Stone's Cove Kit Bar

What is a kit bar, you may ask?  Its basically a restaurant where almost all the seating is at the bar and in the entire kitchen is contained in the middle of the bar.  Stone's Cove in Herndon, VA is such a place experimenting with this newer dining concept.  It provides a casual and social atmosphere where you can interact with your waitstaff while they cook your dinner.

Because the entire kitchen is contained in the middle of the bar, it does provide some challenges with cooking equipment.  The limited space makes it difficult to have most of the traditional ovens and refrigerators that a regular restaurant kitchen may have. But they seemed to have figured out some creative space saving appliances, including a brick oven in the middle of the kitchen that has openings on both sides, to ensure that the food they offer is also served up with creative quality yumminess.

 We began our meal with a couple "appetapas"...appetizers/tapas/small plates.  The first was Lobster Cones. These were not only adorable to look at, they tasted very yummy and fresh as well.  They are miniature savory poppy seed waffle cones stuffed with a chilled chipotle lobster salad with basil, guacamole, and tomatoes.  I could've easily eaten these all night.

Our second appetapa was Ahi Tuna Sashimi.  Fresh, lightly seared, sliced tuna served with an Asian slaw of cabbage and carrots with a creamy chili sauce drizzled on top. Delish!

We also tried Blue Crab Lettuce Wraps. Also very fresh and light but full of flavor.  Large pieces of crisp lettuce and fresh crab meat tossed with avocado, mango, red onion, almonds, and agave lime dressing.  The dish includes small compartments with other toppings like sliced limes, raw sugar, chopped cilantro, and more agave lime dressing.  The sugar was a little odd at first but combined with all the other flavors it was a nice sweet touch next to the sour of the lime and the savory crab and herby cilantro.

Then they have a couple offerings on the menu called "edibations" and they are foods but they are listed under the cocktails.  This looks interesting.  We ordered the Caramelized Beef Edibations.  We were served a plate with four large tasting spoons.  Each spoon was filled with a bite of beef that has been marinated in bourbon, gorgonzola, smoked bacon, and green onion.  And its all swimming in Maker's Mark...a Kentucky bourbon whiskey...not exactly what we expected. But that's what a food adventure is all about, right?

 If you're like me and not used to drinking whiskey, it may be a little strong at first.  But you really just have to go for the gusto and take the whole spoon like a shot to experience all the flavors together in their fullness.  At first the whiskey is a bit overwhelming but if you let all the flavors sit in your mouth for a second, the whiskey flavor quickly melds with the beef and the gorgonzola and the bacon and the onion to make the most incredible bite you'll ever taste.  The whiskey actually intensifies the other flavors and brings a sweetness to each one, including the tang of the gorgonzola. 

We were pretty stuffed after all that but couldn't resist taking home a dessert...Smores Flatbread! A crispy flaky flatbread covered with cinnamon and sugar, melted chocolate and roasted marshmallows! Super yumm! A great dessert to take home for later!

Summer Grillin'!

Superking and I recently bought ourselves a little charcoal grill. Up til now, if we wanted to grill something, we would hop down the street to my in-laws' house with our food and bogart their grill, then run back home before the food got too cold.  Superking finally broke down and got us our own. Its a Weber and its small, not too expensive, but its perfect for us.  And we've been grillin' up a storm every chance we get!!

The first night we fired it up, we got a nice tender filet and some raw shrimp.  We've never cooked raw shrimp ourselves before.  But we marinated them...half in a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce and half in this creamy Greek marinade with lots of spices...and put them on skewers.  The filet, prepared with nothing but salt and pepper. We also tossed a few poblano peppers on the grill too.

The steak was perfectly tender and juicy and the shrimp plump and pink with a slight smokiness. The peppers had a lovely char on the skin. Everything was great and so easy!

 And every time we fire up the grill, we leave it burning for a while after dinner so we can roast marshmallows to make smores!! Superking asked me after about the second or third time of doing this, if the smores were going to continue to be an after-dinner-grilling-tradition.  I'm like, uh heck yeah!! What kind of question is that??

