Boston Globe review: Pogo's

Shirley Goh/Globe Staff

For breakfast with a Portuguese flair, gut-busting portions, and dessert-inspired first meals of the day, there is Pogo's in East Bridgewater.  This place is known for its heaping platters of food, so it was funny to see the waiter's reaction when three of us ordered two entrees apiece to get a good cross-sampling of the menu!  Read my review in today's Globe South in The Boston Globe.

Read the review with all photos at BostonGlobe.com here.
If the subscriber pay wall comes up, you can still read the review at Boston.com here.

Toasted Almond Gelato

After making the Hazelnut Baci, I was eager to discover what other great recipes were in Gina De Palma's Dolce Italiano.  I've never had an almond gelato, and this recipe sounded easy and the preparation intrigued me.  Almonds are toasted to bring out their full flavor, and then steeped in the milk and cream.  The toasty almonds definitely infuse the gelato and give it nice flavor, and the amaretto liqueur helps it stay creamy.

But I've got to be honest -- there was nothing wrong with the gelato, and yet it failed to knock my socks off.  It was nice to try something different, though.  I also don't recommend the melted chocolate drizzle, since the chocolate overpowers the delicate almond flavor.

Wondering about the candle?  I realized that I missed a milestone last month, when my blog entered its fifth year!  A huge thanks for stopping by, and I hope you keep visiting.  Happy Friday!

Hazelnut Baci

Sometimes summer makes me overlook chocolate.  I get so excited about strawberries, peaches, plums, cherries, and especially watermelon, that chocolate can get relegated to all the months I don't enjoy these fruits in season.  Then I tasted these cookies at a picnic, and liked them so much I had to make them.  Soft, crackly chocolate-hazelnut cookies sandwich a layer of Nutella in little bites.

We enjoyed them at our recent Jane Austen book club picnic at World's End, and boy do we know how to do picnics right.  My contributions were fried chicken, scones, and plum skillet cake.  Rebecca made her "Austen" cucumber sandwiches and the most delicious nectarine-steeped iced tea, and brought real china teacups!  And Mrs. Hot Potato, or "the Mrs.," as she's known on her blog, made these hazelnut baci and lemon-lavender shortbread.  Yum.

The Mrs. adapted her Baci di Cioccolato (chocolate kisses) recipe to use hazelnuts instead of almonds and Nutella instead of ganache.  I followed her instructions but was stumped about measuring out the dough.  The original recipe calls for shaping the dough into logs of a certain diameter and then cutting up pieces.  That sounded fussy, so I can see why the Mrs. used an ice cream scoop.  I didn't know what size she used, and if I wasn't making these on my wacky schedule in the middle of the night I would have asked her.  I used my "tablespoon" scoop, but those turned out too big, like Oreos, and a little flat though they tasted just as good.

Wonder about using sanding or sparkling sugar?  Don't.  I experimented, and it was pretty but too crunchy.

For my second try, I did what I call "the insurance policy": I froze the dough balls to help maintain a round shape and made them in 3 sizes, figuring one of those sizes had to be right.  Turns out using the tablespoon scoop and then halving those pieces makes the perfect two-bite cookie.  And this cookie is definitely making an appearance come Christmas cookie basket time.  Some relatives will be very happy indeed.

Butterflies kept us company during the picnic.

Peach and Plum Crumble

This crumble was both insanely easy and insanely good.  My sister and I had each eyed it while browsing a magazine on our Nooks, and when she visited for the July 4th holiday we thought the simplicity made it perfect.  Easy and quick mean so much when I'm chasing around an 18-month-old niece for days.  Seriously.  The day they left, I proceeded to nap an hour, then went to bed way early and stayed unconscious for 10 hours.  Mothers, and especially blogger mothers, you have my utmost respect.

But even busy mothers and anybody who doesn't like fussing with rolling out pie dough can make this crumble.  You just slice up peaches and plums and toss them with sugar, cornstarch, and salt -- don't even bother peeling the fruit!  Then quickly mix up a crumb topping and scatter it over the top, and it goes in the oven.  My love of traditional pie crust made me skeptical a crumb topping could satisfy, but we three adults were so mad about the topping we agreed it should be doubled next time.

