courses and a glass of wine), although I suspect that reservations were granted mainly to the "regulars" of the restaurant, hence the price was a thank you for frequent patrons.

What made things difficult was the fact that several of the courses offered multiple options, all of which sounded wonderful, and it was quite hard to decide what to get. By coincidence, it turned out that Matt and I ended up ordering all the same things!

We started with the salad of lobster medallions, fresh artichoke hearts, green beans, and shallots, all tossed with a mix of European style greens and tossed in a classic herbed vinaigrette. They were generous with the lobster and artichoke. The French haricots verts beans gave a nice beefiness to the salad, and there was just enough bitterness to the curly endive in the greens to balance out the flavors.



Next we had a Grey Goose lemon granite. This was an interesting lemon ice served swimming in Grey Goose vodka in a small wine glass rimmed with large green Pernod-scented sugar crystals. Pernod, of course, is the greenish, anisette/licorice-flavored liqueur that was created as a substitute for absinthe when absinthe became illegal in the early part of the twentieth century.



Our main course was exquisite. We selected the seared filet of venison served on a confit of zucchini, fennel, saffron, raisins, and lemon, and drizzled with an intriguing red wine sauce perfumed with chocolate. Not quite a molé, the sauce accented the venison and didn't over power the flavor. And speaking of the venison....it was melt-in-the-mouth tender, certainly some of the best venison I've had in the District in the past two years.



Our final two courses were both assortments. First, we had a cheese plate with four cheeses: a Savoie beaufort, an Auvergne roquefort, a Normandie camenbert, and a Pays Bisque petit basque. They were served with thin slices of French bread and walnuts, apple slices, and butter.



Dessert was an assortment of miniature French pastries. We had a little chocolate eclair, a wedge of pear tart, a fresh fruit tartlet, and an interesting profiterole filled with pumpkin ice cream, the plate being garnished with cigar-rolled shavings of chocolate, fresh mint, and dustings of confectioner's sugar and cocoa.



Naturally, we had some nice French wines to go along with our meal. Matt played sommalier for us and selected a Chateau les Amouruses Cote du Rhone for our first course and a Louis Latour Bourgogne chabis for our main course. Both wines were quite good, but Matt got them backwards, with the red wine for the lobster and the white wine (which would have been exquisite with the lobster, by the way) for the venison in red wine sauce. LOL...that's what I get for letting a Durham man pick the wines. ;-) With dessert was a Heidsieck Monopole Brut rosé champagne (rosé sparkling wines continue to be very vogue this season).

Our great waiter started coming by after we finished eating to refill our champagne glasses with whatever he had in hand at the time, most usually a very nice Veuve Fourny et Fils Premier Cru Brut. At midnight, he brought around more champagne for our New Year's toasts, and they broke out the party hats, noise makers, and streamers.

Twas a very happy new year, and I hope everyone will have a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2007!

Afterwords Cafe, Washington, D.C.

My friend Matt from North Carolina came to D.C. for the weekend to visit all of us and ring in the new year. He got in last night around ten. Rather than cooking dinner at home, and after drinking a couple of bottles of wine, we decided to walk up to Dupont Circle to one of the few late night cafes still open to find a little late night supper. Along the way, we picked up Robert, and he joined us for dinner at KramerBook's Afterwords Cafe.

Well, Robert decided to drink dinner and had two Irish coffees. I wasn't really hungry and debated not eating anything at all, but went ahead and ordered some nachos. Well, what they call nachos. They were okay and I'm sure the locals love it, but I found the sun-dried tomato "salsa" and the black beans underneath to be too sweet, and the so-called jalapeño pepper slices were about as hot as a bread and butter pickle. I only ate some, so Matt finished them off after his dinner.



Matt had the lobster, asparagus and mascarpone ravioli. These were interesting little hand-made packets made in parsley pasta and sauced with a mascarpone cheese sauce. With his dinner, he had some kind of beer.



After that, he had a slice of goober pie, a rather unusual but traditional Southern peanut butter pie topped with chocolate and made in a graham cracker crust.

Cantina Laredo, DFW Airport, Tex.

While making airline connections on my Christmas Day flight through DFW Airport in Dallas, I ate lunch at Cantina Laredo in concourse D of the airport. I was excited to be back in a part of the world where there is decent Mexican food!

I started with a great, freshly made guacamole served with freshly fried tortilla chips. It was so good, spicy and chunky, and way better than anything I'd been served in D.C.



Next I had a chicken chimichanga. It was, alas, disappointing. The flavor was excellent. Unfortunately, though, the chimichanga had been prepared in advance (I don't know if this is normal proceedure or just for Christmas Day) and the kitchen had microwaved it to rewarm it. That meant the outside wasn't crispy and, even worse, the very center of the chimichanga was cold. When I was almost done with it, the waiter was by and I told him about the coldness; he offered to take it back to rewarm it, but at that point, I was nearly done. Surprisingly, I was offered neither a discount nor a free dessert or something in recompense. Such is airport food.