Harry Potter and Butterbeer

There are a lot of opinions out there when it comes to making the most famous drink in the Harry Potter universe. When the drink was introduced in the books, lots of fans tried to come up with recipes based on the way it was described, and now that Warner Brothers has an official recipe that's made at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, people have attempted to recreate the experience they had with the butterbeer at the park. Now, I don't know if there's such thing as a butterbeer expert, and I probably can't claim to be one anyway, since I haven't actually been to the park in Florida and tasted the butterbeer, but I do have a fair amount of experience with it. Back when midnight premieres of the movies were still happening (I believe this was for the premiere of the sixth book), my friends and I made a very simple butterbeer recipe, then bottled it elaborately so we could show off to all the other people waiting in line. This recipe is very very sweet and pretty artificial tasting, but it's definitely not bad, especially if you're just having a single glass.

Simple Butterbeer
(From Mugglenet)

Ingredients
1 cup club soda OR cream soda
1/2 cup butterscotch syrup
1/2 tablespoon butter

Measure butterscotch syrup and  butter into a microwaveable bowl. Heat on high for 1 to 1 and 1/2 minutes, or until syrup is bubbly and butter is completely incorporated.
Stir and cool for 30 seconds, then slowly mix in the club or cream soda. Mixture will fizz quite a bit.
Makes two servings, and can be easily multiplied.

Then, this past summer, my friends and I had a party for Harry Potter's birthday, and we got a little more complicated with our butterbeer recipe. The following is the version of the recipe for those of you under twenty one, but butterbeer is actually described as mildly alcoholic in the books, so if you really want to be accurate, omit the rum extract and add about half a shot of rum per drink. This recipe is less artificial tasting than the one above, though approximately as sweet. If you like, you can use club soda or ginger ale to lessen that effect. We also skipped the whipped topping for reasons of it being too sweet, but I'm leaving it in the recipe as an option.

A Somewhat More Complicated Butterbeer
(From The Huffington Post)

Ingredients
1 cup light or dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
6 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
3/4 cup heavy cream, divided
1/2 teaspoon rum extract
Four 12-ounce bottles cream soda

In a small saucepan over medium, combine the brown sugar and water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook, stirring often, until the mixture reads 240 F on a candy thermometer.
Stir in the butter, salt, vinegar and 1/4 heavy cream. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
Once the mixture has cooled, stir in the rum extract.
In a medium bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar mixture and the remaining 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Use an electric mixer to beat until just thickened, but not completely whipped, about 2 to 3 minutes.
To serve, divide the brown sugar mixture between 4 tall glasses (about 1/4 cup for each glass). Add 1/4 cup of cream soda to each glass, then stir to combine. Fill each glass nearly to the top with additional cream soda, then spoon the whipped topping over each.

I wish you luck in your future butterbeer endeavors, whether you choose one of these roots or one of the 500 other options on the internet!

Bonus Photo: Harry Potter's Birthday Cake, made with Julia Child's Reine de Saba avec Glaçage au Chocolat recipe. If you're going to have a Harry Potter Birthday Party, get serious about it.

Sweet Potato Parmesan Tater Tots (and Horseradish Ketchup)

Decided to share one last recipe for our last blog post. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to keep reading my own blog if you're in the mood for more yummy ideas!

This snack is AMAZING. The tots alone are sweet and creamy, but pared with the spicy ketchup they’re just out of this world delicious. AND they’re baked, so it’s basically health food. My favorite part of this snack is easily the crunch chip coating; it adds a whole new level to the tot. I made them as a side for burgers, but I think they’d be incredible as a breakfast side with fried eggs or an omelet. Try them. They do not disappoint. 

