Sal, Kris and Charlie's

It was very spring-like this past weekend, so Mandy determined that we should do something outside. We made our way to Astoria and walked along the river for a while.

The nice weather was also the perfect cover for me to make a trip to Sal, Kris and Charlie's. I'm not sure how I'd heard about it, but it the reviews said they made amazing sandwiches. That was enough for me.

I ordered an italian combo. It was pretty good. It came with hot & sweet peppers on it, I'd try to get roasted red peppers instead next time. The provolone (at least I think it was provolone) was a bit sharp, I would've preferred some mozzarella instead (or some milder provolone). Everything else was thoroughly enjoyable.

Oh, the sandwich was very large. I ate about 2/3rds of it for dinner and then the rest for lunch the next day.

I'm not sure if its worth a trip to Astoria solely for the sandwich, but not a bad option if you're in the area.

Roasted Chicken

This post comes with the following advice: don't go grocery shopping after 4 beers. You may end up with a 7lb chicken. It was on sale!!

I prepared this monstrosity of a chicken by roasting it in the oven for about 2 hours with some rosemary and lemons inside. The white meat was thoroughly dried out (exactly as Mandy likes it) while the dark meat was pretty close to perfect for me.

More Pizza!

This was the third or fourth time we've made pizza.

I can't remember if we used a different dough recipe this time or not. Mandy is typically in charge of the dough-making. We did bake the crust again without toppings for about 5 minutes, and then for a few minutes with the toppings. It seemed to work out a little too well. It may have had something to do with the pan we used (a dark baking sheet vs light baking sheet) or the recipe.

In the end, the crust's texture resembled a Celeste frozen pizza. It was pretty crispy and not very chewy. It was pretty good, but not the best we've had.

Here was Mandy's pizza, burnt to her exact specifications:


And here was my pizza, looking perfect (if I may say so):

Brownies

After buying a massive amount of cocoa powder in order to make molten chocolate cake, I had to come up with something else to bake to use the remaining powder (probably 4 cups).

I settled on these brownies from Alton Brown. The reviews said they would occasionally come out cakey. People adjusted with less eggs and things like that. I just went with the original recipe.

They weren't hard to make (except for sifting the brown sugar, ugh). They weren't super chewy but they were super chocolaty. The Newtster devoured one brownie in approximately 5 seconds, so I suppose they passed the taste test. Mandy also seemed to like them as long as she thought of them more as chocolate cake or something than brownies.

If I have cocoa powder sitting around again, I'll probably make these.