Roaming The Restaurant Depot

I got a chance to wander around the new Restaurant Depot that recently opened on Warehouse Row in Colonie. Before you head over, you should know that the Restaurant Depot is not open to the public. You need a Tax ID number or the proper paperwork from a non-profit to get a free membership. Luckily, I know a few people that have already become members and was able to tag along.

From the outside, the place looks like any other really big wholesale store but there is a very nice covered area so rain and snow won’t get on your purchases while you load up. Since it is a store for restaurants, everything is bulk. Not just bulk, BULK. The refrigerated section is huge and filled with meats, cheeses and produce. Some meats were marked for sale by the piece (whole briskets, packs of pork butt, whole sirloins – like in BJs) but they were also sold by the case which makes sense if you are preparing several hundred portions of short ribs. Most of the cheeses looked to start in the 5 pound range. And it looks like a fresh seafood section is coming. Right now most of the seafood was frozen, but the empty holding tanks looked like they were almost ready to go.

When I was done in the cooler I wondered around the rest of the store. They had some nice looking kitchen equipment – stock pots, slicers, grinder, coffee equipment. Smaller stuff too – spatulas, whisks, peelers, knives. And plates, glassware, aprons, to-go containers, paper/plastic stuff, pizza boxes, the list is very long. Then you get into the dry goods. It is kind of like a supermarket except “gallon” is the smallest size. If they have what you want and you want a lot of it, the prices are good too. For example, the price of De Cecco spaghetti is $1.24 a pound. The catch is you need to buy twenty, 1-pound boxes.

Restaurant Depot is a lot of fun for a food nut to walk around. I went in hoping to find one, specific ingredient and I did. But it only came in 100 or 50 pounds bags.

Guess who has 50 pound sack of high protein pizza flour.

Pizza on the Brain

Just joined another pizza forum. This one is at PizzaMaking.com. The amount of fantastic information on that site is overwhelming. I made another folder in the bookmarks pull down menu to hold the new links and threads I want to revisit. And the pictures...I have been staring at amazing pizzas for almost a week now.

I'm hoping to get out to buy some high protein flour tomorrow so I can make a dough I read about this weekend. The recipe calls for a minimum 3 day cold ferment and the dough apparently gets better with age. Challenge accepted.

Happy Birthday To Us

Once a year, my side of the family gets together to celebrate our collective birthdays in one shot and that's what we did over the weekend. This year, everyone met up at our house and it was the first time I was under the gun to pick the celebratory restaurant.

The event kicked off Saturday morning with the baking of the Grandma Cake. The recipe has been handed down from my Grandma Lilly (also of Grandma Cookie fame - what can I say, we didn't come up with very clever names). It is a tricky recipe and that is mostly because you have to cook by feel. and that is never good in baking. For example, the only measured amount in the frosting recipe is for the butter. Everything else is to taste plus you have to eyeball it to make sure you have enough to frost the whole cake. My oldest brother was in charge of baking the cake this year and I was his assistant along with 3 kids. I took a few photos along the way. Here's the batter during several milk additions to get the proper "ribbon" flowing off the spoon.

Two cake pans filled with batter ready to get baked.

The frosting gets mixed up while the cake bakes. You need to frost the cake while it is still warm. The frosting came out great. The leftover was mixed into some milk for some afternoon hot chocolate.

My brother's first time using an offset spatula to frost. A butter knife is the usual frosting tool.

We piled into two vehicles and headed off to Garden Bistro 24. I figured it was a casual enough restaurant to have a few kids with coloring books and the food was good enough to make the adults happy too. For the most part, I'd say it was a great restaurant pick. Three hiccups stood out to me, and I'll detail them, but above everything else I must say I really enjoy their mussel dishes, the steak that came to the table was delicious, the kids liked the chicken fingers (house made) and burger, I thought the Merabec Salad was fantastic, frites are awesome, the staff is very friendly and my mother was happy with the vegan meal they prepared for her. So even with the hiccups, we enjoyed the restaurant.

So the hiccups...I had called almost two weeks in advance to make the reservation and make special accommodations for my mother who basically eats a vegan diet with minimal fat. I was assured it wasn't a problem and to remind the server. We did and there were a few awkward moments there where it seemed like there was going to be a scramble to get her a dinner because there is nothing on their menu other than salad for her to eat. It was awkward enough for my wife to ask me if I had called in advance to set it up. In the end it worked out nicely and she got some very fresh, lightly sauteed vegetable over a bed quinoa. Lovely. Nothing major, just a minor bump.

Hiccup number 2: We ordered a bottle of wine with five glasses. The glasses were delivered to the table and a few moments later the bottle of wine was place on the table in front of me with a - and this is a quote - "Here you go." The bottle had a twist top which had been loosened and I poured wine for everyone. I understand there wasn't a cork to present, but something slightly more formal would have been nice. Instead, it was me saying, "Hey, pass me your glass."

