Chefs Cooking for Hope (and for us!)

Last night was Chefs Cooking for Hope, one of the big fundraising events for the Friends of Dana-Farber. I'd wanted to check this out for a while, especially after last year, when co-worker Robbin, who does PR for the event, had rounded up some goodies for me while I was out sick.

I still have fond memories of last year's maple bacon cotton candy from Harvest:



But that was last year. This year, I wanted to see for myself.

Chefs Cooking for Hope brings together area restaurants and caterers, who dish out small-plate samples to a crowd paying $100 a ticket.

And while that might seem pricey, look at it this way: You're in a room with some of the best chefs in town. And they have food. And they ain't going nowhere.

And no one can stop you having seconds. Or thirds.

So here's what we found:

Oysters in a spicy beet mignonette from Rialto:



Seared tuna with wasabi from The Cottage:



Sweet, lightly marinated roasted red peppers from Strega:



Amazing grilled octopus from Bistro du Midi (and a reminder to vote for chef Robert Sisca in Food and Wine's Best New Chef poll)



Just-right beef tartare from Gaslight:



Light and airy rabbit liver pâté with port gelée and picked carrots from Sel de la Terre:



Eye-rollingly good veal terrine with violet mustard from Beacon Hill Bistro:



Wild mushroom ravioli with oxtail ragout from Miel:



And the dish that seemed to be the hit of the night: braised brisket in a dumpling, in a light dashi broth, with soy pearls, from Baker's Best Catering. You ate it like an oyster: juice, then meat. It was stunning.



Between bites, we stopped by the table for Citizen Pub, who was handing out samples of a lovely rye peach punch.



We liked the Citizen people, not only because cocktail, but also because one of the staff recognized me from a visit ... four months ago.

"Yes," he said, "you came in on a Tuesday. You asked for a sour drink. I persuaded you to have a second one."

Well, that does sound like the kind of thing I would do ...

By this point in the evening, we were pretty much full. Yes, we were eating small amounts, but if you're counting, that's nine small amounts.

Wait, make it ten: I almost forgot about the sweet plantain — halfway between tostón and maduro — topped with apples and eggplant, from (I think) Zephyr on the Charles. It was a crazy combination, but it worked really well.



So yeah, not much room left for dessert. Okay, maybe just a little suspiro Limeño from Taranta. Super-sweet dulce de leche with a meringue topping.



And we'll just look at the cupcakes



and the cupcakes



and the cupcakes.



These last are bacon (the maple kind, yah?) from bakery Glutenus Minimus.

Finally, we picked up a plate of goodies from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and rolled out.



Tonight, I think we'll be having a nice plate of steamed vegetables.

A drive-by cupcaking

You know what it's like: you're sitting in your office cell, feeling snacky. It's too cold to walk far, plus your energy is already low, and the only in-house options are the woefully inadequate (and slightly squashed) granola bar in your desk drawer, or the suspiciously non-perishable items in the vending machine.

And you think: Wouldn't it be perfect if a truck selling awesome cupcakes just happened to stop right in front of my office right now???

Something like this, perhaps?





Smarty Diane, who runs the Cupcakory truck, came up with the idea of Request-a-Visit Thursdays, in which interested companies could set up a time for the truck to stop by. So we made it happen for our department (and, by extension, the entire building).

Here's Diane, remaining super-nice and very calm, despite the long line of hungry cupcake fans.



The cakes went fast: red velvet sold out while I was still in line. My haul ended up being salted caramel, birthday cake (with the sprinkles), Almond Joy, Nutella, and peanut butter and chocolate.



I should note that they weren't all for me!

In the end, the Cupcakory truck visit was so popular that Diane sold out and some sad co-workers were left cupcake-less. So we're planning a return visit later this month.



Apparently it can't come soon enough.

Kickass Trick or Treat cupcake is eeeevillll!

I used to be beeeeg into Hallowe'en (yes, it has a frickin' apostrophe). And then for some reason — I suspect it was I got old but let's not go there — my interest waned. The box of decorations stayed untouched in the basement. We stopped buying candy (kids rarely trick-or-treat on our street). Costumes? Meh. I wear black every other day anyway.

I was about to let Hallowe'en pass in similar fashion this year. And then something happened to change my mind. Maybe it was the appearance of four fat orange pumpkins on our porch, courtesy of the kids who live upstairs. Maybe it was listening to Dracula by Philip Glass and the Kronos Quintet, one of my favorite atmospheric pieces, perfect for a rainy fall day.

Or maybe it was the heads-up email that arrived yesterday to let me know that Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square had a Hallowe'en special: the Trick or Treat cupcake.

"A chocolate cupcake baked around a mini candy bar ..."

So of course I had to check that out.



We picked up the Twix and Milky Way Trick or Treat cupcakes, and also a Sammy, because what's not to love about a cupcake made with Sam Adams stout?



They were almost too pretty to eat.



Almost.

Kickass cupcakes are perfect if you like 'em super-sweet and indulgent. They don't just use butter, they use Plugrá (that's "more fat" for the non-francophones). Which explains why their buttercream frosting looks like this:



Here's the inside of the Twix one - see the cookie at the bottom?



