Monday, May 29, 2006

Bella Rosa, rte 1 North Hampton, April 12th

In attendance: Mycroft, Solids, Zeus, and myself: Moxie

meh.

that't about all I can muster for this most recent incarnation of the place across from the purple bicycle store. It's subtitle is "Brick Oven Pizza" The pizza's were pretty good, not great, not bad.

We started off with onion rings which was a big mistake. We had just had the best onion rings on the seacoast - Wheelies (potentially tragic aside: on a recent trip to Newmarket Mycroft discovered that Wheelies is no longer - they are now part of Mama Lena's of Stratham - we don't know what this means for the future of onion rings on the seacoast) the week before, so it really wasn't a fair fight.

onion rings

We also tried the cheezy garlic bread, of which I have no memory whatsoever.

cheezy garlic bread

The pizzas had good crusts - they weren't bad. I remember that we were dissapointed in the spinach one for some reason. If I had to guess the reason, based on this picture, we were overwhelmed by sundried tomatoes, which should be used sparingly.

sundried tomato and spinach

The margherita was good - fairly hard to mess up, anyway.

margherita pizza

The pineapple and ham and barbecue chicken was genius.

pineapple and ham

The meat-a-palooza was a little too meaty. Go figure.

meat-a-palooza pizza

Puerco Pibil Night, April 26

Location: Beach Palace
In attendance: Solids, The Count, Wasabi, Mycroft, and myself: Moxie

Ever since I saw the special feature "10-minute cooking school" by Robert Rodriguez on the Once Upon a Time in Mexico dvd I have wanted to make this dish. Not only are the ingredients fascinating, the preparation, the sum total irresistable, but the creation of this 10 minute video is the best example of cinematic foodography (I just made that word up - do you like it?) I have ever seen. It was simply a matter of gathering the ingredients (which took months) and waiting for the right opportunity (school vacation for me), but the stars were aligned in late April, and the results lived up to the long anticipation.

Since the dish itself reminds me of real barbecued pork, we played off the southern food thing with mexican flavors.

Wasabi's guacamole
best guacamole ever, made by Wasabi

puerco pibil
ta da! the puerco pibil.

garlic cornbread
garlic cornbread

collards
collards

rice&beans
Mycroft's most excellent rice and beans