The Buttersburg Inn is one of those places that every town seems to have tucked away somewhere. A simple, family-style American restaurant that does the classics and does them well. Usually, it's a pretty straightforward menu: fried chicken, roast beef, crab cakes, all the standards. Buttersburg Inn has those, and does an astoundingly good job with them. But the menu also has some food you don't see as much on your typical family-style restaurant menu--at least, not nowadays. Fried rabbit and Pennsylvania Dutch Hog Maw have been known to grace their menu on occasion, and some nights you can get liver and onions. (The menu also has an option to order this with "extra liver", which proves that someone at the restaurant has their priorities straight.)
Honestly, while everything we've tried at Buttersburg Inn has been great, you'd be wise to go with anything fried. Whoever mans the fryer at this restaurant knows what they are doing, and everything from fried chicken to fried oysters to french fries to corn fritters comes out fried to golden perfection. My favorite thing to get is definitely fried chicken--I don't know their secret ingredient, but I told them I'm pretty sure it's magic.
Buttersburg Inn is open all day most days (Tuesday-Saturday from 7am to 8 or 8:30pm depending on the day), but they are not open for dinner on Sundays. Like most restaurants around here, they are closed on Mondays.
The Buttersburg Inn
9 N. Main St.
Union Bridge, MD 21791
Phone: 410-775-9939
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Drink of the day: Troegs Mad Elf
I've never been a huge fan of Troegs Brewing Company. But we got a bottle of Mad Elf as a present this past year, and I've been waiting for the right time to break it out. Today is rainy and gloomy: perfect.
Mad Elf is a very strong Belgian ale (11%) brewed with honey and cherries. It pours an unusual, almost artificial, pinkish-red color, theoretically from the cherries (although I'm not entirely convinced). The taste is much gentler and subtler than I was expecting - I thought it was going to be a fruit-splosion like the Black Diamond Grand Cru that Florence and I had several weeks ago. Instead it's slightly sweet and fruity but not overwhelming, and less boozy that I was expecting as well. It's surprisingly well-balanced, although it could do with a bit more bitterness to counteract the fruit and alcohol. Worth a try if you like fruity Belgians.
And it came with a tulip glass, which is most excellent.
Mad Elf is a very strong Belgian ale (11%) brewed with honey and cherries. It pours an unusual, almost artificial, pinkish-red color, theoretically from the cherries (although I'm not entirely convinced). The taste is much gentler and subtler than I was expecting - I thought it was going to be a fruit-splosion like the Black Diamond Grand Cru that Florence and I had several weeks ago. Instead it's slightly sweet and fruity but not overwhelming, and less boozy that I was expecting as well. It's surprisingly well-balanced, although it could do with a bit more bitterness to counteract the fruit and alcohol. Worth a try if you like fruity Belgians.
And it came with a tulip glass, which is most excellent.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Drink of the day: Millstone Gingeroot cider
The title of this series has already changed: tonight I'm writing about cider! Millstone Cellars is a small cidery and meadery in Monkton, Maryland, about 35 minutes from where we live. They've restored a beautiful 1800s grist mill and miller's house - it's worth visiting for the architecture if nothing else. Florence and I went with some friends last month for a tasting and tried several of their ciders and meads. The first one we're drinking is Gingeroot, which is (unsurprisingly) a ginger-infused cider.
At the tasting I remember it being okay, if not particularly great - it was slightly sweet and overwhelmingly gingery. The person running the tasting mentioned that Millstone's sparkling ciders, of which Gingeroot is one, can be aged for a few weeks to allow the residual yeast to ferment the remaining sugar. Not liking sweet alcoholic drinks, we did that and opened it tonight. It's very different from the version we tasted. Now the cider is slightly sour and more evocative of apples than strictly tasting of apples. It's hard to explain - I've heard it described as a French cider style rather than a British one. It's still gingery, but the sourness balances that flavor much better than the original off-dry version did at the tasting. Well worth the purchase if you live nearby - Millstone is also available at several stores in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Carroll County. They also ship to Maryland addresses in accordance with the state's new law on direct-shipping, but the shipping is fairly steep.
