Monday, November 21, 2005

Some more about Del Ray

J told you all about Los Tios and I wanted to let you all know about our other little jaunts in Del Ray. Del Ray isn't a huge commercial area, but the shops that are there are interesting and worth exploring. After we were sated at Los Tios, we went to Cheesetique to forage. Ironically, we ended up getting everything BUT cheese. J and I got some pepper crackers and fig jam in hopes of recreating Two Amy's pipe dreams goat cheese with fig jam. We had a log of goat cheese form the cheese vendor at Eastern Market. We then went to what used to be called the Dreamery. It was forced to change it's name because some evil ice cream conglomerate sued them. So now it's called Dairy Godmother. This pisses me off to no end. It's just like when some family owned a pub in Scotland and were sued by MacDonald's for calling themselves MacDonald's. This family WAS the clan MacDonald. As if anyone will confuse a Scottish pub with a soulness fast food joint. Anyway, we got some custard sundaes at the shop-formerly-known-as-Dreamery and they were fine. For J, the sundaes were a marshmallow topping delivery system. What I found was funny was that the jukebox only played songs with the word "dream" in the title. Boy D put in a quarter for the jukebox to play the Billy Ocean classic "Get out of my Dreams, Get in to my Car." While an attention whore like me will totally start bopping in public to a song like that, I was tickled pink when both Boy D and Girl D starting bopping too.

Del Ray was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and well worth exploring.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I decided to cook dinner for my wife this weekend and used your balsalmic vinaigrette. I followed your recipe to the letter in my first attempt, but felt that it tasted too oily. And, in my second attempt in playing with your recipe made the following modification:

3 cloves of minced garlic
pinch of salt
1/4 cup of balsalmic
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 Tablespoon of maple syrup
and, the juice of 1/2 an orange

As it turns out, my wife loved the salmon and wanted to thank you for the inspiration.

DC Food Blog said...

Did you use it as a dressing or as a glze for salmon? That's interesting because a lot of vinaigrette recipes call for a one to one ratio of oil to vinegar. Thanks for giving me the heads up.

Anonymous said...

I actually marinated the salmon in olive oil, dill and a few grinds of cracked pepper. After broiling the fish for about ten to twelve minutes, it was pink but wasn't as flavorful as I would have liked.

So, I poured your balsalmic vinaigrette into a little ramakan and used it as a dipping sauce for the fish. And, my wife loved it.

To answer your question, it probably would be great as a fish marinade, or even as a salad dressing.

For desert, I combined
1/3 cup of sugar
1 Tablespoon of flour
1 large egg
4 Tablespoons of stick butter
4 ounces of dark Hershey's coca

Mixed with a hand held blender, and poured into heart shaped cupcake pans and baked for twelve minutes. Served with blackberries we picked a couple of months ago at the Homestead Farm.

DC Food Blog said...

With salmon, I either cook it unadorned or I marinate the hell out of it with a strong acid (i.e. balsamic vinegar, lemon juice or rice wine vinegar). I agree with your proportions for the balsamic glaze. A 1 to 1 oil to vinegar ratio for a dipping suace would result it an oily texture. Your dessert sounds incredible. I'm still holding on to my Homestead blackberries. I might try and make blackberry lemonade in December to remind me of summer.