Restaurant Review: Back A Yard Caribbean Grill

Back A Yard Caribbean Grill - dinner on December 2, 2013, 4.5-star rating on yelp based on 1182 reviews

I was meeting one of my closest friends from business school for dinner and, as always, I like to look up restaurants on yelp to find something locally owned, small business, highly rated, with good food and in a good location for us to meet at since we were coming from different directions and trying to meet somewhere in the middle.

I had never heard of Back a Yard Caribbean Grill before but it met all my criteria, including having an astonishing 1182 ratings that averaged to 4.5 stars. I label it astonishing because it's the most unassuming, modest restaurant I've been to in awhile and is in an unlikely location set in a mostly residential neighborhood but on a frontage road right near the freeway. It's not like they had a ton of signage either or ample parking but fortunately I was somewhat prepared by reading the yelp reviews on how to find it or else I might've missed it.

Caribbean Cobb Salad

Back a Yard is perfect if you want good food at fairly cheap prices and don't mind a modest place to eat it.  It also appeared quite popular for takeout.  When my friend and I got there at 6:30 on a Monday night, it was fairly empty which was just as well because it was also pretty small and there weren't that many tables.  I'm not sure if it could have seated more than 16-20 people at the same time, i.e. I wouldn't come here with a large party. But for the two of us, it was fine and before we left, nearly every table (there were only a handful of them) was taken. While we were there, I think more people came in and ordered takeout than actually sat down to eat there.  Either way, they did a pretty brisk business for a Monday night.  There was never a line but there was a decent stream of people coming in at regular intervals.

My friend Karen got the Caribbean Cobb Salad with jerk chicken, bacon, hard-boiled egg, cheese, tomatoes, avocado and Ranch dressing for $8.75.  We each placed our orders with the very nice guy behind the counter, seated ourselves and he brought our food out shortly from the kitchen. No complaints about the service.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Since it was a Caribbean place, I went with the jerk chicken.  It came with fried plantains, rice and beans and tossed salad for $9.50.  The portions were quite generous and the food was great.  The chicken was very tasty and not too spicy for my bland taste buds, although that may have been because I deliberately didn't use the sauce that came with it.  But the spice rub in the jerk chicken was perfect enough and I didn't feel the need for any more flavor.

All in all, Back a Yard was a nice little find and another place I can recommend for anyone in the area and/or looking for Caribbean food.  I don't know how authentic it is compared to food in the Caribbean itself but it tasted pretty good to me. And for less than $10 in the Bay Area? Priceless.

Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake - made December 1, 2013 from Macaroni and Cheesecake

I made this cake on the first day of December so it seems fitting that I also include a snapshot of my tree this year.  For most years, I would call it "one of my trees" since I usually put up multiple trees throughout my house.  Yeah, I'm a little bit over the top, obsessive, fanatical of a Christmas freak.  Last year I put up 4 full-size trees, multiple counts of smaller trees, wreaths, garland, decorations on every conceivable flat surface of my house, stairwells, doorways, and pretty much anything that didn't move.  But it's a huge 4-6 week effort to put all that up so I tend to do Christmas threw up all over my house type of decorating only every other year.  2013 is the scaled down version, hence only 1 tree.  And, being me, it had to be a food tree.

And, it being now December, what better cake to mark the last month of the year than red velvet?  First, I always give an honest assessment of the food I make. My scale of "wouldn't make again" to "it's okay" to "wow, couldn't get enough of this" might be different than most people's but I tell it like it is.  Even when I classify something as just "okay" but my friends roll their eyes at me and think I'm too picky because to them it's more than okay (hey, all of our taste buds are different). The advantage of being "too picky" though is when I really do like something, you know it has to be good.  At least to me.

Second, get that bundt pan ready because this is one of those recipes. The pictures don't do it justice but it's good.  I mean seriously good.  I love most things red velvet anyway but not all red velvet baked goods are created equal.  Some are no more than red-colored edibles that have no flavor while others are not just chocolate but they really are red velvet. If you've ever had good red velvet, you know what I'm trying to say.  If you haven't, make this cake.

Even better, it's just in time for Christmas so it fits right in with the holidays.  Make it in a bundt pan so you can lay a bow at the top of it and decorate it like a wreath like my very creative niece did one Christmas.  Or frost it with cream cheese frosting and sprinkle with red and green sprinkles for your Christmas table. I can't even tell you what made this so good other than the texture was moist and that perfect bundt cake/pound cake texture while the flavor was delicious. One of my coworkers even told me she doesn't really like red velvet but she loved this cake. Another one called it AMAZING (caps are hers).  So you don't have just my word for it.

