Out of the Kitchen: The Holy Grail of dim sum

My quest is over. I have finally found the Holy Grail of dim sum in the Capital Region.

For years, I've been looking for a place around here with good dim sum — ALL of it. That means perfectly cooked har gow, and tasty sesame balls, and baked pork buns, which are usually where places around here fall short: Only one place I've tried has baked buns consistently available, but the rest of their dim sum sucks.

So the other day, when my husband decided that we should go check out Rain, a new Cantonese place in Albany, I was up for it, cautiously hopeful that maybe this would be the good place, the place with a full slate of well-prepared Cantonese dim sum.

And the clouds parted, and the sun shone down, and I swear I heard angels singing as I bit into their beautiful, juicy, meat-filled baked pork buns. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating — but these are the best damn baked pork buns I've had in the area, hands down.

And better, it wasn't only the pork buns that were good. The har gow was perhaps a teeny bit thick-skinned but nicely chewy and filled with succulent shrimp pieces. The sesame balls were warm and crispy-chewy and filled with what I think was lotus seed paste, very yummy. The dan tats were flaky on the outside, eggy on the inside, just right. The cheung fun were great as well, meat-filled and perfectly cooked. And the sui mai were some of the best I've had.

We got an order of beef chow fun, too, just to see how they did on a regular noodle dish, and we weren't disappointed. The noodles were cooked perfectly, with just the right amount of chewiness, and the beef itself was intensely flavored, marinated with something, I'm sure, but better than most beef I've had in a Chinese noodle dish. One odd quirk: They asked whether we wanted our noodles dry or with gravy, which is an option neither of us had ever seen before (and we have plenty of experience with authentic Chinese food). It turns out that "dry" isn't dry at all: It's the usual way you'd expect to get it, seasoned lightly and with plenty of wok char adding to the delicious flavor of the dish. The "gravy" is a brown sauce, which sounded... sort of gross on a noodle dish, really, but I guess somebody must like it that way, since they offer it.

Anyway, I know where I'm going for dim sum from now on. Rain has lots of options, and they're all top-notch. I've found my Holy Grail of Cantonese food, for sure.

Out of the Kitchen: Healthy Living or "Wealthy Living"?

[This is where the picture would have gone, if "No Photography" hadn't been posted by the doors of Healthy Living (seriously, what's the big secret that can't be photographed?).]

I went up to the new Healthy Living store today, thinking that maybe this would be a new, better place for me to do my grocery shopping. Would this be the grocery Mecca that local bloggers are making it out to be? Or would it be, like some Yelpers have written, more like "Wealthy Living," a waste of time and a paycheck? I went in with an open mind and an empty notebook page; I didn't need to pick up many things, but I figured I'd take notes on some items I often buy, just to see how the prices were.

The first thing I noticed was that Healthy Living has definitely learned some things about how to set up a store. I've been to their Burlington, Vt., home base, and it's really, really horrible to navigate -- it's a maze of cramped, crooked aisles running this way and that, a place where you can very easily get lost, literally, "where is the door again? and how the heck do I get back to that thing I saw a minute ago?" lost. It's just terrible. But the new store isn't that at all -- it's got reasonably spacious aisles that are laid out in rows, like a normal store. The layout presented no problems at all. Kudos for figuring that out.

I wandered through the store, and as I shopped, I noticed that their selection of less-common groceries is actually impressive: You won't find a lot of the brands and items you usually buy, but if you follow a restrictive diet plan -- you're a vegan, say, or have celiac disease -- you'll love this place. It's the kind of place where they have tofu on the hot bar and seitan in the deli sandwiches. (I'd imagine that the majority of average grocery shoppers don't even know what seitan is.)

They also have a good-sized bulk-ingredients section, which is nice: If I need, say, a half-cup of whole wheat pastry flour, I know where I can get it and not have to buy a huge package of it.

And they have an emphasis on farm-raised, local foods that's nice, though it's clearly a bit of a work in progress in spots, since they're still learning about local food sources. For instance, they sell pies from Champlain Orchards in Vermont, but there's no need to bring in Vermont pies when we've got a really good pie-baking orchard of our own only a few towns away from their store, at Smith Orchards in Charlton (and they do sell to stores -- you can find their pies at the Meat House).

But how about the prices? Well, that was an eye-opener. The store's owners have said in the local media that their prices are reasonable... but are they?

I rounded up some prices of things I buy frequently while at Healthy Living, then went over to the nearby Hannaford and checked their prices on the same or comparable items. I also went down to Trader Joe's later in the day, which is where I've been doing a lot of my food shopping since they opened (if for no other reason than TJ's has a wide variety of non-corn-syruped, non-chemical-laden bread products).

