Penn's Woods

I took off a few days last week to visit my family.

First stop was Philadelphia. I went to Modo Mio with my sister. If you're ever in Philly, stop in. This ones intense...

That's chicken liver bruschetta. Faithful readers will know I've made my own delicious chicken liver pâté. That's what this tasted like. But they added apricot to kick it up a notch. Delicious. I'm gonna steal the recipe and make it.

That's my sister's cured beef with arugala, pear, and fresh ricotta. Unbelievable.

Here's my favorite of the night. Agnolotti stuffed with a sweet pea purée. This was so good. There's honey in the sauce to accentuate the sweetness of the peas. And those are hazelnuts which added terrific crunch and accentuated the earthiness of the peas. This was top notch. A pea extravaganza.

My sisters pasta dish, ravioli with fresh cheeses and golden raisins. Stupendous.

And a break before the main dish. This is how we started.

And here's an awesome veal cutlet. This was perfect.

And my sister got suckling pig. This was a flavor bomb. This was intense pork mania. It was almost too much. 

But, there's always room for dessert.

My apple crostini. Yep.

And espresso and sambuca.

This place was great. It's only $38 dollars  per person for 4 dishes and it's byo. Also, they don't skimp on bread. Being the piggy boy that I am, I had bread for every dish to sop sauce. 

I was really full after this meal. So full I shat in a bar later that night.

Hahaha, such a classy meal, and such low brow language.

The next part of the trip I went out to lovely downingtown and visited the farmers market, on a rainy, cold Saturday, and really cleaned up. 

Goat cheese and beets and snap peas and arugala and broccoli and cauliflower and purple cauliflower and rainbow chard and brussell sprouts. And eggs for aioli. 

Yeah, I finally made this stuff. I never realized how easy it is and how my fathers Caesar salad dressing is so closely related to French mayo. Oh well, now I know. 

I made it to have with roasted market veggies. 

That's Bronzini with the veggies and pork below. I blew the pics of the roared veggies and meals. Oh well.

Til next time 

Titled a lot of pictures of Christmas food:

A couple days before Christmas, I ate the following:

In the interest of taking better pictures, I tried to get closer. Still nothing terrific. But I don't care. That's spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, asparagus, and tomatoes. And more farmers market baby kale salad.

Next?:

That's meatloaf with some farmer's market sausage mixed in, steamed kale, baked beans from my previous post, and roasted japanese parsnips and golden beets. Also, a perfect ketchup mound. Everything was great, the beets were awesome.

Which brings us to Christmas. I didn't get pictures of everything, because by the end I just wanted to eat.

First the pecan pies I made the 23rd:

Those are made from a recipe from a friend, with an additional 2 tablespoons of this:

Uhhhh...they were awesome.

I also made an apple pie, with bourbon. Don't have a great picture. It's there in the left corner:

Then on Christmas Eve morning I made the chicken liver pate:

So that (livers, onions, garlic clove, 2 bay leaves, marsala wine, butter) got all food processed with more butter, and served with crumbled egg yolks and minced onions. Along with olives and cheeses. It was the beginning of the Christmas Eve food bonanza.

And then the time came to start eating. It was at this point my sister attempted to teach me how to take good food photos with my phone. Let's see how that turned out, shall we?

That's a good picture of the spread. Lot's of brown and yellow, San Diego padre-esque, even. Everyone thought the liver was to die for!!!!! Or something. It was damn good.

From there we moved on to baked stuffed cherry stone clams, prepared by my father.  Me and him devoured them.

 More good pics from my sister:

She's gonna ruin this blog's reputation.

Next for the Christmas Eve feast? Little neck clams. But before the pics, let's go to a video of Richard Jewel shucking clams for the Wakal family:

He's really in terrific shape! And what a great 'stache! Good job, buddy! I never believed them when they said you set off that bomb at the Atlanta Olympics!

So, how did they turn out?

Hot stuff.

But wait, there's more. Kielbasa. Obviously, I took the picture.

And then after everyone went to sleep, visions of sugar plums dancing, and Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, we awoke. To more food.

But first, some prep to get through the day.

Now, ready for the day, and the food.

Oysters? Yep.

 
Caesar salad? Sure.

And then, Prime Rib.

So, there was a plate of prime rib and horse radish sauce, and lobster tails. and garlic mashed potatoes, and kale and chard. But I didn't take a picture.

Enough already!

There was a lovely Christmas sunset:

Merry Christmas!