Old Bay Fried Chicken

I've written about Old Bay seasoning before - if you're American you are probably familiar with it but if you're British or from another country, probably not. Old Bay is a seasoning made in Baltimore for more than 75 years; it was paired originally with seafood but is popular particularly in the state of Maryland with all sorts of dishes. Read more about Old Bay's cult following.

This is a very simple and not particularly healthy recipe but probably OK in moderation; I'm sharing it because I'd forgotten how good fried chicken can be. You can find the Old Bay recipe here; you don't really need to follow exact quantities and can use whatever kind of chicken pieces you want - legs, thighs, even pieces of chicken breast. If you are using legs, which take longer to cook, I would advise baking them in the oven first and finishing off in the oil, to make sure the chidken is cooked through. You can do that with the other chicken pieces as well to be on the safe side.

Mix Old Bay seasoning and flour in a shallow bowl or a freezer bag. Beat an egg (one egg will do enough chicken for two people, roughly) in another shallow bowl. Dip the chicken in the egg and then the flour mixture, or if using a bag, place the chicken in the bag and shake until it is coated.

Part-cook the chicken in the oven if you wish; heat an inch of oil in a large saucepan until just bubbling and carefully place the chicken using tongs into the hot oil, turning as each side becomes golden brown. Remove from the oil with tongs and drain on kitchen paper.

Cheesy Broccoli Bites

I found this recipe for broccoli bites in a book called America's Most Wanted Recipes, which aims to recreate dishes from popular US restaurant chains. This one comes from Bennigan;'s, which I've never heard of, despite having visited 21 US states over the years.

This is broccoli, but not as you know it! I guess this is one way to get people to eat their vegetables... it's mixed with bacon, cheese, onion, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried! So it's really not very healthy, but it is still broccoli I guess... and it tastes amazing! I made these to go with pasta and they worked really well; the recipe suggests to serve them with a honey mustard dressing.

The recipe said to use  Monterey Jack and Colby cheese, neither of which I could get hold of, so I used cheddar. It also called for a 16 ounce box of frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and drained. You can of course get frozen broccoli here but I wanted to use fresh so I cooked it in a pan of boiling water then chopped it up. So this is what I did:

To serve 4, you need;
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cheddar, grated

 

 

1 head broccoli, cooked and chopped
5 tbsp. bacon bits or pancetta
1 tbsp. finely diced onion
2 tbsp. plain flour
about 100g breadcrumbs
oil for frying

Mix the cheddar, broccoli, bacon, onion and flour in a bowl and refrigerate for an hour. Heat an inch of oil in a large frying pan. Meanwhile form the broccoli mixture into balls, roll in the beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs and fry each one in the hot oil. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.

Santa Fe Chicken

After a few road trips around the US I bought a cookery book called 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - it contains copycat recipes based on dishes served at some of the biggest restaurant chains across the US.

I hadn't used the book in a while so a couple of weeks ago went through and picked out several recipes to try. This one, called Santa Fe Chicken, is apparently based on something served at Applebee's, a restaurant chain I've heard of but never actually been to. Still it sounded like a nice recipe I wanted to try!

It's one of those recipes where exact quantities aren't required and you play it by ear, at least I did.

First butterfly a chicken breast to open it out flat and cut a thick slice of cheese - one per chicken breast. The recipe said to use Monterey Jack cheese but I couldn't find that in the supermarket. I think this would be nice with any kind of cheese but the internet tells me Monterey Jack is a mild white cheese and that Cheddar is a close cousin.

Wrap the flattened chicken breast around each piece of cheese and secure with a cocktail stick.

Mix breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, cumin and pepper. Dip the chicken in a shallow bowl of melted butter and then roll in the breadcrumb mixture.

 

 

Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

 

Serve with a cheese sauce and top with chopped red and green peppers - though I left these out as my husband and I don't like them!

 

Chocolate and Caramel Brownie Mini Cheesecakes

 

 

Coming back from our honeymoon in the Galapagos Islands earlier this year, we had a very long layover at Miami airport. To kill some time we went to a nearby shopping mall and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory - the third US city where I've eaten at one of those restaurants. I can't get enough of the cheesecake!

