Category: food

T.G.I. Friday’s Makes a Good Cobb Salad

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Some coworkers and I went out to lunch last week at T.G.I. Friday’s and, as I had a late breakfast that day, I didn’t really want something too heavy. I started looking over their lunch menu and noticed that they had a Cobb salad — and considering that Cobb salads have both avocado and blue cheese, I could hardly resist. But, if you’re not familiar with Cobb salads, here’s the gist of how they got started:

One night in 1937, Bob Cobb, then owner of The Brown Derby, prowled hungrily in his restaurant’s kitchen for a snack. Opening the huge refrigerator, he pulled out this and that: a head of lettuce, an avocado, some romaine, watercress, tomatoes, some cold breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese and some old-fashioned French dressing. He started chopping. Added some crisp bacon — swiped from a busy chef. […]

Now, I don’t think the T.G.I. Friday’s version had watercress and I can't recall whether it had chives, but this was a fantastic salad. As described by their menu, their Cobb salad has “chilled chargrilled chicken, crisp bacon, avocado, Colby cheese, egg, black olives, tomatoes and Bleu cheese on salad greens”:

  • Grilled chicken: Unlike some poseur grilled-chicken ### salads (like the grilled chicken Cesar salads that some restaurants have), the chicken was sliced into bite-sized pieces. It always annoyed me when restaurants slapped4” slices of chicken onto a salad; but, that wasn’t the case here.

  • Bacon: This was real bacon, natch, and not some of that soybean-based fake bacon. And, it was cooked to a point of crispiness (but not yet crunchiness) which, as I see it, may the optimal texture for salad-based bacon.

  • Avocado: Here’s where the salad really shone. Of course, I'm a bit of an avocado fiend as it is and I'll order nearly anything if avocado is a primary ingredient. However, nothing ruins an avocado-based dish more quickly than unripe avocado (bleh). But, this avocado was ripe and soft — I really couldn’t believe that Friday’s hadn’t screwed this part up as restaurants so often use almost-ripe avocados on hamburgers and the like.

  • Hardboiled egg halves: Other than overcooking them, it's hard to flub a hard boiled egg. And, sure enough, these eggs were cooked properly and halves (which meant that I didn’t have to manually slice them myself).

  • Diced black olives It doesn’t look like diced olives were part of the original salad, but they worked well here. And, like the eggs, it’s hard to incorrectly add olives to a salad ;).

  • Blue cheese: Like the avocado, the blue cheese was another stand-out in this salad. Really, I was expecting a few pea-sized bits of blue cheese scattered throughout the salad, but the blue cheese in this salad was generously sized, of which some chucks were almost approaching the size of those bite-sized (cube-shaped) candybars that are popular around Halloween.

At the time I ordered it, I was thinking to myself that I’d “just have a salad” and that I’d order “something more substantial” next time. But, this salad had a deliciousness that surpassed my expectations and I’ll definitely have one again sometime.

These Thick Pancakes, They Vibrate?

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I went to SXSW last weekend and got back to Dallas Tuesday evening. Then, the following day (Wednesday), there was the DFWBlogs March Cocktail Event at New Amsterdam Coffee Haus (which actually is a bar, contrary to what you might think). I actually wasn't sure if I’d go, but decided to give it a try as I had heard that there might be some new bloggers there.

I ended up getting a bit lost on my way there and wound up about ten minutes late. Now, even though ten minutes late is still “on-time” in the DFW-blogiverse, I still expected that there’d be a few people there ahead of me. However, as I walked in the door, I took a quick look around and soon realized that I was the only one there. So, I just ordered a drink and sat down at a table which looked big enough to hold several more people. And, fortunately, New Amsterdam has an excellent beer selection; I certainly didn’t mind a few quiet moments as I sipped my Chimay White.

As I waited, I peered around the place and took in their decor. Soon enough, a few other bloggers arrived — Leia, Matt, Julie and Andrew walked in about the same time. Each of them ordered a drink and, as we began talking, we soon realized that neither Leia nor I had dinner beforehand. Leia mentioned off-handedly that the last time the DFWBlogs happy hour was at New Amsterdam, the group went off to Cafe Brazil afterwards. That sounded pretty good, actually, and I suggested that we could go get some dinner there.

