Watch Us Eat!

Cthulhufruit

2010-12-29T22:21:00.007-05:00

Okay, I admit -- its real name is Hand of Buddha. But c'mon. Look at this thing!

I don't think I'd found a religion around anything that hands that looked like that. Mouth feeder tentacles on the other hand...

And now you see why Kate has dubbed this the Cthulhufruit. So what's in this thing?

For starters, nothing. It's all rind and pith, with no actual flesh. Makes me wonder how the thing carries seeds around. Anyway, I had read elsewhere that the pith isn't as bitter, and you can just slice it right into salads, so let's taste spthhhhhhspspthspt okay, whoever said that is going to hell for being a filthy, dirty liar. Like any other citrus pith, it's a nasty, nasty affair. Maybe the one I have was a little old, but still.

Well, plan B is to candy it. Now, this process starts by boiling it in a bunch of water. After it comes to a boil, let it go for 5 minutes, then taste the water. If it's still bitter as hell, do it again. And again. And again. It took me 5 tries to get this down before I actually just gave up. If or when you get to this point, add as much sugar as there is water. Leave the fruit in there, naturally.

Let that go until it gets to 230 degrees, a.k.a. the thread stage. Cut the heat, and dig out the fruit chunks with a strainer. A small one, like half a tea ball. Set the fruit out on a plate full of sugar for dusting.

Let it come to room temperature, along with the syrup you've inadvertantly made.

For those of you who haven't had candied rind before, it's actually got this neat gummy texture, with the outside sugar crunch. And since you boiled most of the bitter out, it tastes nice and light. The syrup is ideal for squirting on things, or sweetening your tea, or adding to seltzer for a refreshing drink.

See? Don't be afraid to try something out of the grocery store, even if it looks like an eldritch horror.

2010-09-26T21:48:00.001-04:00

Bacon Bash 2010

2010-08-16T22:35:00.003-04:00

Hiyo folks! I'm back, and so is Mr. Baconpants's Bacon Bash! Apparently Vande Rose Farms wasn't around this year, so the man himself reeled in a sponsorship from Sugardale and hosted the Bacon Bash under his own power. What a guy, eh?

Ah, there's a welcome sight. A little further up...

...

...

...No.

Also in the "no just no" category:

I'm not big on the taste of vodka, but I hate to say it, this is one thing bacon can't improve. In fact, it's downright nasty. Now granted, I tried it in its straight-up form. If you're into bloody maries (which I'm not) it's probably better.

Let's eat! Returning items included pierogies, wings, and deep fried bacon, which I sadly missed. Let's take a look at the new entries.

Bacon wrapped meatball: Why didn't we think of this earlier? I mean, I could do without the maple glaze, but the concept is sound as a pound.
Bacon wrapped breadsticks: Again, why didn't we think of this earlier? Topped with a little parmesan, this was a great little treat. Maybe could use more bacon.
Bacon wrapped tofu: About time! Finally, tofu I can stand.
Bacon shotglass of cheesy bacony mashed potatoes: Heaven in a bite. You know you want some.

Bacon sushi: It's back, and this time it includes that thing you see in the upper right corner of the corner frame. It's got some bacon, scallions, and bound by baconnaise, and put atop a little sushi rice cake and wrapped in seaweed. Nice!
Bacon wrapped jalapeno popper: Really, the fattiness of the bacon cuts the heat of the jalapeno. Fantastic.
Bacon alfredo: I'm dying to take this for a spin. I think the best alfredo I've ever had was salmon, and that gave me the idea to add stuff to alfredo sauce. In this case, shallots and bacon. Very very nice.
BLT slider: You know, anyone can make one of these. So, um, yeah. Still good though.

They're talking about a cookout next year. I'm there!

Snapshot: Chicken and Salad.

2010-08-01T14:28:00.006-04:00

Yeah, yeah, I know. I haven't posted in months. I've had all sorts of excuses - bad camera, at school all the damn time, too tired... But I'm out of excuses. So I'm just going to drop you guys a line, open a window into what I do for dinner these days.

Lo! This here's an arugula and watermelon salad with a honey-balsamic vinaigrette. And to the side is chopped sesame and soy-braised chicken on a cracked-wheat crostini.

Snapshot taken. Can't let Diko take all the credit here. Carry on.

Parmesan french toast

2010-07-25T23:15:00.005-04:00

Greetings, gentle readers! I’m sorry about the lapse in the almost-back-on-schedule monthly schedule, but things really fell apart here. I’ve got flooding damage in my basement, and Raoul’s running around crazy with his taco shop. But I’d better get back on the ball quickly, or something will collapse by the time the Bacon Tour comes back on August 10.

So at some point, I was flipping past Rachel Ray on the Food Network, and she was doing something with french toast for dinner. "That's interesting," I thought. "Savory french toast. Let me think about this."

So I did. And it wasn't really the toast that was the difficult part, it was creating the rest of the meal around it. But let's start at the beginning. Take some nice crusty bread, slice it thick and on the bias. Soak in custard a la normal, but then smush both sides in grated parmesan cheese before sending it to the frying pan.

Cook like normal.

Well, it looks pretty good and smells pretty good. Tastes pretty good too, but what now? In this case, I decided to go with something I haven't had in a while. So here's a veal chop of some persuasion. Let's start by seasoning it and browning it on both sides.

Oh hey look, it's our best friends, fond and fat! Add some flour to start the roux, then use a little white wine to deglaze.

Add some whole green beans and plate nicely...

...you know what? I'm going to register for white dishes when I get married, so when I put together a nice plate, you can see it.

Fish stick sushi

2010-05-28T14:57:00.005-04:00

Sushi, in case you didn't know, refers to the rice, not the fish. This is why you can get stuff like egg (tamago.) And if they can stick krab with a k in sushi, well, where do you stop?

Kate and I had a bunch of leftover rice and nothing better to do with it, so this was her idea. She dug up the rice wine vinegar, I made some tartar sauce, and since the process is pretty standard sushi making, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Nice and crunchy, but very silly.

Bacon Wellington

2010-04-22T20:14:00.006-04:00

So after that salmon wellington, we had to do something more... Caes-like.

Come on. You had to see this coming.

Take your hunk of slab bacon and split in half, then fill the middle with chopped dried apples. I stole that from St. Alton who used chopped dried apples in his pork wellington.

Wrap in puff pastry and baste with beaten egg...

...then bake like the pastry calls for.

You're drooling. Admit it.

Pavlov calling!

Serve along with chunky mashed potato. It may be a little dry, so make a little gravy. Start with a roux of bacon grease and flour, then add ham boullion.

As they say on the internet, I'll just leave this here.

Salmon Wellington

2010-03-28T20:42:00.003-04:00

Wellington. It's a pretty neat concept. Kinda like pigs in a blanket for people who wouldn't be caught dead eating "pigs in a blanket." So instead of biscuit you get hoity-toity puff pastry, and instead of sausage you get high-end beef tenderloin.

Or anything, really. But what? Beef is classic, and I watched St. Alton do pork tenderloin. A little digging around on ye olde internet suggested salmon. Mmm, I loves me some salmon.

So, you're supposed to add a little something on the inside, right? Well, I found a recipe for creamy cheesy kale that called for two leeks. And since you can't buy two leeks at my local grocery, I had to find something to do with the other two. So they're in the food processor with a stick of softened butter, some salt, and a few shakes of dill, and spun until it looks like this:

Kate swears by this stuff. I have to find more applications for it.

Use a bit of care when wrapping, since salmon doesn't have that nice cylindrical shape to work with. It's also got a sharp edge on the thin side, so be careful. A spot of egg wash will seal the deal, and cause some browning on the top.

This it what looks like in cross section...

...and here it is next to that combination of cream, harvati cheese, leeks, and kale.

Oily and flaky inside, light and flaky outside. Very nice all around.

Must... post... more...!

S'more cake

2010-02-17T21:47:00.003-05:00

Here we go again, another idea taken too far in the name of food. What idea is this? Well, St. Alton did graham crackers, home made marshmallows, and pound cake within a three month span of my wonky memory. Put together with Ina Garden's chocolate buttercream icing and the goofy Wilton heart-shaped fill-in cake pans, and here's another experiment in the making.

In short, I took the pound cake recipe, then adjusted the flour and sugar to match what was in the graham cracker recipe. I maintained the ratio of the flour ingredients and the sugar ingredients, and ended with 13 oz. graham flour, 3 oz. AP flour, 9 1/8 oz. brown sugar, and 6 7/8 oz. molasses. The butter and eggs were the same.

Oh, just as a side note, when it calls for you to grease and flour a pan, use butter. Not nonstick spray. Take a guess why.

I was in for a rude surprise when I filled the first pan and one recipe filled... one pan. A quick whipping together of a second recipe filled the other pan plus 6 cupcakes. So keep in mind that this cake is upwards of 2 pounds of butter right now. Stick all of this in a 350 degree oven. Pull the cupcakes at 30 minutes in, or less. Start testing the actual cakes around 1:45.