So here's the breakdown ("n/a" indicates that the store doesn't carry that product):

	Healthy Living	Hannaford	Trader Joe's
Bananas	$1.19/pound (fair trade)	$0.79/pound (organic), $0.49/pound (conventional)	$0.29 each (about $1 per pound) (organic)
Scallions	$1.49/bunch	$1.19/bunch	$1.29/bunch
Applegate lunchmeat: Roast beef, 7 ounces	$6.89	n/a	$3.99
Applegate lunchmeat: Smoked turkey, 7 ounces	$6.49	n/a	$3.99
Applegate lunchmeat: Ham, 7 ounces	$6.39	n/a	$3.99
Boneless, skinless chicken breast	$14.99/pound (organic)	$5.49/pound (Nature's Place)	$6.99/pound (organic)
Eggs, farm-raised, 1 dozen	$3.69	$2.79	$2.99
Milk, Battenkill Creamery skim, one gallon	$4.59	$3.99	n/a
Van's frozen waffles, 1 box	$3.99	$2.99	n/a
Frozen blueberries, organic	$4.99/8-ounce package ($0.62/ounce) (Cascadian Farms)	n/a	$3.99/12-ounce package ($0.33/ounce) (TJ's brand)
Ben & Jerry's ice cream	$4.99/pint	$3.79/pint	n/a
Amy's Organic creamy tomato soup, 1 can	$3.29	$2.99	n/a

Let's see what we've got here... I'll assume one pound of anything that's per-pound, and I'll leave out the blueberries, just to keep the math sane and fair (since the packages are different sizes)...

Total if I had bought all of these things at Healthy Living: $57.99
Total if I had bought all of these things at Hannaford and Trader Joe's: $35.99

That's a more than 61 percent markup! For the exact same products!

So what have we learned today? We've learned that Healthy Living's claim to have reasonable prices is a crock. Their prices are MUCH higher than those at other stores.

Perhaps one could justify a small markup, since they're a smaller company and have overhead costs and all of that. But more than 60 percent is hardly a reasonable markup -- if I can buy the same product elsewhere, sometimes just up the road, for 60 cents or a dollar or even multiple dollars less than you're charging, you're charging way too much.

This isn't to say that Healthy Living is completely useless: Like I said, their vegan/gluten-free selection is vast, so if you have a restricted diet and can't eat a lot of the stuff that most people typically buy for groceries, this might be the place for you. But know that if you're buying regular stuff there, or even organic stuff, chances are very good that you're spending way more money on groceries than you could be. If you've got that much money to waste in the name of one-stop shopping, go for it, but most of us don't. As for me, I walked out with an empty shopping bag.

Out of the Kitchen: Maestro's at the Van Dam

[Sorry, no photos... cozy, intimate restaurant lighting does not make for good picture-taking.]

Sometimes, when you're having a lousy day, the best way to make yourself feel better is by treating yourself to a good meal. So it was that after my husband came home one night recently from a rough day at work, we decided to go to Maestro's at the Van Dam in Saratoga Springs for dinner.

The place certainly gave the impression of a special-occasion restaurant as we were seated in the dining room, surrounded by dark wood wainscoting, intimately dim lighting and artwork on the walls. That impression was sustained when our server immediately brought us some flatbread crackers and white bean dip to nibble on while we perused the menu. The crackers were tasty, as was the dip, which included onions and balsamic vinegar to accent the flavor of the chunky mashed beans.

We placed our orders and finished up the bean dip, and our server soon returned with slices of two varieties of bread, white and oatmeal molasses, plus a large pat of unsalted butter topped with Hawaiian red sea salt. The bread was warm, and both varieties were delicious: the white was nicely yeasty, while the oatmeal had a faint aroma of molasses, rather like that of Boston brown bread, though its flavor wasn't nearly as strong. Our server told us that the breads were made in-house.

For appetizers, I got the crab cake, while my husband got the stuffed cannelloni. The crab cake was described on the menu as "The best you will ever eat!" -- and I have to say, based solely on the cake itself, they might be right. It was really, really good, stuffed with crab and almost no filler, nice and thick and crispy on the outside. But it was plated with a spicy sauce that was overwhelming -- the flavor went well with the crab cake, but there was just way too much of it. My husband's cannelloni, on the other hand, suffered a similar but worse fate: the meat stuffed inside was barely noticable except by texture, and the whole thing was drowning in bechamel sauce.

Our entrees panned out much the same way. I ordered the braised short ribs, and while the beef itself was pretty good (with an interesting flavor note in the demi-glace from the birch beer it was braised with), the accompanying garlic mashed potatoes weren't garlicky at all and were a bit watery. My husband, meanwhile, ordered roasted butternut squash and chicken risotto, which tasted like CHICKEN -- not just chicken, but aggressively chickeny and nothing but chicken, not a hint of the flavors of squash or the spinach and ricotta that were buried in there somewhere (the spinach was visible but flavorless).

