Beans by way of introductions.

I never thought that I was the type of eater who would eat the same thing for days on end, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t think I was ever provided the chance when I was growing up, and frankly, I genuinely like to cook too much to allow myself to go very long without making something new. However, the one bad habit that I do have is making a full portion of things- to serve 4 or 6 or 8- when there are only two people in the house. Sometimes we end up eating more than our fair share (Hello, chicken pad sew), and sometimes I take the leftovers for lunch. But, sometimes there are dishes (like this one, of course, which is why I’m giving you this back story) that have so many portions that it requires eating it for days. It reaches the fine line for ‘an inordinate amount of food’*

In this case, this dish served for a dinner, three lunches, and one breakfast. Far from inordinate, but slowly reaching the point where I might be craving something new later this week. Maybe.

The basis of this recipe is derived from Heidi Swanson, of 101 Cookbooks. She forever surprises me with how tasty you can make ‘healthy’ food. In which she takes crazy grains that I would never think to buy, and makes them into delicate and delicious pastries. She makes legumes sound and taste more interesting than meat. I think if I were to ever attempt vegetarianism, Heidi’s books would be my crutches. (On the other hand, I recently got my hands on a copy of The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, which is grounded in Quebecois food culture. I have no plans to stop eating meat.)

The incomparable Kelly brought her take on this dish to our supper club. I don’t think it was the most broadly loved dish in the room, but for me, it was the most deeply loved. These beans are everything that I love about Latin cuisine – spicy, and warm, and toasty, with the chipotle sauce, but also far from heavy, with a cilantro pesto that makes them sing. (I know, there are metaphors about beans and song. Sorry.) If you’re not one for cilantro, you could make a pesto of parsley/olive oil/garlic/lemon, just the same. As Heidi rightly points out, even though there are a lot of components, you can do much of the work ahead of time, or in stages, before completing it in the oven.

Chipotle White Beans
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 pound of large, dried white beans, prepped using the quick-cook method.

After cooking them to tender, salt them well and let them sit for about ten minutes, before draining. Proceed with the rest of the recipe:

Chipotle-Tomato sauce:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 big pinches of red pepper flakes
2 pinches of salt
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 14-ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons adobo sauce from a can of chipotle peppers

Place the olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt, and chopped garlic into a cold medium saucepan. Stir while you heat the saucepan over medium-high heat. Saute until fragrant – you don’t want the garlic to brown. Stir in the tomatoes and heat to a gentle simmer. Remove from heat and stir in the adobo sauce. Taste. If the sauce needs more salt add it now, more chipotle flavor? Now is the time. Set aside.

Cilantro Pesto:
1 medium clove of garlic
1/3 cup fresh cilantro
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
a small handful of toasted pepitas or shelled pumpkin seeds (optional)
Salt, to taste

Combine the garlic, cilantro, and pumpkin seeds in a food processor. Pulse while you drizzle in the olive oil. Season with a bit of salt and set aside.

2/3 cup feta or goat cheese
1 cup cubed, whole-grain bread, toasted in a skillet with a tablespoon of butter.

Heat the oven to 425F degrees. In a 9×13 casserole or dutch oven, toss the beans with the tomato sauce. Top with the cheese, cilantro pesto and bread cubes and bake in the top-third of the oven for roughly thirty minutes -when the cheese gets bubbly and a little bit brown. Let it stand for 10 minutes before serving – you don’t want to burn your tongue.

*When we hosted a New Year’s Eve party, I asked people to RSVP so as to keep us from having an inordinate amount of food. When a friend asked for a definition, I provided: “An inordinate amount of food is the amount at which you cannot finish the leftovers before it spoils.”

Lemon Bar Ice Cream

I promised, when I wrote the Dutch Baby post, that I would share the recipe for lemon bar ice cream. My husband is convinced it’s the best ice cream I have ever made. It was ice cream that was nearly a month in the making.