This time I had the caramel pecan turtle cheesecake - named after a particular brand of chocolate called turtles. It consisted of a pecan brownie and caramel-fudge swirl cheesecake, topped with caramel turtle pecans and chocolate. It was so good- though of course I couldn't eat more than half of it!

Back at the airport, shopping to use up the last of my dollars, I bought a packet of  - which contained a pecan and soft caramel covered in chocolate. I'd had them before so didn't eat them right away and brought them home. A few weeks ago I found them in the cupboard and decided to see if I could recreate the Cheesecake Factory dessert. The only caveat being that my husband doesn't like nuts!

I found this copycat recipe which looks amazing; but I was making the dessert on a night when I had been out all day and needed to make some shortcuts. I also wanted to turn them into mini cheesecakes rather than one large one. I'd just had an Asda delivery a couple of days before so had bought some chocolate brownies; I used these as the base of my dessert, cutting out a circle to put in the bottom of a silicon muffin tray.

 

I followed the recipe instructions for the filling, using a tin of Carnation caramel for the caramel sauce. This is the cream cheese, egg, sugar and vanilla mixture, poured on top of the brownie base which was obviously already cooked as it was ready made.



 

I mixed the chocolate sauce with the caramel sauce and swirled it in to the cheesecake mixture:

 

 

Here they are after being baked in the oven.

 

 

I topped each mini cheesecake with a layer of Carnation caramel and a drizzle of chocolate sauce - I used Choc Shot as you can squeeze out a thin drizzle easily. Finally I topped each one with a mini chocolate turtle.

 

 

Here is the view from the side. These were amazing - one mini cheesecake was enough as they are quite rich but the flavours of the caramel and chocolate, and the texture of the cheesecake on the brownie base, were just amazing. Almost as good as at the Cheesecake Factory!

 

 

I'm sending these to Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat, the Baking Explorer, for their monthly baking challenge.

 

 

I'm also sharing these with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

 

Restaurant reviews: Miami Florida

We spent the first four nights of our honeymoon in Miami; I laughed when a few months before the wedding someone asked if I had already booked a hotel for the honeymoon and I told them I had already booked restaurants! That just goes to show how much I like forward planning (I’m really not spontaneous) – but also I was realistic enough to realise that if we wanted to eat in a particularly good restaurant we wouldn’t be able to just wander in off the street and get a table.

 

I thought about what kinds of restaurants we wanted to go to in Miami. I was keen to focus on the South Beach area where we were staying, and wanted ones that stood out in some way. I didn’t necessarily want high-end expensive restaurants and realised what I really wanted was to feel like we were really in Miami, so somewhere with a view of the beach or in a lively art deco area. The restaurants also had to fit my husband’s fussy eater tendencies. I found an internet article called “9 best restaurants with a view on South Beach” which was exactly what I needed! So I checked menus and used this to suggest to my husband-to-be where we ate.

 

We were too tired from travelling and the time difference on our first night, so ordered room service at the Fontainebleau hotel where we were staying, which I have reviewed separately.

Stripsteak
 

And for our second night I’d booked Stripsteak, a high end restaurant inside the hotel that is often on lists of top restaurants in Miami. As well as steak, the restaurant is said to serve excellent seafood, but I wanted to try the steak.

 

We had a large comfortable booth and were greeted with real warmth by the staff. When I’d booked they had asked if it was a special occasion so I told them it was our honeymoon and they brought us over a glass of free Prosecco each, which was really nice.

 

I don’t think I’ve ever had a wagyu steak – I’ve had wagyu burgers – and we both opted for the 12oz Australian skirt steak, at $48 apiece. It was excellent steak but to be honest I wasn’t really aware I was eating wagyu or how it is supposed to taste different. A 12oz steak is a lot bigger than we would have at home but the portions are much bigger in America – 14oz or 16oz seems typical!

