Life in My 50s: Off to a Good Start

 My 50s are off to a delicious start thanks to the Milestone Restaurant in Glenmont. Where else could I celebrate my milestone birthday than at the Milestone?

I had this awesome, not-to-be-believed pumpkin pie martini to end my spectacular dinner. I'm not usually a fan of sweet drink concoctions, but this one? Unbelievable. So good I can't possibly do it justice. Go now before it's too late and order one for yourself. I plan to go back soon to get another taste.

Of course, our dinners were all that we expected and more of this local gem. I couldn't resist a repeat of my seared scallops on mini risotto cakes. I go for the big size (two sizes are available) and I ate every bite. Every. Bite. (See that photo? See what I mean? I dare you not to eat it all.)

Everyone else was thrilled with their meals as well, so the night was a success. And what a way to ring in this new decade.

A meal so good I brought back Foodie Friday

 As you may know, Foodie Friday has been on hiatus for quite a while, but today's lunch was so awesome, I had to bring it back if only to share the photo.

Feast your eyes on this lunch from Chef Michael Mastrantuono of Milestone Restaurant in Glenmont. Lobster mac and cheese with a delicious house salad. See that dark piece of what looks like browned pasta in my little crock of heaven? Not pasta. That's an entire piece of claw meat. The chunks of lobster in this totally decadent and delicious meal were so big I needed to cut them multiple times. This was absolutely the real deal -- half a lobster worth of meat, I was told. And the cheese sauce? To die for.

Dennis opted for another lunch special, the fish and chips, which was tempura-battered cod served over hand-cut fries. He said it was the best fish fry he'd ever had. You can catch a glimpse of it in the photo on the right.  Yummy looking, no?

I can't show you a photo of Noah's Milestone Burger because he was so anxious to dig right in, there was no time to snap a picture. But he declared it the best burger ever, with its ancho chili sauce on the side, a homemade pickle and a big batch of those awesome hand-cut fries. (I may have tried a few despite being stuffed to the gills with lobster and cheese sauce.)

Capital Region friends, get to Milestone. The food is really unbelievable, and the fact that owner Chef Mike is only 21 years old gives it a great back story to go along with the great food. We were there for our anniversary dinner in April, when we were first wowed by Chef Mike's talent. I had a fabulous entree of seared scallops atop little risotto cakes. Dennis had the osso bucco, and we split an order of calamari. Everything was cooked to perfection, and on Sundays you get any bottle of wine half-price. What a deal.

Now, maybe you've driven by this place and think: Really? Am I going to dine in a restaurant with a truck yard behind it, an Econo-Lodge in a state of expansion next door, and a highway out front? Yes. You should go there and ignore that stuff. Get inside, where the stone work is beautiful, and the bar area is intimate and lovely and includes the piano that Liberace once played on a visit to the place when it was Stone Ends. Milestone pays homage to its earliest incarnation by keeping the sign, original menu, and celebrity photos hanging on the stairs in the bar area. Be sure to check it out. Lots of famous faces from the past.

Foodie Friday: Adding zest to life, or at least to a really good salad

I was standing at the counter making a salad the other day when Chiara walked in and asked what I was doing.

"I'm zesting this lemon," I told her.

"What's zest?" she asked.

And so I explained how I was taking the very top layer of rind off the lemon without getting any of the bitter white pith underneath.

And then she asked the $64,000 question: "What if someone doesn't have a zester?"

I gasped. No one should be without a zester! How would I add lemon zest to the fabulous Mediterranean Orzo Salad I'm about to share with you, or the lime zest that gives such kick to my favorite quinoa salad? I don't want to think about it.

Your assignment this week is to go get a zester, if you don't already have one, and if you do, for goodness sake, go buy some lemons and get zesting!

Here's where I put my most recent zest:

Mediterranean Orzo Salad

16 ounces orzo or other small pasta
¼ cup olive oil
⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups Kalamata olives, chopped
2 pints grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 large red onion, finely chopped
½ cup lightly packed chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 cup feta cheese, crumbled
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of sea salt

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, and add salt and orzo. Stir and cook until al dente. Drain well in a mesh strainer, then pour hot orzo into the mixing bowl.

2.While the orzo cooks, stir together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in the small bowl. Pour the mixture over the hot orzo and toss. Allow it to sit for about 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.

3.Add the olives, grape tomatoes, onion, and parsley, and stir well. Season with fresh ground pepper and a pinch of sea salt.

4. Just before serving, stir in feta cheese. Serve salad warm, cold, or at room temperature.


On my food radar this week:

I was scrolling around various blogs and following links from one to another and came across a blog called Not Without Salt and this picture of grilled brie topped with fresh figs and honey. Doesn't it look amazing?

I say that despite the fact that I have never in my life had a fresh fig. My Italian family always used to have figs at holiday meals, but I never tried them. And they weren't fresh. But this picture makes me want to run out and buy a fig tree. I do love brie, and love the idea of grilling it on my panini press even more. And I've got that new jar of Delmar honey just looking for a recipe and a big pot of thyme growing on my back deck. So, really, all I need are those figs.

I'm determined to give this one a try some time soon, although I do have this irrational (?) fear of the brie melting all over the panini press. I'll let you know what happens. If you want to beat me to it, go for it. Here's the recipe.

