I am NOT on a diet. Absolutely not.

So, since Tula has recently closed (tears shedding), Mr. M and I ended up at Mezcal for brunch this weekend. I often get the "Entomatada", which is basically a stacked enchilada plate with a spicy red sauce, topped with eggs and bacon. It's more delicious than it sounds and just the thing to hit the spot after working all night.

We also hit Abyssinia again recently, drinking Meta (the Ethiopian beer that tastes like honey), eating with our hands, and licking our fingers clean in what can only be described as a truly sensual dining experience.

On another note, have you tried Ca Del Doge Chianti 2006 (Tuscany)? We had some last night, and I was a bit worried given the high-end wines we were drinking over the holidays. But it was a fantastic accompaniment to our dinner last night, and you can't beat the price. Go get it at Marczyk's Wine Store now - here's an excerpt from their website:

Ca Del Doge Chianti 2006. Tuscany, Italy. A WOW Chianti, even at twice the price. Beautiful clear ruby red in color with a vibrant floral nose. A plethora of integrated flavors of cherries and cranberries, flirty hints of cinnamon and cloves round out the palate. The sweetly charming introduction is backed up by judiciously firm tannins and a lengthy finish. An outstanding food wine! Regular price: $13.99 - Sale price: $9.99 - Case discount price: $ 8.50.

Also, I bought some yummy cheese at Marczyk's the other day. One of my very favorites of all time is the Pierre Robert triple cream brie. Unbelievably creamy and rich - one of the best ways possible to break your New Years resolutions. I also bought another one that I can't remember the name of right now, but it's a goat cheese, I think, marinated in red wine and has a reddish/purplish rind - if you look, you'll see it. It is also quite good.

So, if you're having trouble with Weight Watchers, don't worry. You can always count on me to encourage you.

Happy New Year!

Mr. M and I had a quiet New Year's Day dinner at home. We had some beautiful grilled ribeyes, an arugula salad, and some decadent creamy polenta. We lubricated this meal with a bottle of 2005 Ca di Pian, La Spinetta (Piedmont) Barbera. What a way to start off the new year. No diets for us!

Spicy Creamy Polenta (modified from Paula Deen's Rosemary Polenta recipe)

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes (more or less as desired)
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary leaves
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
2 cups half-and-half
2 cups milk
2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup good grated Parmesan


Heat the butter and olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, rosemary, salt, and pepper and saute for 1 minute. Add the chicken stock, half-and-half, and milk and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and slowly sprinkle the cornmeal into the hot milk while stirring constantly with a whisk. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 10-15 minutes, until thickened and bubbly. Off the heat, stir in the Parmesan. Serve immediately.

Magnum Opus

My mother-in-law came to town Christmas Eve, armed with a shopping list organized into sections for meat, produce, etc, so that shopping would be more streamlined. We hit Whole Foods around 5pm that day, and they were already out of so many things. Thanks to her organization and planning, we were out of there relatively quickly.

The Christmas Menu:

Pea Soup with Avocado and Lump Crabmeat
J. Schram 2000, Schramsberg Cellars

Beef Wellington
Orange Mashed Potatoes
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Opus One 2003, Opus One Winery

Chocolate Mousse Tart with Strawberry Macedone

We cooked for close to 4 hours on Christmas Day. We'd never made a Beef Wellington, and we learned a lot along the way. We worked hard for that meal, but it was all worth it. We had a meal truly worthy of the carefully chosen and exquisite alcoholic accompaniments.

(I'm really worried that I'm spoiling myself. After J. Schram and Opus One, can one really go back to drinking Yellowtail?)

Stuffing my face with my family

Isn't that always what we do when we get together with family? It's definitely true for mine. As if this month hasn't been bad enough, with all sorts of gluttony and drunkenness already encouraged at work, at home, at holiday parties, with friends...

I don't remember the details of each meal, as it is a bit of a haze. Here are the highlights:

I remember shopping on the Pearl Street Mall, then hitting Centro for some beautifully tasty $2 happy hour tacos - the adobo and the shrimp beating out the chicken tacos by a mile. A hot manchego and chorizo fondue was lubricated well with grapefruit margs.

Our party of five blew three bills at Sushi Den. For lunch. With no alcohol. I remember a delicious cold creamy Japanese tofu, some black cod, some tasty eggplant. There was fantastic sashimi. Lots of fresh sushi - toro, uni, buri belly, etc. I could go on.

We had a lovely meal at Limon, though it did worry me that the restaurant was almost completely empty during a time when most restaurants are packed. The kitchen obviously had time to focus on our food, which was excellent. The fritada appetizer - little bits of fried pork - how can you go wrong? The tiradito cebiche was great. As was the Quinotto de hongos, the Arroz con pato, the Corvina bass. Again, I could go on. The cachacaritas and margaritas are also excellent.

Osteria Marco - fun to go at night with all the lights on Larimer. The burrata continues to be amazing, always a favorite. We also discovered a new favorite in the wild mushroom and robiola pizza, drizzled with truffle oil. Earthy, rich, and fantastic. Even the two devoted carnivores at the table agreed that it was the best dish.

Happy, happy holidays...

Going Ethnic

If you're anything like me, a shortage of cash is a dilemma that accompanies the always inevitably expensive Christmas holidays. I also usually feel short on time as well during this season, with all the holiday parties, cookie making, gift shopping, and travel planning to do. So what to do if you're short on cash but still want to eat out because you have no time to cook (and you really, truth be known, like eating out)? The answer for me is always - Go Ethnic.

