The Food of Philadelphia and New Jersey

Ever since I met my friend Megan a couple years ago, she's been telling me how great the food is in her hometown in New Jersey. Her hometown is just outside of Philadelphia, so she's also been telling me how great the food in Philly is. Naturally, as a big lover of food, I've always wanted to try out these things Megan has been telling me about. And this past week I was in luck; I finally managed to make it out to Philadelphia for a visit and try out all of the delicious food the city has to offer. As I'm sure you can imagine, a Philly cheesesteak was the first on my list:

1. Philly Cheesesteak: I'm told that there are 2 places in the city to get the best cheesesteaks (Geno's and Pat's). I had a lot of other things to accomplish on my trip, so I didn't manage to make it to one of the 2 "top" places. But I did still manage to get a cheesesteak. I got mine at the Reading Terminal Market at Carmen's Famous Italian Hoagies and Cheesesteaks and it was delicious. The classic cheesesteak is with cheese whiz and onions. But these days you can get provolone cheese, peppers, and sometimes more on yours too. I opted to get provolone and peppers (both sweet and hot) on mine. Unfortunately, I was too excited to eat it and I forgot to take a picture. You'll have to take my word for it that mine looked something like the picture here that I found on google images ;)


2. Chickie's and Pete's Crab Fries: While in Philly, I also took the opportunity to go see a Phillies game. It was an awesome night with perfect weather and the Phillies won (always a plus). One food that's really popular at the stadium are Chickie's and Pete's crab fries. They were a tad too salty for me, but still tasted really great, especially with a beer.

Watching the game

3. Tommy Dinic's Pork and Beef: For part of my time in Philly I stayed downtown right by the Reading Terminal Market which is an indoor market full of lots and lots of different food options. One of those options is Tommy Dinic's. A coworker of mine (who is from Philly) told me that I had to try the pulled pork sandwich there. So I waited 20 minutes in line to get the delicious sandwich you see below. I only got provolone on mine but you can also get greens (i.e. spinach or broccoli rabe) or peppers. I thought the wait was definitely worth it.

4. Water Ice: The concept of water ice was perplexing to me when Megan told me about it. At first I thought she was describing a snow cone or a slurpee, but she assured me that that's not what it was. It's actually more like Italian ice or sorbet but it comes out of a soft serve ice cream machine. In either case, it was really good. I got halfway through eating it before realizing I forgot to take a picture (so forgive me for the poor quality). I got mango flavored, but they have other kinds like blue raspberry and root beer. You can also mix the water ice with ice cream. Megan ended up getting root beer water ice with vanilla ice cream. Hers was also delicious and tasted like a root beer float. Apparently there are different types of water ice, but Megan recommended Polish water ice, so that's what we had.

5. Manco & Manco's Pizza: Being from New Jersey, Megan naturally wanted to dispel my misconceptions about what is really the Jersey Shore. The prospect of a day at the beach sounded wonderful to me, so of course I agreed to go. We spent a few hours on the beach and then went to walk the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. On the boardwalk we got a slice of pizza at Megan's favorite place, Manco & Manco's. I always like a good slice of pizza, and I definitely enjoyed this one. I just went for their generic plain (i.e. cheese) pizza. But they have other options like broccoli (which is apparently really good), venetian, sicilian, and more.

On the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ

6. Yuengling: If you ever make it out to Philly and try out all this delicious food, a great beer to pair with your food is a Yuengling. It's a lighter beer but has more flavor than something like Bud Light or Miller Lite. I'd never heard of Yuengling until I came out east and Megan told me to try it. It's by no means a craft beer, but this Philly beer is definitely a great choice.





So that concludes by Philly and New Jersey food/traveling experience. Philly sometimes gets a bad rap for being a dirty city, but I truly enjoyed myself. And it helped that I had a great travel guide (thanks Meg!). There are a bunch of things to do in Philly and I just gave you a lot of good food options above :)

Chicken and Pasta Salad

This is kind of a new take on chicken salad and pasta salad, but it's really good and really easy. I can make it at the beginning of the week and then eat the leftovers for lunch throughout the week. 

Ingredients

2 cooked and diced chicken breasts

1 box of penne pasta

1 1/2 cups chopped celery

1 1/2 cups red grapes

3/4 cup mayo

1 Tbsp Dijon mustard

2-3 dashes lemon juice

Directions

1. Bake chicken at 350 for 40 to 50 minutes. After the chicken is done, cut it into diced pieces.

2. While chicken is cooking, cook the pasta. After you drain the pasta, run cold water over it cool it down.

3. Chop the celery and pick grapes off of the stems.

4. Combine chicken, pasta, celery, and grapes in a large bowl. Add the mayo, Dijon mustard, and lemon juice and mix everything together. 

You can easily adjust the quantities of each of the ingredients. If you want it to be more "saucy" just add a little more mayo and mustard. Or add more grapes if you like. The recipe is so easy, you can adjust it how you like or make it exactly how I did :)

Homemade Beer Bread

Fall is just around the corner...personally, I'm really sad to see summer go, but on the bright side, my favorite kind of beer is now available (yum, Oktoberfest....so delicious). In the spirit of good fall beers and continuing with my homemade series, I tried out this quick and easy recipe for beer bread. This is a great recipe to accompany with some warm fall soups.