After hearing so many great things about this place, we were a bit thrown by the amount of misses compared to hits, and so we decided to see if they'd redeem themselves a bit with dessert. We ordered the clementine torte, which turned out to be a somewhat bitter cake studded with almonds (which also tend to be bitter). The cake itself almost tasted like the pith of the clementine instead of the juice, which is weird considering that clementines are usually a sweeter citrus. And the clementine-vanilla sauce was even worse -- it tasted like a bit of clementine juice mixed with a heavy dose of straight vanilla extract, very bitter and almost astringent. This dish desperately needed some sugar somewhere, perhaps caramelized in the bitter, watery sauce.

But the end of the meal wasn't all bad. After we were finished, our server brought us complimentary dark chocolate bark studded with raisins and almonds, which was very tasty and left us with a much better taste in our mouths.

Still, while the meal started and ended well, we couldn't help but wonder on the way home what had happened. Why was this supposedly-great restaurant so inconsistent? Why were there so many letdowns in our dinner? We expected great, we wanted good, but what we got was hit-or-miss, with the misses dominating the night. And for that kind of money, that's just not right.

Out of the Kitchen: Good but not God

The Capital Region's first Trader Joe's opened on Friday. From the reaction, you'd think it was a one-time-only visit by Jesus himself.

The hysteria must, of course, be all caused by outsiders and transplants to the area. I was curious to go there, true, but mostly because I wanted to know what the big damn deal was, why transplants to the area talked about this like it was the greatest thing that's ever happened to them, and why they actually make hour-and-a-half-plus road trips to the next nearest Trader Joe's to stock up on their wares. It's sort of like the reason why I stopped for lunch at an In 'n' Out the first time I went somewhere that had one -- I wanted to see what this thing was that people were talking about like it was the greatest thing ever. (In the case of In 'n' Out, it was totally overrated -- it was a fast-food burger, no better than any other, except made a little bit less appetizing because they print Bible verses on their packaging. I'll take my lunch dogma-free, thanks.)

So I went to the new Trader Joe's today, wanting to see what the fuss was about and sort of expecting to be underwhelmed, and two days later, it was still crowded. Strike 1 came when I was barely in the door: Why do they only have large shopping carts, no smaller ones like the nice, short, easy-to-maneuver ones at Hannaford? It doesn't affect the quality of their products or anything, but it does affect the shopping experience, 'cause it's less easy to shop with big, bulky carts (or those hopeless awkward little baskets with the handles). I decided to shun both options and load up my reusable shopping bags instead.

I have to say, hell really is other people. I totally understand people standing in the aisles, taking a long time to examine all of the offerings -- we've never had a Trader Joe's around here, and 80-plus-percent of their offerings are house-brand items of types we haven't always seen, so it requires some browsing to get familiar with their offerings. But do you seriously have to stand in front of something, then stay there ten minutes talking about something unrelated while blocking those shelves? Or stand thisclose to me while I'm looking at something, shoving yourself in between me and the shelf so you can look, too? But this is saying something about the people Trader Joe's attracted this weekend, not the store itself, so I digress.

Once I found my way through the crowd and started to get an idea of what and where things were, observations started to emerge:

• Why are the organic bananas labeled "X cents each," but they're wrapped together in a bundle with tape, implying that the whole bunch is one unit and therefore one "each"? (We asked a store clerk to verify that this wasn't true, and it wasn't -- the price was per banana, not per tape-wrapped bunch.)
  
• Why are there no "kiddie cereals"? Every offering they had was a grown-up, health-food kind. Surely, if they can make so many other products, they could figure out a tasty, all-natural knockoff of Lucky Charms or Cookie Crisp or Life. I like the healthy kinds, but y'know, sometimes, I want the sugary, kiddie kinds.
  
• The variety of frozen foods was, indeed, impressive. They're also fairly expensive, but not much more so than similar offerings elsewhere, for the most part, though samosas at $3.69 for a box of six seemed outrageous. I know you can get them way cheaper at the Asian Supermarket.
  
• It's so refreshing to be able to shop from a whole section of breads! There were all different kinds, scones, plain ol' sandwich breads, naan, everything, and no corn syrup! It's usually a struggle to find one loaf of bread that's not jammed full of artificial crap. Here, they're all good. I bought a loaf that was comparable to most high-priced loaves you'd find in a store, and it was both free of artificial junk and only $2.49, a total steal. The Trader Joe's philosophy is great, I have to say -- it's nice to know that everything you're buying is HFCS-free or all-natural or organic, ethical food without the junk fillers.
  
