Category: Eats

Up until sometime last year, Starfish Grill was the place to go grab a snack over at the Folly Beach Fishing Pier after a hard day of sunning yourself, or just to look out onto the ocean while enjoying a decent meal. It’s since been replaced with Locklear’s Beach City Grill, so Starfish Grill seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It’s back now (well, soon will be anyway), a little further inland on Folly road in the Merchant’s Village shopping center (where the James Island Publix is). I spotted the big “Starfish Grill Coming Soon” sign on my way to get my hair cut this weekend. It’s not going to have quite the view it used to, but it should provide yet another reasonably priced eatery on James Island to choose from. I’m looking forward to trying it out when they open.

Yesterday the wife and I met some fellow labrador-owning friends to celebrate a birthday at The Map Room over in West Ashley. First time we’d been there, so I was looking forward to it. It’s located in a strip mall where the Kaplan Learning Center used to be (it’s moved next door) in an impressively large space. There’s a largish bar area toward the back middle of the area with a couple of rows of booths and tables in the front section of the room. There’s a stage area in the back right corner where live music plays. A large open space in front of the stage provides plenty of music for dancing. The music last night was pretty jazzy stuff, so not much dancing going on while we were there. In the other corner next to the stage are a bunch of comfy looking couches arranged in front of a TV and a couple of video games for people to hang out on.

Food was pretty decent, with a varied selection of appetizers and pub fare done up a little more sohpistication than your usual pub grub. I enjoyed the fish and chips that I had, although the wife wasn’t terribly impressed with the shrimp and grits (too greasy for her liking). Our friends seemed to enjoy the spring rolls and chicken satays they ordered.

We had a good time there talking and enjoying the tunes. Seems like it would be a good place to stop off on the way home and hang out for a bit after work.

I was kind of disappointed there weren’t more maps decorating the room though, considering the name of the place

Went to check out a new Brazilian place called Amazon Grill last night. Way out in Goose Creek, it was out in an area that we’ve never been to before, so finding the place was a bit of an adventure to begin with. But after being lost for only about 30 minutes or so, we finally found our way to the place, located in an unassuming strip mall.

The restaurant was a nice, well lit place with the buffet running down the middle. Not a huge selection, but enough to keep us interested. We saw black beans, stewed beef, chicken, fish, rice, some delicious fried bananas that everybody kept going back for, and a cauldron of reasonably tasty soup made with beans and meat. At the other end of the buffet was the salady and fruity stuff and in between a freezer section with ice cream for later.

The real attraction were the guys bringing around spits of meat and sausages fresh off the grill to each of the tables (which apparently only happens on Fridays and Saturdays). If you opt for the buffet and grill, they stop at your table, you grab a piece of meat and they slice it right off the spit for you. There were a few different varieties, including bacon-wrapped chicken, brazillian sausages, sirloin, tenderloin and filet. All of them were very tasty, and if you managed to get some of the inner more medium sections, very tender and juicy. Even the outer more well-done parts of meat were tasty and full of that grilled rotisserie flavour, although somewhat tougher to eat.

It’s definitely a very meaty restaurant with anything resembling veggies being in somewhat short supply. Meat-loving carnivores out there are sure to love the buffet and grill. Definitely a place we’ll have to go back and try again.

There’s nothing like a good savory stock (unctuous as Alton Brown might say) to liven up a soup or gravy. This time of year is when I usually make most of my stocks, because of the abundance of roast critter carcasses left over in the kitchen.

Usually there’s the Canadian Thanksgiving roast turkey or chicken in October. Freeze the carcass from that to make a stock for the US Thanksgiving practice turkey a few weeks later. Then that turkey carcass gets frozen to make the stock for the real US Thanksgiving turkey. Another one frozen for Christmas stock. Finally, the Christmas turkey (and maybe even a ham bone if I’m fast enough) gets frozen for another batch of stock.

People seem to get intimidated by the thought of making their own stock, but it’s really one of the easiest things to make, and takes practically no effort at all. Even less if you use a slow cooker, which is what I make all my stocks in now.

My basic stock recipe is pretty basic, but the great part of it is that it can be spiced up with anything I feel like.

Basic chicken/turkey/beef stock
1 critter carcass (chicken, turkey, whatever you have on hand)
1 large onion coarsely chopped
3 or 4 cloves of garlic (you know what, it’s garlic…just use as much as you feel like)
500 g bag of baby carrots
15 mL peppercorns
15 mL allspice berries
15 mL each of dried thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano
1 or 2 bay leaves
1 or 2 dried chilis (like it spicy? Add a few more!)

If the bones aren’t cooked already, roasting them in the oven for a while will add more flavour. Toss everything into a large 6 or 8 qt slow cooker. Fill with water to about 1 cm below the top rim. Make sure the bones are fully submerged. Turn the slow cooker to low and leave alone for the next 12-18 hours. Stir once or twice to break up the bones and meat. When the bones are soft and crumbly, your stock is done. Strain through some cheesecloth into a suitable container and enjoy or freeze! Make it into soup, or use it to cook up some ramen noodles instead of using those overly salty flavouring packets they come with.

If you put too much water into the slow cooker, you’ll end up with some spill over, so I usually put a half sheet pan under my slow cooker to catch any spills. Makes cleaning up easier.

Shrimp, crab and lobster shells also make a great stock. Doesn’t take nearly as much cooking time though (just simmer for an hour or so) to get a nice tasty seafood stock.

For a pre-Christmas dinner test run, the wife is hosting another post-exam party for her fellow med school students. We’ve also started the monster task of our Christmas baking, so the kitchen has seen a lot of activity the past couple of days. It’s only going to get even busier from here on out.

My first attempt at nanaimo bars got off to a bit of a rocky, but very tasty start. Making it went ok, but when the wife wanted a variant without coconut, the second batch ended up not having enough graham crumbs for the amount of chocolate in the bottom part of the crust, so it turned out very chocolatey.

Then I screwed up the middle section, so had to disassemble the bars, scrape it off and re-do it. Then when it came time to cutting, the top chocolate layer ended up being not very cuttable, so the middle parts ended up getting squished out when I cut them into squares.

So they didn’t end up looking like much, but initial reports from the people at work that I shared them with were very good.

The first batch of spritzer cookies were finished yesterday. Only, oh about 5 more to go.
Then for the wife’s party of Friday, we’re making some greens, mac & cheese and roasting a turkey. Most of that will get started today. We usually do a pretty good job with the greens (I don’t eat them myself, but the people that do eat them have told me they’re very good). Starting with a good stock is important, and we usually make the greens with a homemade turkey stock. Yummy. Mac & cheese will be thrown together tonight for baking tomorrow, and the turkey will be brining overnight for roasting tomorrow.

All of this is just to get our cooking skills honed up for the arrival of the Horde next week.

On top of all that, we’re also heading out to go get the tree tonight. Looks like we’re going to get wet doing it too.