Restaurant Review: Antigua

It had been a while since the ethnic dining group made it out to dinner, so it was nice to get together this week and go to dinner at Antigua in West Allis. I had been to Antigua before, but years ago and I didn't remember much about it, other than it wasn't a Mexican restaurant, but a Latin restaurant.

We had a great experience--and great food--when we were there. The menu contains many tapas you can have for appetizers or order a couple to make up a meal. There is one page dedicated to Mexican food and two types of paella. Another page has different entrees from Latin American countries including Peru, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain, as well as Antigua-created dishes.

Rather than the usual chips and salsa, we were treated to a plate for small-bite appetizers: a piece of mango and cheese quesadilla. a lightly fried potato-puff sort of thing and an empanada-style dough pocket with meat (sorry I don't have better descriptions for the appetizers!).

Even though we had those to snack on, we couldn't pass up an order of guacamole. The guacamole was very fresh and flavorful--it had a good, strong lime taste--and it came served with fresh, homemade tortilla chips that reminded me of the ones we had in Mexico.

For meals, the other ladies each ordered a bowl of the caldito xochitl, Mexican "hot flower soup," made with chicken broth, shredded chicken, avocado, onions, tomato, rice, tortilla strips and lime. Sun and Leah had different salads, and Lisa tried one of the tapas, Yolanda empanadas.

I ordered the Peruvian dishes: lomo saltado, which was strips of beef, yellow aji pepper, vegetables and fried potatoes, served over green rice. It was delicious! My only (small) complaint was that it wasn't spicy at all, despite having two peppers next to the dish name on the menu. No worries, though--I added some of the spicy salsa our waitress brought.

We had a great time at Antigua. The service was a bit slow, but it was pretty busy for a Tuesday night, and it was nice catching up, so the time went quickly. On Tuesdays, if you tweet from Antigua you can get a free drink, so I enjoyed a mango margarita with my meal. Not a bad deal! I can't wait to go back and try something else. I'd like to check out their brunch menu sometime, too.

Restaurant Review: Firefly Urban Bar & Grill

Last Friday, Nate and I went out to dinner at Firefly Urban Bar & Grill in Tosa with our friends Craig and Margo. We've been there a few times before, but hadn't been in quite some time and not since they changed up their menu.

There was a nice crowd in the back part of the restaurant, or the bar area, which I prefer. The two dining rooms at Firefly are very different from one another. The front room is much more formal. It's nice, but it's not so much my style. The back bar area, though, is more lively and has a nice bar-slash-dining room atmosphere.

I knew at least one thing on the menu I wanted to have before we even go there--the crunch salad. This salad is unbelievably good. It's made with bok choy, baby spinach, wasabi peas and a chili buttermilk dressing. Luckily, you can get the salad as a side with any of the sandwiches. So I ordered the microburgers (sliders). There were three microburgers: one had goat cheese and mojo salsa, another had tomato, basil mayo and mozzarella and the other had smoke bacon and white cheddar. The flavors were good, but the burgers were a bit dry, despite asking for them to be cooked to medium.

Nate ordered the firefly burger, which came with pepperjack cheese, bacon, pickled jalapenos, lettuce, tomato, haystack onions and chipotle mayo. Schwoo! He had it with a side of creamy tomato soup. I had a bite of it and it was really tasty. Very filling, too--he couldn't even finish it!

Craig had the all-you-can-eat fish fry (for the record, he didn't even get seconds) which he said was good, and Margo had the chicken torta--pulled chicken, coriander sour cream, cilantro, avocado and pickled onions--as well as the crunch salad, after I told her both were delicious. Both of them seemed to enjoy their meals!

Overall, we had a good experience. They have a great beer list, which of course was great. Service was just a tad slow, but that was OK, as we just chit chatted the whole time.

We talked about saving room for the tableside s'mores, but we ended up going to Cold Spoons for gelato afterward. Yum! (That's a combo of sea salt caramel and blood-orange gelato.)

Bulgar & Butternut Squash Side Dish

There were a few reasons to make this dish, which is based on a recipe I found in my Moosewood Restaurant Cooking For Health book:

1. I needed a side dish to go with the Tex-Mex stuffed portabella mushrooms I plan to make for Wednesday's dinner (recipe from this same cookbook).