• You can't do all of your shopping here -- they just don't have everything you'll need. There's almost nothing in the way of personal care items, and certain other things you'd find in a grocery store are either absent entirely or won't be present in the brand or variety or size you want. (Today, for instance, our grocery list included gelatin, which was nowhere to be had, not even the Jell-o type, and Scotch tape.)
  
• Speaking of things they don't have, there's no deli counter. In fact, there are few options for things to put on a sandwich -- just some pre-packaged deli meats, two types of gourmet-type chicken salad and one packaged "egg white salad."
  
• The milk and egg prices seemed really high. But y'know, after we made the required stop at Hannaford later on to get what Trader Joe's didn't have, I compared prices, and they weren't as bad as I'd thought. A half-gallon of 1 percent milk at Trader Joe's was $1.99; it was only $1.71 at Hannaford. But then again, Trader Joe's is "happy" milk; when you compare the price to, say, Battenkill Valley Creamery milk, local, "happy" milk, that's $2.69 at Hannaford. And eggs were $1.99 a dozen at Trader Joe's and only $1.78 at Hannaford -- but again, if you bought the cheapest "happy" eggs at Hannaford (I'm honestly not sure which type was the most accurate comparison here... cage-free? hormone-free? organic? I don't know the lingo), they were $2.79. So really, yes, you're paying more for milk and eggs at Trader Joe's, but not much more, only 20 cents or so, for a better-quality product. I could live with that. (I didn't buy either today, though, 'cause I didn't need them.)
  
  

I went up to the checkout, bracing myself for a really high bill, 'cause I'd picked up a whole bunch of stuff (though it was all practical, things I can eat for dinner and not snack foods -- and no "cookie butter," 'cause even if they hadn't been out of it, I've been trying to figure out a good use for it since I spotted the jars of Biscoff spread at Hannaford a year or so ago and still haven't justified buying some). And I was irked again, 'cause the layout of their checkout lanes is really awkward -- there are no conveyor belts or counter space, so you can't unload your bags or basket, which makes checking out slower and more cumbersome for the checkers, and they have this odd layout where you can't figure out what side of the counter the line is on, and it looked like they were stealing everyone's carts and running them behind the checkers and unloading them... it all seemed really oddly planned and awkward.

But y'know, the bill wasn't actually all that high; for the amount of meals I plan to get out of what I bought, it was pretty reasonable. And the food is pretty good, what we've eaten so far -- we had a frozen pizza for dinner that was tasty, and some cookies (my fiancé didn't avoid the junk food like I did), and the bread I got is pretty good.

My overall opinion? Trader Joe's is not everything its fans say, but that's because its most devoted fans treat it like it's a religious experience or something, and come on, it's not the second coming: It's a grocery store. In fact, it's a grocery store with a quite limited selection of the things you're likely to need, but on the flip side, what it does have is of good quality at a price that's pretty darned reasonable for that level of ethical standards.

The biggest complaint I have, actually, is that it's not closer to home: I like this place enough that I might actually consider shopping here every week, then making a quick stop on the way home for what Trader Joe's doesn't have, like we did today, except that I can't stand the thought of driving all the way to Albany every single week to get groceries, making a special trip all the way down there and back, when I have a good grocery store with everything I need in one stop right near my house. As it is, I'm bemoaning the fact that I don't already go down there every Sunday or Monday, and I'm wondering if, if nothing else, I can convince my fiancé to stop and pick me up a loaf of bread every week on his way home from work Monday night; that sounds like quite an imposition, but on the other hand, I'm just so excited to find good-quality, good-tasting, no-HFCS bread that's reasonably priced, too.

Out of the Kitchen: Good food for a bad day

When you're having a lousy day, what do you want to eat?

Macaroni and cheese? Maybe a cheeseburger and some tater tots? Sure, that sounds good. But if you're having a really lousy day... do you really feel like cooking? Nah. Screw it. You're having a rough day. Why not let someone else cook? Why not... head to Comfort Kitchen in Saratoga Springs?

I was recently invited to a tasting event for area food bloggers at Comfort Kitchen, and overall, it was an enjoyable experience, and the food was both good and promising. I can pick a few nits, and I will, but let me just preface this by saying that all of my criticisms are small, and none of them would preclude me from recommending this place. (Apologies are in order at this point for the subpar photography -- the lighting there, while fine to dine by, is pretty awful for taking pictures.)

First up were a couple of appetizers. The first offering was homemade tater tots. They were a bit rounder than the frozen ones we're all used to, but the flavor and texture were spot-on, with just a hint of rosemary to them. They were served with a bunch of different sauces: your standard mustard sauce, and blue cheese sauce, and a maple barbecue that was alright, and "awesome sauce," which was, indeed, pretty awesome, sort of like Russian dressing, but not quite, not really.