The final hiccup: the appetizers were weak. They aren't bad, but they aren't good either. Certainly not in comparison to everything else. Maybe it was an off night, I don't know. I've never had any appetizers there before. My wife and I split a salad, then we each get a dinner, then maybe we'll split a dessert. We ordered the Crispy Calamari and Jumbo Lump Crab Cake. If a place can put that much attention to detail into their salads - seriously the Merabec salad with a maple/mustard vinaigrette was really delicious - they can make much better crab cakes and fried calamari. The skill in the kitchen is clearly there. There just needs to be some of that skill focused at the appetizers.

Hiccups and all, we enjoyed ourselves and the night. We skipped dessert at the restaurant and headed back to the house for Grandma Cake. After singing Happy Birthday to Us, we tore into the cake. It was a good time.

New Make Cough Syrup

I said earlier how much I enjoyed watching the Moonshiners show on Discovery. I shouldn't. And yet I love the damn show. The first season was a little bit better than the second but I still enjoyed it and if there is a third season, I'll be setting the DVR up to watch it.

Ever since having the flu just before Christmas, I have a cough I just can't shake. Last night after a brief coughing fit I reached for the bottle of cough syrup I had been nursing all week. It was gone.

What would Tickle do? I'll tell you what Tickle would do.

 
Tickle would never have bought the CVS knockoff of Robitussin. He would have had himself a few belts of shine (probably a mason's jar worth) and gone to sleep it off. So, I reached for my bottle of Albany Distiller's New Make Whiskey. Technically speaking, alcohol from a corn mash that was aged in a barrel for as long as it took to fill the barrel and then empty it sounds pretty similar to the shine I've been watching these guys make for the past few weeks. I did about half a shot. Watched a rerun of 30 Rock. Did another shot and went to bed.

This morning I woke up well rested and felt the best I have since early December. Not all better, but on the mend. Definitely having another shot (or two or three) tonight. Strictly for medicinal purposes, of course.

Chicken dinners continued

Quesadillas for dinner yesterday with the kids. The one with filled with sriracha sauce was mine.

Chicken Marsala for dinner tonight.

Still have to make the stock and there is a little meat left over for a soup. I thinking it would be good for lunch on Saturday.

Chicken dinners

Now that I have the pressure cooker and it is easier to make stock, I started buying whole chickens again. I like that I can do this with a half-assed plan. Chicken is chicken. There is no one way it needs to be cooked.

Prior to the Sunday grocery shopping trip, I checked the weather and saw that today was going to be pushing 40 degrees. Perfect winter grilling weather. The report, however didn't say anything about the precipitation was luckily dodged between 5 and 6 this evening. I've grilled in the rain and/or snow before and it isn't that big a deal. The hardest part is trying not to track up the house going in and out. Anyhow, upon seeing a 40 degree Tuesday and knowing that I have more time to get dinner ready on Tuesdays because of gymnastics - grilling was happening.  During the Sunday shopping trip, I picked up two fryers from Fresh Market. When they aren't on sale, two of these chickens will cost about $15. A sale drops the price closer to $11. I like getting two chickens because I get a minimum of three dinners out of them, plus a lunch or two and stock.  Plus, I think the chicken tastes better than buying pre-butchered chicken. Especially boneless breasts. Maybe it's my imagination.

After a little bit of handiwork (I'm actually getting pretty good at this), each chicken is broken down into 2 boneless breasts, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks and I break up the wings. A boning knife helps, but a chefs knife will do. Here's a good video on breaking down a chicken (there are 3 videos in the series - 1, 2 and 3). To make life easier in the future, I also remove the tenderloin from the breast and take out the piece of sinew that runs through them.

The breasts and tenderloins get wrapped up for the future. I'll probably remove the skin before I use the breasts. I leave them on in case I end up grilling them.I used to freeze the wings and save them until I had enough for a wing dinner. Lately I've just been throwing them on the grill.

The carcass and wingtips get packaged to make stock. This can easily get frozen. So can any of the chicken you don't plan to use this week.

Light up a chimney full of charcoal. I've been using Royal Oak lately. Sadly, I have the phone nymber to the Phillips Hardware store on Central in my phone. I also have the product SKU in there too...for easier ordering. There' no shipping charge if you pick it up at the store.

Got my chicken spice rub together. I'll give you a hint: one of the six ingredients is salt.

Apply the rub liberally and go grill.

It was a little to dark for outdoor photography at 5:30 this evening. I set up an offset fire in the Weber, put all the chicken on the cooler side and flipped everything after about 10 to 12 minutes. They were out there for about 25 minutes. I checked some pieces with a thermometer to make sure they were done and had to use a flashlight (the joys of winter grilling). Dinner is served.

Tomorrow, I'm on my own with the kids for dinner. I think I'm going to use one breast and the tenderloins to make tacos or quesadillas. Thursday will either be a slightly easier one pan take on chicken parm or chicken Marsala. Whatever is left will probably go into some chicken noodle soup. All plans are subject to change. Like I said, it doesn't matter. It's just boneless breasts of chicken. Except, these are fresher and I believe they will taste better than if I had bought them already off the bone.

Nighthawk Kitchen

I poke around the Serious Eats website pretty regularly. Nighthawk Kitchen at the Troy Farmer's Market got a nice writeup yesterday.  Here's a link.