If you've ever had the red velvet bundt cake at Nothing Bundt Cakes, this one is very similar. Dare I even say better? Macaroni and Cheesecake makes the same claim and it's no lie.  The only modification I would make for next time (and rest assured there will be a next time) is I would use mini chocolate chips instead of regular size chocolate chips.  But that's a personal preference since I don't like anything "chunky" to stand out from the texture of the cake.  I think mini chocolate chips would blend in better and add more chocolate flavor without interfering with the cake's texture.

2 eggs
1 cup vegetable or canola oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1 ounce “no taste” red food coloring
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Spray a bundt pan liberally with cooking spray, set aside.
2. In a medium sized bowl, add eggs and whisk until beaten.  Add in the vegetable oil, vinegar, vanilla, buttermilk and red food coloring. Whisk together until fully incorporated, set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add in the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder.  Mix briefly on low to combine. With the mixer on low, slowly, pour in the wet ingredients.  Increase speed to medium and beat until incorporated. Remove bowl from stand and stir in chocolate chips until evenly distributed.
4. Pour batter into your prepared bundt pan.  Bake for approximately 50 to 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.  Keeping cake in the pan, place pan on top of a cooling rack to cool completely.
5. While cake cools, prepare your frosting.  Once cake is completely cool, turn pan out onto your serving dish. Frost with frosting of your choice if desired.

Ferrero Rocher Brownies

Ferrero Rocher Brownies - made November 26, 2013

I'm no stranger to adding candy to brownies and it's par for the course after Halloween for me to add Twix, Snickers, Midnight Milky Ways, peanut butter cups, Rolos, Almond Joys and Milky Way Caramels to brownies and sometimes cookies.  But for some reason, it never occurred to me to add Ferrero Rochers. Maybe because I don't buy Ferrero Rocher that often because, unlike the other "grocery store" candy, I would actually eat Ferreros as is. So it's better for me not to have them in the house at all.

But I saw these on pinterest (where else?) and thought "why not?" Nothing like adding more decadence to a decadent brownie.  The pinterest recipe used the brownie recipe from Tartine which I have but the picture showed brownies with a crust so I decided not to go with that one. I'm not big on filmy crust on my brownies, especially since it reminds me of box mixes.

Instead, I used one of my favorite brownie recipes for doing candy add ins and that's this one from Tish Boyle's The Good Cookie. It's dense, moist, fudgy and holds add-ins very well.  Tish's original recipe calls for tucking peanut butter cups in the brownie and that's the "surprise" part when you bite into it.  Ferrero Rochers are a bit more prominent than peanut butter cups so they sit there, bold as brass, atop the brownie.  Which makes cutting them into neat squares and keeping the candy intact much easier since you can see exactly where they are and can cut accordingly.

I must say, I like this add-in better than any of the others I've used.  But again, that's because I like Ferrero Rochers. Using only a 4 x 4 pattern did make for large brownie squares though so next time I would arrange them as 4 x 5 to have smaller pieces.

Restaurant Review: Las Flamas

Las Flamas - lunch on November 29, 2013

The day after Thanksgiving last week, my sister's boyfriend took our family out for lunch.  He wanted to take us out to Mexican food and originally we were going to La Paloma but when we drove there for lunch last Friday, they had a sign on the door saying that they weren't opening until 4 pm that day to let their employees have more time off for Thanksgiving.  Good for them!

It did mean, however, that we had to go looking for a new place to have Mexican food for lunch.  Fortunately, we found Las Flamas just down the street.  From the outside, it almost looks like a Mexican version of an L&L Hawaiian barbecue.  It's very casual, you can sit down and order for dine-in or place an order at the counter for takeout. It doesn't necessarily fit the stereotype of "dive" or "hole in the wall" because the place is mostly glass walls so there was plenty of light and it was bright and clean.

Freshly fried tortilla chips served warm and crunchy - yum

But if you have a stereotype that most hole in the wall places sometimes have the best food, Las Flamas can live up to that generalization.  I don't usually eat Mexican food because a) I like fried tortilla chips a little too much for the comfort of my waistband and b) on the opposite end of the spectrum, I don't like or eat a lot of the basic ingredients in Mexican food: tomatoes (nix the salsa), avocado (hold the guacamole), sour cream, or chilies (forget spicy). Plus Mexican dishes are rarely as plain as I like to eat - remember that a French dip of just bread and beef is my idea of a sandwich whereas a typical Mexican dish probably has no less than 8 ingredients in it, including vegetables. Yeah, I have the culinary tastes of a 5-year-old and have yet to develop a taste for 95% of all vegetables.