Tots (adapted from halfbakedharvest.com) 
- 4 medium sweet potatoes 
- 2 tbsp butter, melted 
- 3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese 
- 1/2 tsp salt 
- 1/2 tsp pepper 
- 1/2 tsp chili powder 
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder 
- 1 cup cups sweet potato chips crumbs 
- 1 cup cups lentil chip crumbs 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Prick the sweet potatoes all over with fork. Bake on the oven rack until tender (50-60 minutes). Allow to cool, then use your hands to peel away the skin. Place the potatoes in a medium bowl and mash with the butter. Stir in the cheese, spices, salt and pepper to taste. To make the best chip crumbs, pulse in a food processor until fine, then transfer to a bowl. You can also puree the potato mixture in the processor as well to get the smoothest texture if mashing by hand isn’t pleasing you. Scoop about 1 tablespoon of the sweet potato mixture into your hand and roll into a tot shape. Roll the tot in the chips and coat well. If you need to re-shape the tots now is the moment. Place on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Repeat until all of the sweet potato mixture is gone. Bake for 15 minutes and flip the the tater tots over and bake another 10-15 minutes or until golden! 

Horseradish Ketchup 
- 1/2 cup ketchup 
- 2 tbsp horseradish 

Combine the two ingredients and be merry.

Food Mapping

                              Seeing New York (through my Giorgio Armani lenses), Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg

(Lengthy post. I know, I know.)

Sometime in my junior year in high school I decided to follow a pescetarian diet. I continued with it for about four years until one evening, at dinner, in my second year at Smith. It was October 31, 2011 and I had mistaken a tray of beef teriyaki for something vegetarian. Well, I was disgusted, but it kind of fit in perfectly with my plan. I had already calculated that I should start introducing meat into my diet the year before I went to Paris for JYA, so that an all-inclusive French diet, including pork, beef, some lamb and veal, wouldn't be a total shock to my system.

For a year leading up to my year abroad I had not only began eating meat (chicken mostly) somewhat reluctantly, but I had also started educating myself on French fare. Not your typical traditional french cuisine though, but rather the local flavors about which my favorite American-expat bloggers were writing. I wanted a taste for the culture, instructions on how to behave, know proper etiquette. But I also wanted les bonnes addresses... Restaurants and shops that sold the best of whatever they had to offer. Every euro counted and I didn't want to spend my money on tourist traps that I would sullenly walk away from, feeling ripped off and discontent.

A whole bunch of blog reading prepared me well. I arrived to Paris with a tiny notebook filled with the best patisseries, boulangeries, Japanese restaurants, some museums and jardins, but mostly cafés (and very few actual French restaurants.. too expensive!) Arranged by neighborhood, I filled the pages in weekly all during the length of my stay. Every time I would ask a friend out to lunch I would first consult my notebook and pick out one or two places that we could try. (You always need a back up. Always! Places close unexpectedly or sometimes they aren't what you pictured.)

Essentially, food is how I found my way around Paris. In the beginning the neighborhoods were  indiscernible. I was missing that "feeling" of direction that I have when I wander around Manhattan... That sort of sixth sense that lets me know which way north is, which way is the quickest way to a decent latte and which way will bring me to the cleanest public bathroom. Food adventures kept me walking around, kept me exploring so that I ultimately gained this sense and designated "feelings" or "moods" to each of the arrondissements based on the food experiences I had in each one of them.


In the 4th is where you can get some decent falafel. But never on Mondays.. and sometimes not on Saturdays either. The sixth has one of the best cafés for hot chocolate. Hands down. The sixteenth has nothing. Really. The first is where I ate many dinners because the Japanese restaurants provide a cheap but hardy meal.

The way I orientated myself in this foreign city was through food. The way I practiced my French. Rehearsing each line in my head before I entered the store until one day I was able to chat freely, without a script, to the servers. At some point I even helped some tourists translate the menu and kept the waiter from bringing them pork. Other times, too frequently, I repeatedly had to execute the same phrase, twisting my pronunciation every which way, so that the server could finally understand me. Food challenged me. Food is how I escaped from feeling like a foreigner to feeling like someone who didn't care if they belonged, just so long as got access to as much food as I could before leaving Paris.

Forgetting my vegetarianism was the best thing I could have done for myself. I was able to unabashedly try all of my host mother's dishes, eat blood sausage over a crepe and experience real French cuisine no matter the ingredients. Food made me conquer Paris geographically and it also helped me understand the culture and the subtle differences in French regional cuisine.