The second appetizer was mini veggie burger patties. They were a little tricky to eat served this way, bun-less -- I managed to half-drop mine trying to get it from platter to napkin. And I have to say, I was a little nervous about these, 'cause I've never eaten this sort of veggie burger, the black-bean-patty kind -- I've only ever tried the frozen kind that are trying to pretend they're real burgers, the soy-mushroom-nasty kind. But these? They were pretty good, really. I'm not sure if they're something I'd order, given that they have real burgers on the menu, too, but they had a good flavor, sort of like chickpeas, oddly (though I don't think there were chickpeas in there, just black beans and zucchini and maybe some other veggies I didn't catch).

Then, it was onward to the main courses.

The first thing served here was mini-cheeseburgers. They were really, really good, perfectly crisp-but-juicy patties, soft buns, tasty toppings that didn't overwhelm the burger, real cheddar cheese and a little surprise -- I tasted something smoky, and sure enough, when I peeled off the bun, there were bacon crumbles on top of the cheese. These were meaty-delicious-awesome.

Here is actually a good time to mention something awesome about Comfort Kitchen: They get as many of their ingredients as possible from local farms, fresh providers, no pre-packed and overprocessed junk allowed in their kitchen. I could've said this at the beginning, 'cause it's a good selling point, but honestly, I don't care how locally sourced and fresh your ingredients are if the end product doesn't taste good. Knowing that what you're eating here comes from good, fresh sources is a nice bonus, though. For instance, the potatoes in their tater tots are from Sheldon Farms. And the meat in the hamburgers, the owner explained, is a customized mix that's fresh-ground for him every other day by the Meat House -- the burgers we ate, he said, were made with meat that was freshly ground three hours before.

The second part of our main course was the ultimate comfort food: macaroni and cheese. There were two offerings, a plain version and one with pulled pork in it. The pulled pork version was really good, meaty and spicy and creamy and soft and, well, comforting. But the original version? I have to say, I had a small qualm here, 'cause while the texture of the sauce was spot-on, nicely creamy and not grainy at all, and in a good proportion to the amount of pasta and crumb topping (made from Rock Hill Bakehouse bread), the flavor was a bit bland. It needed salt -- or maybe a sharper cheese in the four-cheese blend, though that might negatively affect the texture. Really, it felt like a couple of shakes of salt would've been enough to elevate this from eh to awesome.

The final course was dessert, and there was a surprise in store: Strawberry ice cream sandwiches, modeled on Good Humor strawberry shortcake bars, complete with a crunchy strawberry crumble around the edges. The flavors here were phenomenal, especially that of the ice cream, made that afternoon with the last fresh strawberries at the farmers' market. The strawberry flavor just popped, bright and sweet, with big chunks of berries throughout. The cookies, however, while having a very good sugar cookie flavor, were too thick and crunchy for an ice cream sandwich. I wished that the cookies were thinner and softer, and a bit more of that amazing ice cream would've been nice, too. But all of the components here were very good -- the dish as a whole just needs a little tweaking.

Overall, I'd say there's a lot to like about Comfort Kitchen. My biggest complaint, and the only reason I'd tell someone not to go there, has nothing to do with the food: It's that they're probably not open when you'll want to go, 'cause their hours are short and centered around a conventional lunchtime. They're not open at all on Sundays, and the rest of the week, they're only open until 7 p.m., meaning that you're not likely to be able to make it there for dinner before they close (or at least, I'm not, even on my one weekday off, 'cause my fiancé works until 6ish in Albany). But if you can manage to get there when they're open, do, 'cause both the quality of food and the philosophy behind it are worth supporting.

Out of the Kitchen: A la cart

Today, I get to hip you to a great new food outlet that you probably haven't heard of yet, 'cause it just opened a couple of weeks ago, and it's in Saugerties. But bear with me here, 'cause if you're in the area, it's totally worth it (and honestly, even if you're not in the area, it's only a few hours of driving and a few bucks in tolls to go check it out).



On a recent sojourn south, we stopped by the Wholey Moly food cart, which is on Ulster Avenue outside of a hardware store -- from the north, get off of the Thruway at Saugerties, take a left and then another left onto Ulster Avenue, and it's just a little bit past the railroad tracks on the right.



The menu is small and reasonably priced. It's also mostly vegetarian so far. If you're a meat-eater, try to get there on Thursday, Friday or Saturday, when there's a special meat of the day on offer. But honestly, I'm a meat-eater, and I didn't really miss it here; I had a rice and bean burrito with avocado, and it was delicious, very flavorful and filling, stuffed with rice, black beans, tomato salsa, sour cream, shredded cheese and fresh avocado slices.

If I lived in the area, I'd probably eat here all of the time; the food is unpretentious, the flavors are delicious and the prices are more than fair. As it is, the Wholey Moly cart would make a great stop if you get hungry during a Thruway trip (and it's way tastier and cheaper than anything you'll find at a rest area, that's for sure).

