I am on a cooking hiatus – on vacation on a 2000 mile road trip to Up-state New York, Canada and New England. This weekend was mostly spent driving to and from St Catharine’s living on Tim Horton’s and avoiding Henley Island hot dogs, but this evening, staying with a friend in Ithaca New York, I was treated to dinner at the renowned, Moosewood restaurant. This was fun, because I have had a Moosewood cookbook for years. Moosewood was founded in 1973 and is a vegetarian restaurant based on the idea of heathful natural foods. The menu changes daily and has 3 or four main course options. You can tell immediately how famous the restaurant is because of the lengthy wait times and the range of branded merchandise and cookbooks on sale. As well as a cult local following it seems to attract a lot of tourists. Luckily we were able to order appetizers in the bar while we enjoyed a local beer.
This is what I had for dinner:
Sicilian Chick Pea Spread with Toasted Sesame Pita
With roasted red peppers, pinenuts, lemon & fresh basil
Pesto Genovese & Sun-dried Tomato Sunflower Seed Pesto
With multi-grain crostini & cherry tomatoes
[why is it that restaurants never seem to give you enough bread with such things?]
Sicilian Stew
Variation from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
Green beans, yellow squash, zucchini, mushrooms, fennel, tomatoes, capers, red wine, rosemary & basil; served with a parmesan-peppercorn polenta triangle & topped with grated sharp & mild provolone
The side salad had a pine nut vinaigrette which was good and was the vinaigrette du jour.
The highlight was probably the chickpea spread and toasted sesame pita which was very tasty and the fennel was a good and interesting touch in the stew. I usually just put it in salads and haven’t really cooked with it. The polenta was good too.
On another food note, I listened to some short story podcasts in the car today and one of the collections was about food. I highly recommend the short story ‘A piece of pie’ by Damon Runyon. Very entertaining.
