Messy and Picky

Two things I love: peaches and whipped cream. Even better when the whipped cream is freshly homemade and the peaches are nice, soft and juicy. Luckily for me, I work at Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market which has both of the items mentioned and peaches are in full production at the orchards around Philly. It's hot out today. Reward yourself from all of your hard work with a nice treat, eh?

The heavy cream we use to make the whipped cream is from Dutch Way Dairy out in Myerstown, PA - a little northwest of Reading. It's sold in quart containers for $6.50 at FFF. At 38% milkfat, it's at the higher end of cream. According to the Wiki cream article, this places the Dutch Way Dairy cream as 'extra-heavy' or 'manufacturer's' cream. It's magical. We usually whip up a pint of cream at a time with anywhere from a teaspoon to a Tablespoon or so of sugar depending on who's making it (more if it's Picky) and what we're making it for (we used less when making cream for the super sweet vegan chocolate pie). Whip up your cream for a few minutes on a low setting on your mixer. In our case, it's a hand mixer with whisk attachment.

As for the peaches, ours come from Beechwood Orchards in Bigglerville, PA - due west from York. Picky prefers yellow peaches with their tangier and juicier flesh. We usually chunkily dice up one medium to large peach each. Add in some wild huckleberries from Paradise Hill Farm (Vincetown, NJ - just past Mt. Holly) and you've really got a winner. Wild huckleberries are smaller than blueberries and have larger seeds. I like the crunch they give when chomping down on a few and they add some body to this delightfully cool snack. Unfortunately, it's just about the end of huckleberry season so the farmstand might be out of stock of them. At $2 a pack, they were selling quickly all this week. Peaches (and nectarines) are all $2.25/lbs. and will be around for another month and change, so make sure to gorge now!

We've been cooking from the Horizons cookbooks for a while now (both books available for purchase at Horizons, just ask the host upstairs), and it's pretty great. However, the restaurant itself is a little on the expensive side for us, so it's taken us a while to get over there for a sit-down dinner. We had take-out from Horizons a year or so ago with friends with mixed results - like most food, it's truly best when cooked, served and eaten in a timely manner.

For Messy's birthday, we decided to go. By drinking water (not that we're normally guzzling bubbly and martinis) and sharing an appetizer, we were able to keep our bill under $50. We were surprisingly so full we didn't even need dessert to satiate our sweet tooths.

Their freshly baked bread and herby olive oil was so yummy! It's one of the many reasons why this place is packed from open to close every single day - reservations for the upstairs dining area are strongly recommended. We got there just before 9 p.m. on a Thursday and were told the dining room was full until about 9:30p.m., but we got lucky and a table for two opened up and was bussed within a few minutes.

We started off with spicy chipotle seitan and black bean enchiladas, and they were absolutely fabulous. Vegan cheese almost never tastes good, and this was terriffic. Whatever their secret is, it's worth the trip. In fact, this appetizer could make a suitable dinner. Picky ordered the Yucatan chopped spinach salad and Jamaican BBQ seitan for his meal (both appetizers). Messy had the grilled seitan which comes with Horizons famous yukon mash potatoes. (We both really, really like seitan. Our favorite way to eat it is with Horizon's "zesty chipotle" recipe). It was all delicious.

The Yucatan salad was quite creamy with tons of avocado holding the guts of the chopped salad together. The smoked black olives were a lovely touch adding unexpected little bursts of flavor. It's a salad big enough to share and we did - along with everything else. Our server was helpful and accommodating to our request to have our food brought out of traditional order (we ordered appetizers, an entrée and sides) so that we could create our own pace. Picky's Jamaican BBQ seitan was tasty, but not as good as the "zesty chipotle" version in the cookbook. Horizons threw a little curveball and the seitan had a distinctly smoky flavor to it which was different from the cookbook's directive, but very well done and balanced with a spicy scotch bonnet crema. (Prior to this meal, Picky was feeling lukewarm about Horizons. He had previously had the take-out version of the Pacific rim grilled tofu which just didn't cut it flavor wise. It didn't pull the Korean-Japanese meld they were going for. But that was over a year ago and maybe the recipe has been tweaked since.)

Messy had the grilled seitan with Yukon mash, horseradish cream, grilled spinach and red pepper tapenade. The portion was generous and everything was just incredibly tasty and filling. Messy had this meal when we got take-out last year and she'll continue to get it every time we return to Horizons, because it is awesome. (It is so awesome, Messy is breaking her own personal rule of trying everything "interesting" on a given menu before repeating orders.)