Millstone Cellars
2029 Monkton Road
Monkton, MD 21111
Tastings most Saturdays and Sundays 12-5pm
At the tasting I remember it being okay, if not particularly great - it was slightly sweet and overwhelmingly gingery. The person running the tasting mentioned that Millstone's sparkling ciders, of which Gingeroot is one, can be aged for a few weeks to allow the residual yeast to ferment the remaining sugar. Not liking sweet alcoholic drinks, we did that and opened it tonight. It's very different from the version we tasted. Now the cider is slightly sour and more evocative of apples than strictly tasting of apples. It's hard to explain - I've heard it described as a French cider style rather than a British one. It's still gingery, but the sourness balances that flavor much better than the original off-dry version did at the tasting. Well worth the purchase if you live nearby - Millstone is also available at several stores in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Carroll County. They also ship to Maryland addresses in accordance with the state's new law on direct-shipping, but the shipping is fairly steep.
Millstone Cellars
2029 Monkton Road
Monkton, MD 21111
Tastings most Saturdays and Sundays 12-5pm
Friday, April 11, 2014
Beer of the Day: Allagash Odyssey
I've decided to start a new series on interesting beers I come across, inspired by my recent membership in the craft beer club of College Square Liquors, my Friendly Local Beer Store. Every week I get an email with a list of new beers they have in stock, and I happily head over to the store and buy a couple to try.
A few weeks ago, that list contained Allagash Brewing Company's Odyssey. I've known about Allagash since I visited Portland (Maine) a few years ago - they're an excellent brewery, so this was worth checking out. Some research told me that Odyssey represents one of my favorite beer styles - the dark wheat beer. It's sort of a hybrid dark wheat/Belgian to be more accurate, but I let that slide. Dark wheat beers (or dunkelweizen in German) combine two styles I love into a wondrous whole. I had one with my cousin in Toronto a few years ago - sadly, I can't remember if it was Erdinger or Paulaner, but it remains the best beer I've ever had.
So I had to try the Odyssey. It comes in a 750 mL bottle with a champagne-style cork top, which I've come to love. No special equipment needed - just wrist strength and care. It's ultimately much closer to a wheat than a Belgian - no syrupy, fruity, or boozy flavors that I normally associate with Belgian ales. Actually, it's remarkably clean and subtle considering the ABV is just over 10%. Instead, it's much closer to what I was hoping for - a dunkelweiss. It's slightly bitter, more dry than sweet, with the crispness I associate with wheat beer. It's also slightly oaked - not to the point of an Oaked Arrogant Bastard, but it's noticeable and blends very well with the other flavors.
This beer isn't cheap - I paid $15 for the bottle, more than I usually pay for beer. But it's worth every penny, and I'm buying another bottle this weekend if it's still in stock.
A few weeks ago, that list contained Allagash Brewing Company's Odyssey. I've known about Allagash since I visited Portland (Maine) a few years ago - they're an excellent brewery, so this was worth checking out. Some research told me that Odyssey represents one of my favorite beer styles - the dark wheat beer. It's sort of a hybrid dark wheat/Belgian to be more accurate, but I let that slide. Dark wheat beers (or dunkelweizen in German) combine two styles I love into a wondrous whole. I had one with my cousin in Toronto a few years ago - sadly, I can't remember if it was Erdinger or Paulaner, but it remains the best beer I've ever had.
So I had to try the Odyssey. It comes in a 750 mL bottle with a champagne-style cork top, which I've come to love. No special equipment needed - just wrist strength and care. It's ultimately much closer to a wheat than a Belgian - no syrupy, fruity, or boozy flavors that I normally associate with Belgian ales. Actually, it's remarkably clean and subtle considering the ABV is just over 10%. Instead, it's much closer to what I was hoping for - a dunkelweiss. It's slightly bitter, more dry than sweet, with the crispness I associate with wheat beer. It's also slightly oaked - not to the point of an Oaked Arrogant Bastard, but it's noticeable and blends very well with the other flavors.