Out of the Kitchen: Yes, my liège...

To all of those who think that the only good place in New York to find good international food is New York City, I say ha, no, think again. The liège waffle, a Belgian treat known to few Americans (but sold by one notable food truck in NYC), has arrived in the village of Ballston Spa. And it is good... very good.

When Groupon had a deal for the Iron Roost, a new, waffle-focused cafe in Ballston Spa, I jumped at it, eager to find a new good breakfast spot (I'm always looking for those) and curious as heck about their menu, 'cause on it was a liège waffle (pronounced, at least by the counter staff, as "lee-AYj"), something I'd only heard about in foodie circles but had never seen on a menu, aside from the aforementioned NYC food truck. They're a largely novel food for Americans, and they sounded good, so I had to try one.

Of course, I couldn't just get one waffle; I had to try out a balanced meal (and after all, it was breakfast time, and I was hungry). So I got the "Southwestern Fiesta," sort of like a breakfast burrito but wrapped up in a savory waffle.



It was pretty tasty, and though the portion looked small (as did the side of home fries, which were adequately cooked), it was filling. I think this is one of those situations where we've become so accustomed to mammoth portions we can't finish that our sense of proportion is all out of whack; when this was delivered to our table, I thought, "hm, that's it?", but by the time I was done eating, I was pleasantly full.

But this trip was only sort of about filling my stomach with breakfast food. The real motivation here was the liège waffle.

So how was it?



Really, really, really good. It was crispy and carmelized in all the right ways, without being burned, and the crunchy bits of pearl sugar created a nice textural contrast. There was a bit of spice going on in there, too, just a hint, nutmeg perhaps, something to create a warm depth of flavor without being blatant about it. It was delicious, and I was sad to eat the last bite and have it be gone.

Needless to say, I'm going to have to make this one of my regular breakfast spots. Perhaps you should, too.

Out of the Kitchen: Tour de Hard Ice Cream

On Saturday, my fiancé and I sacrificed our waistlines in the name of science (yeah, that's it) at the Profussor's Tour de Hard Ice Cream.

We had a short list of flavors that would be available at all five stops, so we could do a side-by-side comparison: Butter pecan, chocolate, coffee, maple walnut, strawberry and vanilla. After much consideration, I went with chocolate. (My fiancé went with strawberry.)

The first stop was the Farmer’s Daughters’ Drive-In, on Route 29 east of Saratoga Springs. The chocolate ice cream here was ... well, it was chocolate ice cream. Honestly, it reminded me of the half-gallons of Sealtest my parents would get when I was little -- sorta chocolate-y but not a lot, and tasting a bit like freezer, with a few ice crystals. It was ho-hum ice cream. And they had an upcharge for a sugar cone, which I think it crap -- come on, there's no way that bulk-ordered sugar cones are so expensive that they need to charge extra for them.

Now that we had a baseline for our ratings, we headed to The Ice Cream Man in Greenwich. What a difference there was: This stuff was richly cocoa-y and had a thick texture reminiscent of Ben & Jerry's. It was so good that I ate it too quickly and gave myself an ice cream headache. And there was no upcharge for a sugar cone, and the cone itself had a sizeable portion of ice cream for just two bucks -- it was about the size of a regular "small" portion, except that this was the "kiddie" size. We've been there once before, and this is par for the course: the last time we went to The Ice Cream Man, I got a "small," and it filled a waffle cone!

The next stop was a ways away, at the much-vaunted Snowman in Troy. The bloggers around here have talked this place up so much that I was sure it would be phenomenal. But instead, it kinda sucked. First off, they didn't even have sugar cones! What kind of ice cream place doesn't have sugar cones? That was just nuts. And this was the only place that didn't have any seating in the shade, no shade at all in fact, not a single awning or umbrella or anything. And to top it off, the ice cream was lousy -- the chocolate flavor was dusty and muted, and that's once I got past the odd sweet taste in the first few bites cause by the scooper not being rinsed off properly between my fiancé's strawberry dish and my cone. But it could have been worse. My ice cream was just bad, but his strawberry ice cream was aggressively bad, blatantly disgusting, sickly-sweet and almost bubblegum-like. We both threw ours out without finishing them. The only good thing I can say about The Snowman is that at least the ice cream was the cheapest of the day. Still, it was worth even less than that.

Our taste buds needed relief after that, but thankfully, we got it at Mac's Drive-In in Watervliet. Their ice cream was perhaps a little bit thinner, and the sugar cones, which they charged for (grrrr), seemed thinner as well -- mine cracked while I was eating the ice cream on top. But the ice cream had a good, if not great, cocoa flavor, and the price was reasonable. I'd stop here if I was nearby, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.

