Tag: Food
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 21 – Shipmates
Like many a cruise ship, the Disney Dream features nightly rotational dining where you and people you just met eat together at different restaurants each night. Most of the time you get paired up with travelers with whom you have nothing in common and the conversation never moves beyond polite chit-chat. But we got lucky on this voyage, having been paired up with four like-minded media types who were around our same ages. They were hilarious and entertaining and we couldn’t have asked for better eating companions. It made the dining experience much more enjoyable, to the point where we were the last patrons remaining in the first restaurant we ate at because our conversation just wouldn’t end.
I hope they don’t mind me posting their pictures here!
TweetTHURSDAY THEME PARK: Raglan Road Chef’s New Cookbook Brings Irish Cuisine Home
Because I’ve been working nearly non-stop for 5 days on trying to finish the layout for the April/May 2009 issue of Orlando Attractions Magazine, I’m taking the lazy way out today and reposting a vaguely theme park-related book/food review I just wrote over on the OAM blog. So here it is…
Raglan Road Chef’s New Cookbook Brings Irish Cuisine Home
Chef Partner Kevin Dundon at Raglan Road, an Irish restaurant located at Downtown Disney, has released a new cookbook called, “Great Family Food.” Inside, home cooks will find recipes that Dundon regularly prepares for his family in Ireland.
The book is split up into seven categories: one-pot wonders, quick & easy suppers, roasts & family meals, leftovers, accompaniments, and desserts. While the recipes are based on Dundon’s Irish background, you won’t find only meat and potatoes here. Instead, Dundon offers a variety of familiar meals with new and often bold flavors.
On Tuesday night, the night before St. Patrick’s Day, I had a chance to sample a few of the dishes included in the book as well as some offered by Raglan Road. Chef Dundon was on hand to cook the meals, ensuring they were prepared in the best and most accurate way possible.
Two main dishes were offered that night: Crown of Lamb & Roasted Root Vegetables and Suckling Pig, both directly out of “Great Family Food.” The book describes the Crown of Lamb as “two racks tied together in a circular shape,” which is exactly how it came out of the kitchen. The recipe, which calls for very little preparation and just 45-60 minutes of cooking time, couldn’t be any easier. I’ve always been a fan of a good rack of lamb but have never tried to prepare it at home as I wasn’t sure how. I will definitely give Chef Dundon’s recipe a shot.
The roasted root vegetables, consisting of parsnips, carrots, and turnips, were full of unique flavors provided by the fresh herbs they are cooked in. They take roughly the same amount of time as the lamb to cook, so they are an easy compliment. But the better side dish for me were the classic roast potatoes that were also served alongside the lamb. They are simply large slices of potato, boiled and cooked in sunflower oil or goose fat. Think oven-roasted potato meets crispy, salty french fry. I had a second helping.
The highlight of the night was a dish that, while the recipe is in the cookbook, I don’t think I’ll be attemping it at home any time soon. Chef Dundon rolled out an entire roasted suckling pig, complete with an apple in its mouth – green, of course. Now, as I grew up in Miami, I’ve had a number of roast pigs in my life, mostly prepared with Cuban flavors. As much as I’ve always enjoyed those, the pig prepared on Tuesday night was the juciest and most flavorful I’ve ever had.
The recipe calls for a whole suckling pig, around 16 pounds. While it says that pigs under 20lb will fit “comfortably” into a standard oven, I wouldn’t even know where to acquire such a pig near my house. In addition, the recipe also calls for the pig to be barbecued after roasting in the oven and I’m sure my home grill isn’t up to the task. But if I somehow managed to have all the necessary equipment and ingredients, I would only hope that following Chef Dundon’s recipe resulted in the same deliciously crispy skin and moist meat.
Following the main course, dessert was served in the form of sherry trifle (another recipe from the book), which consists of raspberries, strawberries, black currants, sherry, and whipped cream mixed with jam Swiss rolls and egg custard. It was quickly devoured by all in attendance and, in combination with a small glass of mead, made for a perfect ending to a fabulous meal.
In the United States, “Great Family Food” is available for $30 exclusively at the two Raglan Road locations, located at Downtown Disney here in Orlando as well as in Kansas City. It is, however, also for sale via Amazon UK. For our Irish readers, it can be found in all book stores throughout Ireland, including Easons.
So if you didn’t get enough Irish food and fun on St. Patrick’s Day, head to Raglan Road, have some shepherd’s pie (which I also sampled on Tuesday – it was excellent), enjoy some Irish music and dancing, and pick up a copy of Chef Kevin Dundon’s new book.
(Photos by Matt Roseboom)
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Get my take-out order right. Is it really that hard?
I will start off my Wednesday Whine series of posts with one matter that has been bugging me for longer than I can remember. Hopefully someone can shed some light on why this simple matter is such a widespread problem.
Why can’t I get takeout food without there being a problem with my order?
With a large number of excellent restaurants literally down the street from my house, I can’t resist getting takeout at least 3 or 4 nights a week and almost always for lunch. The selection includes Longhorn Steakhouse, Chili’s, Panda Express, Arby’s, Chik-Fil-A, Bonefish Grill, Cracker Barrel, and many others. The ability to regularly use $5-off coupons generally brings the price of a night’s takeout meal for myself and my wife to around $20, which is around what I usually spend at the supermarket for dinner.
However, for some reason, it is almost impossible for me to order something for takeout, whether it’s from a sit-down restaurant or just a drive-through, and have the order be 100% correct. It’s not like I’m creating custom orders every time either. I simply order directly off of the menu and, sure enough, something is always forgotten or incorrectly prepared.
Today for lunch, right before posting this, I went through the drive-through at Arby’s and ordered a chicken bacon & swiss combo (sandwich + fries + drink), a regular roast beef sandwich, potato cakes, and a small order of southwest egg rolls. After paying, I received no potato cakes and no dipping sauce for the egg rolls.
Not receiving all of the items I ordered is the easiest (and most common) problem to deal with, but it’s still obnoxious. Because of the recurring problem, I can never leave a restaurant (fast food or otherwise) without triple-checking every tiny detail of every food item to ensure that I won’t be annoyed when I get home to find that Longhorn Steakhouse has given me a sweet potato wrapped in aluminum foil instead of a regular baked russet/Idaho potato (yes, this happened recently).
It has gotten to the point where I almost have to eat the food at the restaurant to make sure that the steak is not overdone, the fries are not undercooked, or that there’s no mayonnaise on a sandwich when I specifically said “NO MAYO.” A typical takeout experience now involves getting the food, opening every styrofoam container, foil wrapping, or plastic lid and inspecting every item before leaving the restaurant.
And the one that really ticks me off the most is when fast food locations don’t have what’s on their menu! I can’t count the number of times I’ve ordered corn on the cob at Kentucky Fried Chicken, a baked potato at Wendy’s, or a milkshake at McDonald’s only to find that they “ran out of corn,” “the potatoes are still cooking,” or “the milkshake machine is broken.” Isn’t the point of fast food to have everything on the menu ready at all times? Why bother staying open late if you’re only going to have half of your food available?
So I ask… is all of this really necessary? Is it really that hard to prepare a takeout meal properly?
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