Romanian Food Festival

The growing food festival scene in DFW presents wonderful opportunities to sneak a peek at foreign cultures. This weekend, St. Mary’s Romanian Orthodox Church in Colleyville hosts the fourth edition of their annual DFW Romanian Food Festival. 

Invited by Romanian hosts anxious to show off their native food, drink, and culture, we arrived on Saturday night to witness packed grounds with season appropriate pumpkin decor, festive folk music, and the distinct smell of grilled meats in the air.  There’s no waiting around with this crowd, and after a few brief introductions, we were off to the food lines.  Items can be ordered a la carte or through a variety of combo plates.  The three combo plates ($15), with names reflecting various geographic regions of Romania, all included common dishes like samarle (cabbage rolls), mititei (Romanian skinless sausage), and coleslaw.  We started off with the Moldavia combo plate, hoping to try the lamb pastrami, but to our disappointment the popular item had run out.  However, the substitute, an oven baked chicken quarter, was still juicy, tender, and tasty.

It’s hard for an outsider to detect the subtle differences between various brands of eastern European cuisine, but I enjoyed all the familiar yet foreign offerings on my plate.  The pickled cabbage contrasted nicely with the smooth rich ground pork filling in the cabbage rolls.  The grilled skinless sausages had the same succulent texture as Vietnamese bo moi chai (ground beef rolls), and when dipped slightly in the sharp mustard, became the perfect companion to my Warsteiner.  The polenta generously covered in crumbled feta rounded out a hearty autumn plate.

The night was getting chillier and our hosts were growing excited for us to participate in the festive dancing.  Naturally, this was the perfect cue for my rhythm challenged self to get back in the food line and conveniently avoid the dance circle.  The cleverly named “Romanian Flu Shot” soup booth caught my eye.  The two soup offerings were the innocuous Romanian wedding soup (with pork meatballs) and the more alarmingly named Truth or Dare soup (sour tripe soup) at $3 for a cup and $5 for a bowl.  Forgive me, I’m a texturally challenged Asian who passed the dare on the tripe soup and went for the steaming hot bowl of wedding soup.

Think Italian wedding soup plus vinegar/lemon juice and tomato; a tangy, soothing cure to your flu season afflictions.

For dessert, we tried a couple of slices of cozonac (a sweet, but not too sweet, bread with stuffed with swirls of ground walnut and golden raisins) and gogosi (a lemony fried donut covered in powdered sugar that is a like the fluffier and less greasy cousin of funnel cake).

Feeling full and toasty, I was ready for the church tour to mark the end of my evening.  But as the often sitcom-esque timing of my life would have it, the performers on stage had expanded their dance circle into the audience as I was bolting to the trash can.  Caught in the circle and no way out, no outburst of “opa” to distract the attention from my clumsy feet, it was four steps forward and four steps back until the end of the song, and the end to a fun, festive, and culture-filled evening.

The festival runs until 7:00pm tonight, so it’s not too late to check out the action for yourself.

Dallas Chefs and Restaurants Recognized as James Beard Semifinalists

The James Beard Foundation Award semifinalists were announced this morning and several local chefs received recognition, including:

Outstanding Chef:

Stephan Pyles of Stephan Pyles

Best New Restaurant:

Tei An (how cool is that?  I love this place.)

Outstanding Pastry Chef:

David Collier, The Mansion

Best Chef (Southwest Region):

Sharon Hage, York Street

John Tesar, The Mansion (even with the recent announcement?)

Visit this page for a complete list of semifinalists.

Market Street in Coppell Opens

It’s official! As of Wednesday, Market Street in Coppell is open for business. I’ve been envious of McKinney and Allen residents who have easy access to this grocery chain which combines gourmets and organics with more basic grocery items as well as home needs (toothpaste, laundry detergent). Now there’s one near my ‘hood!

On a different note, my laptop has completely died after a month or so of technical struggles. Apologies for the lack of posting, hopefully I can recover everything off of the hard drive and get back into the swing of things in a week or so.

Top Chef New York Goes Bridal

This episode starts with a quickfire challenge that almost redeems the show from the circus that was the TV demo challenge. The cheftestants are asked to taste a soup and then identify the ingredients, the one whose palate can correctly detect the most wins. Each pair of cheftestants tastes the lobster and shrimp bouillabaisse and the better palate moves onto Mexican mole sauce. Carla screws it up big time by guessing peanut butter as an ingredient in the mole. She either badly mispoke or had no inkling what the sauce was. In the end, it is Stefan versus Hosea on Thai green curry. Hosea squeezes out a win with guessing seven ingredients. I am just glad to see someone put Stefan in his place.