What's on your food radar this week?

Foodie Friday: The start of something delicious

If you've been reading Not Strictly Spiritual with any regularity, you know when I veer off the spiritual posting path, it's often to talk about food -- food I'm making, food I'm eating, food I'm craving. You get the idea.

So, today I'm launching my new weekly food-focused post: Foodie Friday. Every Friday I'll write about food. Some weeks it will be a recipe, some weeks a review, some weeks a picture. This doesn't mean I can't blog about food other days of the week, just that I'm committing to blog about food at least one day a week. This week you'll get all three -- recipe, review and photo. What a deal.

I thought today was the perfect day to launch Foodie Friday since it's the feast of St. Martha (Look at that! It's about spirituality AND food. It just gets better and better.) You remember St. Martha. She's the one who gets a bad rap for cooking and cleaning and serving dinner while her layabout sister, Mary, sat at Jesus' feet and just listened. Okay, maybe that's not quite scripturally accurate, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I may be a Mary in name, but I am absolutely a Martha in spirit.

Today I wanted to tell you about my foray into a basic Italian food that is so simple and yet so overlooked: polenta. It's peasant food, really, but as with so much good, cheap peasant food (see last week's zucchini blossom post), our society manages to remake its image and charge way too much for it. But you can make delicious polenta at home for very little money, especially if you buy it in bulk at a health store like the Honest Weight Food Co-op (for Capital Region folks).

Here's how I made my polenta. It's a recipe I adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, my food guru. I changed it up a bit and served it topped with broccoli rabe that I blanched briefly and then sauteed in olive oil with sliced garlic, which is how I cook almost all of our vegetables. (What can I say, I'm Italian and my kids fight over who gets the garlic slices.)

Creamy Polenta with Garlic and Cheese

1/2 cup milk, preferably whole, although I used skim with a splash of half and half
2 cups water
Salt
1 cup coarse cornmeal
I tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 spring fresh rosemary chopped, or a teaspoon of dried rosemary
1 teaspoon of chopped garlic
1 tablespoon of butter
Grated Parmesan cheese

Combine milk and water with large pinch of salt in a saucepan over medium heat. When it's close to a boil, add the polenta in a steady stream, whisking the whole time to keep away the nasty lumps. Add the rosemary.

Turn the heat down to a simmer and keep whisking until the polenta gets thick -- about 10 or 15 minutes. If it starts to look too thick too soon, add a little water. (I did this. I was fine.)

Add the butter, cheese, garlic and stir. Grind some pepper into it to taste. Serve immediately as a side dish or main course. I doubled this recipe for my hungry family and used it as a side dish with baked salmon and sauteed broccoli rabe.

Variation: You can make grilled or fried polenta by decreasing the amount of water and making a thicker mixture. Don't add the butter, cheese. I'd probably skip the garlic and rosemary as well for this version. When it's done, spread the polenta on a board and let it cool for a while. Then cut it into slices -- about 1/2 inch thick. Now you can brush the slices with olive oil, salt and pepper and throw them on the grill or into a frying pan.

Mini Restaurant Review of the Week: Swifty's in Delmar

Swifty's replaced Beff's in Delmar a while back. While we'd been to Beff's with some regularity, we hadn't ventured into Swifty's until last weekend. After church at historic St. Mary's in Albany, we tried to find a lunch spot downtown. No luck. Albany is like a ghost town on a Sunday afternoon. So we headed back to Delmar and into Swifty's. We got there around 1 p.m. when a small lunch crowd was starting to arrive. Very small.

First we asked about what beers were on tap (since this is a pub). We were told that no beers were on tap, as the beer was warm and they didn't want to serve warm beer. Well, I applaud them for not wanting to serve warm beer, but, really, NO cold beer on tap in a bar at the start of a lunch hour. Then the waitress didn't even bother to tell us about any good bottled beers we might want to try instead. So we drank water, which was better for us anyway. (Another beer-related pet peeve: They didn't separate out local or regional beers on the blackboards, so if you're from out of town, you might have no idea that Ommegang is Belgian beer made nearby.)

I ordered the fish and chips, as did Dennis. Noah got the cowboy burger. Chiara got the chicken fingers and fries. (Olivia was weekending in the Cape. Excuse me.) So...the fish and chips tasted good at first, but with every oil-soaked bite my stomach began to feel more and more like I was eating lead. At one point when the waitress came over to check on us, both Dennis and I had pieces of fish in napkins, trying blot up some of the grease that was, quite literally, dripping from the fish and from our hands. Not good.

I love a good side dish of coleslaw, but I took one bite of this and warned everyone else off. I thought it might be bad. Perhaps the mayo had suffered the same fate as the beer. Noah's burger -- stacked with onion rings and bacon, yow -- was good, but he said his mac salad tasted weird. I think the only one who didn't complain about the meal was Chiara. Then again, she ate only three or four bites, so that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Bottom line: We have no plans to return to Swifty's, even if they decide to chill the beer. Too many other better options.

Okay, that's a rap for the first Foodie Friday post. We'll be back next week with more food fun. And possibly a review of Lombardo's in Albany.