You see, a month ago, when I was baking up a storm for Urban Craft, I baked a batch of lemon bars that weren’t a complete failure, but that weren’t quite up to my standards of what I want to sell. I didn’t throw them out: I offered some of them up on Twitter. I ate more than my fair share. I saved some in a freezer bag, in the back of the freezer, where I would avoid eating them only end up eating two in the weeks that followed.

Fast forward to this weekend past, when we had a couple of friends over for a pizza dinner. I had promised to make lemon bar ice cream, and if there’s one area where I don’t flake on people it’s in the kitchen. So, lemon bar ice cream it was. I really have nothing more to say on the matter, aside from that it’s worth ruining a pan of lemon bars to make these. And if you’re completely incapable of ruining lemon bars, make a batch, eat half, and use the other half to make this.

Lemon Bar Ice Cream
Makes 1.5 litres

1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
2 cups 18% cream
The seeds of 1/2 a vanilla bean (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

1 cup chopped lemon bars (about 6 bars, depending on size). I use this recipe to make my lemon bars, but I’ll assume you know what you’re doing on that front.

In a saucepan whisk together the zest, the lemon juice, the sugar, and the eggs, whisk in 1 cup of the cream and the vanilla, and cook the mixture over moderately high heat, whisking constantly, until it just comes to a simmer.

Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing hard on the zest, and chill it, covered with plastic wrap, until it is cold.

Whisk in the remaining 1 cup cream. Cover and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Churn in the ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions until the consistency of soft serve. Add the lemon bar pieces and continue churning for 1 minute, until incorporated. Transfer to a container and freeze until solid, at least 1 hour.

Oh, Baby.

I was going to subtitle this post “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much,” but my love for the Benelux nations extends beyond Netherlands. Belgian frites (and waffles), Luxembourgish bretzels, and of course, all their around delicious beer options. Yum. The other problem with emphasizing the Dutch heritage of this recipe is that it’s not really Dutch at all – Dutch pancakes (Poffertjes) are made in a small pan and are something of a cross between pancakes and doughnuts. Delicious, but not a dutch baby. Dutch babies are akin to German pancakes…and if anyone knows the difference, please let me know in the comments!

Enough with the politicking, though. This sucker is delicious, delectable, delightful. The decision to make these was inspired by Edgar, who has been serving up duck fat fried Dutch Baby pancakes with pork belly for a few weekends. It’s kinda like a cross between a souffle, a crepe, and an omlette, and it’s as scrumptious with plums and maple syrup, as it is with pork belly, or with lemon bar ice cream and mint. What? Lemon bar ice cream? That’s coming later this week. Promise!

It’s also dead simple. Beat your batter, make it bubble, pour it in a hot cast-iron pan, in to the oven and walk away. Twenty minutes later, sit down to an incredible breakfast. (Or dinner. You know I’m going to put kale and swiss cheese on one of these this week, right?)

Dutch Baby Pancakes
Makes one 9-inch pancakes, enough for 2 hungry folk, or 4-6 as part of a larger spread.

1 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk (2% or higher)
4 large eggs
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter

Heat the oven to 425F. Place a 9-inch cast iron skillets in the oven. (Heating them while the oven heats ensures that the pancake will have a gorgeous, crispy exterior.)

Combine the flour and sugar in a food processor and pulse several times to combine. Add the milk, eggs and vanilla, and blend continuously for 10 seconds. Scrape down the sides, and blend continuously for another 10 seconds or until the batter is frothy. Let the batter stand in the blender for 15-20 minutes to give the flour time to absorb the liquids.

Melt the butter in the cast-iron skillet and pour the batter into the hot skillet. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are crisp and the pancake has risen. Serve it straight from the oven, with whatever delicious things you like to put on pancakes.

