Dinner tonight: Warm Past Salad with Shrimp

Last night, I made Warm Pasta Salad with Shrimp. Except I made it without the pasta...because I still have pasta guilt from my stint on the Atkins diet in high school. I know what you're thinking, "But she just made stuffed shells!" Somehow that's different. Because they're a vessel, rather than the main attraction? I dunno. Anyway, enough about my neuroses. On to the recipe review!

This recipe was surprisingly unclear for a CL production. It tells you to cook the shrimp and then stir in everything else, but at no time does it tell you when to remove the pan from the heat! I decided, after the spinach stage but before the vinaigrette stage, to keep the pan on the heat for another few minutes to wilt the spinach, then took it off once I added the mustard sauce. The other weird thing was that the recipe calls for minced red onion, but the picture clearly shows way bigger pieces. This led me to start doubting my cooking terminology knowledge, and I went to look up the definition of mince. It does, in fact, mean to chop as small as possible without pureeing. So whoever made the picture in the recipe clearly took some liberties with the directions. Not that we know anything about that, right? ;) And yes, as you see from my pictures, I did not mince either. If they cheated, so can I!

In any event, I wanted to like this. I really did. I liked all of the components. But somehow they just didn't come together. It is possible that my carby foe may have served just this purpose, but I'm doubtful...I have a sneaking suspicion it would just be one more component that didn't work as a whole dish.

Dickson's Wine Bar

Saturday, Pat took me out to Dickson's Wine Bar on U St. It was much, much smaller than I expected, but we went pretty early, so we managed to get a seat. I should warn you that all of the tables are hightops, so ladies...maybe don't wear your low-cut jeans when you go.

Dickson's is great, conceptually. I love that everything, wine, liquor, and food, is organic or biodynamic (I had to look up what this is...it's like an even MORE granola version of organic--http://www.biodynamics.com/biodynamics.html). I love that they make their own duck proscuitto. I love that they have 3 different types of banh mi.

Unfortunately, the execution does not quite live up to the concept. Maybe the selection of organic wines available to purchasers is sparse, maybe the sommelier is not the good...whatever it was, the wines we had (a sangiovese and a bonarda) were both flat, dull, BORING. Particularly disappointing at $11-$16 for a really miserly pour. Although it's a wine bar, I recommend sticking to the cocktails (which, incidentally, all have wine in them, and are also $11). I got the "Gold Line," which was refreshing, super original, and not at all too sweet.

The food similarly was weak on the execution. The pear and arugula salad, which came with piquant, crumbly parm, would have been so much better if it wasn't drenched in dressing. The duck proscuitto was alright, but the mustard horseradish sauce accompanying it was a bit heavy-handed on the horseradish. The greens that accompanied the banh mi were also overdressed. And then there was the banh mi. Delicious, scrumptious flavors in the pork belly sammy...but it was served on a sub roll, rather than a french baguette, and the pork belly, which should be melt-in-your-mouth tender, was not. At all.

Perhaps the other banh mi's are better, but if I go back to find out, it will probably be at someone else's behest. This restaurant did not at all offend me, and I'm happy we tried it out, but it did not live up to its potential. (portions x-posted to yelp.com)