After finishing our drinks — and meeting new-blogger Heidi — we closed our tabs and headed off to Cafe Brazil. And, as an illustration of the goofy road patterns in the area, I recall that Matt’s directions to get to Cafe Brazil went something like this: “ Go left on Exposition Ave and then turn left onto Elm Street. Well, actually, you don’t need to turn left onto Elm — Exposition just curves around and then becomes Elm.”

We drove to Cafe Brazil and there were plenty of free tables; we were seated just about as soon as we got there. And, while I often order a make-your-own omelette when I go to Cafe Brazil (with chorizo, feta and sun-dried tomatoes), I felt like something a bit sweeter this time. I turned to the breakfast section of the menu and the pancakes caught my eye. Of course, the menu only said “pancakes” and didn’t make it clear whether fruit-filled pancakes were available (such as blueberry pancakes which would have hit the spot right about then).

When our server came around to take our order, I just asked him what kinds of pancakes they had. I recall that there were plain, chocolate chip and some third variety of pancakes. Well, that made my choice easy — I could hardly resist a dish featuring both pancakes and chocolate. And, just to ensure some protein intake within the meal, I also ordered a side of chorizo.

Our food arrived a little while later and I dug right in. And, I’m not sure if this is typical of all breakfast-is-our-specialty restaurants, but these were some enormous pancakes — each of the three pancakes was about 6-8 inches across and about a third of an inch thick. Sure enough, there were chocolate chips in there. But, the thickness of the pancakes worked to their disadvantage. I mean, let’s not kid around — this was a chocolate-chip delivery vehicle which happened to be in a circle and I just wanted as many chocolate chips in each bite as possible.

To the cook’s credit, it was evident that the chocolate chips were added as the pancakes were cooking (as opposed to adding right into the batter) as chips might have all sunk to the bottom of the mixing bowl otherwise. With this manual chip-sprinkling midway through the cooking process, the chips were evenly distributed. But, the pancakes were so thick that even a 2" x 1" slice — a throughput of perhaps two to three chocolate chips — still left me with a mouthful of pancake.

Perhaps some thinner pancakes would resolve this. Nothing crazy or crepe-like (not that I would be opposed to that) but perhaps something closer to a quarter-inch thick. That should be thick enough to remain structurally sound when transferring them off the cooking surface while ensuring the most favorable chip-to-batter radio. Not that these were bad pancakes — they were soft and delectable — but they did have that area for improvement.

Come to think of it, most restaurant-pancakes are pretty thick, if memory serves. Maybe it’s just that their customers like the spectacle of a pile of plate-filling pancakes. So, I suppose I’ll just have to make my own chocolate-chip pancakes to get them properly unthickified. (And, that reminds me of the DFWBlogs-breakfast which we had about two years ago. Everyone joined in and we cooked up a huge breakfast; I wouldn’t be opposed to trying that again sometime.)

Tony Romas: The Place for Slow Service

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

Leia, Matt and I went out for lunch yesterday. We didn’t have a particular place in mind, so we just started wandering around the West End (since that’s where our office is now). We came across Tony Roma’s which sounded pretty good; so we walked in.

It was maybe 1:30 at this point, so the restaurant was fairly empty. We were seated at a table near the bar and I soon noticed the above par number of beer bottles featured along the shelf behind the bar (but, I just ordered water with lunch, natch). The menus were tri-fold glossy jobbies, which is about what I expected. And, as I started looking through the menu, Leia helpfully pointed out that they had blue cheese burgers. “Well, that makes my choice easy!”, I said as I refolded my menu back to its compact form.

We placed our orders and the food arrived didn’t take long to arrive. Leia had barbecued chicken with broccoli on the side, Matt had a barbecue chicken sandwich and I had the blue cheese burger (also with broccoli on the side). From that point forward, the experience became a bit surreal. As we ate our meals, we couldn’t help but notice the awful music piped over the speaker system, a smattering of mid-80s not-really-hits, if I recall. And, what was even more bizarre, as our server came by to fill up our glasses from a pitcher of water, I noticed that she was quietly humming along to this schlock.

But, back to the food. I ordered the blue cheese burger, of course, and even though blue cheese alone is usually enough to entice me to order a dish of Ingredient X + Blue Cheese, I saw when I was reading the menu that their blue cheese burger also featured bacon — which was only a further bonus. Jumping back in the timeline a bit, when the food first arrived and the server was handing the plates from her servers’ tray to our table, the burger whet my appetite: the blue cheese was sprinkled liberally across the face of the patty and the buns appeared to be toasted as well. I soon learned that appearances could be deceiving.