Now for the chocolate buttercream. Accent on the butter.

Yeah, that's a few tablespoons into a pound and a half of butter. That's six @#$%ing sticks of butter. Mark this down, because this may be the only time you'll ever see these words in this blog: This may be too much butter.

The heart-shaped cavity is filled with marshmallow. I started with a full recipe, and there's plenty left over. But that's okay. I'll use it.

For example, as little garnishes on the cupcakes.

So... there's also this little issue of the crowns of the cake. You know, the part you have to cut off in order to level the cake. Well, we ate one because it wasn't that big. But the other one, well, it needs another application

On the left: half of the crown laid out as a cutting pattern on top of some of the leftover marshmallow. On the right: the other half frosted with chocolate buttercream. You know what's coming next.

It looks like a giant Oreo, but so, so much better.

Ah. The taste. I knew I was forgetting something.

Well, it does taste like a graham cracker, a little. I think I'll try honey next time because the molasses leads to a heavy texture. The marshmallow, well, if you have ever had home made marshmallows, you're going to have a hard time stomaching store-bought ever again. And the chocolate buttercream. Um. I have a quart of it left over. The recipe says "makes 4 cups," but that's a filthy, dirty, undercutting lie. It makes something more like 7. I'm going to have to figure out something to do with it....

Christmas 2009 cookies

2010-01-25T23:15:00.005-05:00

Um, whoops. So much for that New Year's resolution. 25 days in, and not only is it broken, but you never heard it.

Ahem.

Okay, so, Christmas cookies. This is usually Kate's department, but since she's in grad school right now, she's a lot busy. So I took over cookie duty this year, and in true Bayani fashion, went completely overboard. Let's survey the damage....

Snickerdoodles: Classic. I love the little crunch that the caramelized cinnamon sugar brings to these cookies.

Dipping sticks: This idea came about after watching St. Alton make zabaglione. Well, it's an Italian custard, so I figured sorry Alton, but we're going with Mighty Mario this time. These are shortbread and gingerbread cookies cut into sticks suitable for dipping into marsala wine and custard. Pretty slick.

Toll house: This is pretty standard stuff too. Take the recipe from the back of a bag of chocolate chips. Then replace the chocolate chips. In this case, with some chopped up cinnamon almonds left over from the last Reniassance Faire, or chopped up pistachios. Double extra boo-yah on each of them.

Tricky business: Meringues are always a bit of a stunt. I found that using a star shaped tip rather than the usual nozzle keeps them from looking like poo. These are cotton candy flavored, somewhat ironic given that meringues are mostly sugar to begin with. And whee, pinwheels. Take a half batch of sugar cookies, half a batch of gingerbread, and render them into sheets. Roll them together into a festive log, and then slice and bake. It's pretty good for presentation, plus, if you're not completely keen on gingerbread, the sugar cookie blunts the taste a little.

Spritz: Kate got me the Cookie Gun a few years ago. It's a joy to play with. I pulled it out a couple of years ago at Tita's, and I was like, "Raoul, you wanna try?" And he was like, "Nah, I'm okay." And then I shot a batch. Then he was like, "Um, can I try?" They don't make this particular model any more, but if you can get your hands on one, it is a lot of fun.

I swiped the tin from the cookies the cleaning company left for my company in the office. It's about 16" across and 8" high. And now it's full of cookie love.

Happy holidays guys. Keep on reading, keep on eating.

Zucchini fettuccine

2009-12-14T19:09:00.004-05:00

I blame Jimmy Buffet. You may be wondering how I got to that. Rock Band is involved. You can download "Cheeseburger in Paradise", and the lyrics just wouldn't leave my head. In particular, "Not zucchini fettuccine or bulgur wheat." That actually sounds good.

Okay, maybe not the bulgur wheat. I have no idea what that is. I don't think I've ever seen it in the grocery stores either.

Aaaaaanyway, zucchini fettuccine. I always thought it sounded good, but then I had an idea -- there's this stuff called "spaghetti squash," so named because you can get the flesh to render into spaghetti-like threads when you rake them with a fork. Zucchini's a squash, right? Hmm....

Slide your zucchini through your mandolin slicer with the large julienne attachment. And use a cut-proof glove! They're only like $25 at your local cookware store, plus they're like chainmail. Oh yeah.

I tried adding a yellow squash to the mix, but they don't take to noodling quite as well as the green ones, particularly because of the seedy middle.

Mince a handful of garlic, and french an onion.

Sweat all of that in some olive oil and some salt, then add some roasted red peppers in their liquid. Let the liquid boil off so you're down to a little oil and vegetable goodness. Over in the land of pasta, boil the fettuccine to about 1 minute short of al dente, then add your fettuccined zucchini. Boil for 1 more minute, then drain.

Throw in your oil and other vegetables, toss, and serve.

Hey, even I can go vegetarian periodically. And now, for a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat. And maybe a margarita.

Starfruit

2009-11-10T22:24:00.003-05:00

Hi, hello, I'm back, and I bring another act for What The? Theater. This one needs a little backstory. When I was 10, my Mom brought me and my brothers to the Philippines to meet her side of the family. We're out there in the Batangas, a rural area. And there under a tree were a bunch of starfruit, fallen on the ground. Little math geek Bayani is immediately drawn to a food that has its own strong sense of geometry. Naturally, I reach down for one, figuring I can wash it off.

"Don't eat that," Mom says.

"Why not?" I ask.

"That's not for people to eat. We feed that to the pigs." And I left it at that.

Years and years later, I'm cruising through the local grocery store, and what do I see?

That's right. Pig food at $2.99 a whack. But the real "What the?" moment came a few months ago when starfruit appeared in the basket on Chopped. (Food Network show. Look it up.) And there's Alex Guarnaschelli saying, "Starfruit has a light, delicate flavor that's really wonderful." In pig food? What the?

I grab a couple of them and decide to solve the mystery for myself.

It's citrusy alright. Take a look at the cross section. It's like... when was the last time you had artificial "tropical fruit" flavored drink? It's just like that. Yeah, I was pretty thrown too! Now there is this nasty little problem about those seeds up the middle. But we can solve that when you think citrus again -- supremes. A gentle little knifework will extract fingers of tropical sweetness for you to enjoy.

Of course, in What The? Theater, we can't leave it there. Well, here's something else we haven't tried at Watch Us Eat! yet: a drink. I've got the supremes of two starfruit in my shaker with some mint leaves and a shake of sugar. I'm not a bartender like Raoul is, but you know what? I bet he doesn't own a muddler either (Christmas gift!) I improvise with the butt end of the strainer and muddle away.

The rest of it is pretty standard mojito procedure.

Top it off with seltzer, club soda, or lemon lime soda. Nice and refreshing.

Give it a try. I can think of dumber things to do with $5.98.

Chicken Pot Pie, Part Two: Something Clever Regarding Pie

2009-11-04T18:58:00.005-05:00

Welcome back! It's Day 2 of our little project, and while this stage requires more work, we don't have to wait four hours for it's conclusion. Forgive the size of the pictures today; I was in a hurry, so everything came out blurry. Hey, that rhymed. I'm so clever. Anyway, smaller pictures are forgiving, so you'll have to deal with 400x300 imaging for this round.

Now that we have assembled our stock, our chicken meat, and our schmaltz, it's time to put them to work. But first, our mise en place!

(of course, for those of you qui ne parle pas le francais, that means "stuff we's gon toss into other stuff.)

Behold, our vegetation!

Nothing exciting here. Yes, those pearl onions and peas are frozen. They're easier to work with. Also, as a side note, nomming on a frozen onion is not as good an idea as it sounds. Onionsicles = thumbs down.

Other flavorants?

Mmm. Next to the garlic, you can see some grated ginger. I love ginger in any sort of chicken soupish application. Try it, you'll see what I mean. Can't identify the powdered stuff? I don't blame you, the picture sucks. That's dried thyme, ground allspice, and fresh-grated nutmeg. Not in that order, though.

Now that we've got all our ducks in a row, let's hop to the action. Chicken pot pie gravy, like all good thickened-broth things, starts with a roux. And a roux, as you all know, is equal parts fat and flour...

(in tonight's performance, the part of fat will be played by schmaltz, bolstered with butter.)

...mixed together over low heat until it tans into a pasty concoction.

To this, we add, in order, two quarts of stock, a healthy dose of salt and pepper, the spices and whatnot, and the vegetation. Bring all this to a boil, and you've got:

Soup! Gravy, technically, but whatever. Regardless of what you want to call it, we still have to stir in one last ingredient.

Fare thee well, Murray. You have served us nobly. Now get in there.

Whew. Fun times. Now just ladle into a big ol' baking dish...

Top with rounds of puff pastry...