Duck fat dinner rolls

I hate using the same photo for two posts in the same week, and I hope you’ll forgive me once you taste these dinner rolls. I made them for a supper club that the delightful Kelly of The Gouda Life has founded and for which I am all too happy to be a part. Our theme for the evening was “comfort food”, but it ended up being more along the lines of “fancy winter food that leaves you feeling warm and full inside”. There was bacon wrapped meatloaf, gnocchi with an amazing tomato sauce, a play on this bean dish – which I dreamt about for the three days following, and homemade peanut butter cups (secret ingredient: ritz crackers). Not your mother’s Sunday night roast.

Originally, my contribution was vegetarian handpies with mushrooms, caramelized onions and goat cheese. These were good, but a lot of work for something that wasn’t a total standout. Then, I started thinking about popcorn and truffle oil, and that became a natural combination for snack food while everything was (re)heating. Then, I reminded myself of Amateur Gourmet, and was scrolling through it, when BAM: The best dinner rolls of your life. Dinner rolls were kinda always my favourite part of Sunday dinners, so this seemed like a really natural contribution. Except that they called for lard or shortening, and I had neither. So, I did what any irrational person, who was already spending the better part of the day selling her baked gods, would do and I went and picked up duck fat.

They were the best dinner rolls that I have ever had. (Of course, what do you expect from duck fat?) Go, get yourself some duck fat, and make these. I don’t care if it’s Wednesday, or Sunday, but make these. (And if you really want to be spectacular, throw some pulled pork on them. Could you imagine that? Mmmhm.)

Duck Fat Dinner Rolls
Adapted from Donald Link’s Real Cajun, by way of Amateur Gourmet

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water

1/2 cup shortening or lard
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup boiling water

1 egg, lightly beaten
3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted

In a small bowl, stir together the yeast and warm water. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, use a fork to combine the shortening, sugar, salt, and boiling water. Allow this mixture to cool for a few minutes. (Alternatively, you can combine the ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat for 2 minutes using the paddle attachment until combined, then cool.)

Use a fork to stir the beaten egg and yeast into the shortening mixture, then add 3 cups of the flour (add the remaining 1/2 to 1 cup as you knead). When the mixture pulls together into a dough and you can no longer stir it with a fork, use your hands.
Lightly flour a work surface and knead the dough until it has a smooth sheen and doesn’t fall apart; 5 to 10 minutes. Try not too add too much flour here.

Cover the dough and let it rise for 30-40 minutes, until it has increased 25%. Punch it down, knead it briefly (up to 1 minute).
Roll the dough into 2-inch balls (there should be enough dough for about 16 rolls), and space evenly on a butter baking sheet.
Cover and let rise for 15 minutes. Heat the oven to 325F.

Bake the rolls for about 20 minutes, until golden brown.
Brush with copious amounts of melted butter. Eat hot.

This weekend (& thoughts on Urban Craft)

Jars upon jars upon jars.

A truly inordinate amount of food.

One heck of a happy pup. (via The Gouda Life)

Oh, this weekend was a long and heavy one. Entirely burdensome, but completely worthwhile. There are similarities in launching your own business and running your wedding. Both are labours of love, no doubt, and both occasionally require you to look at your partner and think, and then act. Their support is meaningful, even if to bystanders it appears that they played no part.

Urban Craft was a fantastic experience, and I’m incredibly grateful for the organizers and their volunteers who kept us sane and ensured we had what we needed.

I have come to the realization that I love doing this, even through bouts of frustration at times, that it is a worthwhile endeavour. Most of my frustrations came from the shear mass of stuff that I chose to prepare and less than stellar planning. But, at the end of the day, there’s something incredibly delightful about seeing someone who has never tried an Oreo bite into their first one, a handmade one, and see their eyes open widely. Similarly, there were  a few lovely customers who expressed the utmost excitement when they saw the salted caramel sauce, joy of joys was brought to them.

So, you will likely see me at Urban Craft again, in a few months’ time. In the meantime, I will be offering one type of sauce/spread and one type of baked good for order at the beginning of each month, and I will be taking personal orders.