2. I needed to use up the rest of the butternut squash I had, after making the chickpea chili.


3. I needed to come up with a good pre-workout snack that had complex ("good") carbs and other good stuff.

I found a recipe for quinoa and sweet potatoes, and decided to adapt it to what I had--bulgar and butternut squash. Bulgar is a whole grain that has lots of protein and fiber, plus lots of vitamins and minerals.

Bulgar & Butternut Squash

• 2 cups cooked bulgar


• 1 Tbs. olive oil


• 1 cup diced onions


• 1/2 teas. salt


• about 2 cups diced butternut squash


• 2 cups lightly packed finely chopped fresh spinach


• 3 Tbs toasted pine nuts


• 1/2 cup dried cranberries


• 2 Tbs. minced scallions


• 1 Tbs. lemon juice


• salt and pepper to taste

In a saucepan, bring water to a boil then add butternut squash. Cook for 5 minutes or until tender. Drain.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil and cook onions and salt over medium-high heat for about 7 minutes. Turn off heat. Add butternut squash, bulgar and rest of ingredients to pot. Stir to mix. Season as desired.

I've only had a few bites of this so far, but it's really pretty tasty. There's a lot you can do with it--add other foods or take some out. I can't decide yet if it'd be better hot or cold--I think it would work both ways! You could also add some cooked ground chicken, turkey or beef if you wanted to make it a full, well-rounded and healthy meal.

CCC: Crockpot Chickpea Chili

In the same issue of Cooking Light that I found the shrimp pad Thai, I also found a recipe for Chickpea Chili in the crockpot. I had been looking for a vegetarian meal and something to put in the crockpot for a Monday night meal. Perfect!

The meal took some prep time, so don't think you can just throw a few things in the crockpot, all willy nilly, and be done with it. The recipe calls for dried chickpeas (although I supposed canned would be all right), which you have to let stand in boiling water for 1 hour. There is also a lot of chopping, as the recipe calls for butternut squash, onion and garlic. BUT, it's all worth it. This meal was delicious and hearty. And it makes a ton--we've had six servings of it, plus there are at least two, maybe three more, in the freezer.

We pretty much followed the recipe, but did a few things differently:

• Used veggie broth rather than chicken broth to make it fully vegetarian (and, honestly, I had veggie broth on hand!).


• I couldn't find golden raisins at Outpost, so we used regular (brown?) raisins.


• I didn't have fresh cilantro, but I had had some in the freezer, in ice-cube form, so I defrosted that and used it. I think fresh cilantro would be better, but alas.

The chili was great over the couscous, but I think it would be great just plain, too. The only thing I would do differently next time is make it spicy--the recipe calls for a bit of ground red pepper, but I'd add more or a jalapeno--something. Also, one thing to note--the recipe calls for pimiento-stuffed olives, which I love, but Nate doesn't like. We added them anyway, and he said they tasted just fine.

Shrimp Pad Thai a la Cooking Light

While flipping through the March 2011 issue of Cooking Light not too long ago, a recipe for Shrimp Pad Thai caught my eye. I love just about any kind of Thai or Thai-inspired dish, and we hadn't made anything with shrimp in a while, so this was great.

The recipe was super easy and didn't take much time. We followed the recipe exactly. I think next time we make it I would do just a few things different:

• Add more Sriracha, although it's fine to add to the plate after it's cooked.


• Add a bit more shrimp. The recipe only calls for 8 oz., so divided by four servings, that's not too much. We cut up the shrimp, too, for maximum plate coverage! Also, I think tofu would be good in it, too.


• I think most pad Thai recipes call for eggs to be mixed in while stir frying the veggies and shrimp, so I'd definitely do that next time.

We served the pad Thai with some baked spring rolls we picked up in the sale bin at Outpost. It was all very tasty!

Vegetarian Lentil Loaf

I've had a vegetarian cookbook, Quick & Easy Tasty Vegetarian, for a few years now (it was on sale at Border's for $1.99! I couldn't pass it up). I've only made one or two recipes out of it, although everything looks really tasty (well, the name of the cookbook indicates that!). I thought a good vegetarian meal would be good after a somewhat meat-heavy weekend.