This beer isn't cheap - I paid $15 for the bottle, more than I usually pay for beer. But it's worth every penny, and I'm buying another bottle this weekend if it's still in stock.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
An Easy Sauteed Spinach with Creamy Yogurt Sauce (plus Leftover Yogurt Sauce Mashed Potatoes!)
Your drive-by recipe of the week: I sauteed an entire bag of spinach with a few cloves of garlic (instead of putting raw garlic in the sauce; raw garlic induces an upset stomach in some people), then made the rest of the creamy yogurt dressing from this recipe as written. I've been very into putting plain yogurt into everything lately! I've also been very into putting a fried egg on everything lately, which may have been partially spurred on by the fact that we participated in a meat CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program this winter and were thus given 3 dozen eggs a month...
There was a lot of yogurt sauce left over from this recipe, which got recycled into these a few days later:
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Delicious experiments with Hainanese Chicken Rice
I have wanted to try Hainanese Chicken Rice for quite awhile now, after seeing it on lots of travel shows and reading about it on lots of food blogs. Since there are approximately zero restaurants anywhere around here that serve something like that, we decided to go ahead and make it ourselves.
We used this recipe, in combination with some other recipes we found around the internet, and the results were great. Hainanese Chicken Rice seems like such a simple dish, but just under the surface it is more complex and delicious. We used lots of ginger flavors--in the chicken, in the rice, in the dipping sauce, and everything was kind of permeated with this gingery goodness. The gingery rice was so good that I was eating it with everything, and I used all the leftover ginger dipping sauce finding new and exciting things to dip it in. Plus the different preparation helps guard against any Roast Chicken Fatigue that we local eaters might have experienced in a long winter of lots of meat and not many vegetables.
Our finished product (garnished with some raw turnip slices). Deeeeelicious.
We used this recipe, in combination with some other recipes we found around the internet, and the results were great. Hainanese Chicken Rice seems like such a simple dish, but just under the surface it is more complex and delicious. We used lots of ginger flavors--in the chicken, in the rice, in the dipping sauce, and everything was kind of permeated with this gingery goodness. The gingery rice was so good that I was eating it with everything, and I used all the leftover ginger dipping sauce finding new and exciting things to dip it in. Plus the different preparation helps guard against any Roast Chicken Fatigue that we local eaters might have experienced in a long winter of lots of meat and not many vegetables.
Our finished product (garnished with some raw turnip slices). Deeeeelicious.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Squash soup
Just a short post to share a recipe and a few pictures of a squash soup we made last month. We used a recipe from Laylita's Recipes, a blog that I have been following for years. The only substitution we made was that instead of using tomatoes we used a bunch of tomato sauce that we had made in the height of summer and froze to break out in the dreary winter months.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Woodberry Kitchen (Baltimore, MD)
I've lived in Maryland for almost my whole life, and I've now lived in the Baltimore area for about 3 years. While I spend plenty of time discovering new restaurants in the counties adjoining Baltimore, I hadn't spent a lot of time looking at restaurants in Baltimore itself--it just never seemed worth it to venture out to the city, and even though Baltimore is rejuvenating itself over the years, it's a hard place to go on a casual visit. The neighborhoods with great restaurants are spread out just enough that in order to get between them you sometimes have to go through places you really, really don't want to go through. For awhile, I only had one restaurant I really liked to go to in Baltimore, and I didn't have much desire to branch out.
