Lisbon, Portugal: Towers, Music, & Chestnuts for All by Randi / September 24, 2013
As we’ve studied the eating habits of the Friends over the past few weeks, what is the most important lesson we’ve learned? JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD. Correct! In “The One With The Birth Mother”, in one of my favorite Joey storylines, he dates a woman (Annie Parisse) who does silly things like order plain salads but mooch off of Joey’s dinner. I agree with Joey on this one: Order the food you want to eat! (As long as it’s vegan, obvs.) Anyway, Annie (let’s just call her Annie) doesn’t really understand that it’s weird to take food off of someone else’s plate, at least without asking first. The conflict comes to a hilarious climax with Joey’s seafood platter dinner. He thinks he’s successfully distracted her with extra fries (which he is willing to share), but no such luck:
HAHA Joey at the end of the above video is MY FAVORITE EVER. Anyway! So, as you heard, the following conversation occurred:
Annie: (looks over at Joey’s platter) Oh wow, are those stuffed clams?
Joey: Uhhh.. yes, they are my stuffed clams.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Hold on, woman. It says ‘stuffed clams’, not ‘fried clams.'” A few points:
- See his seafood platter plate, with all those little fried somethings? They look clam-sized, not shrimp-sized. (I know you see the actual stuffed clam in the shell later, but he could have had clams a few ways!)
- What do you think Joey would like better, something stuffed, or something fried? Correct.
So, we’re going to make fried clams. Much better idea, right? Who has food-grade seashells lying around?
Nori is not the best idea here
I generally used the homemade seitan recipe from The PPK blog, because it’s great. I ripped the seitan pieces into long strips, and boiled it in broth with seaweed and dill thrown in. I didn’t have any kombu, so I used nori in the broth. If you have kombu, use that, because the nori isn’t meant for boiling and it disintegrated. Messy seaweed. You can see in the picture, it gets kind of weird. Kombu would impart a stronger flavor anyway. After the strips boiled, I breaded them and baked them. Let’s see!
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FIRST, MAKE SEITAN
INGREDIENTS:
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DIRECTIONS:
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How weird does this look with the disintegrating nori! Don’t do it!
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THEN, BREAD THE STRIPS
INGREDIENTS:
Coated strips, ready for cooking These turned out really well! They might not be salty enough for you, but that’s what sauces are for. You can make a vegan tartar sauce by blending vegan mayo, mustard, pickle relish, and capers, or you can just use ketchup. Really, any kind of sauce works here. An amazing thing I might do tomorrow with the leftovers is to mix vegan mayo with sriracha and a drop of Frank’s for a crazy spicy orange mayo like the type that comes with sushi rolls.
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DIRECTIONS:
It makes a lot! Dayum! |
Now, with your sauces ready, your strips crunchy and baked (or fried if you are awesome), you can enjoy them on a plate, as Joey did in this episode. ORRR, you can honor Mr. Joseph Francis Tribbiani even more, and make a sandwich! Because what is Joey’s favorite food? Say it with me: Sandwiches!!!
It’s aliiiiive! |
Not bad for my first try |
In sandwich form, I’d definitely recommend tartar sauce and whatever else fried-clams-on-rolls are usually served with up in New England. So good! These were overall really easy to make, and they turned out well. You can play with the breading mixture and add spices as you desire, perhaps some cayenne pepper, curry powder, or, if you are like me, more nooch. Yum! And, let’s say it all together now:
Giveaway trivia!
- Joey’s favorite food is, of course, sandwiches. But what is his favorite kind of sandwich?
- In Monica and Chandler’s storyline, they meet a woman at the adoption center who likes them. What does this woman think M & C do for a living?
- Extra credit: What Pulitzer-prize winning show featured a fantastic Annie Parisse?
Related Posts
Vegan Bar Food at Local 44, Philly: Gimme All You Got
Local 44 is my JAM, people. It’s the coolest, hippest, raddest neighborhood pub in West Philly. Although it can be overrun with hipsters and Penn kids (I can make fun because I was once both), it has interesting craft beer options (not that I drink it), a challenging and awesome Quizzo night (which I rock), and most importantly amazing vegan food options.