Smores Ice Cream

I'm so excited to present to you Yumma Yumma's very first guest blog post. And its by none other than Superking himself; English major, computer genius, and ice cream maker extraordinaire!!  Superking likes to make up his own recipes but we did get a few ideas from another blog, Spache the Spatula.

ah, summertime.  the mild, vernal climates of spring have begun to ebb, and mother nature beckons us to the maternal clutch of her warm embrace.  her calescent similitude and clarion skies are harbingers of all things exuberant, things we so dearly reckon with such a season:  a holiday spent frolicking amongst the heaves of azure sea, scintillating displays of dignified patriotism, midgets in powdered wigs playing backgammon whilst they regale one another with tales of butterscotch pudding and adult diapers.  it is summer.

having noticed it was now June, and because it was over 9000 degrees outside (fahrenheit, kelvin … look, when it's this hot it's irrelevant), AND because my wife bugged me a bunch - it was ice cream time.  but what flavor?  i've done chocolate, peanut butter, honey, strawberry (and a buncha others i can't remember) we scoured the internet looking for something unique - and we found it.  s'mores.  yumma yumma.

this recipe differed a bit from my usual forays into home made ice cream.  this one did NOT use a custard base (no eggs).  SIDENOTE:  yep, raw eggs.  i know.  salmonella, and yellow fever, and in-grown toenails, and AIDS - the government says you will experience all these things if you prepare food using raw eggs.  i guess i've just been lucky so far.

anywho, the Cuisineart mixer/churner was in place and the freezer bowl was -9000 degrees for extreme coldness.  the hardware was in place, but now to prep the ingredients.

first i heated up some heavy cream.  at lot of recipes for ice cream call for milk.  lame.  heavy cream (in nearly all cases) is far superior because fat in food tastes awesome.  don't believe me?  ask your tongue.  the only time i wouldn't use all heavy cream would be if the additional ingredients have a high fat content (e.g., peanut butter).  and even then, it would still taste crazy delish.

once the cream was warm/hot (not lukewarm, but not boiling) i proceeded with the marshmallow infusion.  did i measure anything?  no.  numbers are for accountants and idiot savants.  it took a bit for the marshmallows to melt into the cream but a few minutes of patient stirring ensured proper infusion.  bear in mind that there's oodles of air in the marshmallows and as they meld final-scene-of-Terminator-2-style into the cream, the mixture will wax increasing in volume.  don't panic (or do).

having prepared the base, our classic s'mores flavors were going to be provided by crunched (NOT pulverized) graham crackers and chopped chocolate.  the semi-sweet Ghiradelli bars were the obvious choice, our base being pretty much processed sugar suspended in liquid fat.  milk chocolate in this ingredient would doom any of it's consumers to instant and cataclysmic diabeetus.  

hee hee, just kidding!

only good chocolate please

freezer bowl + churner  + lid = hammertime.  let's churn us some ice cream.

i dumped the base into the churner and let it churn for a good 20 - 30 minutes.  it was fairly warm when i added it, so it didn't really start to thicken until it got chilly willy.  REWIND:  remember the part earlier i mentioned, about how the volume goes crazy mad when you add the marshmallows to the cream?  well, now that it was cool it got way lower.  i arrived at an impasse:  go with the current volume of ice cream (barely a quart), or really quickly heat some additional cream and toss in the remaining marshmallows.  In an almost 1980s movie montage'esque fashion i dumped the remaining cream in a pot, cranked the burner heat to 11, and dumped in the remaining marshmallows.  like a boss.

Superking;s kitchen chaos

once the mixture was sufficiently heated, it joined the already churning base in the churner.  a few minutes later it thickened and the mix-ins joined the battle for culinary glory.  was it pretty?  no.  was it perfectly sanitary?  no.  executing something this epic takes a lot of dirty work.  this is an uphill battle for epicurean superiority.  this is guerilla cooking.  (i was gonna say "this is Sparta", but that whole joke is really played out - i mean, the movie came out in 2006, and even if it was more recent, its relevance to this blog post would be weak at best.  in that pivotal scene, King Leonidas of the Spartans was conversing with an emissary off an encroaching foreign land whose desire was - by negotiation or by force - to seize control of the Spartans' lands and alter their entire system of governance.  i'm only making ice cream.  i hope you see the conundrum i'm faced with here.  perhaps it is best we move on.)

can I lick the freezer bowl?

at about 40'ish minutes in, it was ready.  i pulled the mixing arm, only to realize that i forgot to (beforehand) find an appropriate container.  i tore through the (questionably) organized plastic container cabinet and found a container and matching lid.  i scooped the ice cream into the container.  the few remaining bits of chocolate, and marshmallow, and graham cracker were dumped on top of the gooey concoction and hermetically sealed before placement into the freezer.

it turned out yumma yumma (if i may say).  my wife seemed pleased with it (and refused to share it).  so, i guess we've got a point in the win category on this one.  geez, i can't believe i wrote so much.  really, if you're still reading this - you deserve a ribbon or a medal or something.  i personally woulda said "tl;dr" a while back and bailed.  anyways, go make some ice cream.  enjoy your summer.