 

The sides were pretty substantial as well; my husband had parmesan truffle fries and I had the truffle mac and cheese, which I knew would be very filling and I had to leave half of it, which was a shame as it was so good!

 

I was absolutely stuffed at the end but my husband had been eyeing up the dessert menu and announced ‘there’s always room for dessert’. How wrong he was… he wanted the chocolate ganache cake ($14) and when it came we both gasped – I’ve never seen such a big slice of cake apart from when we ate at Gibson’s steakhouse in Chicago (a dessert that the people next to us ordered). The cake would have served 6 or even 8 people easily I think! My husband held his phone up next to it for a photo as a size comparison. They wrote ‘happy anniversary’ on the plate – I guess they’d forgotten it was our honeymoon we were celebrating. We only ate a fraction of the cake so they gave us the rest of it to go; luckily there was a fridge in our room so we were able to enjoy it again the next day!

 

 Smith & Wollensky

 

We also ate at Smith & Wollensky, a steakhouse located in South Pointe Park, at the tip of South Beach just across from the exclusive Fisher Island.

 

 

We were asked if we’d like to sit inside or outside, but the wait for an outside table would be at least an hour and we could see several people smoking outside (we are non-smokers) so opted to sit inside, and were given a table next to the window. We were slightly above street level – you have to go down a flight of steps to get to the street – which meant that the outside awning of the restaurant was obscuring part of the view which meant we couldn’t really see the sun set as I’d hoped. But I did pop outside a couple of times between courses to take photos and enjoy the view as the sun went down – and found five cats sitting just off to the side of the tables as well!

 

Even being inside, the view and the ambience was lovely and the service was excellent. And the food… well, the food was fantastic. We paid less than we had at Stripsteak – it was still expensive, but we didn’t order wagyu steaks – but we actually thought the food was better.

 

We skipped the starters, knowing that once again the smallest steaks would be huge (to us, anyway) and both had the 10 oz Black Angus filet mignon for $46 (about £35 at the time of writing but this was the day before the EU referendum vote and since then the pound has been in freefall!). It was easily one of the best steaks I’ve ever had; beautifully tender, cooked perfectly to medium-rare. I chose to have a loaded baked potato with it ($10) which came with sour cream and bacon, though the potato was a little under-cooked for my liking.

 

We were absolutely stuffed and weren’t going to order dessert and then the waiter came over with…. a giant piece of chocolate ganache cake, almost exactly the same as the one we’d had at Stripsteak – and the same size! They’d asked when I booked if it was a special occasion and I said our honeymoon and so they gave us a printed Smith & Wollensky anniversary card (yes, I said anniversary) and wrote ‘happy anniversary’ on the plate containing our dessert. I’m not sure if people don’t get the difference between honeymoon and anniversary or they just keep forgetting! So it was lovely getting a free dessert but quite funny it was the same giant cake we hadn’t been able to manage the day before! Once again, we ate a small piece of the cake and were given the rest to go, and were able to enjoy it the following day – so we had chocolate cake several days in a row!

 

 

 

Larios on the Beach
 

The same article about restaurants with a view recommended Larios on the Beach, owned by the singer Gloria Estefan and her husband. It serves Cuban food and is located on Ocean Drive, known for its art deco hotels though I’d disagree with the description of it being a restaurant with a view. You can sit outside the restaurant within a roped-off area but it was a very busy area with people walking past and car horns blaring, so we chose to sit inside (where there was air conditioning). If you are upstairs I guess you would have a view over the street and might be able to see the beach as well (across the road but not immediately visible)- I don’t actually know if they have an upstairs seating area as we weren’t offered a table there and instead shown to the back of the restaurant. So in a restaurant I chose for the view, we had no view at all. I took this from the other side of the road to the restaurant:

 

We also weren’t that keen on the food – I thought Cuban food would be a nice change from all the steak, but neither of us has eaten much Cuban food before.