The menu has changed over the years. I remember a Frito Chili Pie and a good veggie burger. However, I’m solidly behind the latest offerings. Hot damn, they are good!
The menu has changed over the years. I remember a Frito Chili Pie and a good veggie burger. However, I’m solidly behind the latest offerings. Hot damn, they are good!
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My friend and I started with 2 of the 3 vegan appetizer options, because that’s how we roll. First, the Spicy Seitan Nuggets, of which you get 5 decent-sized pieces of amazingness. I don’t know how they got the buffalo wing sauce down so perfectly, but they did. It was orangey-red and tangy and spicy like a mother. I was impressed by the actual nuggets too, far from the sponge that seitan can often produce. They were actually quite sturdy and hard to cut, but you’re probably just supposed to bite them like wings. I loved the satisfying bite the texture provided, and the mild ranch dip accompanying them. Definitely a must!
Next, we got the Fried Brussels Sprouts. You might have seen in past posts how much I love Brussels Sprouts, especially when doused in oil and nearly burnt. This is the best way to eat them. These sprouts were cooked really well and melted in your mouth, as fried things should. However, ask for the soy-chili sauce to come on the side. It made the sprouts way too tart and salty, and then the bottom layer got really soggy and even more tart. Sadface.
The third app, which we didn’t order, is popcorn doused in nooch. You can’t go wrong eating at a place that knows nooch+popcorn=love. |
Bars are dark! 
Brussels |
Reuben!
The weirdest thing about the menu? None of the salads are vegan! And 3 of the burgers are! Up is down, left is right. But let’s focus on the good part: 3 burgers! You can choose from the ALT (avocado, lettuce, and fried green tomato), the black bean burger (which is great), and what I’m sure you will order, the Pastrami Spiced Seitan Reuben. I know!
Obviously, my friend and I both ordered the Reubens, because when you have the chance to eat a vegan Reuben, you take that chance by the horns and you eat it.
Oh my goodness, this was a good Reuben. The seitan was sliced so thinly, and the cooks stuffed as much as they possibly could between those slices of bread. It was extremely salty – I think I drank 4 glasses of water just during this course – but that’s how pastrami is supposed to be! I’m glad I asked for the side salad instead of the fries (you can do so for no extra charge!) because I put all those leaves in the sandwich, helping alleviate the saltiness and providing a different cooling texture.
Obviously, my friend and I both ordered the Reubens, because when you have the chance to eat a vegan Reuben, you take that chance by the horns and you eat it.
Oh my goodness, this was a good Reuben. The seitan was sliced so thinly, and the cooks stuffed as much as they possibly could between those slices of bread. It was extremely salty – I think I drank 4 glasses of water just during this course – but that’s how pastrami is supposed to be! I’m glad I asked for the side salad instead of the fries (you can do so for no extra charge!) because I put all those leaves in the sandwich, helping alleviate the saltiness and providing a different cooling texture.
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Do you see how much meat is in there? It can’t be contained! So much! |
This was one of my favorite Reubens, though I wish it came with a bit more Thousand Island dressing and cabbage to counteract the shittonne of meat in there. Because there really is a shittonne! Can you believe all of that? So awesome.
Local 44 definitely has vegan bar food down. You can’t go wrong with any of the current vegan options. And I’m really looking forward to having brunch here – the vegan brunch option is scrambled tofu with homefries and mushroom scrapple. What!
Local 44 definitely has vegan bar food down. You can’t go wrong with any of the current vegan options. And I’m really looking forward to having brunch here – the vegan brunch option is scrambled tofu with homefries and mushroom scrapple. What!
Another great thing about Local 44? It’s a short drive from Little Baby’s Ice Cream Parlor! Little Baby’s is a small-batch ice cream purveyor, and it always has at least 4 non-dairy options. They are uniformly delicious, for hard scoop ice cream (you know how I feel about soft-serve). Also, all of their cookies, for ice cream cookie sandwiches, are vegan! After this dinner, I had a scoop of Smoked Cinnamon ice cream. Pretty darn great.
LOCAL 44
- Water speed: Great! I was drinking insanely fast, due to how salty the food is, and I never got impatient.