Last year, Noah suggested that we try someplace new for our anniversary. He'd heard a lot of great things about Woodberry Kitchen, and it was certainly in demand--the wait time for a reservation was more than we were used to. We managed to get a late-night reservation, which we still had to secure several months ahead of time. I don't have a record of that visit for you, but suffice it to say that we loved our experience at Woodberry Kitchen and decided to go back for our 1-year wedding anniversary this January. This time we were able to get a slightly earlier reservation, but at the cost of coming in at a much busier time. We also sat in an area with heavy traffic, which didn't have anything to do with our reservation but certainly made me miss the more secluded room we had been placed in last time. Because there was a wait, we sat at the bar and enjoyed some snacks and cocktails. I'm incredibly partial to the Gov't Mule cocktail, a ginger-based vodka drink. From what I gathered by looking at our neighbors at the bar, this is one of Woodberry Kitchen's most popular cocktails. Noah drank a Snake Charmer, a spiced rum drink with lots of delicious apple flavors.
Our snacks at the bar included popcorn (not only my favorite snack, but a Woodberry Kitchen mainstay that should not be missed), smoked rockfish fritters, and house made chips and sour cream and onion dip. There was not a misstep in anything we had, and the snacks paired perfectly with our cocktails. We were seated a bit after our reservation time due to a busy night (we were stunned to look up at one point and see Bill Cosby exit the restaurant with a group of his friends; at that point, you don't begrudge the staff for being a bit swamped), where we were given more chips as a consolation. Woodberry Kitchen's menu has changed as of this writing, so I don't have as many details on our dinner, but we had some boudin sausage, an incredibly smooth and delicious beef tartare, barbecued oysters, and a pasta with egg sauce.
Woodberry Kitchen is often crowded, loud and busy, but it's easy to see why. The restaurant specializes in making the most of local food and does it spectacularly well. The attention to detail in each area of the food and drinks is excellent, and the staff is busy but attentive and pleasant. There are a couple of spin-off restaurants associated with Woodberry Kitchen that are at the top of our list when we are in town again.
Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Rd. #126
Baltimore, MD
410-464-8000
http://www.woodberrykitchen.com/
Last year, Noah suggested that we try someplace new for our anniversary. He'd heard a lot of great things about Woodberry Kitchen, and it was certainly in demand--the wait time for a reservation was more than we were used to. We managed to get a late-night reservation, which we still had to secure several months ahead of time. I don't have a record of that visit for you, but suffice it to say that we loved our experience at Woodberry Kitchen and decided to go back for our 1-year wedding anniversary this January. This time we were able to get a slightly earlier reservation, but at the cost of coming in at a much busier time. We also sat in an area with heavy traffic, which didn't have anything to do with our reservation but certainly made me miss the more secluded room we had been placed in last time. Because there was a wait, we sat at the bar and enjoyed some snacks and cocktails. I'm incredibly partial to the Gov't Mule cocktail, a ginger-based vodka drink. From what I gathered by looking at our neighbors at the bar, this is one of Woodberry Kitchen's most popular cocktails. Noah drank a Snake Charmer, a spiced rum drink with lots of delicious apple flavors.
Our snacks at the bar included popcorn (not only my favorite snack, but a Woodberry Kitchen mainstay that should not be missed), smoked rockfish fritters, and house made chips and sour cream and onion dip. There was not a misstep in anything we had, and the snacks paired perfectly with our cocktails. We were seated a bit after our reservation time due to a busy night (we were stunned to look up at one point and see Bill Cosby exit the restaurant with a group of his friends; at that point, you don't begrudge the staff for being a bit swamped), where we were given more chips as a consolation. Woodberry Kitchen's menu has changed as of this writing, so I don't have as many details on our dinner, but we had some boudin sausage, an incredibly smooth and delicious beef tartare, barbecued oysters, and a pasta with egg sauce.
Woodberry Kitchen is often crowded, loud and busy, but it's easy to see why. The restaurant specializes in making the most of local food and does it spectacularly well. The attention to detail in each area of the food and drinks is excellent, and the staff is busy but attentive and pleasant. There are a couple of spin-off restaurants associated with Woodberry Kitchen that are at the top of our list when we are in town again.
Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Rd. #126
Baltimore, MD
410-464-8000
http://www.woodberrykitchen.com/
Friday, February 14, 2014
What I've Been Reading: Endless Feasts and Secret Ingredients
Lately, I've been very interested in compilations of food writing from magazines. Food writing collections always seem like a fantastic around-the-world journey comprising of everything from travel to restaurants to home cooking, and I love being able to open up the book and get a snippet of a new experience. In that vein, I've read two food writing compilations recently that are both well worth exploring for yourself.