Fajitas Camaron (Shrimp)

But I was pleasantly surprised by the entrees at Las Flamas.  We all ordered different dishes and every single one of us liked what we got.  The rest of my family enjoys Mexican food a lot more than I do so they didn't have my picky eating hangups to start with. But they're also far more familiar than I am with what good Mexican food should taste like and Las Flamas passed their test. My mom got the shrimp fajitas pictured above and it came with a generous amount of shrimp. The picture below came out weird and blogger doesn't let me rotate it even though I corrected it in the source file.  But this is the some kind of fish entree that my dad got.

My sister's boyfriend got the enchiladas and by the time he was done, his plate was literally clean so I'm going to assume his dish was good.

Enchiladas Poblanas

When push comes to shove, what I usually get at a Mexican restaurant is some kind of fajitas. I can pick out what I won't eat (the onions and green bell peppers) and only fill the tortillas with what I will eat. The beef in the fajitas I ordered was really tender and very good.  What I enjoyed just as much was the flour tortillas themselves.  They came out warm and were soft.  Just perfect.  My dish ended up being a little greasy at the end once the cheese had melted and from the sizzling of the beef on the hot cast iron plate but aside from that, it was delicious.  For less grease, I suggest the shrimp or the chicken fajitas.

Bistek Fajitas (Beef)

My niece got the flautas which she also enjoyed.

Flautas de Pollo

The service was great.  Our waitress was nice, the place wasn't crowded so we received our orders in good time and overall, it was a good dining experience.  If anyone was in town looking for good Mexican food, I'd take them to Las Flamas.  It isn't fancy but it serves good food with a smile and that's worth more to me than a hifalutin' ambiance.

Ina Garten's Lemon Bars

Lemon Bars from The Barefoot Contessa - made November 23, 2013 from Desserted Planet

There's no faster way to use up lemons than to make lemon bars, preferably a recipe that uses the zest and the juice.  Sometimes the zest is the best part of the lemon so I like adding them to lemon desserts whether the recipe calls for it or not. This is the 4th dessert I made for my friend's fundraiser efforts and unfortunately the one that turned out the least well.

It's usually hard to go wrong with lemon bars so I thought I was only taking a small risk by trying this new recipe from the Barefoot Contessa.  Unfortunately, I should've paid closer attention to the proportion of ingredients before I started mixing them together.  The crust part was okay, albeit a bit thicker than I normally prefer in a shortbread crust but that was okay.  It was the filling that got to me.  3 cups of sugar?  Eek. That's a lot of sugar in a lemon bar filling. At first I was worried it would make it too sweet, despite the generous 1 cup of lemon juice the filling also called for.

When this was baking, it seemed my worst fears were justified because the top got really dark, probably because of the high sugar content.  I left it in the oven as long as I dared before it got too dark.  It's hard to burn lemon bars and I didn't want to add that possibility to my list of baking failures.  Turns out my fears of burning were for nothing as were my fears of too much sugar making this too sweet.  Sadly, I had the opposite results.  While the corners and edges appeared done and the filling was firm (almost too firm) the middle was a bit goopy. And far from being too sweet, the lemon bar had so much lemon juice that it was too sour and had a bitter aftertaste.  I think the sourness was partially due to it not being baked long enough. I inadvertently messed it up even further because I was in a hurry when I made these and glazed them quickly with a royal icing glaze in the hopes that it would lighten up the dark top.  But the glaze ended up not setting as much as I had hoped and instead absorbed into the goopiness of the filling. So I had to sprinkle powdered sugar over the goopy glaze over the goopy filling to try and salvage them. Sigh.  Lemon bar fail. Next time I'm sticking with my tried and true recipe.

Crust

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened (8 ounces or 1 cup)
½ cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Filling

6 large eggs at room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (8 lemons)
1 cup all-purpose flour
Powdered sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer. Combine the flour and salt and with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed. Add vanilla. Gather the dough into a ball and press gently and evenly into the 9×13 pan. Chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
3. Bake the crust for 18 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on, set to 350 degrees.
4. For the filling, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and flour. Pour over the crust and bake for 30 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.
5. Cut into triangles or squares and dust with powdered sugar.

Coconut Macaroon Brownies

Coconut Macaroon Brownies - made November 23, 2013 from allrecipes.com (submitted by Valerie Hatfield)

A third dessert I made for the fundraiser folks.  As with any bake sale or relief efforts, I almost always contribute a brownie and this time was no different.  I've had this recipe in my "to try" file for years and now seemed like a good time. It's a brownie sandwiching a coconut filling; what could go wrong?