I took this course on food writing because I had spent the past year dreaming about food, and sometimes writing about it too. I had read so many blogs on French food and lists of "the best" in Paris, that I wanted to make food, as a subject, be more than just a selfish endeavor. Food is about more than pleasure, and food writing is where this is actualized.                                                                                                                                             From all the writing we read this semester, from restaurant reviews, to New Yorker articles to actual cookbooks, I became intimate with another use of food. Though I've never been one to view food as simply practical, I've come to learn how academic food can be (but you can leave the academic voice at home!)

The subject of food isn't silly. It can be a means to communicate a personal story as well as divulge the truth of a time period, a company, a society or a way of life. Food deserves further consideration than the quick inspection we give to the nutritional content on food packaging. Food enters our daily life and reflects our choices, behaviors and beliefs. 

My relation with food has been more telling than I would have ever imagined. However, I also realize that food has broader implications that extend beyond what it says about me. It is the possibility to learn more about an entire culture or population through food that I've now drawn my attention to.

-Stacey Ladusch 

Covered in Gold (why the hell not?)

(Not my weekly post. I just wanted to share this amusing (and frightening??) video of Stephen Colbert ordering three outrageous $1000 dollar meals offered in NYC)

The Colbert Report
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Colbert Report on Facebook

Good Night and Good Luck (Aka Top 5 Food List)

Well, the semester is coming to an end, and I couldn't quite decide what to write as a final blog post. I felt like I needed to write some sort of foodie summery, so here is what I came up with...

 

5 meals that map out my first year of college:

 

1) A piece of mushroom pizza from Pizza Amore-

 

A late night slice with 4 of my, now, best friends really solidified our relationship. Something about the delicious melted cheese and thin crispy crust stuck us together. Oh, also important to note, they deliver.

 

2) Chocolate espresso beans-

 

 

I lived off of them during Ultimate Frisbee tournaments. Yes, I went a little crazy after one too many, but they did the job, and they did it well.

 

3) Go Berry Frozen Yogurt-

 

 

The first weekend of school all of the first-years in my house took a trip to Go Berry together. I learned that granola and mango made delicious toppings on vanilla frozen yogurt. Mind. Blown. I revisited later with my mom, after my dance performance. The mini dark chocolate chips are also stellar.

 

4) Failed Peanut Butter Cookies-

 

Katie and I attempted to make beautiful cookies, like the ones displayed above, in the Comstock kitchen. It was very spur of the moment, purely out of finals stress, and turned into a buzz-feed worthy failure, but we had a lot of fun.

 

5) Green Bean!

 

The four friends from #1 and I went to the Green Bean to experience the famous brunch. We were not disappointed, it was incredible. Plus, we went to out first hot yoga class afterwards at Shiva Shakti. Talk about inner happiness, it was a wonderful day.

 

So there are my top five. The year has gone by fast but, clearly, it has been delicious.

Good Night and Good Luck.

Crepes: The First Is Never Perfect

This past weekend was Senior Ball. Desiring to squeeze into our dresses, my friends and I wanted a light dinner. After a lot of brainstorming and rejected ideas, I finally won by shouting "SAVORY CREPES!" I had dabbled in crepes two summers ago and had suddenly found myself with a burning desire to go back into the world of crepes once more. 

When I first made crepes, the idea seemed daunting and advanced for such a lowly home cook as myself. To my surprise, crepe making wasn't that hard! I now know that I don't have to count on going to the Mosaic Cafe to get my crepe fix. Just follow this recipe!

Basic Crepe Batter: (adapted from Alton Brown's recipe)

2 large eggs

1/2 c milk

1/2 c cold water

1 c all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 tablespoons melted butter, cooled

Combine all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. If you don't have a blender - whisk the eggs, milk, and water. Slowly continue whisking and add the rest of the dry ingredients (flour, salt). When smooth, continue whisking in the cooled, melted butter. Continue whisking until the batter is consistent and without lumps. Put in refrigerator whilst preparing the fillings.