Endless Feasts is a collection of food writing from Gourmet magazine, edited by the inimitable Ruth Reichl. While I never had the pleasure of actually reading the print version of Gourmet, I can't seem to get enough of its writing, even in book form. Everyone from M.F.K. Fisher and James Beard to E. Annie Proulx and Ray Bradbury has contributed to the magazine, and therefore the book, in some way or another, and every story is a delight--even the early travel stories that shine a rather embarrassing light on America's cultural ignorance and insensitivity. Though I love all the stories, there is one I keep coming back to: "Down East Breakfast", by Robert P. Coffin, is a funny portrait of the hearty breakfast required to keep Maine lobstermen and outdoorsmen going all day. I read it again and again. Also keep an eye out for Jane and Michael Stern's piece on road food, "Two for the Road: Havana, North Dakota", which portrays small-town America as only these two travelers can.
I grew up reading The New Yorker, and so did Noah (probably more so, considering he actually grew up in New York; my dad is a native New Yorker, but our family never lived there). One of my favorite things to do was always to flip to the back of the magazine, where the restaurant reviews were located, and imagine the wealth of different foods available in the city. The restaurant blurbs were like personal ads for restaurants, which was apt because at that time I was also strangely fascinated by newspaper personal ads. I also enjoyed reading the full-length food articles, so when I started dating Noah I gave him Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink as a birthday present. In the same vein as Endless Feasts, this book is a compilation of articles from The New Yorker's history and includes plenty of big names, including A.J. Liebling, Bill Buford, Calvin Trillin, and (you guessed it) M.F.K. Fisher. It also contains Anthony Bourdain's infamous story, "Don't Eat Before Reading This", which inspired his book Kitchen Confidential (also known as the book that launched a thousand thoroughly grossed-out diners). Secret Ingredients also includes a very impressive fiction lineup with pieces from the likes of Roald Dahl, Italo Calvino, and Alice McDermott. If you're interested in some great writing about home cooks, M.F.K. Fisher's "The Secret Ingredient" profiles Fisher's vain attempts to decode the secret ingredient in a friend's cooking. One of my favorite pieces for humor value was Woody Allen's "Notes from the Overfed", a funny Dostoyevsky-esque parody on a "Weight Watchers" magazine he read on a plane.
Have you read either of these collections? What was your favorite story?
Endless Feasts is a collection of food writing from Gourmet magazine, edited by the inimitable Ruth Reichl. While I never had the pleasure of actually reading the print version of Gourmet, I can't seem to get enough of its writing, even in book form. Everyone from M.F.K. Fisher and James Beard to E. Annie Proulx and Ray Bradbury has contributed to the magazine, and therefore the book, in some way or another, and every story is a delight--even the early travel stories that shine a rather embarrassing light on America's cultural ignorance and insensitivity. Though I love all the stories, there is one I keep coming back to: "Down East Breakfast", by Robert P. Coffin, is a funny portrait of the hearty breakfast required to keep Maine lobstermen and outdoorsmen going all day. I read it again and again. Also keep an eye out for Jane and Michael Stern's piece on road food, "Two for the Road: Havana, North Dakota", which portrays small-town America as only these two travelers can.