One snowy cold night, Mr. M and I made our way (slowly) down the parking lot previously known as Parker Road to Masalaa, the South Indian restaurant touted to be the best in town by those in the know. Our usual Indian meals come from Little India - I'm definitely a bit more familiar with North Indian cuisine, but this was a welcome change from the usual. Mr. M suffered a bit of disappointment when he discovered that Masalaa is a vegetarian restaurant, but like a trooper, he quickly recovered and tried everything that was put in front of him. We had dosa of course - the classic North Indian crepes filled with savory fillings. We also had a combo thali with Mysore masala dosa, onion tomato uthappam, Kanchipuram Idly, medhu vada, idly podi, sambar, coconut and tomato chutney and Rava Kesari. I had no idea what I was eating most of the time, but it was all quite tasty.

Another day, I discovered Lao Wang Noodle House. I can't believe I've lived in Denver so long never having discovered this little gem. They have the best xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and kwo tyeh (fried potstickers) in town. The place is run by a cute older couple that speaks minimal English, but that just means that the food is going to be outstanding! Wasn't cheap as far as dumplings go - you could get them in a major city's Chinatown for half as much - but they definitely have the market for dumplings in Denver. They are the market. The dumplings are good and authentic - the skins are great. Haven't tried the various noodles yet, but I'll be back for sure.

Another night, we went to one of the many Ethiopian restaurants that line Colfax in a stretch near our house. We've been to many of them, but this night we chose Abyssinia, right near Colfax and Colorado. Mr. M discovered a new favorite beer - Meta, an Ethiopian beer that tastes like honey. (If you've never had Ethiopian food, it's a really fun and tasty experience. Be prepared to eat with your hands, licking your fingers clean because it's so good. Fluffy injera bread, which tastes like sourdough but looks and feels like a washcloth - hee hee -, is served with the meal - you break off pieces of it and use it to sop up your food, trying to get it in your mouth before you drop it in your lap. Lots of fun and kinda romantic to eat with your sweetheart.) We ordered a meat combination and a vegetable combination, all of which arrives on a injera-lined platter, colorful dollops of goodness covering the plate. Again, many of the dollops are unidentifiable, but they are so good that you really don't care what you're eating - you just want more of it. I'm serious. Give it a go.

Anyway, these three meals this week not only saved me some bucks during a negative cash flow month but also gave me some really, really, really good eats.

Christmas Cookies

Living in Denver is not always conducive to baking - I discovered that the hard way when I first moved here after several dessert disasters. Though I may not attempt cakes as much as I used to, I still love to bake cookies. Cookies still seem to turn out right despite the altitude, and heck, they are just so convenient and fun to eat!

Holiday cookies are even more fun. They are especially nice to give as gifts, or just to have around for parties, for friends that drop by, or for your family houseguests for the holidays. Plus, I wanted to give my (relatively) new Kitchen Aid mixer a good workout.

This year, I finally invested in some commercial-quality baking sheets as well as several silicone baking mats. It made all the difference in the world, and I'd highly recommend it.

I made 4 different cookies this year (I picked out 8 recipes, bought all the ingredients for them, then ran out of steam halfway through):

Mexican Wedding Cakes - classic, always a crowd pleaser, and pretty on a plate.
Raspberry Lemon Thumbprints - for the fruity people. also very pretty.
Chai Spiced Almond Cookies - something a little different.
World Peace Cookies - for the chocoholics. see below.

Though all 4 batches turned out well, my runaway, hands-down favorite, are the World Peace Cookies. I am usually not a fan of chocolate chocolate chip cookies (I suppose I'm more of a traditionalist and prefer the plain chocolate chip ones), and I probably wouldn't have picked these up had I seen them on the cookie plate. But these have captured my heart. Aptly named, this is a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie that is made totally transcendent by the addition of some fleur de sel. If you make these, be sure to use excellent quality chocolate and fleur de sel - do NOT substitute regular table salt. Anyway, supposedly if everyone could eat one of these cookies every day, we would all be so happy that we would truly have World Peace. I, however, agree with smittenkitchen - if you were holding the last cookie of the batch, warm and soft from the oven, I'd most certainly resort to acts of violence in order to wrench it from your little fingers...

What could be better than sushi at Sushi Den?

The answer is, of course, FREE sushi at Sushi Den.

One of the (few) perks of my job is that once in a while, product reps will take us out to dinner. Sometimes, the food is already ordered for us, or we are limited to only a few selections. But occasionally, there are one of those much-coveted free-for-all, order whatever the hell you want kind of dinners. Last night, I was privileged to take part in one of these lovely occasions at one of my favorite (and one of the most pricey, at least the way I eat) restaurants in town. I sipped on a couple glasses of a wonderful Spanish Albarino ($10/glass, new on the menu, can't remember the name) over the course of my meal which included edamame, agedashi tofu, calamari, and miso black cod. And those were just the beginning.

We feasted on orders of the ginger sashimi and japanese wasabi sashimi to start - both incredibly fresh and dressed with delicate sauces and microgreens giving layers of flavor. We ate LOTS of melt-in-your-mouth toro, some briny sea urchin, some seared tender sea scallops, some salmon roe. We overstuffed ourselves with the spicy firecracker roll, creamy house roll, crunchy spider roll, and much much more. The only thing that lay mostly untouched (hurrah! I'm so proud) was a sad California roll that no one would quite own up to having ordered...

As I'm sure is true with any job, there are times I really hate mine. (Especially whenever I'm up working at 3 am.) I wonder to myself, "Is my job is really worth this?!?" But after just one evening of excess at the Den, I am finally convinced that it is.