Boulder CO: The Boulder Dushanbe Tea House

Karl and Rhonda introduced me to a gem of Boulder, the Boulder Dushanbe Tea House. The building is a gift from Boulder's sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. As you can see from the photo below, the building is decorated ground-to-roof with handmade tile sculptures. The amount of work required to create these ceramics is astonishing; the care with which they were transported half way around the world is impressive.

The restaurant presents a world cuisine, as you will see from our dishes.

The meal started with an egg-dough bread served with olive oil.

Rhonda and I enjoyed the cheese soup which, as Karl pointed out, is not an obvious dish for a tea house but illustrates their commitment to world cuisine. Some cheese soups can be heavy and overbearing, but this soup hit the sweet spot for flavor and consistency.

These are my Indonesian noodles with peanut sauce. The sauce had a medium heat kick to it that goes very well with the peanuts.

This is Rhonda's tamarind shrimp, which she said was excellent.

And this is Karl's tagliatelle (world cuisine, indeed), which he clearly enjoyed.

Comments

Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course)

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

Search This Blog