Showing My Mom The Town...Veggie Restaurants Included

My mom came to visit for the weekend, the first time she's been able to come since we moved up here. Friday night, we took her to dinner at Aladdin's, a local Middle Eastern food chain (www.aladdinseatery.com) that J and I enjoy a great deal. We shared a vegetarian appetizer platter with hummus, baba ganoush, tabbouleh, falafel (theirs is terrific) and dawali (stuffed grape leaves). Then, J had a a pita roll with a gorgeous charbroiled tuna steak, tomato and tahini sauce. I had chicken sambusek (curried chicken inside a pita shell) with salad and my mommy had a big bowl of veggie chili topped with crumbled feta. We went over to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert, lemon & raspberry cheesecake for my mom and chocolate mousse cheesecake split between J & me. One of these times, I will have to try the dulce de leche cheesecake.

Saturday night, we had been poking around Oberlin, doing the bead shop and just checking things out. We had stopped in The Feve (www.the feve.com) for 50 cent beers (and dollar and sixty cent Coke on my part) earlier. J was hungry after shopping, so we went back in for dinner. They will sub a Boca burger for any other burger at no additional cost, so it was a good dinner spot for my mom. It's very casual, nothing fancy, but they do burgers quite well. J and I had ours with avocado and bacon (cheddar on hers and muenster on mine...you gotta love a place that'll put muenster on your burger) and my mom tried an Erica's, with portobello in addition to the avo. We all had tater tots, too. J usually objects when I make them at home, but she loved these. The spicy seasoning on hers must have helped. My ma got hers plain & I got mine stinky (with garlic), all of us getting a different dipping sauce. I liked my mom's chipotle mayo best, while J favored the Thai peanut sauce she ordered and the garlic mayo I got. We also had some decent jalapeño poppers. I'm so glad Ohio has a smoking ban now, so that I can enjoy bar food without having asthma issues.

Last night, I cooked a vegetarian pasta dinner at home, making enough to send the leftovers home with my mom for their dinner tonight. J loved the endive so much that she said she could just have that for her meal. Surprisingly, mojitos go remarkably well with these dishes. My mom & I had them to break in the jigger measure she bought me over the weekend.

Garlic Caper Pasta

1 c. freshly-grated bread crumbs (I used some day-old sourdough & made some of the pieces chunkier for more interesting texture)
3/4 lb. pasta, cooked (I used campanelle, but something like radiatore would be great, too)
1/2 c. extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, finely-chopped
Splash of lemon juice
6 tbsp. capers
1/4 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
Grated pecorino romano or parmesan

Heat oil in skillet. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until golden. Add lemon, capers, parsley and bread crumbs. Stir until golden. Toss with pasta. Serve with cheese. Serves 4. I suspect that the dish would be even better with half olive oil and half butter, with some pine nuts tossed in.

Baked Endive with Walnuts and Cheese

4 Belgian endive heads, thoroughly cleaned & trimmed
1/4 c. olive oil
Salt and pepper
1/4 c. walnut halves
A couple handfuls pecorino or parm, grated

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make 2 length-wise cuts, in a plus-sign, to endive, leaving ends uncut and attached. Toss with olive oil, salt & pepper. Tuck into a glass loaf pan. Cover with foil and bake until tender, about 32 minutes. Top with nuts, then cheese and bake, uncovered, until cheese melts, another 10 minutes or so. Serves 4.