I grew up reading The New Yorker, and so did Noah (probably more so, considering he actually grew up in New York; my dad is a native New Yorker, but our family never lived there). One of my favorite things to do was always to flip to the back of the magazine, where the restaurant reviews were located, and imagine the wealth of different foods available in the city. The restaurant blurbs were like personal ads for restaurants, which was apt because at that time I was also strangely fascinated by newspaper personal ads. I also enjoyed reading the full-length food articles, so when I started dating Noah I gave him Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink as a birthday present. In the same vein as Endless Feasts, this book is a compilation of articles from The New Yorker's history and includes plenty of big names, including A.J. Liebling, Bill Buford, Calvin Trillin, and (you guessed it) M.F.K. Fisher. It also contains Anthony Bourdain's infamous story, "Don't Eat Before Reading This", which inspired his book Kitchen Confidential (also known as the book that launched a thousand thoroughly grossed-out diners). Secret Ingredients also includes a very impressive fiction lineup with pieces from the likes of Roald Dahl, Italo Calvino, and Alice McDermott. If you're interested in some great writing about home cooks, M.F.K. Fisher's "The Secret Ingredient" profiles Fisher's vain attempts to decode the secret ingredient in a friend's cooking. One of my favorite pieces for humor value was Woody Allen's "Notes from the Overfed", a funny Dostoyevsky-esque parody on a "Weight Watchers" magazine he read on a plane.
Have you read either of these collections? What was your favorite story?
Monday, February 3, 2014
Welcome back to From Bach to Stock!
Hello again!
It's been a long time since we've posted here at From Bach to Stock. We went through a long dry spell in which we just didn't feel like blogging about our food, but lately we've been excited to share with you again.
What, you may ask, have we been up to all this time?
For one thing, Noah moved back to Maryland in the fall of 2012. He got a full-time job, and we moved into our own place.
Not long after that, I graduated with my Masters of Science in Special Education and was hired a month later by the nonprofit I had been working for to teach with them full-time.
In January 2013, Noah and I decided to make things official and invited our families over for a small courthouse wedding.
That was so much fun that in October 2013 we decided to do it again, but with 100 of our friends and family (and with a religious ceremony).
Now we're working, cooking together, and loving life!
Here's what you can expect from our blog in its new phase:
-We are not terribly interested in taking pictures of our food at restaurants. You may see some photos every now and then, but for the most part restaurant reviews will be narrative with lots of descriptors, light on the photography.
-We will photograph a lot of our food that we cook at home! This blog is less of me and Noah coming up with our own recipes (Noah does that more than I do, and I will usually be the one posting) and more of a compilation of Recipes I Have Loved. Expect to be linked to other blogs for recipes or for recommendations of cookbooks and food magazines I read. I enjoy being a conduit for other people to find media they love, and I feel like I enjoy being a curator of recipes rather than a recipe developer.
-I will review food media (food writing, movies about food, etc.) and post links to food-related articles I find interesting.
I hope this appeals to all of you who subscribed to us in the beginning, and that new people may find what they're looking for in the blog's current direction!
It's been a long time since we've posted here at From Bach to Stock. We went through a long dry spell in which we just didn't feel like blogging about our food, but lately we've been excited to share with you again.
What, you may ask, have we been up to all this time?
For one thing, Noah moved back to Maryland in the fall of 2012. He got a full-time job, and we moved into our own place.
Not long after that, I graduated with my Masters of Science in Special Education and was hired a month later by the nonprofit I had been working for to teach with them full-time.
In January 2013, Noah and I decided to make things official and invited our families over for a small courthouse wedding.
That was so much fun that in October 2013 we decided to do it again, but with 100 of our friends and family (and with a religious ceremony).
Now we're working, cooking together, and loving life!
Here's what you can expect from our blog in its new phase:
-We are not terribly interested in taking pictures of our food at restaurants. You may see some photos every now and then, but for the most part restaurant reviews will be narrative with lots of descriptors, light on the photography.
-We will photograph a lot of our food that we cook at home! This blog is less of me and Noah coming up with our own recipes (Noah does that more than I do, and I will usually be the one posting) and more of a compilation of Recipes I Have Loved. Expect to be linked to other blogs for recipes or for recommendations of cookbooks and food magazines I read. I enjoy being a conduit for other people to find media they love, and I feel like I enjoy being a curator of recipes rather than a recipe developer.
-I will review food media (food writing, movies about food, etc.) and post links to food-related articles I find interesting.
I hope this appeals to all of you who subscribed to us in the beginning, and that new people may find what they're looking for in the blog's current direction!
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