We're quite happy that Horizons made their move from the 'burbs a few years ago. Knowing it's close by is comforting. But saving up to dine in makes visits about as frequent as if they were still located outside of Philly. However, saving up some coin to make the trip is well worth it for special occasions — especially if you're a vegetarian.

Messy ****
Picky ***

The final word: Delicious upscale vegan food that is out of our budget. Get the cookbook!

Horizons Philadelphia
611 S. 7th St
215.923.6117
Tue - Thu: 6pm - 10pm
Fri - Sat: 6pm - 11pm

Minar Palace churned out some of the best Indian food Center City's had in a good while at their former hole in the wall at 16th & Sansom Sts a couple of years ago, but they shut their doors and left a great void within Center City. Sure, one could trek up to 7th & Girard for, in our opinion, the best Indian in town at Tiffin, but we're Center City dwellers and like to stay closer to home (even though a nice long walk after a big meal doesn't hurt). Well, Michael Klein reported that Minar Palace is just about ready to open up at 1304 Walnut St. The grand opening is set for September 3rd pending a health inspection.

Keep your fingers crossed everybody. This place seems to have had more delays than your average opening. But until then, take a look at the new décor which Klein alluded to in his earlier post on Minar. We've got high hopes for this place and lots of friends just itching for an outing once it's ready. Their menu is finalized and available for download here [377KB] as a .pdf or you can click here for a zooming Flash-enabled version Picky just whipped up.

The photos above are from August 27th. We have no idea what the final signage will look like, but we're gonna assume they're going to take the old Time Video sign down at some point.

***UPDATE 4p, 9.3.08***
Minar Palace has yet to open its doors. The front curtains are closed so no peeking either!

Minar Palace
1304 Walnut St
215.546.9443

When I was growing up, my (nearly life-long vegetarian) sister used to make the most delicious chocolate tofu pie. For those who've never tried it, you can't actually taste the tofu, it just provides a super smooth and creamy texture with minimal effort. Everyone always loved this pie, even though we didn't always divulge the secret ingredient. For her birthday this year, my sister made a grown-up version of chocolate tofu pie in the form of a fancy cake with a cashew crust and raspberry sauce and toasted candied almonds. We happened to be visiting at the time and got the chance to taste some — it was divine. It was so delicious, in fact, that I decided to make myself the same cake for my birthday.

Since it's hard for me to eat nuts (I am sadly rocking adult braces for at least another few months) I figured I would make a graham-cracker crust instead. Then, I thought, wouldn't a chocolate cookie crust be even better? Then I figured I would do away with the raspberry sauce and whip up some cream on the side instead. So basically, I decided to make a different cake all together. There are a lot of recipes for chocolate tofu pie online and I combined a bunch of them to make this one. I made a terrible mistake by forgetting to melt the chocolate (you can see in the picture that the pie is a little grainy) but it turned out to be quite tasty nonetheless.

Ingredients

Crust:
20-25 cookies, crushed [I used Paul Newman's vegan version of Oreos - Newman-O's]
about 4 Tbsp butter or vegan margarine

Filling:
16 oz Silken tofu
1 package (12 oz) Chocolate Chips [If you are serving vegans, make sure the chips are vegan, many aren't!]
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions
To make the crust: Crush up the cookies. Mix with approx. 3 1/2 Tbsp of margarine or butter. Pour into a buttered (or margarined) pie plate. Bake at 350°F for about 8 minutes. Allow to cool completely.

To make the filling: Mix the tofu and vanilla in the blender. Melt the chocolate chips using a double boiler (or equivalent) over medium heat. Add melted chocolate to the blender and mix until smooth. Pour mixture into pie crust and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Serve small slices, as this pie is really rich. We served it with slightly sweetened, homemade whipped cream (Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market has some wonderful local heavy cream). I have not made vegan whipped cream yet, but I hear it can be done with coconut milk. If anyone has a tried-and-true recipe, I'm interested!

Taking up the northwest corner of Reading Terminal Market is Beiler's Bakery, described on the Reading Terminal website as an "Amish bakery selling homemade baked goods." They bake breads, pies, cookies, sticky buns, donuts and other treats daily and they also sell an assortment of conventional bread on their easternmost endcap. This corner of the market is usually pretty packed when the Dutch Market is open, but your time waiting will be well rewarded with reasonably-priced delicious treats.