And bake! And if you've been a really good boy/girl, Santa will swap out that gooey mess you put into the oven for this:

Ta da! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of my first attempt at chicken pot pie. I'll be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment in places. The gravy was far too watery, the puff circles were limp and flat. But it still tasted darn good. And the recipe had a lot of soup left over... I think I'm going to freeze it and take another swing at this in the future. A little extra thickening, some fancier puff pastry work, and I think I'm there.

Cheers, kids. I'll see you on the morrow. I think.

Chicken Pot Pie, Part One: The Brothening, Part Two: Extrication at Dusk

2009-11-03T21:35:00.005-05:00

Just a little side note 'bout little Murray - he likes to float. So how do I keep him submerged?

That's right, a small glass bowl will do just fine. Really, any heat-resistant ceramic or glass thingamajig will do. It's not like the stock's at a rolling boil; it's at around 185 degrees or so.

So it's been four hours now. Let's see how ol' Murray's doing.

Hmm. Doesn't look so appetizing, does it? Well, it's not supposed to. After all, we just boiled all the flavor out of a chicken and two pounds of his vegetable friends. Well, maybe not all the flavor, but certainly most of it. The smell, though... mmph. It's serious.

Since we need the meat for the pot pie tomorrow (really, it's the only part of Murray that has any flavor left), let me extricate Murray...

...and pull out the leftover vegetation.

See why I used a pasta strainer pot thing stuff pants? Now, with one fell swoop, I am left with a pot full of liquid chicken.

Mmm. Deelicious.

Okay, that's enough work for today. Let's take a minute and see what we've produced here, shall we? We have:

Three pints of shredded chicken meat. One quart white, one pint dark.

A little under a gallon of chicken stock. And, last, but not least...

A wee bit of schmaltz. Measuring cup says 1/3 cup, and I'm not about to argue. Pyrex is a tough debate opponent.

Well, that's all for tonight. See you tomorrow, kids!

Chicken Pot Pie, Part One: The Brothening

2009-11-03T13:57:00.006-05:00

That's it. Camera or no, I'm getting tired of not posting.

Turns out I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, of all shapes and sizes. I've done salads, I've done chili dogs, I've done pork tenderloin with blueberry-cheddar pastry puffs... you name it, I've been futzing around with it. So rather than try to backtrack and fill you in, I'm just going to go ahead and chronicle what I'm up to right now.

For those of you who, by Fate's rancorous hand or Chance's fickle affections, have not yet heard, a-well-a bird bird bird, buh-bird is the word. My doting aunt was kind enough to bring by a family-farmed, raised without antibiotics, free-roaming chicken. Ch-check it out:

Now, what the difference is between this little fella and an organic chicken eludes me at the moment. I can at least hope that he wasn't raised like those poor clipped-beak little buggers that run around in their own filth for their pitifully brief, miserable lives that Perdue markets. That doesn't mean I don't pick up a family pack of Perdue chicken thighs when they're on sale for $1.09/lb., but I do usually have to brine them to get the guilt out.

Anyhoo, I'm-a name this little guy Murray. Looky - he looks so comfy sitting in his bathtub...

Now, I'm planning on making pot pie out of Murray, and that starts with a good chicken broth. Of course, I could have just grabbed a carton of the stuff while I was at the store scoping out meat specials and on-sale leftover Halloween candy, but where's the fun in that? I'll just make my own, and cook my chicken while I'm at it.

Roll call! Onions and garlic?

Here!

Other aromatics?

Here! Oh, hey, even Parsnip made it. How's it been, man? Really? Man, I told you that bitch was crazy. You're better off, trust me.

Oh, right. Sorry. Herbs and spices?

Here! Peppercorns, you brought your Chinese cousins? Wicked. Everybody into the pot.

At this point, you people know the drill. Add a gallon of water to the mix:

(No, I'm not so snooty as to use spring water for this, this is just easier than refilling my measuring cup a couple of times. Also, easier to photograph.)

Set on stove. Bring to a boil, then simmer for four hours.

We'll check in on little Murray then, won't we?

Shoyu

2009-11-03T00:24:00.005-05:00

So in case you're wondering, Raoul is without a camera. Hey, I know what to get him for Christmas! In the meantime, I'll be picking up the slack. Here we have a little environmentally friendly cooking. Take a look here for Aida Mollenkamp's recipe for Shoyu Chicken. (See, it's not all Church of St. Alton here.) It's really tasty, involves a bunch of soy and chicken broth with some ginger and garlic and other things.

I always cut the recipe in half, not just because I can't get 6 pounds of chicken thighs in most of my pots, but neither can I cram that much liquid in them either.

Serve with rice, drizzle sauce over everything. But we're not done yet.

Stash all this in your fridge overnight. The fat that renders off the chicken will float to the top. Skim it off, if you want... ya pansy. Fat is flavor, so says Kate's mother, and I'm inclined to agree. So just fish the chicken out and set it aside.

Oh, it's still good, you'll still eat it, but you want to just heat the sauce through so it becomes one consistency again.

It's a coincidence that I mentioned fish, because that's what we have here, along with a two pound bag of stir fry veggies. You know where this is going, right?

Do this in reverse order: if you flake the fish, it'll cook in no time flat, so start your stir fry with the vegetables.

Add the fish, and some of the shoyu sauce left over from the chicken.

And serve with rice.

I'm going to have to find new things to do with this sauce... Maybe mix it with ground beef to make shoyu meatloaf? I'll let you know.

Mire poix pork chops

2009-10-26T23:25:00.002-04:00

It ain't much, but we want you to know we haven't abandoned you.

Well, I'm a big fan of one-pot meals. Easy to prepare, easy to serve, and less stuff to clean up afterwards. What's not to love? Okay, so I'm actually using 2 pots here, okay a pot and a baking dish. But the concept's the same. Especially since I'm using a non-stick pot. Good ones are criminally easy to clean. Start by lubing up a 9x13x2 baking dish. I used spray. Like I said, I cheated.

Up next, prepare a mire poix. I think mine isn't exactly right, because I used equal amounts carrots, celery, and onion, but it still tastes fine. And smells great too. Use a little butter to induce a little color in the onion and carrots. (According to Greg Dean, it's an old culinary school hazing prank to tell the freshmen to brown celery. Celery doesn't have the required sugar to undergo the Maillard reaction, so it doesn't brown. Think about it: You spend more energy chewing celery than you get from eating it, so how much nutritional value do you think it has?)

When you're done with that, add some cubed bread to make croutons in there, and mix it up.

Now lay down a little stuffing, followed by some pork chops. I've used cuts of loin. Salt and pepper each layer, then lay down more stuffing and repeat.

Bake until the pork chops are done. Umm... I really don't know how long. When in doubt, go with 350, and just check on it at 15 minutes, and every 5 after that until your pork is the doneness that you like.

Voila! One pot meal, with your starch, your vegetables and proteins. Easy money.

Something more interesting next time, when I'm not getting crushed. Stay tuned, I promise it will be more entertaining next time.

Apple butter cookies

2009-10-11T20:32:00.004-04:00

As you all know, there are three rules here about Caes brother cooking. Rule number one is that everything is better with butter. This entry is an exploration of possible corollary to this rule: things with "butter" in their names are good.

At our Mart of Wal, they keep apple butter right next to the peanut butter. And since I was running low on PB, I figured I'll take some AB along for the ride.

Also in this neighborhood is jelly and jam. I guess I should have realized that apple butter would be closer to those because it comes in a similar jar. But it'll be close enough for what I want to do with them. I think.

What I have in mind is apple butter cookies. In my childhood we had this cookbook we got from a local hospital. I don't know how, but there it was. And in it was a dirt-simple peanut butter cookie: 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg. Bake. It's really that simple. So let's see what happens if we try to make apple butter cookies instead.

Hmmm.... That consistency of apple butter has bitten me in the butt. But I had a feeling this was going to happen, so I figured I'd just add flour, a little at a time, until it becomes a cohesive dough. Or least a thick batter. Well, there's a spare 1/4 cup measuring cup that lives in my flour jar. Perfect, right?

2 1/2 cups of flour later, this is what we have. It's close enough. So. Apparently it's traditional to ball up peanut butter cookies and mash them down with a fork. I decided to mash the apple butter cookies down with a spoon. You'll want to spray the back end of the spoon with some nonstick spray. Pour out a blob of batter then mush it around into a disk. Bake at 350 for about 10-12 minutes or when you figure they're done.

Looks pretty good, right? Well, there's a bit of a problem. Remember how I added 2 1/2 cups of flour 1/4 cup at a time? You can surmise I beat the batter after each addition. Now, if you follow the gospel according to St. Alton, you'll be familiar with the muffin method: Mix your dry ingredients together, your wet ingredients together, then pour the wet on the dry and mix as little as possible. Beat it senseless and you'll get a very glutenous creation that will end up chewier than you'd like. But it's still edible...