The plums were our own addition to the recipe, and they turned the crumble a beautiful purple and gave it some tartness.  Sis and I thought the filling was too sweet, though Joe thought it was all right.  So on this second try I doubled the crumb topping but reduced the sugar.  Summer perfection.

I'm up for visiting the beach again too, with or without Audrey.

Boston Globe review: The Chicago dog in Boston

Shirley Goh/Globe Staff

Well, south of Boston.  This was a fun review, though I think I ate my fill of hot dogs for the entire summer and then some.  The Chicago hot dog is a very particular combination, and I got some "native" expertise thanks to my friends Karen and Janet.  There are also plenty of nontraditional hot dog combinations on the menu.  


Click here to read all about them in my review of Windy City Eats.  You can also watch a video I made of the owner putting together the "ultimate Chicago dog."  That link has all the photos and video, but if you run into the subscriber pay wall you can still access the review and video here.


As always, I welcome any suggestions for places to review on the South Shore!  Have a happy 4th!

Lemon and Basil Sorbet

Are you a fan of Italian ices?  When I lived in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, they called them water ices. Joe has been buying a lot of the lemon Italian ices from the supermarket, and I wondered about making something similar.  After two rounds of homemade ice cream recently, it sounded like a lighter and more refreshing option.  And not in that bland diet way.  These are wonderfully cold and lemony and won't weigh you down.

But I didn't want to do a plain lemon sorbet, and I remembered Kiersten from Oh My Veggies blogged a Meyer Lemon and Basil Sorbet a while back.  Alas, meyer lemons were in season when she blogged them in February but they aren't now, and I've never seen a meyer lemon sold around here.  But the sorbet still turned out awesome with ordinary lemons.  I was afraid when making the simple syrup that it smelled too strongly of basil, but when tasting the sorbet it truly was the perfect amount of the herb.  It doesn't overpower the lemon at all but enhances it, and while the basil definitely has a presence I wonder if others could guess what it is.

And Joe?  He went nuts for the sorbet.  It costs just a little more to make the homemade sorbet rather than buying the Italian ices -- luckily I plucked all the basil off my front porch -- but the sorbet was way better.  I can't say I'll be replacing his Italian ice fix with homemade sorbet a few times a week, but it will make an appearance a few more times this summer.

Click here to visit Oh My Veggies for the recipe.

Update: This post made the Foodbuzz Top 9.  Thanks for all the buzz!

Bailey's Ice Cream

I had been looking to bake something, but it's been a scorcher of a week.  I went to the beach yesterday and actually didn't enjoy it, compliments of what felt like heatstroke.  So forget any recipes I had been eyeing that involved using the oven.  My mother forbids using the oven at her house in the summer, but how else can you get great summer pies and cobblers?  But even I couldn't argue with that on these 95-degree days, so ice cream it was.  And what an ice cream.

This tastes just like Bailey's, and is one of the best ice cream recipes I've ever made.  Some ice creams turn a little icy or crystallized, but this was very rich, creamy, and luxurious.  The alcohol is cooked out, but the taste still has some potency.  The book also has suggestions for mixing it up: throwing in a half-cup of chocolate chips at the end, or a teaspoon of espresso powder for fans of Irish coffee.

Scoop some Bailey's Ice Cream into a glass of cold-brew coffee for a fun take on Irish coffee.

I won't lie -- this is an expensive ice cream to make.  Cream and sugar don't cost much, but Bailey's does.  I got a 375-milliliter bottle for $18.99.  That gave me the amount I needed for the recipe, plus a little kick left for me over ice.  Joe mentioned that you can make your own Irish cream with some Jameson and heavy cream, and I see that covered in a bunch of blog posts.  Has anyone ever tried that, and would you recommend it?  I normally say you should use quality ingredients when cooking and baking, but it doesn't make sense to spend over $20 making about a quart of ice cream.  Even if it is a really freakin' good ice cream.

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