Thankfully nothing did.  I only tried a sliver of this just to make sure it was okay before I dropped them off at my friend's house and they seemed fine.  The only thing I found surprising is the brownies weren't as dark chocolate in flavor as I expected, considering the amount of cocoa in them and I used Pernigotti which usually guarantees a dark chocolate flavor, especially in that amount. Otherwise, these were decent.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Filling
4 cups unsweetened flaked coconut
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
   In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. Combine the flour, cream of tartar, cocoa and salt; stir into the egg mixture until well blended. Spread half of this mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.
2. Make the middle layer. In a medium bowl, stir together the coconut, sweetened condensed milk and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Carefully layer this over the chocolate layer in the pan. Top with the remaining chocolate batter. Spread to cover evenly.
3. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until top is no longer shiny. Cool in the pan before cutting into bars.

Restaurant Review: Nola's

Nola's - lunch on November 21, 2013

The week before Thanksgiving, I took my team out to Nola's in Palo Alto, just off University Ave.  I'd heard of Nola's before from friends who've gone there but this was my first time trying them out.  If you don't know the address, it's easy to miss as its frontage space isn't that of your typical restaurant.  Instead of opening the front door and walking into the restaurant itself, you enter a hallway and go down a paved path set between "buildings" and come upon a number of partitioned rooms, the most open one housing a fountain. If you don't know what to look for, the restaurant is easy to miss and you think you're just passing an alley way.

Once seated and you look around, you realize Nola's is set up to look like a section of Bourbon Street from New Orleans itself.  Instead of one large restaurant, it's multi-level with rooms partitioned off, making it seem like you're entering different buildings on Bourbon St.  There's also a bar area (which is very Bourbon St for anyone who's been to New Orleans).  It's not quite as glitzily tacky as the original Bourbon St but if you've never been to New Orleans before, Nola's could probably tide you over until you see the real thing.

Chicken and Cornmeal Waffles

Spicy Jambalaya

We were seated in the "courtyard" or what seemed like the center of the restaurant on its ground floor.  I ordered the chicken and waffles and thought it was delicious. The waffles came with a scoop of whipped cranberry butter and that was probably the only thing I didn't inhale on the plate as I don't care for cranberries except in my Pumpkin Upside Down Cake.  The cornmeal waffles were served hot, were thin but both tender and crisp and paired well with the chicken.  The chicken itself was tender and juicy, the way good fried chicken should be to make it worth the calories.  The gravy it came with was a trifle too spicy for me but it was still pretty tasty.

One of the salads with herbed focaccia crostini

Mama's Mac n Cheese

I forgot which sandwich this was - with sweet potato fries

It's a standing joke for our team lunches that we have to order at least 1 dessert for the team to share or preferably one for each person but I try not to pressure them (really, or at least I try not to). We'd all been working hard though and had some good appetites this time around so everyone ended up each ordering a dessert. (Ah, they make me so proud.)

N'awlins sampler: beignets, pecan pie, and bread pudding

Our waiter actually laughed at us, not unkindly but in an "are you sure?" way once we'd put in our dessert orders.  When he brought them out, we understood his amusement.  Holy cow, the desserts were huge!  As in they were literally meant for sharing but 4 people ordered 4 desserts so there was a lot, even for my dessert-queen self.

Beignets

The beignets were nice fluffy yeasted fried doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar.  I can't say they were as good as Cafe du Monde's but that's a high bar to reach and they were delicious all the same. Not greasy, not too sweet (although remember I have a high tolerance for sugar) and if I wasn't already full from my entree, I would've probably eaten more than couple of bites.  From the N'awlins Sampler that one of our party ordered, I thought the bread pudding was the best.  I only tried a smidge of the pecan pie and it seemed decent but it didn't a hold a candle to the bread pudding.

Big Fat Brownie Sundae

My own dessert order was for the Red Velvet Waffles and I had them leave off the whipped cream and paid the additional $2 to have it a la mode with vanilla ice cream.  The red velvet waffles were the main reason I wanted to come to Nola's once Jim, one of my friends from a previous company, had posted a description from the menu on Facebook. Red Velvet Waffles?  Of course I was going to try it.  Unfortunately though, they weren't as good as I had hoped or expected.  I don't know if mine were overcooked as a one-off or if they were meant to be served like that but they'd been cooked too long and were dry.  The cream cheese icing helped as did the ice cream but even so, they were tough to eat and I couldn't even finish half a waffle, much less two of them.  Far, far different than the cornmeal waffles in my entree which had been cooked to perfection.  Sniff.

Red Velvet Waffles

Despite that, I'd still say overall that Nola's is pretty good.  If you want something a little different for ambiance, it's a good place to go, especially if you're the meet and mingle type (I'm not very).  But next time I'm getting the bread pudding.