...it even looks like a cookie. And it tastes quite nice. Apple isn't one of those flavors you see in cookies very much. That's a shame, and you should join me and correct that.

But now that I mentioned "muffin"....

Bacon sausage

2009-09-28T23:58:00.005-04:00

Oh crumbs. We got linked from Mr. Baconpants's blog, due to my post about the Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour. I guess we have to get back on the ball and start updating more often. And since we'd like to retain readers, let's start with some more bacon!

Now then. I would like to make a bold proclamation. I am a god.

Not buying it? Can I get at least a saint?

Why? Did you not read the title of this post?

I have made bacon sausage. Think about that for a second. Roll those two words around in your mind for a bit.

Bacon.

Sausage.

Okay, enough self-congratulatory babbling, let's talk procedure. Remember that $70 Kitchenaid doohickey I bought from the pasta trilogy? Well, one of the things it comes with is a grinder. Use a coarse grind on slightly frozen bacon. That's about 3 pounds sitting in the $10 feeder tray attachment. Grind it, in case you haven't figured that out yet.

Next, you'll need some sausage casing. This may be a little tricky to find. I got mine from Wholey's, the crazy high-end wacky grocery store that has just about any obscure infrequently used ingredient you could ask for. And if they don't have it, someone in Pittsburgh's Strip District will. Follow the directions. Soak it in water first to untangle it and rinse off some of the salt. Clamp it on to your $10 sausage stuffer with a bit of butcher's twine, then tie a knot in the end to keep it from escaping.

Twist the links about 1/3 longer than the length of your bun. That's because you'll lose about 1/4 of its length to shrinkage.

Now, isn't this a thing of beauty?

C'moooooooooooooooooooooooooooon.

A little precaution: Yes, it's bacon. Yes, it's greasy. If you grill it, do so with a piece of aluminum foil, or you'll have grease fires and flareups out the ying yang.

But to be honest, I'd recommend against the grill for that reason. Go with a half an inch of water in a frying pan to steam the sausages through, then let them develop some color once the water all evaporates. If you must have grill marks, may I suggest a grill pan?

Serve on a hot dog bun or sausage roll. Add some mayo, lettuce, and tomato to create a cylindrical BLT. Or hell, just eat it straight up.

How could you not love that?

How?

Ya heretic.

Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour

2009-09-26T16:47:00.005-04:00

My good buddy Dave found this event coming to Pittsburgh, and decided to get me my birthday gift early. He asked if I was interested, and just thought, "C'mon, it's called a Bacon Tour, how could it be bad?"

Now that's a welcome sight if I've ever seen one.

Let me explain something about the Harris Grill. It's not really a hole, in fact, it's got a pretty nice restaurant upstairs. The main feature is that instead of those little baskets of peanuts most bars have, during Steelers games, the Harris Grill has little baskets of bacon. Oh, and every Tuesday night from 6:30 to midnight.

You are not imagining things; that is a pitcher of bacon in the upper right. They use it for their bacontini. You are not imagining things there either; they have a bacontini.

We're immediately greeted by Mr. Baconpants, a guy who wears red pants with pink bacon stripe pattern painted on them. He hands us two tickets for drinks, plus a "Man Bait" maple bacon lollipop.

That disclaimer, if you can't read it, goes: "Not valid with any other specials, offers, or after the above date. Not to be used by minors, miners, ditch diggers, or elves. Void where prohibited, including Wisconsin. Drink responsibly, or else we will."

But we're not here to snicker at the drink tickets, we're here to get our bacon on! And right when we get into the back room that I've dubbed the Hall of Bacon, we are greeted by our first treat, bacon sushi.

They're actually really well made sushi rolls. Some had avocado, some were cream cheese, but the ones that were really good were the ones with tomato and lettuce. Oh, and the unadulterated bacon nigiri, there's no stopping that.

Up next, a quartet of bacon hors d'oeurvuerrs (I have no idea how you spell that, and I'm too lazy to look it up.)

Bacon and shrimp is a classic you can't go wrong with. Pierogies are Pittsburgh local favorite, these had a little bacon in the mashed potato filling, but they were dressed with bacon bits and sauteed onions, very, very nice. After that were the bacon wings, which were basically wings seasoned with bacon salt. Not very impressive. But then they ripped off our deep fried bacon! Damnit! We should have patented that!

And what meal would be complete without dessert?

On the right is a tray full of bacon brittle, or more accurately, maple brittle with bacon bits. It's okay, but they didn't boil the sugar long enough to get to the hard crack stage. Either that, or the grease from the bacon interfered with the brittle setting up. On the left are bacon cupcakes. Or more accurately, maple cupcakes with the lightest maple frosting I've ever had, with a chip of maple candied bacon on top. Oh so good... And I won a door prize $25 gift certificate to the cupcake shop that made them. Score!

Last, there was a bacon eating contest. With no entry fee, I figure, what the heck, why not? Maybe all those Nights of Bacon could finally pay off.

Ha! No. We all started with about 3 pounds of bacon, and I probably ended the 3 minutes with 2. Three spots down from me was a guy who's apparently a competitive eater, since he plowed through all 3 pounds. He's eaten 6 pounds of chili in 10 minutes. And after all three pounds, he finished off the trays of the four guys around him. That's when I started trying to goad him into shooting the grease. Ha! No.

All in all, a lot of fun. Look up Vande Rose Farms if you get a chance -- they make some really fantastic bacon.

Pluots

2009-09-05T19:41:00.003-04:00

Welcome to the first installment of What The? Theater, where we investigate the rare, quirky, and sometimes downright weird food we find in the grocery store. At the one near my office building has in its opening a display for "Flavor Grenades", at $1.99 per pound. What the...?

The stickers say "Dinosaur Egg", and the receipt says "Pluots". Pluwhats? Turns out it's some kind of plum. So what the heck, let's buy some. It'll be interesting.

So... it peels kinda nicely, or delicately. The sticker ripped of a bit of skin when I tried to take it off. And that's a nifty color stryation (?) when you slice it across the meat. Biting into it? Well, you better have a plate handy. These things are juicier than the worst office gossip. This thing shot juice across my cheeks and created a big honkin' puddle on the plate.

So what's it taste like? Unsurprisingly, it's got the consistency of a really wet plum. It tastes kinda like a plum with tangy acidic, mildly citric tones, and then the sweetness is turned up a notch. The flesh does its best to disintegrate when you put your teeth through it. Surprisingly, it holds together okay when you take a serrated knife to it.

Speaking of which, that gave me an idea of what to do with them. St. Alton makes a neat individual peach upside down cake, so I thought I'd adapt the recipe to take pluots. The recipe calls for four individual 6 oz. ramekins. Seeing as how I was really broke at the time, I decided not to drop $8 on a new piece of kitchen equipment and made one big cake in a 6" cake pan.

That's some butter and brown sugar at the bottom of the pan. It's supposed to be followed up by some candied ginger, but I couldn't find any. The batter you mix up as normal, and you pour over the pluot slices artfully arranged in the bottom of the pan. (Image of batter accidentally not taken.)

Because you're going from little ramekins to a [comparatively large] pan, double the cooking time.

It's got a nice color, and a toothpick will come out clean when inserted. Well, the pluots are gooey, so it won't be completely clean. Run the knife around the edge, put a plate on top, and flip the whole thing over. Use a big plate because the pluot's juiciness will cause it to splut out as it's freed from its 6" prison and into a wide world of horizontal space.

Cut the cake in quarters (so it would be the same serving size as the ramekins) and serve. The buttermilk in the cake makes a nice tangy counterpoint to the pluot's now almost excessive sweetness. But overall, it's very nice. I strongly recommend it.

Remember folks, just because it's foreign to you, doesn't mean it doesn't deserve an audition in your kitchen.

I know, I know...

2009-08-22T14:25:00.005-04:00

I've been slacking lately. Well, this isn't going to be a big post, I'm just shooting off a couple of random shots I've been taking.

Ever since I've moved, I've been trying to eat healthier. But sometimes, you just have to backslide a little to remind yourself just how good you have it. For instance, I hadn't been to Red Lobster in so long that I had forgotten that their food was terrible. Their biscuits, however, remain out of fucking control. So I decided to make the most of it and stuffed mine with an assortment of tasty fried fishy bits.

A squeeze of lemon, and the end result was outstanding. I think I'll remember that the next time I've got enough scallops for a good fryathon.

In other news, my dad and I found peeled tenderloins on sale for megacheap. Never one to look a cheap tenderloin in the mouth, I jumped right on stuffing it with fresh herbs and blue cheese. As for the side, well, neighbors had veggies that needed plunderin', not the least of which were a series of ridiculously sweet heirloom tomatoes and a couple of really happy-looking bell peppers. The end result made for an excellent sauce to go along with some cheese ravioli.

This last bit is a snapshot of the sour cream we use at work. Those of you who are faint of heart, look away.