 

To start we shared some empanadas, which were really good, but we found the main courses a bit disappointing. My husband had a breaded chicken steak while I had grilled chicken with onions - I can't remember exactly what it was called.  It was fairly plain and with rice as a side order, actually a little bit dry. Sides to choose from were white rice, wholegrain rice, moro rice, crispy plantain or sweet plantain. I tried the plantain but didn’t particularly like it and we were both really just a bit underwhelmed. I had a nice cocktail and it seemed a pleasant enough restaurant with a nice maritime décor otherwise but as we only had a few nights in Miami I was left wishing we’d chosen somewhere else.

 

Shula's

We had breakfast and lunch in our hotel every day which I've already reviewed; the only other place we ate in Miami was the airport. It was quite early in the morning when we checked in for our flight to Quito, Ecuador, and we had breakfast at a place called Shula's Bar and Grill. I had French toast with sausage which was a bit disappointing - the sausages were round patties rather than actual sausages and the French toast was fine but nothing special, and when I asked for tea I was told they had run out. My husband had chocolate chip pancakes which he enjoyed but again it was nothing in particular to write home about - realistically an airport breakfast was never going to compare to the other meals we had. Next time I'll tell you about the next part of our trip in Quito.

 

 

 

 

Review: Fontainebleau hotel, South Beach, Miami

 

Copyright Caroline Makes dot Net

I have to admit that the Fontainebleau wasn’t my first choice hotel. When we decided to go on honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands and realised we couldn’t fly direct to Ecuador from the UK and our options were Lima in Peru or Miami, it seemed a no-brainer to spend the first few days of our honeymoon relaxing in a luxury hotel in Florida. My husband loves visiting the States and I knew a few days there would help us wind down after the hectic run-up to the wedding.

  

He had a voucher from Virgin Holidays that he’d received as a bonus for working on a particularly big project so I went onto the Virgin website and found they offered 11 hotels in Miami. As it was our honeymoon I decided to sort by ranking and price and did some research on the three hotels that came out top, and decided I wanted to stay at the W South Beach.

 

But repeated problems with Virgin’s booking system meant I couldn’t be sure of getting the type of room I wanted. Nothing on Virgin’s website in terms of the room descriptions tallied with what the W had on its own website, so I couldn’t be sure that by selecting a suite with an ocean view on a high floor I wouldn’t end up with a room with a garden view on the lower floor.

 

Eventually I gave up – having reported the problem to Virgin three times and told it had been fixed but to no avail – and chose a different hotel. The Fontainebleau had been my second choice and actually the room rates were a lot more reasonable – still expensive, but we could spend a lot less than at the W and still get a suite that sounded amazing.

 

And it was amazing – one of the biggest hotel rooms I’ve ever been in. We had a large living room, kitchen (literally with oven, hob, fridge and dishwasher – but who cooks in a hotel like this?!), separate bedroom and large bathroom. It was only on the second day there that we opened a door to what we thought was a cupboard, near the entrance to the suite, and found it was a second toilet!

 

living room and kitchen at the back

 

living room and door onto one of the balconies (the bedroom also had a balcony)

bedroom

 

There was a large balcony and our view was of both the hotel pool below and the beach off to the side – I could happily have lounged there all day. That was the only drawback – when we chose the room (a Sorrento Ocean View One Bedroom Suite) from looking at the hotel’s website, the balcony showed two lounger-style chairs where we could lay back and put our feet up. When we arrived we just found regular chairs, which was disappointing as I’d been looking forward to reclining (my husband isn’t a pool person and I knew he’d prefer to stay in the air-conditioned room so I wanted to lounge on the balcony). I called down to reception and asked about the lounger chairs only to be told they didn’t have any. It was a shame as otherwise our room looked exactly like the one in the picture and I found this a bit misleading.

 

Discovering there was a computer in the room with internet access for us to use was great – though there is a resort fee you have to pay per day of $28.45 per room, which includes wifi, gym access, chairs on the beach, local calls and a daily newspaper – none of which we used apart from the wifi.

