I meant to post this earlier (I'm pre-dating it as is), but I went to Philly last weekend. Was a working meeting for the DI Alumni Association, which we're trying to get off the ground, and I'm the treasurer of. Anyway, the meeting could have been better, but the accommodations are what I really want to write about. We stayed in the mansion of one of the board members. It's a beautiful stone house, three stories tall with a full basement. You walk in, and to the left is the parlor, with curved walls to improve the acoustics, to the right is the dining room, and in front of you is a large, curved staircase. The home has four kitchens (partly from when it was serving as apartments), and a nice deck. The house was apparently designed by some architect that Frank Lloyd Wright studied under, has no rectangular rooms, and was built in 1907.
Our hostess was incredible, having two rotisserie cooked chickens for us (slow cooked for long enough that the meat practically crumbled when you took a fork to it), beans and rice, baklava, green beans, and other stuff that I can't remember for dinner Friday night. Like the rest of the weekend, everything was homemade. Around midnight Friday, she started smoking a 16-pound brisket in her new, cast iron smoker that was on the deck out back. That probably cooked for a good 18 hours or so, along with the turkey she threw in there around 6 am or so, that was smoked for around 12 hours. She also made some spanakopita, which was of course wonderful. The most impressive things were perhaps her desserts, which included a four layer cheescake with incredible rich buttermilk icing, a chocolate cheesecake, which she intentially made so it collapsed in the middle while baking. This allowed her to drizzle a pound of melted chocolate and cream over it, pooling in the middle, and when you pull a slice away, letting the chocolate drizzle down the middle of it.
