O'Falafel

790 East 2100 South, SLC

http://www.ofalafel.com/

Last week (or maybe it was the week before), a couple of guys from work and I went down to O'Falafel for lunch. This was my first visit and I was not disappointed. Check out the menu on their website. I made sure to take pictures of the dishes that everyone got. I am going to try to remember what is what (sorry for the poor pic quality... these were taken with the camera on my phone).

My meal was called Yakhni Khudra. It was one of the less flavorful that I have tried here, but it is still very good. It is served with basmati rice. If you're not sure you will like Mediterranean style food, this would be a good dish to start with. There was some kind of vegetable in here that I didn't really like, but other than that, this was delicious.

One of the guys I work with had the Kifta (the near plate in the photo below), and he also ordered a Meat Pie (the far plate in the same photo). The Kifta is described below. The Meat Pie is seasoned, ground beef stuffed into pita bread (I think), then grilled like a panini. I haven't tried this (yet), but the guy who ordered it said it was really, really good.

I like the place so much that I made Jenny come with me to lunch the next day.

We both like the Fatoush from Mazza, so we decided to give it a shot here. It was very good; very fresh, and very colorful.

It looks kind of funny here because I forgot to take pictures until after we had started eating it. Actually, I forgot to take pictures until we were about halfway done eating everything.

Imagine that everything in these pictures looks much better than it does in the pictures.

The Baba Ganouj was excellent. It was chunkier than the stuff at Mazza, but still just as flavorful. I think this is because it's not made in a food processor.

We also had something called a Spinach Pie. If you're not a spinach fan, try something else. If, however, you do like spinach, definitely give this a taste. These kept pretty well in the fridge over night too (especially with the left-over baba ganouj).

Jenny got a sandwich called Kifteh. It is made out of ground, seasoned beef, and served in pita bread with some kind of magical sauce made out of pixie dust. It makes me salivate just thinking about it.

The Good, the Bad and the Charcoal

Every time I eat something new that makes me smile, I immediately want to try to duplicate it at home. Usually I forget about my aspirations, but sometimes I actually remember to try a recipe later. Almost always, I screw stuff up the 1st time I try to figure out a dish without a recipe. Which leads me to my next point...

Jenny and I have had sweet potato fries at Salt City Burger Co. a couple of times and have loved every minute of eating them. They're good with fry sauce, ranch, mayonnaise, A-1, or just plain. They are just plain good. When you get the cooking time right.

Also, the fries need to be turned over every 10 minutes so they don't turn out looking (and tasting) like mine did. Jenny and I were able to try a couple of the fries with the aioli sauce that I made for them. I will describe the aioli sauce in more detail in a later post. I made my 1st batch of fries a while ago and, after 3 attempts, am finally able to pay attention long enough to get them to turn out ok. They're still not nearly as good as the fries at Salt City, so I think I'm going to (mostly) give up on trying to make them at home.

Salt Lake City Farmer's Market

Yesterday morning, Jenny and I went to the Salt Lake City Farmers Market to browse around. We got there around 9.30am, so it was already pretty packed. There are a ton of booths for veggies, honey, fruit, arts, crafts, food, bread, etc. We ended up getting a couple of (huge) zucchini to make stuff zucchini, a 2 pound bottle of honey from Knight Family Honey, and lunch from a Sudanese vendor. We knew the Sudanese food was going to be really good because we've been to their restaurant out in West Valley already (someone remind me later to do up a proper review on that place... it's very tasty). The next time we head out there, we'll have our choice of Caribbean, Mexican, BBQ, Argentinean, Indian, Thai, fresh made noodles, blah blah blah. The Caribbean place was serving these jerked kabobs that smelled amazing, so I'm thinking that's where I'm going to pick next. I'll let you guys know how that is.

Another fun thing about the Market is sampling various things. While wandering around, we sampled honey from 5 different booths, hummus (the company is called Freaky Monkey, or Happy Monkey or something), jerky, watermelon, cantaloup, cherries, and greyhounds. Yeah, you heard me. We sampled some greyhounds while we were there. There was a booth for the GPA in Salt Lake where you could sample the affection of a retired racing greyhound. The Indian booth (mentioned above) also had samples that were pretty good, although I have to admit that eating Indian food out of a little plastic cup was almost too challenging for me.

Blog Confessions of a Honeybee

I hate Saturday mornings. I get to work this morning to discover that all of the honey is gone AGAIN! Completely gone. The other workers and I have been haulin' pollen all week long to make up for our hive getting cleaned out last week, and the week before, etc. We are all getting pretty sick of it, so we decided to knock off early today and just cruise around for a bit.

Imagine my surprise when I fly into Farmer's Market in Salt Lake and discovered what has been happening to all of our honey!

I'm cruising down the aisles and decided to stop in at the Knight Family Honey stand to sample some of the competition's wares. The guy giving out samples squeezes some honey onto a cracker and I'm thinking "man, this smells almost exactly like our honey". Then I take a taste. That is our honey! Oh man, and now this dude's trying to pawn my own honey back to me for $8 a pound! Do you have any idea how long it takes us to make a pound of honey?!

I may start posting again soon...

I am warning everyone ahead of time... when this semester of school is out and I have a little more time, I may start posting on this blog again. Also, I may not adhere to food-related topics.

Green Chile Rice Casserole

Cheryl's awesome recipe that Jenny made for dinner tonight:

• 1 14 oz box Minute Rice - prepared (6 servings)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 4 oz can diced green chiles
• 1 can cream of celery soup (undiluted)
• 1/2 lb monterey jack cheese
• 1/2 lb sharp cheddar cheese (grated)

combine ingredients - bake 30 minutes at 350. Can be mixed ahead and baked later. Chicken or ham can also be added (Jenny used chicken; Cheryl used ham)

What we're eating lately...

We've cut back on going out to eat in the last couple of months. We now go out once a week on a date night dinner. On Monday, we went to Epic Casual Dining. The appetizers were excellent, as usual, but the entrees were only OK this time.

To start, we had the chicken flat bread. This is one of the best appetizers in the world. I'm not even going to describe it in the blog, just go try it. We also had a couple of crab cakes, which are flaky and light. The sauce they come with is sweet and slightly tangy, but mellow enough to allow the nice flavor of the cakes to come through. They serve it with a homemade coleslaw that is fresh and crispy, but I didn't polish that off this time, because I wanted to save a little more stomach real estate for my entree.

As an entree, I had the Pacific White Shrimp over angel hair pasta. The shrimp was ok, but I think it had been frozen for a while before being thawed for my meal (think weeks, not days). The sauce was good, but a little heavy on the soy sauce. I would definitely not call it a $20 meal.

Jenny had a sirloin steak that was pepper crusted... very heavily. The steak was a pretty good cut, and the sauce was very good. If I remember correctly, it was a light peanut sauce. The pepper crusting on the steak overpowered the steak.

My recommendation for Epic is to definitely go and try their appetizers, but consider carefully before diving into an entree. Also, their salads are pretty darn good.