- Bathrooms: Surprisingly clean for a bar, though you’ll set off the hand dryer probably 4x.
- Service: Good and friendly. It gets crowded, and busy.
- Food: Great vegan bar options, but beware if you have high blood pressure.
- Bonus: If you’re a beer drinker, you will freaking love this place. They have a bottle shop next door so you can buy your favorite specialty beers. Also, Quizzo!
“Secret” Vegan Supper Club at The Gate, Marylebone
Man alive do you know how much putting “Marylebone” in the headline is stressing me out?! I NEVER spell that forking fancy pants neighborhood (dammit, it’s so fancy it’s gonna require the ‘u’) neighbourhood correctly so I must be feeling BRAVE to put it in the headline. I think the correct mnemonic is remembering it as Mary Le Bone like it’s a person’s unfortunate name but it still looks wrong. Omg was Mary Le Bone a real person? Is it named after her? Was she chic af? OK that’s a ramble for another time. Suffice it to say Mary’s hood is chic af and we recently (like last night) went there to dine at The Gate, London’s classic vegetarian restaurant. The Gate has been serving up quality boutique vegetarian food in London since 1989, and they’ve remained a constant, dependable, classy, delicious mid-upscale choice for us throughout the quiet veg years and now in this remarkable vegan boom.
Once a month, The Gate in Mary’s the bone hosts a “secret” vegan supper club (which is cute to call it that I guess because you can’t actually find info on their website easily but obvs it’s not secret; they let me in). For £49.50, you get a decadent, beautiful 5-course meal PLUS matching wines. Five wines are included in that pretty decent price! That’s amazing if you drink/are British! I do not and am not, but I was taken care of too (more below). I believe the menu changes for every supper club event – or at least it should, because I’m gonna go every single month as often as I can, because it was wonderful. (I’m really enjoying this strikethrough feature today. I’ll never stop I will stop.)
Out of the 5 courses, 1 was just fine, 2 were good and could easily have been great, 1 was great, and 1 was forking phenomenal, so overall I call that a win, especially because if this was all phenomenal I’d have nothing to say except EEEEE! and you all know how much I like to say things. Let’s get to the food!
First up to bat was my absolute favorite of the savory dishes, the crispy shiitake wonton: shiitake duxelle (duxelle is a fancy way of saying you prepared mushrooms with onions and garlic and herbs and then mixed it all up into a paste or an almost-paste or just finely chopped), cilantro, lime sauce, alfalfa, enoki mushrooms, and shiso. At first I was like ‘I love me some sprouts but that’s a huge pile of alfalfa’, but it was actually well balanced in the dish on the whole, because the mushroom duxelle was so rich and SO delicious that you needed to even that intensity out with literally nothing threads. I loved the little herb sauce dollops, the random enoki on top, and all the flavors together. This was the dish that was great.
The second dish was avocado, mango, and shimeji ceviche. Shimeji mushrooms are the little cartoon-looking fuckers pictured. I love all kinds of mushrooms (except magic ones) (don’t do drugs (THERE’S NO HOPE WITH DOPE lol remember that episode of Saved by the Bell omg it was the best with Johnny Dakota???? and then actual NBC president Brandon Tartikoff did the actual PSA at the end? HILARIOUS) (also obvs I’m joking do whatever you want just don’t forking drive and DO NOT make me smell it FFS ALL MY NEIGHBORS)). This was a very refreshing, very fresh ‘ceviche’ of our three awesome stars (avocado, mango, cartoon mushrooms) covered in lime juice, chili dressing, soft cashews, and placed in leaves of chicory. As you can see, there are also some edible flowers sprinkled about which is a surefire way to please me. So fun! This was one of the dishes that was good but not great, and that’s because while the flavors were all fresh and nice, it was super limey without having the right amount of salt to bring it out in a nice and not overly sour way.
Next is another of the (very) good dishes that could so easily have been great. I really enjoyed this, but admit that a few tiny tweaks could probably make it incredible. Here we have zucchini rolls (I WILL NEVER SAY COURGETTE) (no I already do), filled with WONDROUS fava bean mousse and topped with sumac. These rolls were super delicious; I would buy tubs of that mousse and eat it instead of my regular hummus rotation for several weeks if I could. It was so mild and pleasant and delicious, and the sumac was an interesting and nice touch. However, the smooth mousse was a little geriatric/soft-food-diet, and one of my dining companions said it needed something in the roll-up that was a little more substantial so he didn’t think ‘nursing home safety.’