In the next few days, I will be setting up a page with more details about my offerings, but in the meantime, feel free to drop me a line, if there’s something you’d love.

Friday food links

I have all sorts of things that I can’t wait to share with you next week. But, meanwhile, it’s been some time since I’ve done a round-up of my favourite things around the web. So let’s.

I’m hosting a supper club tomorrow night and I think I might whip up these rolls.
I think after the insanity of Saturday’s supper club, I’m going to have to check out some of these lighter Super Bowl snacks.
This salad sounds like just the ticket for lunch next week.
I have all sorts of egg whites left, so I think I might whip up these meringues from Joy in the near future. They look so pretty!
If you’re getting hitched, Wed by Hand is next weekend, and I would strongly recommend checking out this amazing show for awesome wedding food vendors!

Scared of a little sugar

Since I’m going to be at Urban Craft this weekend, celebrating all things sweet and hopefully selling some delicious things, I thought I would take the opportunity to highlight a few of the things that I will have on offer.

I’ve never been afraid of eating sugar. No, siree. My favourite candy as a kid was rock candy, from the science museum, flavoured root beer (I have a love for sarsaparilla that knows no bounds). I’ve had good teeth my whole life, save for a stint with braces, but that’s not for having restrained myself in the department of sugar.

What scared me about sugar was cooking it. Boiling water? No problem. (No really. If it were, we wouldn’t be here.) Boiling things *in* water is also not an issue. Heck, even making a sugar syrup (sugar + water) for an Italian meringue is something that I’m familiar with and all too happy to do. But, then I read that Rachel was boiling sugar for the glue in her gingerbread houses. And that seemed scary, but I tried it. And it did not fail. In fact, it was the sturdiest gingerbread hovel of all time.

Fast forward to a few months later, on a trip to Paris, where I discovered salted caramel with good quality butter that would make your knees buckle (unfortunate, since we were trying to see Paris on foot, which is difficult with buckled knees). Some people come home from France with a craving for macarons or a penchant for high fashion. I came home with the desire to find the best butter and make salted caramel. And with a longing for a good ham sandwich.

So began the process of boiling sugar on a regular basis in this house, and even though it’s still a little daunting at first – the sugar crystals stick together and you wonder if it’ll cook evenly in the end – the result is a silky smooth, warm, caramel that you want to pour on everything, especially on everything that comes out of a bakery. This stuff is addictive, but I love putting it on toasted french bread (with or without nut butter), serving it with warm brownies, or drizzling it over ice cream. Or, eat it with a spoon when a ferocious sugar craving hits. I won’t tell if you do.

Birthday Cake Cookies

I remember the first birthday that I celebrated with my in-laws. Their tradition of choosing one’s favourite take-out and getting a cake from the grocery store confounded me. I grew up with a mother who didn’t particularly care to bake complicated cakes, but who would at the very least make an effort to make a ridiculous meal and either prepare a complex dessert, or buy one from the upscale bakery downtown. This is not something that I begrudge my in-laws, far from it. This is merely to state that I’m beginning to understand where my efforts in the kitchen originate. For example, upon my return from Germany, I requested a Black Forest cake for my birthday, something which my mother had never made. Yet, out of love, she found a terribly detailed recipe and prepared a stunning and delicious cake.

My husband, however, introduced me to the concept of real birthday cake. That birthday cake with a sickly sweet, bright white, slightly cloying icing, that may or may not have an addictive quality to it. Shiny icing, underneath which one may find a cake, which – although it doesn’t taste like real vanilla – tastes more like vanilla than anything else you can imagine.