So if you take that level of richness and then you add a candy bar — well, I think you get the picture.

There's a good reason Kickass only offers the Trick or Treat cupcake once a year. Anything more would be a serious (delicious) health hazard.

Cupcakory is on a roll

Though I was aware that Boston now has food trucks, somehow I hadn't really investigated. This is partly because there didn't seem to be much truckular action near my office near Fenway (as opposed to, say, the Back Bay, where there are already a squillion places to eat).

Okay, there are restaurants near me as well; they're just of the red-meat-and-fried-everything-and-beer-and-multiple-flat-screen-TVs variety.

And yes, I could spend my lunch half-hour running to Copley or the CS Plaza and back, but that seems to defeat the principle. They're food trucks. With wheels. You don't go to them; they come to you.

Soooanyway, when I checked the City of Boston food truck map one day and realized the Cupcakory truck was going to be parked around the corner that afternoon, I became a little too excited.

I enlisted Eric to come with. Someone had to carry the cakes back.

We found the (adorable) truck on Comm Ave.



There was a little display window with that day's selection.



A lot of tempting flavors! We couldn't decide between raspberry-lemon, salted caramel, lemon-blueberry, and double dark chocolate. Luckily, this was not a "choose one" situation.



Okay, I'll just say it: These are fantastic cupcakes. The sponge is light and airy. The flavors are well defined and nicely balanced, especially in the delicate lemon cake and the fabulous pairing of dark chocolate, caramel and exactly enough salt.

And the frosting ... oh baby, the frosting ...



Do you see the air pockets in the above shot? Or here?



Some cupcakes have a dense, thick frosting that sticks to the roof of the mouth and makes your teeth ache. Which is fine if that's what you're looking for.

But Cupcakory's frosting seems whipped, almost fluffy, not too sweet and yet still substantial. They're cupcakes for grown-ups; they fulfill the need for a sweet treat without assuming that if you're eating cupcakes, you expect to be transported back to sugar-laden childhood.

And just to prove that they were not too rich, I devoured two of them in quick succession. Which is not something I do very often.

It's good to be a grown-up.

Deep fried cupcake. Deep. Fried. CUPCAKE!

On Friday afternoon, office buddy Dawn alerted me to the existence of the deep-fried cupcake from Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square (a place I'd visited only once before, despite its relative proximity to home).

On Saturday morning, we were so there.

For future reference, this is what you need to make a deep-fried cupcake:



You got yer regular standard deep-fat fryer; yer necessary cupcake, of course; there's yer squeezy cream; and tucked in the corner would be yer bottle of chocolate sauce. Not shown is the bowl of light batter in which the cupcake is doused before frying.

Commence to drooling and/or dialing 9 and 1 and getting ready to dial 1 again.

While we waited for nature to take its course, we checked out the other cupcake options, which included pretty sparkles:



The Green Monster:



The S'mores:



And the, um, "Cheesy Catnip Kittycake," which I assume was not for human consumption.



And then our deep-fried cupcake was ready! Oops, no it wasn't; our server had switched on the fryer and thrown the cake in without giving the oil a chance to heat. I didn't even want to know what the result looked like.

She was very apologetic ("We don't usually start deep frying until the afternoon," she said), and soon had a second cupcake in and sizzling.

While we waited some more, we watched one of the bakers unwrap several three-pound blocks of butter—and when I say butter, I mean Plugra—top them off with a couple of wholesale-sized bricks of cream cheese, and set the whole thing to churning in a serious industrial mixer. That, my friend, is how you make frosting.

And then our server took a paper cone (genius, and the only possible way to present a deep-fried cupcake), swirled chocolate sauce into its base, placed the cake inside, added more chocolate sauce, and finished it off with a generous dollop of cream.

There's actually a deep-fried cupcake under here.



See?



In truth, it could have done without quite so much smothering; save for one small corner that had missed the chocolate-and-cream deluge, and was therefore still crisp and crunchy, the rest was a big, soggy fistful.

Not that it was bad, mind you. As things that are deep fried and loaded with fat and sugar go, it was a fine example of the form: sweet and warm and completely indulgent, halfway between hot doughnut and deep-fried Twinkie.





We ate it walking down the street, our faces smeared with chocolate syrup and cream. It's not something one can consume delicately or with any pretense of sophistication. It's also something best shared; a whole one may just finish off a healthy person of average size.

And then it was gone, and we were left with a slightly heavy taste of cooking oil on the tongue. I'm not sure whether the solution would be to change to a lighter oil, or to allow the cake to drain a little before serving, or just to crank the heat up higher to make the cooking time as short as possible; that might be something to work on.

Davis Square has few options for state-fair-like indulgence, with the exception of the Belgian sugar waffle at Mr. Crepe or a scoop of maple-walnut from J.P. Licks (and even there you can almost legitimately claim there are healthy choices; hey, strawberry ice cream has fruit!).

So now there's something else to add to the list of heart-stopping goodies, though note that Kickass only does deep-fried cupcakes Friday through Sunday. Maybe it's for the best.

