Wing Wah Chinese Restaurant – the new Friday night hangout for seniors

Many of you had your neighborhood’s “street” that hosted your favorite places to hangout: Frederick Road to the west, York Road to the north, Belair/Harford Road in the Northeast and Eastern Avenue to the east. Reisterstown Road was and is my hood, northwest Baltimore.


Hanging out or “to hang” hasn’t changed much over the years it still means the same thing - Read more: Wing Wah Chinese Restaurant – the new Friday night hangout for seniors

Random Acts of Eating

A post on Facebook from Lael Sara Hazan, a contributing editor to Saveur.com, and the daughter-in-law to Marcella Hazan, stated, “I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.” Wow, did that hit home. When I ‘m working at my desk there is no desire to eat. Well, maybe after about six hours.

Read the full rant here: http://www.examiner.com/food-in-national/random-acts-of-eating

Juan Valdez is no friend of mine

I have always been a follower, never the leader, and as much as I would like to be one of the pack lined up in a Starbucks or other coffee emporiums ordering a mocha, double latte, it will never happen. Fair trade, organic, hauled on the back of mule in Columbia means nothing to me – I hate coffee, I hate the smell, and I hate the taste. You say everyone loves coffee, but I beg to differ.

Read the complete story:
Juan Valdez is no friend of mine

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Thank you Baltimore Magazine

This story started with me reading my June Issue of Baltimore Magazine and seeing my creative and humorous friend, John Donahue’s blog, Baltimore Snacker being touted in the article 101 Things to Eat, See in Do in the Baltimore-Centrics Corner of the Web on page 116. I sent off an e-mail to him straight away with congratulations on the recognition.

Read the entire story at Baltimore Dining Examiner: Thank you Baltimore Magazine

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Baltimore Chefs and Wine Experience - Come See Me

WHEN: Sunday, July 13th ~ noon to 6 p.m.

WHERE: Tremont Grand

225 North Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21201

Enjoy food samples from Baltimore’s finest restaurants and culinary specialists such as Ciao Bella Ristorante, The Classic Catering People, Ixia Restaurant, LaTasca, Lebanese Taverna, Lucy's Irish Pub & Restaurant, Sotta Sopra, Pisce's, Red Maple, Vin, Water for Chocolate Catering LLC, A. Kirchmayr Chocolatier, Cabot Creamery Cooperative, Cake Love, Charles Street Gourmet, *Dara Bunjon (COME SEE ME), Lindt Chocolate, and Piacci Cheese.

Taste delicious and rare wines from regions across the world and speak to winemakers. Select wines will be available for sale on site.

Attend cooking demonstrations and wine seminars. Participating chefs include *Martha Hall Foose (Viking), Warren Brown (CakeLove), Jerry Edwards (Chef’s Expressions), Benjamin Erjavec (Oceanaire), Michaele Weissman (Food Journalist), Michael Costa (Pazo), Will Koch (Tremont), Fabio Mura (Blue Sea Grill), and Kevin Miller (Ixia).

Wine experts include Ted Allen (TV Personality and Cookbook Author), Monyka Berrocosa, Sharon Charny, CBP, CTC (Regional Director, National Accounts, Charmer Sunbelt Group), Jerry Edwards (Chef’s Expressions), Jerry Pellegrino (Corks), Laurie Forster (The Wine Coach®), Tim Hanni MW (Napa Seasoning Company), and Paul Lukacs (Wine Columnist, The Washington Times & Wine Review Online; Wine Editor, Saveur Magazine).

Visit http://www.baltimorechefsandwine.org/ to purchase your tickets. General Admission Tickets are just $55 and include access to all wine seminars and chefs demonstrations, and food and wine tastings.

* I'll be there sampling recipes from my co-compiled cookbook YUM! Tasty Recipes from Culinary Greats. The book will be for sale through Barnes & Noble and profits from the royalties will go to the National Kidney Foundation via Microplane.

Don't miss Martha Hall Foose's cooking demonstration and picking up a copy of her new cookbook: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea - Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. The first thing I did was read all her stories about her home, the Mississippi Delta. I enjoyed her Southern sensibilities and humor.

Unbridled Cooking

I enjoy cooking for small intimate dinner gatherings and this past Sunday wasn’t any different as I put together an eclectic menu for friends. I start small, a simple 3 course dinner and BAM, it has grown, out of control cooking. (recipes below) Keeping it simple doesn’t seem to be in my realm of reality, I ended up with 6 courses…yup, count them.