 

view from Sorrento 5th floor pool

 

We stayed in the Sorrento tower – the hotel is absolutely massive and they give you a map of where everything is when you arrive. Most of the restaurants (yes, there are several) are in the area off the central lobby so we didn’t have to do too much walking around but it was still quite a trek to get down to the main pool. I kept seeing a small sign in Sorrento saying there was a pool on the 5^th floor but didn’t go for the first couple of days, then I decided to check it out. There was a good sized swimming pool, with a pile of towels and a water dispenser, and lounger chairs overlooking the beach. You’re high above the main pool but can’t actually see it from here so it’s a good way to avoid the hustle and bustle if you’re not into that. In fact for the two hours I was there I had the pool entirely to myself, it was bliss!

 

view from our room

 

The main pool actually has multiple swimming pools; a large one that was surrounded by lounger chairs, then I remember counting at least four other small pools (one adults-only) and a Jacuzzi – but looking at the hotel’s website they say they have ten pools! Chairs are spread across the gardens so if you don’t want to be poolside there is plenty of space elsewhere – and the hotel is on the beach, just separated by a gate and a path, where you can go and swim in the ocean or sit on a lounger chair on the sand.

the beach

 

If you’re rich and famous – or just rich – there are cabanas for rent around the pool, which come with ceiling fans, mini fridge, butler service and wide screen TV. There are curtains you can draw for privacy but if you’re in one of these, you probably want to show off! I heard one guy tell his friend by the pool that he had asked how much they cost and that they were $750 – I think that might have been per day!

 

poolside

 

We spotted one extra large cabana that was in the centre of a small round pool, with four flat screen TVs; according to the website it accomdates up to 12 people and is a cinch at $1,000. It sounds crazy money and it is, but if you split it between 12 people it’s only about $80 per person – but I still don’t think I’d pay $80 to sit on a chair by a pool, even if there is a TV! And I’m not sure what the butler service entails but when I was by the main pool (in one of the free loungers) there were waiters going up and down taking food and drink orders and bringing it to your seat.

 

extra large cabana

 

I never saw the ‘supreme cabana’ which accommodates six, and costs anywhere from $550 plus rental fee (whatever that is) and tax mid week, or $1500 plus tax on a Saturday with a food and drink minimum spend on top. Maybe this is where Puff Daddy relaxes when he’s at the Fontainebleau.

 

The hotel itself is opulent – there are three chandeliers in the main lobby designed by the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei which are apparently worth $1 million – each. The hotel was popular with the ‘Rat Pack’ when it opened in the 1950s and there are photos of Frank Sinatra lining the walls.

 

$1 million Ai Wei Wei chandlier

 

The hotel has an amazing nine different places to eat, ranging from takeaway snacks to fine dining:

Hakkasan (modern Cantonese – the original one in London has a Michelin star)

Scarpetta (upmarket Italian)

Stripsteak by Michael Mina (expensive steak and seafood)

La Cote (poolside/beachside dining)

Pizza & Burger summer pop-up which opened the day we left, I think temporarily taking the place of Michael Mina 74 (upmarket American cuisine and shellfish)

Vida (American brasserie)

Blade (sushi)

Chez Bon Bon (café/patisserie)

Fresh (snacks and ice cream)

 

My husband doesn’t eat Chinese food or sushi but loves steak so we ate at Stripsteak, Vida and Chez Bon Bon, and also ordered room service a couple of times. I’ll review Stripsteak separately as of course it’s open to people who are not staying in the hotel and is a highly rated restaurant in itself, but I’ll briefly talk about the others here.

 

our first day - it rained all day (still hot!)

 

We were pretty tired when we arrived after a long flight from London, and ordered room service at 8pm (though to us it was actually about 2am). They add a 20% service charge and $4.50 delivery charge so it's not cheap but the food itself isn't badly priced - I had chicken tenders with fries and barbecue sauce for $15 which was a huge portion, I had to leave half of it. My husband had a burger and fries for $20 which he enjoyed, and we both ordered dessert as it was the first proper meal of our honeymoon and luckily it was quality rather than quantity.

chicken tenders

bow tie brownie

 

 

He had a bow tie brownie - we weren't sure why it was called that until we realised one of the hotel pools is shaped like a bow tie. It came with a piece of chocolate printed with bow ties and chocolate sauce and he said it was very good- I didn't actually get to try it! I had the key lime pie which came cut into pieces already, decorated with pieces of orange and some mango gelee - a sort of thick sauce dotted onto the plate. it was absolutely delicious and beautifully presented. We only drank water and yet the bill came to over $80! 