Filling Ideas:

Cheese (extra sharp white cheddar), caramelized onions (slice an onion thinly, add 1 tbsp butter, and cook over low heat until brown and sweetened - approximately 30 minutes), asparagus (simply cut, put into a pan with a small amount of olive oil, and steamed for 1.5 minutes after a tbsp of water when pan is very hot), ham

Cooking the Crepes:

Just remember, as my grandmother once told me, the first crepe never come out right. Do not worry, it's only uphill from there. When you are cooking crepes, try and use an nonstick pan. If you do not have one, use a shiny bottomed saute pan. No need to oil/butter the pan! There's butter in the batter. In addition, if you make the crepe thin enough, it will never stick.

So, pour just enough of your crepe batter into your medium/high heated pan (for a 10 inch pan, about a 1/4 of a cup). As soon as it hits the pan, tilt the pan every which way to coat the whole bottom. Work quickly! The batter will start cooking as soon as it touches the hot pan! Wait a little (20 seconds) before checking to see if there are little bubbles aerating to the surface. Shake the pan and hopefully the crepe will move around easily. If not, just give it a lift with a spatula, and flip the crepe. Cook for another 20-30 seconds and then transfer them to another plate to cool. Allow fellow hungry friends to fill and devour their crepe, while you continue cooking because you are now addicted to trying to flip them successfully without a spatula. It's fun! Be fearless and try it!

Bon appétit!

Dining in DC

While traveling, one of my favorite things to do is randomly explore the restaurants around. The past spring break, I went to Washington DC with some friends and had some fantastic dining experiences. The following are my Top2 favorites.

1.     The Diner

 

(Picture from Yelp)

(picture from Yelp)

Located on 18th St NW in Adam Morgan, The Diner has a nice outdoor seating area, a TV inside, and enough space for each table. The atmosphere there is very relaxing and family friendly. Our waitress is extremely welcoming and knows the menu very well. After consulting her, we order steak salad, lamb mini burgers, honey banana milkshake and strawberry chocolate milkshake.

Steak Salad

The steak salad consists of medium rare steak slices, romaine lettuce, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. The portion size is huge and all of the ingredients are really fresh. We season the salad with only salt and pepper to enjoy the nature flavor of the ingredients and it is delicious.

Lamb mini burgers

These grilled lamb burgers are served with slices of ripe tomatoes and red onion in pita bread with a fresh tasting cucumber sauce seasoned with fresh mint and garlic. I'm not a huge fan of burgers but I have to admit that I love these mini burgers! The juiciness of lamb, the sweetness of read onion and the freshness of mint go really well together and create a harmonic taste.

Milkshake

The milkshake comes in tall goblet type of glass and it tastes heavenly. The waitress even bring us the silver blender-cup that she make it in, so it was like having two glasses of milkshakes!

2. Kintaro

（Picture from Yelp)

Kintaro is a Japanese restaurant located in Georgetown, one of the most historic neighborhoods of DC. I went there with my high school friend who is now studying at George Washington University. She told me that though she had already been to many great restaurants in DC, Kintaro is still her top favorite. It is a tiny family-run restaurant. All the chefs and waiters are Japanese and most of the diners were speaking Japanese, which makes the place seemed very authentic to me. 

Spicy California Roll

Miso Ramen

We had a spicy California roll, miso ramen and a delicious fish sushi which I can't recall its name. From want I know, Japanese cuisine is about the simplicity and freshness of ingredients and all of these dishes embodied that. The crab meat in the California roll and the fish meat on the top of the sushi were all extremely fresh and soft in taste. The miso ramen contained seaweed, noodles, some veggies, one half of an egg and two slices of pork. The broth was tasty but not overly salty or flavorful and it was a good bowl of Ramen on the more simplistic side that focuses on the few ingredients it has.

So, if you are going to visit Washington DC and will pass by these areas, try these restaurants. I promise they will make your trip a more fulfilling one.