pickles

Thirsty Thursday: Bloody Maria

August 1, 2013

This week’s Thirsty Thursday theme is TEQUILA!!!! Clearly, Amanda picked it 🙂 Well, I don’t mind at all, well Price doesn’t mind since he gets to enjoy whatever I mix up. And after thinking of several drinks I ‘settled’ on a Bloody Maria since one of our favorite drinks is a Bloody Mary.

About 5 years ago, Price spent a semester living in a trailer on a Salvation Army camp in Biloxi, MS a year after Hurricane Katrina helping design and rebuild homes. Since I was still up in Boston in school and he was in Biloxi we decided to meet up in New Orleans the one chance we had to see each other for his birthday in September. Well, it was such a great weekend together drinking Hurricanes on Bourbon Street, eating beignets, and enjoying the best Bloody Mary’s ever. EVER.

Price took the bus to NOLA a few more times for some weekends away from that lovely trailer next to the railroad tracks… seriously. Well, during his visits to New Orleans he would basically set up shop at The Old Absinthe House and drinks Bloody Mary’s from Dawn the bartender. Hands down the best Bloody Mary’s we have ever had so we constantly try to recreate them from the recipe that he got out of her.

In this case I made some adaptations from our favorite recipe to best go with a kick that comes from tequila. A spicy tomato juice base, some bite from the Dijon, and a spicy rim all do wonders for this Bloody Maria!

Amanda recently really hurt her finger so she soothed the pain with a few of these Guanabana Margaritas. I think it was a smart move… hold an icy glass filled up with a fruity margarita. Good strategy. Plus Guanabana sounds so interesting and yummy. Gotta try it!

Bloody Maria

Makes 2

Ingredients

4 ounces of tequila
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon dill pickle juice
3 dashes of Worcestershire Sauce
juice of half a lemon
16 ounces of spicy tomato juice
1 cup of crushed ice, divided

Rim Seasoning

Equal parts of black pepper, garlic salt, celery salt, chili powder.

Garnishes

2 celery spears
2 dill pickle spears
2 lemon wedges

Process

Mix together all of the ingredients for the rim seasoning in a bowl, set aside.
Combine the tequila, mustard, pickle juice, Worcestershire Sauce, and lemon juice, mix well.
Take the lemon wedge and run it around the rim of the glass. Flip the glass over dipping it into rim seasoning.
Pour in half of the ice, tomato juice, and tequila mixture into the rimmed glass. Stir to mix. Garnish with the celery, pickle, and lemon wedge.

True Southern Hospitality at M3 with Boston Brunchers

September 19, 2012

I’ve been lucky to have quite a few meals recently that afterwards have stuck with me and I have not been able to stop thinking about. One is the tacos, queso, and agua frescas that we had from TacoDeli when I was visiting Austin. Thankfully, I’ve had another much closer experience that has been really memorable. I went to M3 in Somerville with Boston Brunchers. We had a fantastic time and had to practically be rolled out of there. Check out their brunch menu and you’ll see what I’m talking about!

M3 means ‘meat and three‘ which is a play on Southern restaurants that has customers pick out a meal and 3 of the available daily sides. This place serves up your favorite Southern favorites that can’t be missed. M3 is nicely decorated with fun light fixtures, chalk board walls, and pictures of Elvis. It was a nice place that I could sit and really enjoy anothe brunch or dinner. I know the next time that I go for brunch I have to try their shrimp and grits.

One of the really cool things that M3 does is that they make their own pickles. Their pickled vegetables were featured in several of their dishes, as well as their bloody mary’s. I like that they take the time to make their own pickles.

We started with watermelon salad (7). This was a great start as it was light, fresh, and showcased some great picked fruit and vegetables. I had never had pickled watermelon before so it was nice to try something new. I liked that it had the flavors of a pickling solution but it was still pretty light incomparison to the natural sweet flavor of the watermelon.

Then chicken and biscuits (7) came. We each had a chicken and biscuit to ourselves, which was great as sharing is not an option with this. The biscuit was buttery, soft, and flaky, then it was topped with a fried piece of chicken breast, and then covered in a sausage gravy. I loved everything about this. Our table felt this was a bit salty but really good. I prefered it salty but someone might not like that.

This was my first time trying scotch eggs (6). It was really good but it will probably be my last as I just don’t like hardboiled eggs. Kind of a major problem for scotch eggs as they are hardboiled eggs, just coated and fried.

And then the shared plates began with the chicken and waffles (11). This was the one dish that everyone commented on. The chicken and waffles were great but it just seemed to miss the mark, at least in what we were expecting. The waffle was fantastic but the chicken has us wasnting something more. The waffle was soft, fluffy, and sweet and served with some sour cherries. The chicken was tender and coated well but we were disapointed that it was a sweet coating. We were expecting a savory coating as it was paired with the sweet waffle- a little ying and yang action. Had the chicken had a salty coating this would have been a huge winner in my book. I would get this again, but I would just need some hot sauce on the side.

The food kept coming with blueberry pancakes (8). I don’t love pancakes so this was not for me. I felt the pancakes were a little dense but it was nice to have the blueberries and blueberry syrup on top to enjoy with them. There was a lemon flavored butter that was the highlight of the dish.

The last thing to grace our table was the cinnamon bran french toast (9). It was such a beauty. Thick cut french toast that was coated in bran and then drowned in maserated fruit and syrup. Then it was topped with some chocolate dipped bacon. Holy cow. Crazy. I could see myself going back and getting this as I loved the flavor and texture of the french toast. I feel like I need to coat all french toast in cereal now.

I managed to somehow haul myself out of my seat to head home. Then I spent the rest of the day thinking about the brunch and telling myself I could not possibly be hungry ever again. ha!

M3

382 Highland Avenue

Somerville, MA

617-718-6666

*While I did receive this complimentary brunch provided by The Farm School these opinions are entirely my own.

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Fried Pickles

February 27, 2012

Secret Recipe Club took January off while some rules, groups, organizers were updated. I really missed it that month. I love the fun of finding my blog in the list and seeing what someone picked to make from my recipe index. In this case I hope that Rebecca from A Dash of Thyme is happy to find my blog and see what I made. Pricer and I went through her recipe index several times and had a tough time picking. For a while we planned on doing Grilled Santa Fe Burgers but in the end we decided to make Fried Pickles to go with dinner we were having to celebrate the Daytona 500 (which was pushed to today because of bad weather 🙁 ).

This reminded us of our trip to Charlotte where we ate amazing fried pickle appetizers with our BBQ. Having the fried pickles last night with our pulled pork and cole slaw was perfect. The wine with dinner didn’t hurt but I’ll stay focused on the food… The pickles were perfectly seasoned allowing an extra level of flavor to them while still letting the pickle shine through. We just had them plain with our dinner but they would be great as party food with some ranch dressing.

Fried Pickles

*serves 4*

Ingredients

3 whole kosher dill pickles
1 large egg
1/2 cup of pickle juice
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
pinch garlic powder
pinch of onion powder
pinch of paprika
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
Canola oil, for frying

Process

Slice the pickles into 1/4″ thick slices.
In a small bowl, combine the egg and pickle juice.
In a shallow dish, combine the flour, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika and ground pepper. Stir to combine well.
In batches, dip the pickle slices flour mixture, then in the egg mixture, shaking off the excess, and then dredge in the flour mixture to finish.
In a medium saucepan over medium high heat, bring 1-inch of oil to 375 degrees F. Fry the pickles in batches until golden brown, about 3-4 minutes, flipping half way through.
Transfer the fried pickles to a paper towel lined rack.