I was initially pleased that the burger included not one but two slices of tomato. However, they proved to be largely useless — they were about a third of an inch thick each and, even with one slice, the hamburger was too tall to fit my mouth. The tomato slices were soon placed to the side. And, as I gripped the bun, about to take a bite, I couldn’t help but notice that the bun was actually a bit sticky. It didn’t leave a residue on my fingers but there was definitely some adhesion to my fingertips somewhat similar to the effect of Post-It notes.

My first couple bites were mostly bun-filled, but that’s not uncommon for hamburgers in general. As I ate towards the center of the burger, something seemed awry with the burger but I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Then, as I noticed myself having to wash down a bite with a sip of water, it dawned on me that the patty was of the subsaharan variety. Imagine for a moment chomping down on a dry kitchen sponge placed inside a hamburger bun; that would approximate both the texture and moisture content of this hamburger. Now, I’m not saying that this was the worst hamburger that I’ve ever had. Oh wait, yes I am.

After braving through our meals, we set out to pay our bill. Leia and Matt opted to use cash while I paid for my portion with a credit card. At this point, it was probably after 2:00 — we were almost the only people in the restaurant — but it took what seemed like 10-15 minutes for our server to run the card. All the same, while my hamburger may have been less than ideal, I might be willing to give Tony Roma’s the benefit of the doubt; maybe they were having an off-day, or maybe hamburgers just aren’t their specialty. So, if my coworkers want to go for lunch there again sometime, I may just give that a try. But, I’ll probably order a non-beef entree from their menu ;).

Recipe: Chocolate and Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I brought some cupcakes in to work last week and I thought I’d share the recipe here. Thinking over what I should bring, I was looking for something more substantial than a cookie, but still hand-held (for the sake of easier office eating). I soon narrowed it down to cupcakes and I looked through the cupcakes section of AllRecipes to see if anything caught my eye — and the Chocolate & Cream Cheese cupcakes sounded pretty good.

So, I bought some cream cheese and cocoa over the weekend and made the cupcakes later that week. I made them with Splenda and I’m pleased with how they turned out. And, other than the flour and chocolate chips, the cupcakes were relatively low carb (well, by cupcake standards, anyway). There’s also a photo of the cupcakes at the RD2 blog. Anyhow, on to the recipe:

Black Bottom Cupcakes I

Prep Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Cook Time: approx. 30 Minutes
Ready in: approx. 1 Hour
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes (24 servings)

Ingredients:
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup white sugar
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips [regular-sized chips worked fine for me]
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup white sugar [or Splenda]
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder [I upped this to a heaping 1/3 cup, as recommended in the reviews]
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup water [I used a cup of milk instead, as recommended in the reviews]
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Line muffin tins with paper cups or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray. [I both lined and sprayed, just to be sure.]

  2. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, egg, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/8 teaspoon salt until light and fluffy. Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside.

  3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center and add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Stir together until well blended. Fill muffin tins 1/3 full with the batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture.

  4. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes [I only baked mine for about 20 minutes, as recommended in the reviews].

The only change I might make would be to make extra cream cheese topping next time, as I almost didn't have enough for all of the cupcakes. But, other than that, I think I’d make these again sometime.

Jelly Filled Death

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Bryan is aware of my penchant for JFDs — Jelly Filled Doughnuts, perhaps my favorite doughnut variety — and he brought some in to the office today. He brought in a variety of doughnuts from Krispy Kreme, including some raspberry JFDs. Well, how could I resist?

So, as I went through my usual morning routine of checking my e-mail and upgrading my browser, I made my way through the doughnut. And, the raspberry filling was a nice change of pace from the usual “red flavor” which goes into JFDs. It did seem a bit sweet to me at the time, but that’s probably just me since I don’t consume much sugar these days.

It’s now about an hour later and I’m wishing that maybe I didn't eat a whole doughnut. Calories aside, I feel a little woozy. In fact, in pondering the sensations from my midsection, it seems to resemble a punch in the stomach. I’m sure I’ll be fine soon enough but I didn’t expect that doughnut to have such a lasting impression ;). Note to self: Doughnuts may be delicious delicacies, but perhaps more so in moderation.

PS: Bryan, I still appreciate the gesture and I consider this purely my fault ;)