Craving Interesting Omelettes
These warm days washed clean by spring rain have us raring to go in the morning. Sort of. We only hit the snooze button once. Okay, we could use a little help. Some protein - an omelette! But make it worth our time, because we could have had an extra nine minutes of sleep.
• The Blue Star has been a trademark Roslindale storefront for decades, and it's no wonder why. We are most impressed by their German (ham, leek, and cheese) omelette, served with home fries and toast. Bonus: the best espresso in the Square.
• Visit any friend in JP, and they will take you to Sorella's. Why? Because they know. They know that Sorella's only uses fruits and vegetables that are in season, that it feels like your artsy aunt's kitchen (complete with breakfast nook!), and that, in addition to the impressive selection of pancakes, they will put anything you want in an omelette. Our favorite? The Philly, which is stuffed with (surprise!) cream cheese. We like to ask for avocado, too.
• Then, of course, there's the old breakfast standby in Inman Square, the S&S Restaurant. There's a reason it's been around since 1919. We would highly recommend the heart-healthy garden omelette, made with Egg Beaters, dill havarti, broccoli, spinach, onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes.
S&S [Official Site]
[Photo: Gourmet Trading]
We're equal opportunity gluttons around these parts. We love all the different kinds of meat that come from that magical creature, our friend the pig. We must admit, however, to a preference for those meats that come from the pig's belly. Pork belly is wonderfully fatty and flavorful and it brings us both bacon and its Italian cousin, pancetta. Pancetta usually features more spices than does bacon and is not generally smoked, but rest assured: it is just as delicious as bacon. Below, four of the Hub's best pancetta-glorifying dishes.
Blogston Proper is your thrice-weekly roundup of Hub-related food writing from all over the Internet. We read the blogs so you don't have to. But you should anyway, just to be nice.
Some people shy away from eating rabbit because the thought of bunnies being killed for food is too much for their delicate constitutions to handle. We are not some people. Rabbit is delicious and even if we were going to base our decisions on what meat to eat on which animals are the least cute, we find piglets to be way more adorable and god knows we've never turned down bacon. The beauty of rabbit is that the possibilities for its preparation are near endless. Below, five of the Hub's best rabbit dishes.
Lately, we just can't get enough of the delicate flavor of skate. When cooked well, it's moist and delicious and pairs gorgeously with both citrus-y and rich, butter-based sauces. Skate never tastes heavy, but it's always satisfying. It is, in short, a near-perfect fish. Skate is a fixture on fine dining menus. Below, five of Boston's best skate dishes.
Even though we've definitely hit the point in winter when we're counting down the minutes until 
The fascinating thing about sea urchins is that it's hard to think of an animal that is so highly prized as a culinary delicacy, yet has such a small edible portion of its body. Sea urchins are not tiny creatures, but the only part we eat is the roe*. Sea urchin tastes incredibly rich and complex: the very definition of umami. Sea urchin dishes across the country are generally pretty pricy and Boston is no exception. The following four dishes may not be cheap, but they sure are tasty.
With all due respect to the bar and restaurant parties that we mentioned yesterday, our favorite way to celebrate Oscar night has always been to have a party of our own. Oscar parties are more fun than dinner parties, since you can make up drinking games (we personally will be doing a shot every time someone gets cut off by the orchestra) and less stress than non-event-based parties, because everyone leaves by midnight. While you obviously want to prepare a feast for you guests, the Oscars are not a great time for a sit-down dinner. We prefer to lay out some bread, cheese, and cold cuts, a few finger food appetizers, and some desserts that can be eaten standing up. Below, a few suggestions:
Today's Globe featured a really fascinating 
It's no secret that Brussels sprouts get a bad rap. They, along with broccoli, are one of those veggies you're not really supposed to like. We spent decades hating on Brussels sprouts, only to re-try them for the first time in probably fifteen years a few months ago. It turns out that Brussels sprouts are delightful! They have a delicate, nutty taste that comes out beautifully when the crucifers are cooked with sweet ingredients like balsamic vinegar. We've been on something of a Brussels sprout bender recenltly. Here are three of the area's best sprout packed dishes.
We adore ginger, both for its taste and its medicinal properties. Whether you're stuffed up or nauseated, ginger will have you feeling better near-instantly. We love ginger in all its forms: crystallized, for snacking, grated into hot water for a sort of tea, and most of all, at restaurants. Below, four of Boston's best ginger dishes.
Sure, it's nice to go out for Valentine's Day, but it can also be perfectly lovely to stay in and make a nice meal. So go ahead: set the table, light some candles, put on your romantic playlist. This is, basically, the dinner we made for our boyfriend last year. It's probably our most successful meal ever, despite the total lack of vegetables (okay, radical honesty: when we made this meal, we served it with canned peas because we love them. Don't judge.).