Tatte: rich, buttery, aloof

There's a bakery around the corner from my office that looks so immaculate, it makes me feel I've walked in on a movie set by mistake. Tatte, on Beacon Street in Brookline, is tiny and light-filled, and half the store is taken up with an oversized table holding a minimalist selection of perfect pastries.



Tatte's dessert selection is limited, but the star seems to be the nut box, shown above in the grande variety. The smaller one is equally pretty.



It's basically a pastry shell filled with nuts. Doesn't that sound lame? Okay, how's this: the pastry is so butter-loaded that it's practically shortbread. The nuts (pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts) are covered in a not-too-sweet caramelly coating. For a handful of nuts and a bit of pastry, it's amazingly rich.

I also picked up a ricotta-spinach brioche, which was likewise decadent, rich and buttery (but it had spinach, so it was healthy. Really).



And I had a fresh pear juice, which has a subtle note of cinnamon and caused co-worker Sarah to say, "Wow, it makes me wish it was fall already!" I don't love the sentiment, but I know where she was coming from.

So Tatte creates lovely treats (albeit expensive: my three purchases cost me $13). And yet I'm hesitant to recommend it. Why?

Because the counter staff at Tatte are decidedly unfriendly.

Now you know me: I'm a pretty laid-back, thick-skinned gal (and, allegedly, a bit of a ham). So it doesn't offend me personally if people are restrained or reserved. What does bug me, though, is when people who work in customer-service positions cop attitudes of superiority.

The salesgirls at Tatte were unsmiling and aloof. When I asked whether it would be okay if I took photos, they looked at me as though I'd asked if I could gut a fish on the counter. And then one said, "Well ... I suppose so," and the other said (though not to me), "The Phoenix sent a photographer round last week."

I don't often feel uncomfortable around other people, but here I did. So I picked up my change from the counter (because she wouldn't put it in my hand) and scuttled out.

And then I started wondering whether I was being paranoid. But cube-neighbor Nikki said, "No, the South End Buttery is exactly the same; they're very obnoxious. Plus their cupcakes are terrible."

I don't want to suggest this is a trend: the staff at Sweet on Mass Ave are lovely, as is the owner of Kickass Cupcakes, so there's no direct correlation between bakeries and bitchiness.

But I'd be interested to know whether there are other examples of posh pastry shops with poor personalities. Or, for that matter, places where the service is as sweet as the confectionary.

Anyone?

Cupcakes? Sweet!

I've written before about how the recent explosion of cupcake fanaticism suggests a nostalgic hipster yearning for the carefree days of childhood. But for all my pseudo-ironic swagger, I do love a nice cakey.

So when a sign in a Mass. Ave. storefront heralded the imminent arrival of cupcakery Sweet, I started keeping track of its progress (walls are up ... tables are in ... ooh, there's a display case ...).

When I walked past yesterday, there was a "now open" sign in the window. So today, together with cupcake aficionados Sarah and Dawn, I went to check it out.

It's a tiny store; this is pretty much the whole thing.



(Note the flat-screen TV, here showing the end credits for Sophia Coppola's elegant cupcake Marie Antoinette.)

Humongous carnation cupcake from Winston Flowers:



Gorgeous wallpaper from Studio Printworks:



Coordinating candy:



Nice package:



There's an attention to detail and an eye for design throughout the brand identity that keeps it fun and fresh without teetering into saccharine princess cuteness.

So, that's my report ...

The what?

I forgot what?

Oh, you mean these?







(Check out the finishing touch on this last bunch: gold! Goooold! We're rich, I tells ya!)

It wasn't too hard to figure out which flavors to try, as Sweet's menu only has five choices. A further helpful restriction was the price: full-size cupcakes are $3.25, the mini versions a buck cheaper. Bulk buys are a relative bargain, and four mini cupcakes are $8, which seems more reasonable (and certainly less than the cost of dessert at most decent restaurants).

So I chose lemon, cappuccino, dark chocolate and organic karat (that's the one topped with edible gold leaf).

Somehow I managed to get them back to the office, leave them on my desk all afternoon and carry them home without even "accidentally" dipping a finger in the frosting, much less stuffing all four in my face at once. The Boy was suitably grateful.

First impression: well, they certainly are tiny.



But they're potent little packages. The karat cake (geddit?) was dense and spicy and topped with a thick, chewy cream cheese frosting, which just stopped short of being overwhelmingly sweet and harmonized well with the cake.

The lemon was bright and vibrant and much less sweet--it was restrained, refreshing, and cake and frosting came together as one flavor, rather than playing off each other as the carrot cupcake did. (Update: in the shower this morning, I realized what it reminded me of: Bigelow's lovely line of lemon unguents and ointments.)

Cappuccino was the most "grown-up" cake; more elegant and complex, rich without being ostentatious.

Chocolate was good ol' chocolate, all big friendly round bass notes, satisfyingly chocolate-puddingy.

The only bad thing about Sweet: I walk past it almost every day. Can I possibly restrain myself? Oh, go on, it's only a teeny tiny cupcake ... cheaper than a latte ...