Pot Stickers with a Yuzu Dipping Sauce
Tom Yum Soup (inspired by my dinner at Redfish)
Grilled Caesar Salad
Lemon Basil Sorbetto
Honey Truffle Marinated Chicken, Steamed Asparagus with Apricot Marmalade and Oven Roasted Potatoes
Yellow Cake with Fudge Icing with Fresh Strawberries

Guess what, I didn’t take any pictures at dinner - not a one but I have put together a couple post pictures. I’m going to write this in course order though food prep was much different.

Dara’s Dinner for 4

1st Course

Pot Stickers: This was a last minute decision to have a munch in the den with drinks before we sat down to dinner. I pulled the Pot Stickers from the freezer, sautéed them and then steamed them per the package instructions.

Yuzu Dipping Sauce: I used a tablespoon of yuzu juice (lime juice is a good substitute), 2 tablespoons of Asian fish sauce, 2 tablespoons of water, 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger, 1 small garlic clove thinly sliced and 1 teaspoon of sugar to balance the acid of the yuzu juice. Mix and make adjustments to your taste buds.

2nd Course

Tom Yum Soup: I had homemade chicken broth(see below) and combined it with low sodium chicken broth (total 4 cups), diced shallots, sliced mushrooms, shredded carrots and the Instant Sour Shrimp Paste (tom yum) for the chili-sour flavor* (1 teaspoon). I peeled 8 shrimp and put the shells in a strainer that I put in the stock to cook a bit and add more flavor. I added the shrimp about 2 minutes before service so they wouldn’t be over cooked. I previously boiled off some egg noodles (I was out of rice noodles) which I added to the stock just after the shrimp.

* the instant sour shrimp paste is spicy and I suggest start with a regular teaspoon and let it blend well into the soup. Give it a taste and add a bit more until you reach the level of heat you want in the soup.

3rd Course

Grilled Caesar Salad: I had just gotten the new Food and Wine-June 08 and on page 160 they had Seared Romaine Spears with Caesar Dressing. I got Romaine hearts at the produce store on sale for 99 cents…yes, 99 cents. I cut the romaine heads in half lengthwise and brushed with Canola oil and grilled them until they had a slight char on both sides but were still crisp.

The dressing swapped out egg yolks with low fat mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, garlic cloves, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. I processed all the ingredients and slowly added Canola oil. I dressed the plate with the dressing and put the romaine spears on top, salt & pepper, shaved Parmesan-Reggiano cheese and chopped tomato.

4th Course

Lemon Basil Sorbetto: I wrote about this before, it is SOOO good and I had about 11 lemons leftover from a food styling job just the week before so I filled in to the 20 lemons needed. I zested all the lemons before I juiced them and froze them for future cooking endeavors. The recipe is from Executive Chef Bill Crouse at Sotto Sopra – RECIPE. This was my intermezzo.

5th Course

Honey Truffled Chicken: First I purchased two whole chickens and brought them home and broke them down into parts. I took the wing tips, the backs and gizzards and threw them in the pressure cooker with onions, carrots, celery, parsley stems and salt for a quick stock-used in the Tom Yum soup.

Marinade for the chicken:

4 ounces of honey
2 tablespoons chicken stock
2 tablespoons of truffle oil
2 tablespoons of chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon of fresh ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients for the chicken. Coat the chicken pieces well and marinate them overnight in the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake the chicken about 45 minutes (test for doneness with an instant read thermometer.) As the oven preheats mix up the basting mixture. As the chicken cooks, baste it from time-to-time.

Basting mixture for the chicken:

3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon chicken stock
2 teaspoons of truffle oil
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons of fresh ground black pepper
½ teaspoon of salt

Oven Roasted Potatoes: I chose to use the tiny red potatoes. Remember start your potatoes in cold water with lots of salt. (If what you are cooking grew below ground you start it in cold water and if it grew above ground you add it to boiling water). Once at a boil, I let them cook 5 minutes and drained. I tossed the potatoes in olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, chopped parsley, garlic powder, and chopped shallots and put them on a cookie sheet in the oven with the chicken. Every time I basted the chicken, I gave the pan of potatoes a shake.

Asparagus: From the WomenHeart’s All Heart Family Cookbook, I used their recipe for steamed asparagus and slivered carrots topped with Apricot marmalade and grated ginger. This is a fabulous cookbook that doesn’t feel like a healthy cooking cookbook. There are many recipes I have fixed and many more I am going to make. It emphasizes heart healthy foods, 40 foods proven to promote heart health.