Next up, the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” bridal shower elimination challenge. The cheftestants are divided into teams by drawing knives to cook a course for Gail’s bridal shower (lucky attendees! The only food at bridal showers I attend are overly sweet cupcakes and unnaturally pink punch!) The Old Team, consisting of Stefan, Hosea, and Jeff, is responsible for the first course. They decide to go with an “old world” cuisine theme with Stefan’s heirloom tomato terrine, Jeff’s tomato carpaccio with tomato sorbet. I thought it was a good idea for them to do three separate items on the same plate since both Jeff and Hosea expressed how difficult it was to work in a team environment with Stefan, plus Hosea had immunity. This way, each cheftestant is responsible for the outcome of his specific dish. Right away Stefan seizes his inner control freak trying to grocery shop for all his teammates at Whole Foods. Then he lovingly calls Hosea “douchebag.” Yay for team spirit. Later, Stefan goes on a rant about how Jeff’s sorbet idea is bound to fail (Stefan has years of experience in catering), which I thought was foreshadowing something terrible to come. Thank goodness in the end, the tomato sorbet turns out to be everyone’s favorite feature on the dish. So take that, Stefan!

The New Team, consisting of Eugene, Carla, and Danny, does not fare as well. Their initial idea is already trite, a cooked surf and turf sushi roll (which doesn’t seem “new” at all). Then Eugene goes crazy with this “assemble it yourself” concept that goes completely awry. The team really shoots themselves in the foot when Eugene fails to mention how to assemble the deconstructed cooked sushi when they presented the plate to the bridal shower attendees. A failure all around, with Carla’s salad being the only bright spot on the plate, but ruined by Danny’s strange placement of mushrooms on the bottom (which he did at the last minute before plating so Carla had no time to protest!)

The Borrowed Team, consisting of Radhika, Jamie, and Ariane, cops out with their theme of “we borrowed Radhika’s culture.” Nonetheless, they turn out a divine plate of marinated lamb with Vadouvan carrot puree and kale.

The Blue Team, consisting of Leah, Fabio, and Melissa, takes their theme too literally. There are no naturally blue foods but they were determined to make some. Their plate of politically controversial blue corn crusted chilean sea bass with roasted corn and swiss chard, however, had the judges yawning.

With no surprise to anyone, Team Old and Team Borrowed are selected as the top two teams. Ariane takes home the win for Team Borrowed for cooking the lamb perfectly (which almost did not come out that way as she had to take advantage of every second left to cook the lamb and utilize all the cheftestants, not just those on her team, for plating. It was nice to see the teamwork, though. Notice Stefan was missing from the assembly line). Jamie is, well, pissed. She conceptualized the dish, was the leader of the group, and should have taken home the win. But I think the judges just wanted to make some drama. Ariane has won twice now on the technique of cooking meat properly (turkey and lamb).

Team New is at the bottom this week. I thought for sure Eugene was going home since he conceptualized the dish. But Danny’s attitude of “I think the dish is awesome, even after the judges told me they hated it” sends him packing his knives. It’s just as well, he should have gone home for mixing undercooked potatoes into his mashed potatoes at the Thanksgiving challenge too weeks ago (poor Richard).

I still think Ariane, even with her two elimination challenge wins (properly cooked turkey and lamb), is one of the weaker contestants. So she has decent techniques with meat (with help from her teammates), but hasn’t shown anything thing else to convince me she could be a Top Chef.

Did anyone catch what Melissa did this episode? These team challenges are really buying her time, which just might be up soon.

I really dislike Stefan’s arrogance. It’s worse than Hung from Season 3. At least Hung had this sense of “I’ve worked so hard and I really want to win this.” Where as Stefan gives off this air of “he is so much better than all the other cheftestants that he’s just sitting through weeks of boredom until they crown him His Highness the European Top Chef.”

Still loving Jamie, Leah, Jeff, and Fabio. Feeling a little more iffy about Eugene after this episode. Hosea impressed this episode with that precise palate (or was it just prior experience cooking Thai curry?) I think Carla is great with the classics (a good apple pie, a solid salad) but nothing she has done has come out of left field and blown anyone away. Still can’t quite put solid enthusiam behind Radhika. She keeps saying she wants to bring her Indian cuisine roots to the game in a new way, but we’re still waiting.

No Beef, Just Beer

A recent trip to my local Kroger’s made me seriously evaluate the state of the economy.  I was looking for steak, a couple of nice pieces of red meat to celebrate the end of finals.  It’s a simple request, right?  The only selection suitable was ribeye and thin cut New York strip.  No filet mignon, not even sirloin.  I swear I’ve bought sirloin steak from Kroger on other occasions before.  Was it just the selection on that particular day or is the selection truly a reflection of what shoppers are buying these days?

Better news awaited in the beer section.  I just needed something cheap for a chili recipe, but this caught my eye:

Fireman’s #4 Blonde Ale from Real Ale Brewing Company in Blanco, Texas.  I usually have to go to Central Market to get my craft brews, so I was shocked to see this Texas brew at Kroger.  Fireman’s #4 is a light bodied crisp brew with citrusy aroma.  Not too terribly complex, but a solid everyday ale, and definitely a good find for a Kroger trip.

Status of the economy: Not so good for beef, looking up for beer.