That shit is unreal. Take it easy, guys. I'll see you soon.

A quick interlude of cheese

2009-08-12T13:36:00.002-04:00

Two little things I thought I'd share with you. First, ever wander through your grocer's cheese cave and wonder, "Can I really buy half a wheel of parmigiano reggiano?" Now, how many of you are thinking, "What does half a wheel of parmigiano reggiano look like?" Here's the answer, along with an average female hand in the frame for reference.

Next, I bet you're thinking, "How much is it?" Right now, I'm thinking, "Have you ever suffered sticker shock from cheese?"

That's right. 21.81 pounds at $19.99 a pound makes for $435.98 of cheese. If any of you come across a bigger or more expensive hunk of cheese, please send the pictures to derBayani@gmail.com. I'd love to see them.

Up next, we have an indulgence. I love mac and cheese. A lot of you do too. What could be better than macaroni and a nice, thick, rich cheese sauce?

Think now.... Verrrrry carefully....

Give up?

That's right -- macaroni and fondue! Sure, it makes the entire thing cost $40, but oh ho ho, is it totally worth it. Richer than rich, extra tang delivered by the cider and brandy, with a smoky smooth texture thanks to le gruyere and smoked gouda. Don't bother baking it, just dump the macaroni in and go. You won't be disappointed.

'Til next time, stay hungry and full. Alternate between the two.

Home made spaghetti, part 3 of 3

2009-08-01T09:10:00.005-04:00

And now for the sauce. This recipe comes from a friend of mine, Megan, who put me up for a few months when I got out of college and hadn't quite found a job yet. She made this sauce for me and another friend one time, made of just vegetables in a saute pan, but it was different than the stuff you get in jars. And good! I've tinkered with the recipe since then and have come up with my own version.

You will need 3-4 tomatoes (or a big can of diced tomatoes in puree), a small onion, a large pepper, 1/2 to 1 pound of Italian sausage in bulk, some salt, pepper, fresh oregano and basil. That's what's in the cup. Kate picked some fresh from our pots of herbs outside, along with the pepper from our garden. We would have had fresh tomatoes too, but the weather isn't cooperating.

Start by browning the sausage. While that's going on, dice your tomatoes, and cut your pepper and onion into large chunks. I like my vegetables chunky, but if you don't, feel free to dice them finer.

Now add the peppers and onions. Use the rendered fat from the sausage to brown them a little. If there's not enough fat, add some olive oil.

Add the tomatoes and herbs. At this point, you're cooking the tomatoes down for their liquid, and the herbs for their flavor.

It you've picked up a little fond (?) at the bottom, that's fantastic. Use a little red wine to deglaze the pan. You can see a little undeglazed (glazed?) pan at around 7 o'clock on the pan in the picture, along with a puddle of red wine in the middle. You don't need much; the tomatoes' juices will help along.

Adjust your salt and pepper now, and cook your pasta. Remember -- home made pasta cooks very quickly, like 1-3 minutes.

And there you go. One of the finest bowls of spaghetti I have ever had, and made just about completely from scratch. Home made. Up thine, Sandra Lee!

Birthday Breakfast at Shea's

2009-07-31T21:13:00.000-04:00

Welp, I've moved. I'm back to being a Jersey boy, and if it's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that the best way to get to know new territory is to eat your way through it. Admittedly, South Jersey is no Brooklyn - there's a Carraba's, there's a Bonefish Grill. There's an Olive Garden and a Chili's. But for every chain, if you look hard enough, there's a little mom and pop joint lurking in the strip mall, itching to get a jump on your tastebuds.

Shea's is one of those places - a classic family restaurant, only open for breakfast and lunch, with a nice, simple menu to work from. Limitless coffee, tacky carpet, big honkin' muffins behind the register... the ordinary stops there. They take some of the simplest food out there - sandwiches, pancakes, eggs benedict - and knock 'em out of the park.

It was Courtney's birthday yesterday, and, like all good things in life, we celebrated with food. I, for one, ordered the Orleans Benedict: a pair of toasted English muffins topped with poached eggs, then covered in lump crabmeat, shrimp, and chopped tomatoes and scallions.

Look at that egg. It's perfectly poached. And don't get me started on their homemade Hollandaise. You know how you usually get some sort of gloppy, sad-looking yellow gunk with the consistency of Cracker Barrel sausage-semen gravy. Here, it's at perfect nappe - not nauseatingly thick, but certainly not runny. And buttery and rich without tasting like chazz. For those of you that don't know what chazz is, well. Count yourself lucky.

Of course, since it was Courtney's birthday, the Orleans Benedict wasn't quite decadent enough. Instead, she got the "Five Star Benedict", which is described as the Orleans Benedict with...

Oh yeah. That's a round of filet mignon under that poached egg. There's another one in there, too, buried underneath that heaping pile of delicious seafood.

Now, you'd think that after those two plates, especially with that stack of deliciously spicy homefries, we'd pack it up and call it a day. But birthdays only come around once a year, so we went with Lou (the owner)'s suggestion for dessert:

The cannoli pancake. Chocolate chips in, chocolate chips out, cannoli filling in little splorks around the center, and, of course, fresh whipped cream. Now, I was almost blind from the amount of seafood and egg yolk in my belly, but even with the sheer stuffedness of the two of us..

...that poor pancake didn't stand a chance.

Keep in mind that this meal was immediately followed by three hours on the couch, groaning softly to ourselves, followed by an hour and a half nap. And it was totally worth it.

Home made spaghetti, part 2 of 3

2009-07-31T20:48:00.003-04:00

In our last episode, we made a pasta drying rack. Those who own a pasta drying rack must dry pasta, and those who must dry pasta must make pasta. I picked up the $70 food grinder/pasta maker combo for my Kitchenaid stand mixer. Totally worth it. It's like 7 tools in one, more if you get some of the attachments. So I slapped on the thick spaghetti plate, made some pasta according to the instruction booklet, and fired up the pasta goodness.

First off -- if your recipe doesn't call for salt, add some. I used Mighty Mario Batali's recipe, and it came out... bland. Yeah, I salted the hell out of the water, but it didn't save it. I don't know why.

Follow your instruction booklet. It's there for a reason. I swear I had one of these when I was a kid, except you can't eat Playdough. Well, you can, but you wouldn't want to.

Now that snarl of pasta that comes out at first is just that -- a snarl. If you've ever gone fishing and snarled your line, you really just wanna cut it off. Same with pasta: use your kitchen shears to trim off the bottom so you get a nice even to work with when you go to separate the noodles later. The neat thing is that you can throw that bit back into the pasta maker and reuse it.

You may find it a good idea to hold the noodle mass up and steady as they extrude. This is to alleviate the weight of the rest of the noodles to not stretch them.

Snip again, shut off your mixer and lay the noodles out. If you did this right, you should have something that looks like pull-apart licorice, except it's made of pasta. Pull it apart, and hang it on the racks you just lovingly made, and let dry for 15-60 minutes.

Almost there ladies and gentlemen. Up next, the sauce.

Home made spaghetti, part 1 of 3

2009-07-30T20:17:00.006-04:00

I'm given to believe that Raoul is in the midst of settling in after moving, and since I've been pretty busy I better step up and say something. It's time for a little arts and crafts here at Watch Us Eat! Today we'll be building a pasta drying rack. Now, you can buy these from Bed Bath and Beyond for $13-$20, but you can build one for under $5 if you have the right tools and a little know-how. Let's get started!

You will need: one 3/16" dowel 3' long, half a 5/8" dowel 3' long (just cut it in half and make a second rack), a block of floral foam about 4"x4"x3", a saw of some kind, a power drill, and sandpaper or a power sander. Trust me, eating splinters sucks.

Start by cutting the 5/8" dowel in half, to 18". Then drill two holes in it, one about 1 1/2" from the top, turn the down 90 degrees, then drill the second hole about 3" down from there. The holes will be perpendicular to each other.

Now rotate the dowel 45 degrees away from you and drill a third hole between the first two. Rotate the dowel 90 degrees in the opposite direction (towards you) and drill the fourth hole 1 1/2" below the bottom most hole. The effect you're looking for is a spiral of holes down the dowel.

Use a saw to cut the 3/16" dowel into four 9" pieces. (Note: I cheated. There's a box saw visible in the shot, but the jigsaw I used isn't.)

Now go back and sand everything. Everything. Twice if you have to. Then use a completely dry paintbrush to remove the dust.

Chances are, you don't have a 5/8" drill bit to make your hole in the floral foam. That's cool, you can just shove the dowel through the block. You'll want to push it half way through from one side, then half way through from the other to make sure it doesn't tear when the dowel punches out of the foam. If you need to, use a little geometry to mark the center of the block before you start punching.

Carefully slide the smaller dowels into the holes in the larger one, then wash the entire thing. Do it in the other order, and you'll find the wood will swell and make your fits waaaaay too tight.