Ingredients
3 cups flour (sifted)
3 teaspoons baking powder (omit if using Self-Rising flour)
1 teaspoon salt (omit if using Self-Rising flour)
1/4 cup sugar
1 can of beer (12 oz)
1/2 cup melted butter (you can use 1/4 cup if you prefer)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Mix dry ingredients and beer together. If you don't have a sifter for the flour, don't just pack it into the measuring cup (otherwise you're get really hard bread). Instead, spoon the flour into the measuring cup, so that the flour is less compacted.

3. Mix half of the melted butter into the dough.
4. Pour dough into a greased loaf pan. Then pour the rest of the butter over the top of the dough.

5. Bake 1 hour (I baked mine for 40 minutes since I used 2 small loaf pans). I recommend placing a sheet pan on the shelf below your loaf pan because some of the butter will probably spill over the edge.
6. After baking, immediately remove from pan and cool for at least 15 minutes.

Enjoy the hearty bread with a light beer taste :)

Credit for this recipe goes to Food.com

Homemade English Muffins

For the 4th edition of my homemade series, I decided to try out a recipe that kept popping up on Pinterest: Homemade English Muffins....I don't know about you, but I love Pinterest; I use it for recipe ideas all the time (if you haven't checked the site out yet, I highly recommend it). I found this recipe for Homemade English Muffins and figured it would fit perfectly with this series.

Ingredients

1 tsp active dry yeast

1 Tbsp sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 Tbsp butter

3 cups flour, divided

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup cornmeal

non-stick spray as needed

Directions

1. In a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup warm water. Stir to dissolve the sugar and yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes or until foamy on top.

Yeast and sugar after getting foamy

2. While the yeast/sugar mixture is resting, combine 1 1/2 cups flour and the salt in a large bowl. Stir well to evenly distribute the salt. In a second small bowl, combine the milk and butter. Microwave the milk/butter for for 30 seconds at a time, stirring until the butter melts into the milk.

3. Pour the yeast mixture and the milk mixture into the flour. Stir until it has combined into a pasty mix. Now take the remaining flour (you should have 1 1/2 cups left) and add 1/4 cup at a time. You may not use all of the remaining flour. Stir in 1/4 cup at a tie until the dough forms a soft, slightly sticky ball that pulls away from the bowl. (I probably used about 1 cup of flour here)

4. Sprinkle a little flour onto a clean countertop and coat your hands in flour. Dump the soft ball of dough out of the bowl and knead it for 5 minutes (if you don't know how to knead dough like I didn't, check out this link). Don't be too liberal with the flour in this step; adding too much will result in tough muffins.

5. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a bowl that has been coated in non-stick spray. Lightly spray the top of the dough and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until double in size (about 45 min - 1 hour)

The dough covered to let rise

6. Punch the dough down, shape it into another ball, cover the bowl/dough and let rise a second time (45 min - 1 hour or until double in size)

7. Punch down the dough again and turn it out onto a well floured countertop. Using a rolling pin, lightly roll the dough until it is about 3/4 inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, or round drinking glass to cut the dough into circles. When you can't cut out anymore circles, gently ball the remaining dough, roll again, and cut more.

8. Place the cut dough circles onto a sheet pan that has been liberally covered in cornmeal. Sprinkle more cornmeal on top of the muffins. Cover loosely with a damp towel and let rise, once more, until double in size (about another 45 min).

The cut out muffins on a cookie sheet before rising

9. Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat. Spray the pan with non-stick spray. Carefully transfer the fluffy, risen muffins to the hot skillet with a spatula. Cook the muffins in batches in the skillet until they are golden brown and crispy on each side. Make sure to keep the heat low so that the outside browns slowly, allowing time for the inside to bake. It took about 5-7 minutes for each side with mine.

One side is cooked, cooking the other

10. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Emily's Thoughts

Overall I thought this was a fun recipe to try (who knew you baked English muffins without the oven?!). It's not very hard, but it does take a decent time commitment--not for the physical baking, but for waiting for the dough to rise. If you want to try making something homemade that your normally never would, this is a good recipe to try. And the muffins taste good. 


Credit for this recipe goes to the Budget Bytes blog.

Homemade Peanut Butter

Continuing with my "homemade" series, where I cook things I would normally always buy at the store, I made homemade peanut butter. Three words for this recipe: simple, easy, delicious. I'm a big peanut butter lover, do so I just had to try out this recipe. And I highly recommend it. 

There are so many ways you can enjoy peanut butter :)

Ingredients

8 oz salted party peanuts or shelled and skinned roasted peanuts

1/4 teaspoon very fine salt (only if peanuts are not salted)

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons honey

1 to 2 teaspoons peanut oil (extra virgin olive oil works fine if you don't have peanut oil)

Special Tools: food processor

Directions

1. Put the peanuts, honey, and salt into the bowl of the food processor. Process until mixture is fine peanut pieces.

The mixture before adding oil

2. Add oil through the opening at the top of the food processor or all at once. Place the lid back on and continue to process until the mixture is smooth--about 2-3 minutes. (more processing produces smoother peanut butter)

The final product

Storage: store peanut butter in an airtight container in the fridge

Thanks to The Redhead Riter for the recipe!