We adored Mark Bittman's 
Originally posted on May 3, 2007. One doesn't hear so much about La Verdad anymore.
Super Mega Tuesday is finally here and we couldn't be more excited. More than twenty states will cast their votes for both parties' presidential nominees. It seems not unlikely that the Republican contest could be effectively over by night's end and the outcome of today's races will certainly bring the Obama-Clinton matchup one giant step closer to its end. No matter what candidate you support, it's a very exciting day and what better way to enjoy it than a big themed dinner? Since it's election day, we've gone with a red, white, and blue meal.
Yesterday, we discussed some options if you're interested in going out and about for the Super Bowl. If you're a homebody like us, however, perhaps you'd rather stay in and host a Super Bowl party in the comfort of your own home. For some reason, Super Bowl food is governed by certain inalienable laws: it needs to be mostly savory (a little dessert is fine, but you can't go overboard!), spicy is generally better than not, and even for snobs like us, comfort food is the order of the day. (Our one concession to food snobbery at a Super Bowl party is putting out nice hard salami instead of pepperoni.) Below, some modest suggestions for a possible menu. Go Pats!
Today, Florida is holding its presidential primary. Well, sort of. While both parties are holding primaries, only the Republican one actually counts, delegate-wise. Furthermore, since Florida has early balloting, many of the votes have already been cast. Whatever! We're still excited to see how things shake out. Will Obama continue his momentum? (Not tonight, because older Americans love Hillary!) Will Giuliani's campaign finally take off? (No, because he has a terrible strategy!) As we did for 
The Nevada Democratic Caucus is tomorrow. As a giant political nerd, we're pretty excited for what's being touted as a tiebreaker (
Want to know our dirtiest secret (or at least the dirtiest secret we're going to put on a website)? We weren't actually born in Boston. We were born (gasp!) in the Midwest. To be more precise, we were born in the suburbs of Detroit where we lived until we were about two years old. We don't remember anything from the days before we were a Bostonian, but both our parents grew up in Michigan and our grandparents still live there and you know what? It's sort of nice there, albeit somehow even colder than it is in Boston. Today, of course, Michigan will be holding its presidential primary. In tribute, we thought we'd try to track down one of the state's native foods: the Coney Island hot dog.
At 9pm on Sunday, the best show currently (and dare we suggest ever?) on television returns for its fifth and final season. We're speaking, of course, of HBO's 
It's the new year and now that it's January 2 and you're (hopefully!) no longer hungover, it's time to get down to those resolutions. We're betting that if you overindulged a bit over the past few weeks (and really, who didn't?), one of your biggest priorities for 2008 is to eat healthier foods. If you (like us) are still feeling the financial burn of holiday shopping, these healthier foods might have to come from your very own kitchen. Never fear! We're here with a full day of easy and delicious meals that will make you feel totally virtuous.
In college, we, along with a friend, had the phenomenally brilliant (if not necessarily stone-cold sober) idea to open a bar called TGIF. No, it wouldn't be a knockoff 
Sometimes you want to eat at a stylish white-tablecloth restaurant where you'll be served a multi-course tasting menu paired with the finest wines. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you want to go somewhere just a little dive-y and eat the kind of food your mother rejected as "too trashy" when you were a child and wash it down with a nice cold beer, preferably a Miller High Life. In short, sometimes you want a corn dog. This glorious creation consists of a hot dog dipped in cornbread batter and then fried and served, as so many good and true foods are, on a stick. While corn dogs are readily available during fair season (does anyone else miss the Roslindale carnival that used to happen every Memorial Day on the VFW Parkway? Just us? Okay, then.), they can be difficult to find at restaurants. Fortunately, MenuPages' 
Truly, challah french toast is one of the more delectable dishes in the world. French toast is already an eggy, sweet, marvelous mess and adding challah bread to the mix somehow makes it even better. It turns the dish into the Platonic ideal of french toast: crisp on the outside with just the right amount of sogginess hidden underneath the crust. Yum. Challah french toast is readily available throughout the greater Boston area, but for the most part, it comes out to shine only at weekend brunch. So what do you do when you wake up on a Thursday morning craving it like nobody's business? You use MenuPages 
Feijoada, a hearty bean and meat stew, is widely considered to be the national dish of Brazil. It generally consists of beef, several different pork products (from bacon to pig ears and feet), and black beans. The stew simmers slowly for hours before reaching its salty, savory ready state. It's a complex, robust, delicious dish, rich with porcine goodness. It's also difficult to find. That's where we come in. Using the power of the MenuPages 
While it's fortunately gotten a tiny bit warmer, we're still constantly craving hearty, substantial foods. Right now, we're having major pangs of longing for a food we don't often think too much about: meatloaf. Something about a big ol' hunk of meat and some mashed potatoes sounds just about perfect right now. We harnessed the power of the 
Just when we thought it was spring, cold weather arrives again to give us a nasty surprise. All the snow and cold has us in the mood to get to a cozy pub and order a pint of Magic Hat and some shepherd's pie. This traditional British dish is a cross between a stew, a burger, and a steak dinner. Ground meat is fried along with some vegetables and simmered in a tasty stock until it's flavorful as all get out. A layer of mashed potatoes is then added and the whole thing is baked until the potatoes crisp up beautifully. It's one of the heartier things you'll ever eat and, when it's prepared well, also one of the more delicious. It's a staple on Irish pub menus around the city, but three area pubs take it to another level. 