Voila! Not only do you have a functioning pasta rack and saved yourself about $8-$12, but you'll have that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment. Stay tuned, in part 2 we'll use this thing. Amongst other things.

Yep.

2009-07-22T16:36:00.002-04:00

I'm gonna go ahead and say no new posts on my end until next week or so. I's got things to do!

Cheers, guys! See you soon!

The Batter-And-Deep-Fry Party

2009-07-09T21:21:00.008-04:00

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, Diko and I were up to some pretty revolting culinary shenanigans this weekend. Now, admittedly, they weren't as gross as some of the things you'll find on sites like This Is Why You're Fat., but kids, you probably shouldn't try this at home. Well, on a regular basis, anyway.

As the title implies, the party was based entirely on battering and deep-frying anything and everything we could get our hands on. Corn dogs were a tasty staple, as were tufts of cauliflower. Here are some highlights.

Corn dogs were too easy. How about a corn burger?

Strangely enough, a little dry. The burger quality wasn't all that great to start with, so I'll chalk it up to that. Nice and crunchy, though.

Now, admittedly, this one wasn't battered before it went into the fryer, but I had to give it a shot. Behold, the octodog!

Hee. Cute. I can see putting these on blocks of mac 'n' cheese for fun presentation.

One of the most labor-intensive ventures was the deep-fried pizza. Since it was a whole freakin' pizza, dipping it in beer batter was somewhat out of the question. So instead, Bay just spooned the batter to coat...

Then, giggling like schoolgirls, we lowered it into the oil.

I cannot tell you how tricky this thing was to flip in 350 degree oil. But flip it I did. For science.

The end product was pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

I think when frying pizza, the influx of crust demands a thin crust on the pizza itself to start with. It came out suitably tasty, but a bit too bready for my tastes.

And then, there was my pride and joy.

That, my dear friends, is corn-battered and deep-fried bacon. This was actually really tasty. Like I might do this again sometime soon tasty. I just have to remember that trying to eat more than one or two of these might actually kill me on the spot.

Oh, what's that? That little thing off to the side in that picture? Oh, that's just a deep-fried White Castle cheeseburger. Wanna see it cut open?

Mmm. Yeah, that was a little rich even for me. I opted out after the first bite, but Courtney assures me it was delicious.

So those were just the highlights. We tried our hand at frying Pocky, a few candy bars got in there with moderate success. And yeah, there were fried pierogies a little later, and more than one bacon kiev (bacon wrapped around a pat of butter, then battered and deep-fried) was made. And at the end of the night, a good time was had by all. Followed by nightmares, followed by massive indigestion in the morning.

Worth it? Hell yeah.

Night of Bacon: Eat 'n' Park's Midnight Buffet

2009-07-07T18:27:00.004-04:00

From the instant my plane touched down in Pittsburgh, I knew my digestive tract was in for a hell of a ride. Met Diko and Kate at the airport, did the prerequisite hug-an'-how-are-ya thing, then... "You hungry?"

Hell yes.

The opening volley is not chronicled here, since anyone within spitting distance of a Chick-Fil-A can understand what I say when I say I had a #1 with an extra sandwich. With root beer, please. However, later that night, I was in for some gratuitous indulgings.

After an evening of shooting zombies/robots/terrorists at Dave and Buster's, my brother and I, along with a small cadre of his compatriots, made our way to the Eat 'n' Park for a Night of Bacon.

What is a Night of Bacon? Well, it's a breakfast buffet. And it has bacon. And the goal is to eat as much bacon as your tender heart desires. Because you can.

I was in the sandwiching mood, so I opted to have my first bacon intake be in the form of a bacon biscuit.

Now, that's a fair amount of bacon. But sometimes, you just have to mix it up a little, right? So Bayani, my dear brother and partner in crime on this webstain, split a waffle and stuffed it with bacon and sausage.

I could not let such a challenge go unanswered! I doubled the bacon, doubled the sausage, and threw in some pineapple to balance it all out. This combination, by the way, is highly recommended.

Mmm. Sweet and porky.

But my brother is not one to be outdone. We've been going at this all wrong, it seems. Biscuits, waffles, bready things of any kind... they just slow us down. We needed to get to the heart of the matter.

That's right. The sausagewich. Atkins would be proud.

Stay tuned, kids! If you think what we did Friday night was gross...

HYA

2009-07-02T21:48:00.002-04:00

I'm prepping for Bayani's deepfrying madness this weekend, so I was just fishing through a few pics that never made it into being full-on posts when I found this little gem.

After soaking this cube steak in hot sauce and buttermilk for a few days, I dropped it into the deepfryer. No big surprise there, really.

But you can't just have a chicken-fried steak by itself, right? So why not make a sandwich out of it, using cheddar-bacon mashed potatoes as a spread?

Why not, indeed.

Sushi at Jerry-San's

2009-06-26T15:23:00.004-04:00

Y'know, I usually post-date posts to reflect when the actual nommage occurred, but at this point, I'm so bleedin' late it doesn't really matter. In fact, I haven't posted anything worthwhile in ages. I have only myself to blame, folks, and I do apologize. I just haven't been doing anything interesting in a while, and it's reflecting itself in my food.

But enough excuses. To the sushi!

Jerry-San's has been a family tradition ever since Kuya found it some seven-odd years ago. I really can't remember how long it's been, but I remember I still had ideals and morals, so it had to have been a while. Fact is, this place is fresh. Every time you go, there's always at least one or two cuts of fish that just taste like butter. Everything else is fantastic, but you just catch that one piece of fatty tuna and black out with joy.

Anyway, enough babbling. You'll have to forgive the poor quality of the photos - I managed to forget ma petit amie's camera for the excursion, so I had to go back to just using my phone.

We opened, as we always did, with the delectable and irreplacable crunchy spicy tuna hand roll.

It's like a fishy ice cream cone. It's sweet, it's spicy, it's got that crumbly crunch that comes from the tempura flakes... I could seriously eat these all day, every day. They're just so damned addictive.

Next up was some clam thing he always makes for us...

And a little somethin' extra he made for Kuya and I.

Hee! Wasabi tobiko with a quail egg. A perfect little palate cleanser, snacky enough for us to enjoy while he set up our next course:

Mmmmm. Sashimi. Left to right, that's salmon, yellowtail, regular tuna, and scallops with lemon slices. Everything was fantastic - the salmon was deliciously fatty, the scallops go great with that nip of citrus, and the yellowtail just melted on the tongue. I love tuna, so I'll spare you the description of nomming on those luscious hunks of fish.

And while we took our time chewing on the sashimi, we chatted with each other and Jerry, catching up on former sous chefs, the opening of his new location... it was nice, especially since we all got spider rolls out of it, too.

I've always got a soft spot for tempura crab, especially in family situations. Probably because it was mom's favorite roll, and I like to think we honor her when we get them at Jerry's.

We were coming up on the end of the meal. Seeing as how it was my birthday, I knew I wasn't getting away without dessert, but before I did...

Just one more crunchy spicy tuna hand roll. For the road. Before the tempura cheesecake.

Happy birthday to me! Mind you, after this delicious wad of creamy, crispy sweetness came four sake bombs in quick succession. I think Ku's got all the pictures of that. I'd have to say, this decade is starting out right.

Cheers, guys! I'll catch you 'round. Stay good in the meantime.

Happy Birthday To Me!

2009-06-17T13:06:00.004-04:00

I've got a post on standby about the wonderful sushi I had last weekend (Thanks, Kuya, Ange, Tita and Tatay!), but for now, you'll have to suffice with my breakfast.

Mmm. That there's an egg fried in bacon fat on top of a crusty fried pork chop, sitting on top of a slice of really dark German wheat toast. Fancy? No. But it did put me in a hell of a mood, especially with that mug o' coffee.

Cheers, guys! I'll catch up with you later.

P.S. My other option for breakfast was chocolate cake.

Lasagna Rolls

2009-06-10T14:22:00.007-04:00

Sorry about the radio silence there. Life n'at.

Anyways, there I am on the couch, looking at an Olive Garden commercial for their rollatini -- basically a large pasta noodle rolled around a delicious filling of some kind. I took one look at this and thought, "This can't be that difficult, or too far removed from stuffed shells."

Since I don't have the flat noodle rolling attachment for my Kitchenaid (owing to the fact that it's $300) I had to go with a noodle that starts large and flat: lasagna. Start by measuring the width of the lasagna, and forming "bullets" from bulk Italian sausage. Cook those through, and get some browning on them for good measure.

Cut your cooked lasagna noodles in half, and spoon a little ricotta in the middle.

Lay one of your sausage bullets on the ricotta, then top it off with more ricotta.

Carefully roll the entire thing up and lay seam side down in a casserole.

Lay on your favorite tomato sauce. I don't think I have enough here in this picture.