And then, we headed over the river to Moxie's, which seemed like a straightforward and mostly-familiar trip on paper, yet we ended up getting lost on the way there anyway. At least we weren't the only ones who got lost, so that made it a bit better. But despite the fact that this place has also been hyped up a lot by area bloggers, it wasn't really worth finding. The ice cream lacked flavor, and there were clumps of cocoa powder in it that hadn't been mixed in properly. They charged extra for a sugar cone, too. The serving of ice cream was teeny. And to top it off, theirs was the most expensive cone of the day. What a rip-off.

The Ice Cream Man was the clear winner of the day, for both chocolate and strawberry, we concluded. As for the Profussor's compiled ratings, they largely agreed, though oddly enough, those who tasted butter pecan preferred The Snowman. Even a bad place can usually do something right, I guess. But as for us, I think we'll stick to The Ice Cream Man.

Out of the Kitchen: Sponges for dinner

The other night, my fiancé and I had dinner at Ala Shanghai, an area Chinese restaurant that specializes in Shanghainese cuisine.

It's amazing how many people don't realize that China, being a big place, has a lot of regional cuisines, much like America does, from New England clambakes to Southwestern chimichangas to Southern fried chicken and grits. Most of what we grew up eating as Chinese food is actually a really, really Americanized version of Cantonese or Hunanese food (for example, there's no such thing as General Tso's chicken in China). The authentic versions of those cuisines are definitely worth exploring, but there's a whole other world of Chinese food out there, too, and we're lucky to have a place nearby that does authentic (well, mostly) Shanghainese food.

The great thing about this place, too, is that they cook seasonally. Seasonal eating is always the best way to go; out-of-season foods just aren't as good, aren't as fresh and flavorful, and why eat substandard food? Why waste the calories?

There was one particular reason why I wanted to get to Ala Shanghai now, in the spring, and it's because I was intrigued by last spring's seasonal menu and heard that they'd brought it back. And on that menu are some things you'd never see on an American menu -- like, for instance, luffa (also commonly spelled as loofa).

Yes, like the bath sponge. Except no, not quite. If you harvest luffa in the spring, when it's very young, it's not dried out and coarse. At this stage, it's a green vegetable, totally edible, something that looks a bit like squash. I had to try it, 'cause as weird as it sounds, I'd heard that it was good. We ended up getting an order of luffa with soybeans to split.



So how was it? My first impression, oddly, was of a freshly mowed lawn; it seemed to taste like you'd imagine mown grass tasting, very, very green, but not in a bad way, more of an intriguing way. It was a flavor that was easy to get used to, and it had the texture and some of the flavor of zucchini as well. Also, it was served in a sauce that was astoundingly delicious — the sauce was very, very light, but it had the flavor of char, a straight-up grill sort of flavor, perhaps wok hei, the flavor of the wok it was cooked in. It was an eye-opening flavor experience and paired perfectly with the luffa and soybeans.

Of course, as long as we were there, we had to get some soup dumplings and an order of scallion pancake (both of which I'd highly recommend). And we both got entrees, too, aside from the order of luffa with soybeans that we decided to split. It was too much food, and we knew it, but hey, leftovers are always good. His rainbow chicken (strips of white-meat chicken cooked with strips of carrot, snow pea and bamboo) was intensely chicken-y and tasty, and my crispy shredded beef was sweet and savory in just the right way.

There aren't a whole lot of restaurants around here that are up to this level of cooking, that do one cuisine and do it very, very well, but Ala Shanghai is definitely among them. They do Chinese food like it's supposed to be done, with deep flavor and textural complements and contrasts.

Out of the Kitchen: Albany Cupcake-Off

I think it's time to acknowledge that sometimes, interesting food-related stuff happens that's not directly tied to me baking something. And so, I've added a new entry tag: "Out of the Kitchen." And I can't think of a better way to start off my non-recipe entries (of which I assure you there won't be a whole lot -- this will still be primarily a baking blog) than with an event I was part of today: a blind tasting of area cupcakeries' offerings.

The competition has been pretty fierce around here between the four major cupcake bakeries. There's Coccadotts, best known as either the people who failed miserably on "Cupcake Wars" (and got a lot of flack afterwards for it) or the people who recently got a lot of publicity for making Buffalo wing cupcakes. There's Bettie's, which you can't miss, with their multiple outlets (at least three, last I knew) and two cupcake trucks and massive publicity everywhere you go. There's Sweet Temptations, now in two locations and with one truck. And there's Fluffalicious, which started out as a truck and only recently opened a shop of their own.

But while all of them have their fans and detractors, who really has the best cupcake? I was determined to find out, and after planting a bug in the ear of the Profussor, who has set up quite a few head-to-head food comparisons like this, we had our answer.