I picked the lentil roast, because it looked healthy, easy and was something I could make Sunday afternoon and pop in the oven when I got home Monday night.

Lentil Roast

• 1 cup red lentils (I used brown (I think that's what they were) lentils, as I had a bunch in the pantry)


• 2 cups vegetable stock (I used broth)


• 1 bay leaf (I used 3 because mine are pretty old)


• 1 Tbs. butter, softened (omit if decide just to use cooking spray)


• 2 Tbs. dried whole wheat breadcrumbs (I used some random, probably white bread, breadcrumbs I had)


• 1 cups grated sharp cheddar


• 1 leek, finely chopped


• 4.5 oz. button mushrooms, finely chopped


• 1.5 cups fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs


• 2 Tbs. chopped parsley


• 1 Tbs. lemon juice


• 2 eggs, slightly beaten


• salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375*. Put lentils, stock/broth and bay leaf in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed and the lentils have softened (this probably took me more like 45 minutes--I'm not sure if it's because I used different lentils or what, but the lentils didn't soak up the broth for quite a while). Discard bay leaf.

Line a 4 oz. loaf pan with baking parchment, grease with butter and sprinkle with dried bread crumbs (I ended up just using cooking spray because the parchment paper wasn't working too well for me).

Stir the cheese, leek, mushrooms, fresh breadcrumbs and parsley into the lentils. Bind the mixture together with the lemon juice and eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon into prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until golden.

Loosen loaf with a spatula and turn onto warmed serving plate (ours didn't exactly loosen so well and really look like a loaf when we were done. I figured it all tasted the same, though!).

This was really pretty tasty--the browned, crusty parts were my favorite. The recipe doesn't say how many servings this makes, but we turned it into five servings--six or seven would probably be better, though, as all those lentils and breadcrumbs make it really filling! We served the lentil loaf with some peas and leftover zucchini and yellow squash.

Homemade White Corn Tortillas

After having such delicious, fresh and always homemade tortillas in Mexico, I knew it was only a matter of time before Nate and I would attempt to make them from scratch. Luckily, my parents happened to have a tortilla press they bought at El Rey's years ago that was just collecting dust in their basement.

I had looked up a few tortilla recipes (including one from Pam Mehnert's A Year of Inconvenience blog), and they seemed really easy to make and just included three ingredients: maseca (instant corn masa flour), salt and water.

We ended up following the recipe on the back of the maseca bag, as we wanted to make quite a few tortillas so we could freeze them for future use. Here's how much of everything we used and what we did:

• 2 cups maseca (we used white corn, but you can buy yellow corn maseca, too)


• 1.25 cups water


• 1/4 tsp. salt

Combine all three ingredients. Mix thoroughly for about two minutes, forming soft dough. If dough is too dry, add more water, 1 Tbs. at a time (I think we added 1 or 2 Tbs.).

Divide dough in 16 equal balls (we weighed the entire mound of dough on our food scale and then divided by 16). Cover with a damp cloth to keep dough moist.

Line a tortilla press with two sheets of thick plastic wrap (we took a quart-sized resealable bag and split the seams. This worked very well). Place each ball between the plastic and press down until the tortilla measures 5-6 inches in diameter (this is pretty much the diameter of our tortilla press). Carefully peel off plastic wrap.

Preheat ungreased griddle, skillet or cast iron pan (very important--I don't think the skillet was warm enough for the first few we cooked). Cook tortillas one at a time (well, we ended up cooking two at once in our big skillet--it worked fine), for about 1 minute per side (we generally cooked them until they browned just a bit). Cover tortillas with cloth napkin (or keep in warm oven) to keep them soft and warm.

These were fantastic, and I doubt I'll ever use store-bought tortillas again. The size is great, too--I much prefer having one or two small tortillas or tacos to one giant one. Yeah, it takes more time to make these than going out and buying some from the store. But the process was not complicated and really only took us about half an hour. Now that we at least kind of know what we're doing, I think it will go even faster next time.