 

key lime pie

 

We also decided to treat ourselves to room service breakfast the next morning as we were hungry when we woke up (or rather when we got up, I woke at 4am due to jet lag!) and didn't know how long it would take us to walk around the hotel to find the various places we could have breakfast.

room service breakfast

My husband opted for a breakfast plate with two eggs cooked any way (he had scrambled) with a choice of pork or chicken sausage, bacon or ham, and he had three decent sized pork sausages. It also came with toast and potato hash which turned out to be boiled potatoes mashed up and then fried into a patty, which he didn't particularly like. I had eggs benedict again with bacon - though it wasn't the crispy kind I was expecting and I still think the best poached eggs I've ever had were at the Dana hotel in Chicago, but it was very good - the hollandaise sauce was in a jug for me to add myself, and the whipped cream to go with my husband's hot chocolate was also served in a separate bowl. There's something rather decadent about having room service breakfast so we really enjoyed it, even though that was another $80!

 

Nutella brioche

 

I’d rather have a small breakfast then a nice lunch, whereas my husband could happily eat a huge breakfast and skip lunch, so we compromised on our second day when luckily the weather was glorious - about 32C, much more what I'd been expecting! We went to Chez Bon Bon, a small café/patisserie in the main lobby, which only has two tables - I later saw people with Chez Bon Bon boxes eating by the pool so maybe that's the idea! I had a cup of tea (aah, tea) and a Nutella brioche which was amazing though not the healthiest breakfast! My husband had a chocolate croissant which he said was very good.

 

Chez Bon Bon

 

We went back to Chez Bon Bon for breakfast the following day and I had a peach Danish, which was good but I should have had the Nutella brioche again!

 

Later by the pool I had a mint and watermelon lemonade which was delicious (though it cost $10!).

 

cheers!

 

We didn't want much for lunch but were a bit hungry so went back to Chez Bon Bon and got a croquet monsieur (basically a cheese and ham toasted sandwich) which we shared - it was really good. We then had some leftover cake to eat which you will understand when you read my review of Stripsteak!

 

croque monsieur

 

We didn't spent much time sightseeing in Miami as we were just there to relax for a few days but did go on a boat trip to see Millionaire's Row, ie where the super rich and famous live. We went with the Island Queen - we got a taxi to the Bayside Marketplace where the boat goes from and found there were lots of shops and places to eat and drink, so we would have come back here to eat if our trip had been longer. The celebrity houses were quite interesting to see - this one belongs to the guy who invented Viagra - but the commentary wasn't great. It was in English then Spanish and was rapid and quite monotonous, like it had been learnt by heart by someone who didn't really care and was just doing the job to pay the bills - which I suppose is fair enough but we went on an architectural boat trip in Chicago narrated by someone who seemed to have a real passion for architecture, and this tour just fell a bit flat, though it was still a nice thing to do.

 

 

For lunch on our last full day in the hotel we ate at Vida; my husband had a burger and I was torn between pizza and a pasta dish - shrimp penne with ricotta and summer squash. I wasn't sure what summer squash was so asked the waiter if it was zucchini (courgette) or a yellow squash like pumpkin and he said yellow squash. When it arrived, I had a plateful of what looked like zucchini (it was green, anyway, and I didn't like it) - I should have said something but it hadn't been immediately apparent so I'd already started eating and I'm very English and just left it! So it was basically a very plain overpriced pasta, I should have had the pizza!

pasta dish.... and what I left



Overall I absolutely loved the Fontainebleau. It's a big, anonymous hotel - I do like staying in small B&Bs but for the beginning of our honeymoon we wanted to be alone, in a huge suite with a balcony, eating lovely food and chilling out in style, which is exactly what we had. It was the perfect start to our honeymoon.