Many precautions were taken, because the cupcake business can be cutthroat around here. The orders were placed anonymously, just an order for a party or something, no mention given of our true intent. All participants were sworn to secrecy, not allowed to say anything about the event in public in case a bakery were to find out and somehow game the system, make sure that we had extra-good cupcakes just for us, when what we wanted was to find a fair answer: If you walked into one of these places off the street, right now, where would you get the best cupcake? And to remove our own biases, we tested them blind, with only a few organizers on the other end of the room knowing whose cakes went on plates labeled A, B, C and D.

At high noon, we gathered and prepared for the tasting, which included water and cold milk to wash down the cakes.



First up was the vanilla round: Yellow cupcakes with vanilla frosting.



Cupcake A stood out for being almost shortcake-like, with a whipped-cream-like, non-gritty frosting that had a pleasant vanilla flavor and a fairly good cake. Cupcake D's frosting wasn't so good, awfully greasy-tasting, but their cake was buttery and moist and delicious.

Meanwhile, Cupcake C's frosting tasted chemical-y and buttery in the bad way, like a stick of butter, while their cake tasted mostly like cake flour, like the chemicals used to give cake flour its texture. And Cupcake B was just wretched -- the frosting tasted like Crisco and chemicals, and the cake was about the same, artificial-tasting and just awful. Even the sprinkles were bad; for some odd reason, they tasted like black pepper. You could actually do a little better to buy a box of cheap cake mix and a jar of frosting at the grocery store than to eat this one. We also noticed that B was the smallest cupcake, but considering how bad it was, that might've been a blessing.

So much for "yay, we get to eat cupcakes!" Clearly, they were not all created equal. Onward to round two: Chocolate cakes with chocolate frosting.



Again, A stood out, this time for being the only one that tasted like chocolate: the frosting had a clear cocoa taste, while the cake also tasted like chocolate cake. D was so-so, not offensive but not chocolate-y, either. C's frosting had a hard crust on top, like it had been sitting around for a while, and its cake was even worse: it was beyond dry into full-on tough, actually hard for me to cut through with a knife, and it tasted about the same, dry and awful. But B was again the worst, tasting like chemicals and grease instead of like cake.

Round three was the specialty-flavor round, and we went with the most popular one across all four shops: Peanut butter cup.



A faltered a bit in this round -- it was pretty much the same as the chocolate/chocolate one in the previous round, except for a scant peanut butter filling (which I think was tasty, but I can't be sure 'cause there was so little of it). C actually redeemed itself a little bit here, 'cause while their cake was again very dry and lacking in flavor, the frosting was the best of the bunch, very peanut-y. D was slightly peanut-y in the frosting but sort of greasy and overall unimpressive. And B, well, by this point, I actually resented that I had to put this in my mouth, and when I got a taste of their frosting, I actually made a face -- again, it was all Crisco and chemicals, as was the cake.

You shouldn't actually dread eating a cupcake, but with bakery B's, I did. They were so bad, across the board, so chemical-y and artificial-tasting and lacking in any good flavor at all, that I was actually offended by them. How does bakery B get away with selling these? How do they have the nerve to charge people money for such wretchedly bad cupcakes? Don't they have any taste buds to know how much theirs suck? Do they have no shame?

After much eating and thinking, we turned in our score sheets, and then, we were told the identities of the bakeries we'd been eating from...



Bakery A was Fluffalicious.
Bakery D, which I'd say was my second-favorite (and my favorite yellow cake), was Coccadotts.
Bakery C was Bettie's.
Bakery B was Sweet Temptations.

After the big reveal, the ratings of bakery C made sense to me, 'cause I have tried their cupcakes a couple of times and have always found them to be very dry and not very good in flavor (which is why I stopped eating theirs). I was open to them being the winner, because it was a blind test and I could've been surprised, but I wasn't -- all of the added locations and cute pink ads and double-decker buses in the world can't save a dry, lousy cupcake.

As for Sweet Temptations, I just don't understand how someone can run a shop specializing in cupcakes and make ones that are that horribly bad, then put their name on them and charge people money for them. They were just that bad. I mean, before they opened, didn't they ever eat a cupcake before, ever notice that they're not supposed to taste like grease and chemicals? How do they have the nerve to sell this crap? As for the second obvious question, why do people buy them, I'd guess it's simply because they have no basis for comparison at the time, because it's a cupcake, if not a good cupcake. For that matter, I've eaten one of their cakes before, and I don't remember it being so bad, but not good, either. I almost think it's one of those things where if you buy one of theirs and think, "gee, this isn't very good," you might second-guess yourself, "but they're cupcake bakers, this is what they do, they're professionals... maybe I'm just not appreciating the goodness of this cupcake, 'cause if they run a cupcake shop, they must make good cakes, right?"

(Further reading: The Profussor's recap with scoring breakdowns.)