Bake at 350. I'm not sure how long. 30 minutes should be enough to warm the entire thing through. I also missed the opportunity to layer on some mozzarella or parmesan.

Still comes out pretty well. Serve in a bowl.

They're a little less structurally sound than a stuffed shell, but definitely cheaper and probably better for you than what you'd get at Olive Garden anyways. I mean, it's not like I don't just go in there starving, order the soup and breadsticks, and ignore the salad.

More Assembly Foods

2009-06-08T13:03:00.006-04:00

I know, I know. I've been slacking. It's been a week. But seriously, I've been having difficulty being culinarily creative lately, in part due to my severe Mass Effect addiction. Ever since Mass Effect 2 has been announced, I've been on a mission to make sure the characters I port over into the next installment of galactic drama are friggin' perfect. As a result, I've been sticking to the basics. I mean, yes, beer-brined pork chops with roasted potatoes are delicious, but who wants to watch me make them?

But enough about my nerdish addictions. I've been thinking lately about presentation, how we eat with our eyes first. And I realized that in the course of making food, there are times where the product looks awful. Today, I will study one such food: the pizza roll/stromboli/stuffed bread. Someone should get around to standardizing the term for this thing.

Has anyone out there actually gotten the Pillsbury Pizza Crust in a can? it looks pretty nasty. All off-white and sticky and rectangular. I tried rolling it into a sphere once, so I could reshape it into a disc. I failed miserably. However, the rectangular shape is ideal for what we need it for today. Though really, if you get the chance to make your own dough or pick up a ball from your local pizzaria, go for it. Pillsbury ain't bad, but I imagine anything else would be better - I'm just lazy today. Here, I have the dough stretched out in some sort of mishappen quadrangle.

Note the dollar for size reference. It's surprisingly large, this hunk of gooish dough. This is what I'm talking about in terms of appearances. This is kind of gross. Basic, but gross.

The assembly process isn't hard from here.

I just layered cheese, sopressata, spinach, and capricola on top of the dough, taking the time to squish down the spinach as I did. After all, the spinach was going to lose moisture and shrink as it cooked, so we want to minimize that. Yes, I could have avoided that by wilting the spinach down before I put the layer down, but what do I look like, a guy that isn't lazy? Anyway. At this point, all the layers actually look pretty on top of that pallid palate of pizza dough. But it's not hard to go from this:

(Ooo. More fontina!)

To this:

Again, with the dollar for size reference. Tell me that doesn't look like a palette-swapped dinosaur turd covered in parmesan. It's that weird, football-on-a-pasta-binge look to it that's less than appealing. It doesn't even look good when it's done cooking.

Bleah. No, this is not a visually appealing dish... until you cut it open.

Take a look at that. That's all cured meat and spinach and cheesy goodness, all rolled up in an easy-to-eat crust. So let that be a lesson to you.

Okay, so I'm not really sure where I'm going with that. Ugly food is tasty food, too! Now leave me alone, I have a headache.

Why I Do What I Do - The Steak and Egg Breakfast Wrap

2009-06-01T11:43:00.004-04:00

I'll admit, I've been kind of slacking lately when it comes to the blog. But to be honest, I really haven't been making anything interesting lately. I mean, heck, I was going to post something yesterday about putting peanut butter on an Entenmann's chocolate-covered donut hole.

Delicious, yes, but not exactly worthy of its own post. I mean, what can I say about it? "PEANUT BUTTER ON DONUT NOM NOM NOM" isn't particularly compelling food writing.

That's all part of the problem, I suppose. In the last few weeks, I've been doing construction work - putting together sandwiches and wraps rather than actively cooking remotely complicated dishes. But there's something of value to talk about there, too. Take my breakfast, for example - a steak and egg wrap isn't really complicated, but there are bits and pieces that bear explanation.

Let's start with the choice of steak. Me, I went with skirt.

There's a reason skirt steak is generally viewed as the steak of choice when it comes to fajitas and other such wrap-like applications. Since it's so thin, it takes to marinades very well (mine consisted of teriyaki, Worcestershire, red wine vinegar, honey, Sriracha, and a dash of garlic powder) and cooks remarkably quickly (2:30 on each side on a 400+ degree skillet). The flavor is quite beefy, while the fat marbling and quick-melting connective tissue lead to a very toothsome, yet delicate texture. And since the grain of the meat goes side to side, it's ridiculously easy to cut it across the grain, leading to shorter meat fibers and therefore more tender mouth feel.

Amongst beef cuts, this quality is bested only by the tenderloin's similar grain pattern. But tenderloin's also generally three times as expensive as skirt, so I call whatevs on this one.

One of my biggest problems when it comes to creating wraps is estimating how much filler I need. Filler is that ingredient that provides bulk and texture to the wrap while offering little in the way of flavor. It tempers the more flavorful elements of the wrap, spreading it out across the breadth of the construct while simultaneously filling the stomach. It can be anything from rice to lettuce; in this case, it's fries. Why fries? Because whenever I order steak and eggs at a diner, I always swap out the home fries for fries fries. I like crunchy things.

But I digress. As I was saying, I always overshoot when it comes to the filler, which inevitably leads to overstuffing the wrap. In the end, I'm always stuck with a gigantic half-wrapped monstrosity that I can barely cram into my mouth (that's what she said), and that's never fun to eat.

The solution? Measure out your fries before you cook 'em.

Ta da! Perfect. No muss, no fuss. Into the fryer with 'em.

It's time to put the wrap together. First up, the steak.

Natural instinct would be to lay the steak out vertically, right? More visually appealing, easier to figure out the breadth of the wrap. So why am I laying the steak strips horizontally? The answer comes from thousands of frustrating steak wraps before. I'd bite down, and, no matter the tenderness of the steak, I'd wind up pulling away with an entire chunk of meat. This, of course, would mean the next few bites would be sadly meatless. By laying the steak out horizontally, each piece gets pulled away by each bite - no more struggling to tear off with each chomp.

Next on would be the fries.

Why put them on top of the steak, and not the other way around? The answer here is easy - the fries are sharp and pointy. The layer of steak under them keeps them from poking through the wrap itself. Nothing's sadder than a sandwich or wrap with poor structural integrity.

And finally, the egg.

Why over easy rather than sunny side? Here, we're using the pokiness of the fries to our advantage. The fries will pierce the yolk, freeing the yolky goodness into the interior of the wrap, where it can be soaked up by the potatoey fries rather than run down the inside of the wrap itself. Even distribution of the yolk is key, since it's effectively the sauce. And since the side facing up has seen the majority of the heat, it's just tough enough to shield that side of the wrap from the wicked spears of crispy potato.

The end result is a delight to eat. The fries capture and hold the yolk, preventing it from running out the bottom of the wrap, while each bite delivers a careful balance of steak, egg, and potato. Because that's how we do. Don't just be delicious when it comes to your eats, folks. Be smart about it, too.

Everything Tastes Better Fried

2009-05-24T15:52:00.003-04:00

Owning a deepfryer comes with its own special hazards. Some are obvious, like the possibility of spilling 375 degree oil all over yourself, forcing you to live out your days like Liam Neeson on permanent painkillers. Others are more subtle, like the insatiable need to deepfry anything you can get your hands on. The need is a beast, and the beast must be fed.

Today, that beast wants chimichangas. I wish I could say something about the components of the burritos, but let's face it. It's a bunch of crap rolled in a tortilla. In this case, it's a shmear refried beans, spoonfuls of salsa and sour cream, mexican rice (from the box; if it's Goya, it's got to be good) mixed with taco meat, and a mix of shredded Muenster and white cheddar.

Brilliant culinarism? No. But effective. Sometimes, a guy's just gotta make what's easy. Speaking of easy, it's tricky to get a tight roll on these if you're not willing to get your hands dirty. Lucky for me, that's never been a problem.

One of the driving principles of frydom is a self-contained unit. You can't just go dropping stuff into hot oil all willy-nilly without making sure it'll keep its hands to itself first. For chimis, that means making sure that the tortilla is well-sealed on both ends.

While we're on the topic of tortillas, you, gentle reader, should be aware of something. Tortillas freak out in oil. They want to spasm all over the place, spread their wings and be free, dumping whatever they're encasing into the oil to make a mockery of your organizational skills. This means you have to pin these little jammies down when you drop 'em into the oil. I like to use this here spider.

Admittedly, this means I can only do one of these at a time. But believe me, it's worth the wait. For after five minutes, you will be rewarded with a golden brown and crispy chimichanga.

With the insides all hot and melty.

Eat your heart out, Taco Bell. If I'm going to liquefy my colon and solidify my aorta, I'm going to do it in the comfort of my own home on my own terms, thank you very much.

Fry on, gentle readers! Fry on.