These cookies are awfully similar to that, with a gorgeous shiny icing, flecks of sprinkles throughout, and that uncanny vanilla flavour. Leave it to the incomparable Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar to create desserts around childhood birthday cakes. These are a composition of Tosi’s Birthday Cake Crumb and Birthday Cake Frosting, and the method that she uses for her cookies, in which the butter, sugar, glucose (or corn syrup), and eggs are beaten ferociously until they are light and fluffy, and the cookies are chilled for an hour, to ensure that they hold their shape. The wait is worthwhile in the end, for a ridiculously tender cookie, that’s good enough to appear alongside birthday cakes

Birthday Cake Cookies: Crumb, Cookie, Frosting.
Adapted from Momofuku Milk Bar

Birthday Cake Crumb
The birthday cake crumb is a variation of one of Tosi’s ‘mother’ recipes (based on the idea of the four French ‘mother’ sauces, from which all other French sauces derive.) It’s a sandy, yet not gritty, texture that adds flavour and crunch to the cookie. The recipe will keep in the fridge for about a week, so it’s a good thing to throw together one day when you’ve got a half hour.

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons light brown sugar, lightly packed
3/4 cup cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons rainbow sprinkles
1/4 cup grapeseed oil (or other flavourless oil, if you happen to know of one)
1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 300F.
Combine the sugars, flour, baking powder, salt, and sprinkles in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed until well combined.
Add the oil and vanilla and paddle again to distribute. The wet ingredients will act as glue to help the dry ingredients form small clusters; continue paddling until that happens.
Spread the clusters on a parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pan. Bake for 20 minutes, breaking them up occasionally. The crumbs should still be slightly moist to the touch; they will dry and harden as they cool.
Allow to cool completely before using.

Cookies
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
2 eggs
2 teaspoons clear vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup milk powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles
1/2 recipe Birthday Cake Crumb

Combine the butter, sugar, and glucose in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the eggs and vanilla, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, milk powder, baking soda, salt, and rainbow sprinkles. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. (Do not walk away from the machine during this step, or you will risk overmixing the dough.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
Still on low speed, add the birthday cake crumbs and mix in for 30 seconds—just until they are incorporated.
Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, portion the dough out on to a cutting board, spacing the dough close together. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Cooking the dough fresh from the mixer will spread the cookies and they will burn. And that would be sad.
Heat the oven to 350F.
Transfer the cookies to a parchment or Silipat-lined baking sheet, about 2 inches apart from one another.
Bake for 18 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the top of the cookie is a cracked.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the pan before transferring to a cooling rack.

Birthday Cake Frosting
1 stick butter at room temperature
2 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
pinch of baking powder
pinch of citric acid

Combine the butter, shortening, and cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
With the mixer on its lowest speed, stream in the corn syrup, and vanilla. Crank the mixer up to medium-high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is silky smooth and a glossy white. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the confectioners’ sugar, salt, baking powder, and citric acid and mix on low speed just to incorporate them into the batter. Crank the speed back up to medium-high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until you have a brilliant stark white, beautifully smooth frosting. It should look just like it came out of a plastic tub at the grocery store! Use the frosting immediately, or store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.

Homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread

Since I’m going to be at Urban Craft this weekend, celebrating all things sweet and hopefully selling some delicious things, I thought I would take the opportunity to highlight a few of the things that I will have on offer.

As my husband and I drove over to friends’ on Sunday night, we were trying to determine a schedule for next Saturday: He would walk the dog, I would prepare things to the car, we would drive to his parents, where we will leave the dog and then go the Urban Craft. But, would all the things fit in the car, with the dog? He suggested taking things over the night before, or even earlier this week. I commented on how the chocolate-hazelnut spread needed to be refrigerated.

Husband: But Nutella doesn’t need to be refrigerated
Kaitlin: No, it doesn’t. But Nutella doesn’t have cream in it.
Husband: Doesn’t it have milk in it though?
Kaitlin: Nope. It’s mostly oil and sugar.

Google is good for many things, particularly for finding out the ingredients in things. Whether you have allergies or you simply want to know if you can pronounce the ingredients, Google is a rather informative search engine, even if their new privacy policy scares me.