There was a huge Dutch festival a couple weeks ago at Reading Terminal Market, where Picky happened to be working at the time. He noticed that Beiler's was set up in the main seating area frying up fresh donuts. Without any cash on him, he didn't get a chance to sample the gigantic fresh donuts. He didn't recall seeing the donuts at the bakery in the past either. After the festival ended, he ventured over to the stand and sure enough, there were donuts (and buns)! Armed with some cash, he plunked down 75¢ for a vanilla creme donut and bit into soft and flaky dough oozing with fresh creme. Sure that Messy would also be a fan, Picky decided that the next tag team visit to Reading Terminal would definitely include a stop off for more treats.

Above is Messy's pick from the rack: a chocolate covered donut. While the donut was certainly fresh, Messy is not a huge donut fan and will probably go for a different treat next time. This didn't hurt Messy's perception of Beiler's — she is a big fan of their bread and has her eye on some of their other simple-but-hearty looking treats.

Picky's second sampling was a strawberry jelly and creme filled donut, a double whammy encased in powdered sugar. Life doesn't get much better than a good donut.With Beiler's being a walk up the aisle from Picky's day job, it would be easy to have too much of a good thing so he's limited himself (so far) to one return for a frosted blueberry donut. The only other blueberry donut he's had was a sad excuse of one from Dunkin' Donuts. In contrast, Beiler's blueberry donut burst with flavor. And the texture of a fresh small batch donut is to die for.

Aside from the donuts, we've also taken a liking to their fresh sandwich loaves. Their white and wheat breads run about $2.50/loaf and come in a bag that seems to be coated with oil or butter on the inside. We're not sure exactly what it is, but it's not hurting the flavor.

While the Dutch Market hours are only Wednesday through Saturday you can benefit from this bakery making everything fresh. Get there Saturday towards closing and you'll find treats marked down to $1.50 because they'll be closed until Wednesday.

Messy ***1/2
Picky ***1/2

The final word: Fresh, homemade inexpensive baked goods.

Beiler's Bakery
Wed: 8am – 3pm
Thu – Sat: 8am – 5:30pm
Sun - Tu: Closed
215.351.0735

Just a little housekeeping - we've updated the RSS feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/MessyAndPicky. It'll just help us keep track of things a bit. There's also a subscribe via email form on the sidebar of the frontpage as well.

We hail from Connecticut and New York, respectively, and every time we go to visit our families, we drive past the tempting spinning orange circles of Weber's. For over four years, we've said, "We have to stop there!" And then we end up coming back too late and missing Weber's when we're on the Philly-bound (wrong) side of the street. Then, one night it was so incredibly hot here and we were trying not to turn on our AC, we decided, what the hell, let's get a PhillyCarShare car for an hour and get those ever-elusive root beer floats (Picky once went on a several-month-long search for a decent root beer float in Philly!). Even with the car charge and the toll on the Ben Franklin Bridge, it was a delicious and super cheap date.

Since that date, we've found a reason to go back to Weber's three more times.

Honestly, the food at Weber's is not that good. There aren't many choices, but that's kind of refreshing: just standard fare like hamburgers, hotdogs, pork rolls and (yay for the vegetarians!) grilled cheese. The fries are quite tasty. All of the food is super cheap. [If you click on the image above, a new window will appear with a zoomable version of the image above. You'll be able to see the variety and prices of the menu current for Summer 2008.]

Where Weber's shines is in service and dessert. Their homemade root beer is phenomenal (it has an almost spicy kick to it) and the floats are not to be missed. The delicious milkshakes are thick enough to eat with a spoon. Food is served by quick, smiling, carhops, who attach a tray to your car window (as seen above). Root beer (which is also available by the gallon in a cool reusable glass bottle) is served in frosted mugs. The whole novelty experience more than makes up for the mediocre food. Is there a better way to spend a hot summer day than sipping root beer floats out of frosty mugs, with your feet on the dashboard and oldies on the radio, on the side of the road in Jersey? We don't think so.

Messy ****
Picky ****

The final word: You can skip the food, but don't miss the root beer floats!

Weber's Famous Root Beer Drive In
Route 38 at King Ave
Pennsauken, NJ 08109
856.662.6632
Seasonal (Spring-Summer) 11am - about 9pm