We love cheesecake, but we've always suspected that it's maybe a little lowbrow. Foodies never seem to get all hyped up about it the way they do about, say, red velvet cake. Some quick "
We know. You totally didn't listen to us and you made a turkey. Sigh. It's okay. Everyone does it. Not only did you make a turkey, however, but you made way too much turkey. Everyone in your household has been eating turkey sandwiches like they're going out of style, but there are still, somehow, endless leftovers. Because we're getting into a holiday-inspired giving mood, here are some thoughts on what to make now that sandwiches have gotten dull.
When it starts getting cold, risotto quickly becomes one of our very favorite dishes. In the summer, we find it way too heavy, but in the winter it's perfect: the creamy grains are beautifully warming and hearty for an effect that's a bit like a haute macaroni and cheese. Mmm. Risotto. We happen to make a fabulous 
For whatever reason, we seem to be unable to handle this winter (which we realize hasn't even actually started yet). We're freezing all the time and all we want to do is hibernate on our couch with tea and DVDs of The Wire. Unfortunately, we have a job and a social life and both of those things compel us to leave our house on a daily basis and venture into the cold, cold world. What can soothe our chilly body after such excursions? Butternut squash. We've been eating squash like it's going to become extinct in a matter of moments. The other night, we made 
Mac & cheese is a perfect winter dish: rich, creamy, and hearty with more than a hint of decadence, it can warm the cockles of your heart and stomach on the gloomiest winter evening. Here's the funny thing about mac & cheese: we need it to either be incredibly high-brow (lots of exotic cheeses and interesting pasta shapes) or incredibly low end (we love both the blue and purple boxed versions, although we don't add butter, just milk). In restaurant situations, we obviously prefer the former. Below, a list of four of the Hub's best fancy-pants mac & cheese offerings.
We've always been fond of the concept of sister cities. It's quite charming that whole cities take on what is basically a pen pal arrangement and agree to be linked. Boston has no less than nine sister cities across the world from Japan to Brazil. We did a little investigating, and it turns out that all of Boston's sister cities are home to excellent cuisines. We've assembled a little sister city food tour within the Hub (sadly, Hanzhou, China, Melbourne, Australia, and Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana are not represented in our fair city). Enjoy!
It's the day after Halloween and the odds are that you currently have a lot of extra pumpkin and/or candy lying around your house. What to do with all these leftovers? Well, you could throw the pumpkin away and eat the candy while watching the E! True Hollywood Story, but that would be wasteful, unhealthful, and lame. Why not cook a delicious leftover feast instead? We've scoured the internet (okay, mostly 
We have a vivid memory of reading a book when we were small (Googling reveals it to be 
Travel & Leisure just published their annual list of 
We recently experienced a life-changing revelation. We had always eaten cauliflower steamed and, frankly, hated it. It seemed so low in flavor and the texture wasn't that awesome and ew. Gross. A few weeks, however, we had the opportunity to try roasted cauliflower. Wow! The vegetable we had dismissed as flavorless turned out to be nutty and sweet and really, just plain delicious. Ever since, we've been obsessed with trying different preparations of cauliflower. Below, four of Boston's best.
We can chow down on 
We've been to Morocco exactly once, but we think about it all the time. It's a gorgeous country filled with picturesque villages, outstanding markets, and, most importantly, amazing food. We spent a fantastic week in Morocco a few years ago feasting on perfect bread, croissants, tagines, fish, and so much more. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try pastilla in Morocco, but once we had it back in the States, we were hooked. The dish is, essentially, a pie made of phyllo dough and stuffed with either squab (a polite way of saying pigeon) or (more commonly in this country) chicken and a variety of spices. It is a near perfect combination of sweet and savory flavors and, tragically, it is difficult to find in the Hub. Here's where you can try it:
Although nothing can truly beat the pleasure of sitting down to an expertly prepared meal, reading about such a meal can be a close second. Here at MenuPages: Boston, we're very much into food writing. A good piece of food writing, like any great book, can transport you to a place you've never been, teach you about a subject previously unknown, or inspire you to try something new. Because we are truly evangelical about great food writing, we're offering up a series of recommendations for great food books. Today, we're taking a look at cooking memoirs.