Sure enough, Google tells us that Nutella, made by Ferrero, contains the following: “SUGAR, PALM OIL, HAZELNUTS, COCOA, SKIM MILK, REDUCED MINERALS WHEY (MILK), LECITHIN AS EMULSIFIER (SOY), VANILLIN: AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR.”

I can pronounce all of those. But, I remember my mother telling me when I was in elementary school that I couldn’t take ramen noodles to school because they had palm oil in them and that was the least healthy of all oils. Of course, none of us are eating Nutella for its health benefits. Nor was I intending to eat ramen noodles as a healthy lunch. The environmental impact of palm oil is, however, perhaps more of a concern.

I’m not sure how this post, about something so delicious and lovely as chocolate and hazelnuts, became quite so political so quickly. It’s not so simple as just chocolate and hazelnuts, I suppose. My homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread contains four ingredients: Milk chocolate, cream, hazelnuts, and vanilla bean. As some will tell you, it’s so delicious that it’s hard to not eat it with a spoon. My favourite thing to do is to mix it with marscapone or ricotta and baked it in a bit of leftover pizza dough, for a sweet calzone. Or, dip fruit into it, if you’re concerned about the health effects.

An ode to Pressed

I think I’m a bit late on the Pressed bandwagon. Kelly wrote about it two months ago and her collection of photos puts mine to shame. Lana has posted about her three or four trips in a similarly detailed fashion. And I normally don’t do reviews. So, why write about it?

Well, for one, the Americano. It’s the best that I’ve had in the city. The Pressed Americano has ruined me for my Monday-to-Friday coffee from that-local-chain-that-you-all-know-and-maybe-love. I can drink this Americano black. I don’t think that I ever thought that I would be a black coffee drinker, but there you have it. I genuinely wish that we had moved to Centretown, so that I could be in closer proximity to their espresso.

For another thing, there’s a strong balance of homemade and let’s-not-fuss-too-much here. There’s something really fantastic about having EVERYTHING homemade, down to your mayonnaise. I can appreciate the level of commitment that this requires; as someone who has made pumpkin puree from scratch for pumpkin cheesecake, it takes tenacity and a good amount of heart. And most of what you will find here is made from scratch: The effort and love that goes into the smoked chicken, the homemade aioli, the hand-cut sweet potato chips, is completely appreciated in every bite. They know what they can do and they do it very, very well. Frankly, I love the fact that their bread is ACE baguette, because it’s accessible, and it’s not the same bread that every other sandwich shop in this city uses. In an era in which handmade is becoming the trend, it’s nice to see balance. It’s sane-making.

Also, the brunch. You know by now that I’m a sucker for good brunch. This Sunday, Pressed started serving a selection of waffles. I love that the waffles play on the idea of ‘pressed’, the sandwich press, the waffle iron, there’s a certain amount of imagery at play here that works well, if you care about that sort of thing. If you don’t, let me say this: The waffles are delicious. The ones that we ordered were perfectly cooked, and came with an apple compote, marscapone cheese, lemon zest and maple syrup. It was a great balance of yeasty, doughy, creamy, sweet and fresh. What I’m most excited for, however, are the savoury ones. I have this thing, about brunch, where no matter how much I want pancakes, or french toast, or a waffle, I will inevitably end up ordering eggs benedict or an omlette. Salty, smokey flavours win over sweet. Pressed has five waffle options at the moment, two of which are savoury: Waffles Benedict comes with poached eggs, in-house smoked bacon, and hollandaise sauce, while The Hangover sounds like waffle poutine, with its cheese curds and gravy.

Lastly, it’s the atmosphere. It reminds me a bit of Edgar, if only because Jeff (Pressed’s owner) and Marysol are both incredibly passionate about what they do and are involved in the relationship between the diner and the kitchen. Pressed also gives me the same uncontrollable giddy, happy feeling that I get when I walk into Edgar, and that same resigned sadness when leaving. Luckily, I know that I’ll be back soon.