LaLa Rokh - A Different Beacon Hill Flavor

A little while ago (as in pre-wedding!) my mom and I were running some wedding errands and ended up back in Beacon Hill right around dinner time, so Nick and I took my mom out for dinner.  Since we normally take her to 75 Chestnut, Paramount, or The Bistro, we decided to switch things up and went to Lala Rokh.  This Eastern Mediterranean restaurant is tucked up in the garden level of a lovely brownstone on Mt. Vernon St.  Nick and I had been there once before and really enjoyed the different flavors and had been looking for a reason to head back.

While there is a small bar at the front of the restaurant, we were immediately brought back to the dining room (it was a bit on the earlier side) and started to review the drink menu.  With some fun cocktails on their list, my mom and I had to indulge.  They were delicious and just what we needed after a day of running around.  However, I cannot remember the ingredients and there does not seem to be a cocktail list online.  Regardless - its worth a trip for a cocktail!

While we were enjoying our pre-dinner drinks, we dove right into the bread that was accompanied by some hummus.  It was so flavorful that I was just scooping heaps of it onto the bread, which only ended up being a tool to get more hummus into my mouth.

Best Party Salsa!

Whenever Nick and I have people over we don't have sit-down dinners due to size constrictions in our apartment.  Also, the fact that we have no dining room table might have something to do with it!  Therefore, all of our parties are more of a cocktail style where you can help yourself to a variety of food and drink options.  One staple we always have, no matter the party, is chips and salsa.  My friend L brought over a dressed-up salsa once and we were hooked.  So when it was Super Bowl time, this salsa was obviously something we wanted to serve.

Salsa!

I believe the recipe comes from Green Mountain Gringo.  The Necessities (with the proportions adapted for our tastes)....

Lunch at B&G Oysters

After all of the wedding celebrations and I had finally returned to work, my co-workers decided to continue the celebration with a lovely ladies-who-lunch style outing.  When given a list of amazing choices, B&G Oysters stood out, and I jumped at the chance to go back after having an amazing dinner there over a year a go.

B&G

B&G Oysters is tucked into a garden level corner brownstone in the South End.  While the restaurant is below ground, the bright blue and stainless interior make it feel bright and vibrant.  There are only a few high tops surrounding the massive bar, with loads of seats that have a perfect view of the raw bar and kitchen so you can watch the chefs in action.

At Least There Was Good Food....

In the wake of last night's depressing outcome, the one thing I will be focusing on is the delicious food Nick and I spent the day preparing.  One of the fun reasons to have some friends over for the Super Bowl is the excuse to prepare some dishes you probably would not otherwise prepare!  So, for the past two weeks I was trolling the internet looking for some inspiration dishes and came up with the following (forgive my Instagram obsession)...

First up was a Cheesey Pepperoni Pull Apart Bread that I adapted from Jen's Cheesey Mushroom Bread, as I have a friend who is not a mushroom fan.  This recipe was easy to pull together and very satisfying to put on the table with the "ooo's" and "ahh's" it received.  With its adaptability to almost anything this will quickly become a go-to appetizer.

Cheesey Pepperoni Pull Apart Bread

Next up was Megan's Buffalo Chicken Stromboli, adapted to add a lot more heat!  I doubled the amount of Frank's Red Hot and allowed the shredded chicken to sit in all of the sauce not taken up during the sauteing to make sure all the chicken was sufficiently ready to burn tongues!  If that were not enough, I picked up this great buffalo Cheddar at Whole Foods that even had bits of jalapenos added to it!  Needless to say the Stromboli had plenty of bite - good thing we had friends over who love spice as much as Nick and I do.

Forum Burger

Last week I found myself attempting to get back into the swing of things, and well, it was not working as well as I thought (in my mind I was still in the Indian Ocean!)  Luckily I had some fun things I had to do along the way, like go to a Junior League committee meeting.  While a previous meeting introduced me to the Power Hour at Morton's, I was happy to find myself back at Forum.  Forum is still a relatively new addition to the Back Bay scene, but with the major renovations done to the space that used to be Vox Populi, (spoiler alert!) I highly recommend stopping by and checking it out.

This time around we were seated downstairs and ordered off of Forum's extensive bar/bistro menu that had many interesting looking dishes.  However, being me, the minute I saw the burger it seemed like a burger type of night.  Forum's burger is made with bone marrow, pancetta, Swiss cheese, Dijon and house made pickles.  With all of these fun ingredients, how could I choose sanything else?!?

The Burger

Chocolate, Salted Caramel and Chocolate Coconut Caramel Pretzel Bark

At work, I am in a very small department - only about 7 people - so at the holidays we don't hold a big office party.  Instead, we started doing a cookie swap, which is a good way to indulge for the holidays and also put together a fun gift for all of the security guards and parking attendants and all of the others in our building to help make things easier.  However, this year the cookie swap was on the Wednesday of a very busy week, so I was at a bit of a loss when trying to decide what to make.  I refused to buy something pre-made but it almost came to that!

Instead, I remembered a recipe I spotted on Pinterest that was for a pretzel bark, which required very little cooking, so at 9:00pm on Tuesday night I started to put this recipe together and was "done" by 9:20.

To get started, I put together my ingredients to make sure I had everything I needed - it was too late to get started only to be missing something important!

The Ingredients