Wow! Talk about "ask and ye shall receive!" Last Tuesday, we issued an 
Yom Kippur starts at sunset tomorrow. Those observing will, of course, fast from sundown tomorrow to sundown on Saturday. Personally, we spend the day craving something different every year (last year, it was a cinnamon raisin bagel with butter and cinnamon sugar), but most people we know have very set routines every year. Below, our picks for the three most common fast-breaking meals.
The word on the street is that the Venezuelan government has made 
We'll level with you: we didn't think we would find anything more immaturely amusing than this video of 
Sometimes it's easy to practice moderation, to sit down at a nice restaurant and order a salad of mixed greens and a skinless grilled chicken breast. Sometimes, however, your tummy (and, dare we say, your inner soul) cries out for more, for something decadent and rich and savory. At those times, there is little better than duck confit. Duck confit, for the uninitiated, is simply duck cooked and preserved in its own fat. Like so many brilliant culinary traditions, it was born out of thrift and economy and is now enjoyed in high-end restaurants. Duck confit tastes absolutely ridiculous: unctuous, complex, and luxurious. It can be found on the menu of many a French restaurant (and quite a few non-French ones as well). Here are four of our favorite places to sample the preserved quacker in the Hub.
As regular readers know, we don't truck with big-chain national fast food. 
As you are doubtless aware, it's the height of tomato season. Farmers markets across the state are brimming with heirloom varieties and the majority of specimens are sweet, juicy, and perfectly flavored. Seriously, even if you're not a regular farmers market shopper, we cannot encourage you strongly enough to get down to your local market for some tomatoes in the next few weeks. The ones in the grocery store simply cannot compare. 
Every August, we start feeling a little frantic about the end of summer. We love September with its crisp back-to-school feeling and excuse to wear boots and sweaters and tights, but around this time each August, we start feeling like we didn't take enough advantage of summer, like we have to grab it while we still can and engage with the season to the maximum extent possible. What's the best way to engage with the season? By eating, of course! Although blackberries are technically in season through fall, their slightly tart, refreshing flavor makes them perfect for summer's hottest month. Here are a few of Boston's most unusual blackberry dishes and drinks.
Generally, we're just not that into cucumbers. Wait. That's not entirely correct. We're very much into the taste of cucumbers (so profoundly refreshing!), but there's something about the texture that we find off-putting. It's simultaneously crunchy and mealy, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Given our mixed feelings about the cuke, we're always on the lookout for dishes that capture the lovely taste of the cucumber in a different consistency. We've harnessed the power of the MenuPages 
Watermelon, along with lobster and tomatoes, forms the holy trinity of late summer foods. Every August, we briefly consider dining only on the green striped fruit. After all, it's crisp, refreshing and sweet. What more could you want in the hottest month of the year? Like Mary Poppins, watermelon is practically perfect in every way in its natural state and equally excellent when dressed up a little bit. The 
We're not especially ashamed to admit that we really, really, really like foie gras. It's insanely delicious and we're inclined to believe that there is a humane method of production. We realize that not everyone agrees with us (and we're bracing for the hate mail) and we're very grateful that Boston hasn't banned the tasty substance like 
File this under "
Let's get one things straight here: we're fairly certain penne alla vodka is not an authentically Italian dish. Although there are 
Here's what we like: beef and bread. The more of both, the better. Perhaps that explains our inordinate fondness for the French dip sandwich, which is, perhaps, one of the world's great examples of simplicity and perfection: just roast beef on French bread with a side of the beef's cooking juices for dipping. You can tart it up with cheese or what have you, but we prefer it plain and unadorned. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with us. Below, a rundown of Boston's French dip options.
We're glad that 
Crispy Seared Artichoke? Comically Scared Abalone? Costly Secured Airspace? Nope! CSA stands for Community-Supported Agriculture. And what's that, you ask? Good question! Community-Supported Agriculture refers to a program in which people pay a certain amount of money directly to a farm. In return, the farm provides them with produce (and occasionally, other goods such as flowers or honey) for a set period of time, usually the length of the growing season. Think of it as an extension of a farmer's market. Yesterday's Globe contained a great