This Week at the Herdic House
Not much has changed last week to this week: the region is still under a foot of snow (with more in the forecast), and the groundhog has recently told us to accept our lot—there’s six more weeks of it en route. So we’ll continue dreaming up dishes that’ll help chase off the winter chill, like tonight’s Blue Plate: a butternut squash lasagne (one of the last squash appearances of the winter), studded with fresh mozzarella, housemade ricotta and basil pesto, and finished with toasted walnuts. The Blue Plate, as always, is $18 at our House and $20 to go. And we’ll be serving up fried calamari with chipotle aioli and arugula as an appetizer to boot. We’ll hope to see you out tonight!
Come join us for our Thursday happy hours at the bar, from 5-7 pm, with $1 off all beers and $2 off wines by the glass. Plus we’ll be serving our Thursday night feature that feigns healthiness, all while loaded with the tangy umami of ranch dressing: house favorite Herdic Pittsburgh salad, this week served with grilled tenderloin tips, fresh-cut fries, grated cheddar and parmesan ranch. Hannah’s cocktail feature will be a lemon meringue pie flip, giving new meaning to the protein-drink craze sweeping the nation…
If you were looking for a winter when you could teach your kids to love (or hate) cross country skiing, this might be the best one we’ve had in the past ten years. Not just a gorgeous deep snowfall, but temperatures that look likely to keep it around for the rest of the month, meaning that intrepid (if underpracticed) cross-country skiers across the region have been out cutting track for the past week, and even DCNR has laid down track on the Pine Creek Rail Trail and in the Black Forest. It’s a skier’s wonderland out there!
Now, much of central PA gave up on cross-country skiing as a sport when climate change slowed our winter snowfall to some flurries over the past 20 years, but the Miele family have never been people to just bow to the whims of the weather. The first thing Glory and Jim did when they returned from Florida on Sunday was head out skiing on Pine Creek, and Liz was out skiing around mid-snowstorm two Sundays ago, with the kids (and a sled) in tow. Liz learned how to cross country in Brandon Park when she was barely old enough to hold ski poles (and remembers the frozen fingers and toes she cried over afterward), and grew up skiing on grandma Daisy’s wooden skis from the 1960s until she finally (thank goodness) outgrew Daisy’s fragmented boots with the torn three-pin bindings and got her own gear.
Of course, the first thing we did was buy skis for our little Daisy when she came along, but the snow hasn’t exactly been cooperating ever since. That first set of real skis for Daisy now fits the twins, and Daisy has her own bigger set, and we’re bound and determined to get them out and teach them the delights of winter recreation…and hopefully not make them hate it in the process. Keep an eye out for us at the Water Authority, around the Conservancy in Eagles Mere, and anywhere else there’s snow to be found! And dig up your old skis (we know they’re out in the garage somewhere) and join us…it’s a rare pleasure to travel the woods and waysides, warm and snug in the chill, gliding along on your trusty gear, and listening to the birds asking each other when spring might be coming.
…But we digress! The purpose of this email was theoretically to tell you about our truly delicious Country Homestead Acres duck menu for this Friday, and here we are waxing lyrical about snow sports. Hannah and Liz tasted a nice little Barbera d’Alba last week, and decided on a whim that we should bring in a case, since it would pair so nicely with the duck we have at the Herd…so then, of course, we had to make up a duck menu to compliment that Barbera, and now here we are. Join us Friday evening for manhattans, wine, duck, and all the trimmings…
- A black manhattan made with duck fat-washed bourbon and Paolucci amaro
- Duck wonton soup, with confit and cabbage filled wontons and anise-spiced broth
- Duck confit and sausage ragu served over polenta and finished with a manchego crisp
- Pan-seared duck breast served in a Grand Marnier-orange reduction with pomegranate seeds, over root-vegetable mashed
- Duck egg-milk bread donuts filled with caramel pudding and drizzled with chocolate sauce
P.S. If anyone out there has old cross-country gear from their kids, please let us know! Finding small equipment for the kids is an ongoing challenge, since no one carries it anymore…
P.P.S. If you hadn’t yet heard, we are booked full-full-full to the top on Valentine’s Day next week, but we’ll be serving the same delicious features on Thursday and Friday evenings as well. If you haven’t yet made a reservation for dinner with your love, give us a call to book a table one of those two nights! Or bring him or her in this Friday for a duck feast instead!