As you can see, it’s on a bed of couscous, with mint, pistachios, and pomegranate, which was fine, basic. And then there’s a blob of green garlic yogurt on the side. The yogurt did not do it for me; I left most of it where I found it. I don’t think it was necessary and it was too strong, overpowering the mousse flavor, to be worth it. I think if they adiosed that (maybe replacing with something proteiny since, as usual with vegan tasting menus, that was lacking) plus maybe added a few whole fava beans or crushed nuts or something solid-food to the mousse filling this dish would have been great.
The last of the savory dishes was the one I think was just fine. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted great, as everything did (except that yogurt glob), but it was just so ya basic, the dish vegans have been served since before people knew what vegetarian meant so now just feels uninspired and lackluster: the Mediterranean aubergine. This was a big old (nicely) grilled eggplant with Romanesco cauliflower, pieces of butternut squash, semi-dried tomato pesto (I guess because it’s not sunny enough in the UK to fully dry your maters), radishes, and a very welcome piece of baby artichoke, and some green herby sauces all over. All the components were good, especially the pesto and that artichoke (artichokes rock), but despite everything tasting good, (to paraphrase Husbo’s best restaurant review:) you’re still just an asshole eating yet another roasted pile of root veg.
BUT IT’S OK THEY MADE UP FOR IT WITH DESSERT!
The dessert was the PHUH FORKING NOMENAL dish. I mean. Wow. Guys, I think this has been added to my top five restaurant desserts of all time. OF ALL TIME! This chocolate tulip featured a lovely chocolate shell cup housing the most incredible chocolate mousse like EVER. You can see the mousse cup looks red, so I was concerned that they were trying some funny business of trying to ‘improve’ upon classic chocolate by making it chocolate-raspberry or some bullshit that we don’t need because classic chocolate is perfection, but that’s just a dusting of I’m guessing dried raspberry powder to match the lovely little bits of dried raspberry crunch on top and the real raspberries around the plate. IT WAS SO AMAZING. And even though this was amazing in its own right, that right there in green is a dollop of the MOST INCREDIBLE pistachio Chantilly cream you ever did see. I mean I’m just so grateful. This was THE BEST. You need to try this.
While my three omnivorous (they really enjoyed this!) dining companions enjoyed all the wine, I got to choose whatever soft drinks I wanted to accompany my dishes, for no added charge. I was a bit dismayed at first that the ‘soft pairing option’ they confirmed they had in the email wasn’t pre-planned, but it was nice to be able to choose my own drinks off their regular menu. I got a carrot, ginger, beet, and celery juice first, and then a ginger spritz (ginger, lemon, soda) mocktail next. They made it clear I could order more, but they brought me full-size versions so I was so full from liquid so fast, especially considering I’d gone through 3 liter carafes of water before long! And we had 5 courses to go through!
This supper club was a truly lovely experience and I was glad to be reminded of how great The Gate’s food is. Their next one is August 22, so book in now.
The Gate, “Secret” Vegan Supper Club, Marylebone, London, UK
Water speed: They brought carafes of water pretty regularly! It was good! I was so full of liquid!
Service: Very good. As usual with these sorts of events, with everyone in the room finishing at the same time, it’s a little difficult and stressful to pay at the end since everyone is trying to, and it was frustrating that the servers seemed to be cleaning up instead of seeing that we wanted to pay, but that’s my small quibble. Overall good!
Bathrooms: Three stalls in the women’s room with internal sinks, which always make me mad because when there’s a line you’re like ‘why don’t they just put the sinks outside the stalls so the line moves faster’ but this wasn’t the theatre, there was no line. So it was fine. And clean.
Food: Delicious! Overall it was really nice, and even the things that weren’t interesting were still well made and tasted great.
Bonus: I love a good supper club! I felt this was a great value for money, especially with all those drinks included. AND THAT DESSERT!