Ladies, don’t be fooled, heart disease kills more women than breast cancer. This is a cookbook that should be on your shelves – the food tastes great plus you learn how many choices you do have with heart healthy foods.

ARE YOU FULL YET?

6th Course

Yellow Cake with Fudge Icing: This is an ongoing quest of mine to find a really moist, dense yellow cake. Where as this cake was delicious, denser and moist, it wasn’t what I’m seeking ~ so I still search for my holy grail of cakes. PLEASE, if you have a yellow cake recipe that is really dense and moist send it to me (diningdish@hotmail.com).

I tried the cake recipe from Restaurant Eve which was in the Washington Post-I did not make their icing. I searched the internet for a chocolate fudge icing recipe and was ready to make one that called for condensed milk. I knew I had a can in the cupboard only to find out it had a date on it from 1996. Needless to say, I chose another recipe – Caroline’s Chocolate Fudge Frosting that came out great (I added a pinch of salt to it and only used ½ cup of milk. I think salt brings out the chocolate flavor)

Heathens that we were, we polished off ½ the cake between 4 people. I probably should put a warning on this menu “Do Not Try This At Home~ It Can be Harmful to a Full Night’s Sleep and One’s Waistline.” I’m still eating cake and sorbetto; I sent the leftover chicken, asparagus and potatoes home with my guests.

Are you an unbridled cook? We can start a club and go insane cooking for each other...but what a way to go.

I Got an E-Mail

About 4 to 5 weeks ago I received an e-mail from the chief honcho from the Examiner in Colorado and he had been reading the Dining Dish Blog. He told me the Examiner.com was launching a new format and was wondering if I would blog for them. Well the new Examiner.com launched this week, a soft launch as they get the kinks out so I'm announcing it to my Dining Dish readers.

I am the Baltimore Dining Examiner, that is the title, not a blogger but an Examiner, is that branding to the nth degree? So I need each one of you to go read my stories, at least click on them a minimum of 1,000 times a day - you got the drill down- 1,000 times a day. And be sure to leave pithy comments as well.

You'll see the stories aren't just dining local, it is more rants, raves, reviews and reminiscences. I plan to talk cookbooks, products, restaurants, cooking...no food uncooked or uneaten, pretty much what I write here. I will continue to write the Dining Dish Blog since I just printed 5,000 business cards with it's hyperlink -waste not, want....hmmmm, 1000 hits an hour.

Please feel free to send me press releases you think will be of interest at diningdish@hotmail.com. Want to learn more about me check me out at http://www.linkedin.com/in/diningdish

As Style Magazine said of Dining Dish, it is like Lucille Ball was writing the blog and there are definitely times with all that is going on I feel like Lucy! Let me thank you here and now for reading Dining Dish. You know I do this because after being with my husband for 28 years he doesn't listen anymore so you get the benefit of all my trials, tribulations and triumphs and alliteration.

Food Memories from my Yout

My love affair with food didn't start at an early age. I only recall one food favorite as a child and that was and still is spaghetti in a red sauce, my mother's and then eventually my own concoctions - but that is another post.

Today I was trying to remember back to my childhood to any food memories. I know the story my mother talked about was that my sister and I were picky eaters. We were both very scrawny, tiny children and my mother being a good Jewish mother, felt guilty that we weren't robust looking. I think she felt her friends thought she was starving us.

She bribed both of us with $10 if we could gain 10 pounds in a year. Okay, it was a long time ago and that 10 spot is equivalent to $100 by today's standards. I recollect trying hard to gain but I just couldn't do it. I could win challenge today in about 3 days.

My mother's frustration was that there was little that I liked and my goodness if I said I liked something, I got it everyday for lunch....EVERYDAY...until I would throw a tantrum. The sliced turkey meat sandwiches on rye with a sprinkling of salt sticks in my mind. The lunch box would come home still in tack with the morning's packed sandwich. Oh, mother would be so aggravated and upset. It was my sister who told me to throw the sandwich away (she was the rocket genius between the two of us). I remember swapping a sandwich with another student, it was a meatloaf sandwich with ketchup on white bread...it was good, WELL, it wasn't sliced turkey.

Let me not forget breakfast every morning, of course it was the same thing every morning, a soft boiled egg and a glass of chocolate milk---talk about nausea to kick off your day. She probably did something else on the weekends. I know I had pancakes from time-to-time but it was those fast, so-called nutritious soft boil eggs every morning. To this day I can't watch Rocky Balboa swallow the raw eggs in Rocky and not have a feeling I'm going to toss.

Chocolate milk was the only way to get milk down me, I couldn't handle white milk and to this day I don't drink white milk. I do use it with cereal if there is sugar in it (sugar substitute at this age.)

Don't be shy, let me know about your personal recollections of food of your youth ( or as Joe Pesci said in My Cousin Vinny, "yout").

I Can Hardly Move

Vince Lupo, the intrepid photographer on my cookbook YUM and his lovely wife Mary came over for dinner. That is all Vince wanted as payment for some very nice professional shots he did of me. Here is a photographer who works for the leading magazines for fashion, food and architecture. So I wanted to make this a WOW dinner and I succeeded but I can hardly move.
(here are two of the pictures taken by Vince Lupo)

I started cooking yesterday. I did the brisket Italian style, the key lime cheesecake, cleaned the lobster for the lobster summer rolls, and made the lemon basil sorbetto. Oh, almost forgot I made the lentil and sausage soup.

Thinking I’m ahead of the game I did relax a bit in the a.m. and headed to the kitchen where I sliced the brisket. I did fancy oven roasted baby potatoes and broiled the asparagus. I made the dipping sauce for the summer rolls, did the Buddakan's Tuna Tea Eggs, put out the pate. Pulled out the mandoline to thinly slice the mango to top the cheesecake. Whipped the cream to top the cheesecake…oye!

Here is the final menu:

Appetizers in the family room

Pate, cornichons and French bread
Lobster and Mango Summer Rolls with Nuoc Mam dipping sauce
Buddakan Eggs with Raw Tuna topping

Salad
Sliced tomato, cucumbers, carrots, black olives, feta cheese with olive oil and benimosu vinegar

Soup
Sausage and Lentil Soup

Intermezzo
Lemon Basil Sorbetto

Entrée
Italian Style Brisket
Oven Roasted Potatoes
7 minute Asparagus

Dessert

Key Lime Cheesecake topped with Mango Ribbons

It was a lot of food but people went for 2nds. I have about 2 hours of clean up in the morning. I’ll post the links tomorrow to some of the recipes.

Ciao Ciao

I'm Foie Gras

It's true, I am a walking foie gras. I've been diagnosed with fatty liver disease. Thanks to PETA and their work, I am banned from Chicago and all that the city offers. No matter how good the Southwest Airlines deals might be to Chicago, I am foie gras non gratis in the Windy City.

Who is Dining Dish?

Dara Bunjon is a graduate of the La Varenne Cooking Classes at the Greenbrier and extended education courses at the Culinary Institute of America-Hyde Park. She has coordinated over 100 cooking classes in Baltimore's leading restaurant kitchens. Once a regular cooking demonstrator on WBAL-TV in Baltimore, you now will find Dara behind the scenes as a food stylist for chefs and cookbook authors, or planning special culinary events.

Known as Dining Dish to many in the Baltimore/DC area, Dara writes a free 'foodie' e-newsletter under the same name and maintains a food-related blog: http://www.diningdish.blogspot.com/

Her passion for food - its source, preparation, and consumption -keeps her hands in assorted aspects of the food industry. Bunjon started her culinary endeavors as president of the Epicurean Club of Maryland, moved on to charitable activities to end hunger, and recently opened her consulting business, Dara Does It ~ Creative Solutions for the Food Industry. A stint as Marketing and Public Relations Director for Vanns Spices also called upon her culinary knowledge for product development and sales.

Dara is a board member for the Maryland Hospitality Education Foundation and the American Institute of Wine and Food/Baltimore, MD, as well as a member of the national public relations committee for Women Chefs and Restaurateurs. She is a contributing writer for Foodservice Monthly and has written for Style Magazine, Mid-Atlantic Restaurant Digest, Urbanite, Fruit Growers, Baltimore Eats and assorted websites.

YUM - Tasty Recipes from Culinary Experts is co-authored by Dara and will be in all market
October, 2007.

Recent clients have been the International School of Protocol, Sun Moon & Stars Cafe, Canola Council of Canada, Pazza Luna Restaurant, Donna Shields, The Grapevine Cafe, The Rooster Cafe, Sotto Sopra, Amano Artisan Chocolate, Grape Events and MyCity4Her.com.