Indian Food at Panna II

2009-05-23T22:05:00.002-04:00

Rolled out for some Indian tonight with Courtney and her buddies, Jim and Tanner. It was fun to get out of the house; it'd been a while since I set foot in the East Village. At any rate, we headed to Panna II on 1st Ave. - a train wreck of a place festooned with string lights and other decorative atrocities, and headily hawked by crazed Indians waiting outside like rabid wombats. I guess they have to lure the customers in; there are three Indian restaurants in the same bloody building, and apparently the one we went to is the best of the bunch.

Food was good. (shrug) Nothing too outstanding. I could have taken pictures of the well-fried samosas, or the crispy, oily naan, or the aggressively tasty vindaloo. But good as it all was, nothing stood out in particular... nothing, that is, except for the butter chicken.

I giggled with delight when it arrived. That, my friends, is a chunk of butter stuck in the sauce. Apparently, "butter chicken" is code for "tikka masala with a hunk of butter tossed onto the plate". How blatant is that? It's like they're outright saying "Just in case you had any doubts, butter is what makes everything taste good."

Funny thing is, they're right. Mmm. Butter.

The Good Old Days

2009-05-18T14:07:00.003-04:00

Some of you may or may not know that I attended Rutgers, comma, the State University of New Jersey. In fact, some of you may or may not have met me at said State University. But for you painfully outnumbered folk that are not aware of this, let it be known that, in fact, I went to Rutgers.

How is this relevant, you ask? Well. I'll get to that in a second.

This last weekend, I participated in a barbecue. The food supply was of epic proportions - piles of spinach pie, eggplant pasta, burgers with pimento cheese, pulled pork of two divinations, chicken as far as the eye could see, and a mass of shrimp that I will have nightmares about for the years to come. In fact, I'm going to have kids just so I can tell them about this shrimp, and pass the nightmare on to the next generation.

And while the food supply was everything The Departed was (rich in content, character driven, and masterfully executed), the demand side of things turned out more like the Sex and the City Movie (overly gabby and anorexic in behavior). Aah, I don't really mean that. But seriously, people just weren't in the eating and drinking mood. The end result was that we got ourselves a serious haul in leftovers. Today, we'll be focusing on these here Portuguese rolls:

And this honkin' pile of burgers.

I mean, sure, I could have just sat down with this, made myself a burger or two, and have done with it, but where's the fun in that? This, folks, is where Rutgers comes into the story.

Fact is, I've been ruminating lately on how much I miss the old grease trucks. Never mind that I gained 50 pounds in my freshman year by making the Fat Darrell most of my dietary intake; those greaseball sandwiches were fantastic. So while I had the means before me, I was determined to recreate the one that started it all - the Fat Cat.

The process began simply enough, I reformed the patties to fit the rolls. An easy procedure.

While they grilled, I scooped out the rolls themselves, toasted them, and anointed them with the prerequisite mayo and ketchup.

Mine, of course, has been augmented by healthy splashes of cheepohtleay.

And what would a good burger be without fries?

Not with your burger. Oh, no, there's a lazier option to be had. This is a college student sandwich - you can never have something just on the side. No, the Fat Cat is your good old cheeseburger on a long roll, lettuce, tomato, and fries stuffed into it. You know, so you don't have to worry about alternating what you put in your mouth. That's too complicated for college students.

Construction was a little hairy, but the finished product... oh, those grinning Lebanese bastards would be proud.

Look at it. It looks like it wants to kiss you.

And so we feasted on Fat Cats, and as my delicate flower of a ladyfriend doubled over in pain from the thunderous influx of grease, I smiled contentedly. "In your face, darling," I said as I took another bite. "In your face."

My work here was done.

Dark Chocolate Brownies

2009-05-15T13:31:00.013-04:00

I like dark chocolate. Not the insane 60%+ stuff, the turn your face inside-out bitter kind. Sure, all you chocolate snobs, take your shots now, as I say, "I like Hershey's." I also like brownies, and math. Let's combine the three and do an experiment, shall we?

Okay, so here's what you're looking at: Alton Brown's cocoa brownie recipe from the Food Network, and a bunch of math. A little digging around shows that the average milk chocolate has 10% cocoa solids, and what gets marketed as the average dark chocolate has 35% cocoa solids. If you look at the total of sugar plus cocoa powder, there's 1 1/4 cups cocoa powder and a total of 2 cups of sugar (1 granulated, 1 brown.) This gives us a 5:8 ratio of cocoa:sugar, with a total volume of 3 1/4 cups (or 13/4 cups, for those of us who are weird and like bigger fractions so we don't have to convert them on the fly.) Given that dark chocolate has 35% cocoa to milk chocolate's 10%, the amount of cocoa needs to 3.5 times what it normally is, so the ratio gets upped to 17.5:8, a little more than 2:1. Given that the total number of units in the original recipe was 13, I figured that fudging the math (har har) to a 9:4 would give me the just-over-2:1 ratio that I need.

tl;dr: That means the recipe now calls for 2 1/4 cups of cocoa powder and 1 cup of sugar, divided as 1/2 cup granulated and 1/2 cup brown.

I cut the recipe in half all the way across the board. This was an experiment; if it failed spectacularly, I didn't want to get stuck with an 8x8 pan of something I couldn't eat. So we go with a 4x9 loaf pan:

First observation: the batter is thick. Thicker than your average brownie batter. It also looked like it was pulling en masse away from the sides of the buttered and floured pan, so at least I was pretty confident it wouldn't stick.

Second observation: It was heavy. Heavier than you'd expect something of that size to weigh. But it looked a little spongy, not unlike the underside of your normal brownie. Flip it over...

...you know, it looks... just like it did before it went in the oven. That's a total headscratcher.

Well, this explains why the thing was so heavy: it's dense. I see next to no air bubbles, next to no leavening. And while it tastes like dark chocolate, it's got this slightly dry, slightly grainy texture to it. Removing large hunks of sugar from the recipe probably hurt it, so it's back to the drawing board to figure out how to moisten this brick.

Grilled Things!

2009-05-10T17:02:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year, folks! The weather's warm, but not stuff-sticking-to-other-stuff hot, the sun's out, the kids are out on the sidewalk, playing double dutch and chanting inappropriate phrases that we inadvertently taught them... it's time to grill things.

Now, this is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but, uh... I'm not much of a griller. I know, I know, that little comment is going to cost me a man card, but I'm used to stovetops and ovens - things with measurable heat outputs and whatnot. The grill remains this bastion of unlimited heat and finicky cooking surfaces.

But I wasn't going to let that stop me. Not on a day like today. No, chicken was on sale, and it's time I get over my fear of grilling.

Of course, chicken needs some sort of tasty basting substance on it. Mine started with a desire to get rid of the remaining honey mustard dressing in my fridge, and swiftly became an amalgam of random ingredients lying around my kitchen.

Prep was easy; I just dumped everything into the blender and gave it a whirl. Since I wasn't measuring anything, tasting it as it went became necessary. Also, don't ask me for a recipe, I don't think I'll ever be able to come up with this again. Regardless, it turned out to be a delicious paste that I then proceeded to lather up my chicken breasts with.

You may notice that two of them are butterflied to match the thickness of the less well-endowed chicken products. Who has mad knife skillz? Yo.

But I couldn't just eat chicken. No, I had to prepare some sides. Some corn, perhaps, drained from a can and packed in foil with butter and thyme?

Yeeeeeees. And I'll need a starch of some kind. Perhaps this here proscuitto bread.

Hmm. But I need some excuse to grill it. Oooh, I know! Let's accordion it and stuff it with butter and cheddar!

That'll do.

Suffice to say, grilling was a success. The chicken came out all crusty and tasty:

The corn... oh, man, you should have smelled it when it came off the grill. Gah, it was delicious.

And the bread, well, you know what happens when you melt cheese on bread.

Yeeeeeeeah. That happens.

This is going to be a good summer. I gotta hone my grill skills, so look forward to some fun grilled concoctions as the months lead on!

A Delicious Riddle

2009-05-06T13:36:00.003-04:00

What do you get when you combine this...

With one of these...

And a little of this...?

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. You get... the Pizza Chili Dog.

Okay, so that was a crappy riddle. But still! Behold it in its grossness and glory. Try this at home, kids. But for goodness' sake, make sure you have a tarp down before you try to eat it.

Also, eating this monstrosity first thing in the morning is ill-advised. Just sayin'.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go lie down for a little while.

Bacon Grease Dinner Rolls

2009-05-05T20:26:00.013-04:00

The ongoing saga to make use of the Strategic Bacon Grease Reserve continues. I mentioned in my Anniversary Lamb post that we had these dinner rolls from the breadmaker with them. I have to admit, I wasn't totally sold on this idea. I made bread, swapping out the butter for bacon grease, and something was... off... with the texture. The mouthfeel wasn't quite right, like it was too moist, and the bubbles were too big, so it wasn't exactly structural.

The good news is that I didn't have this problem this time around. The bad news is that I can't give you a recipe -- breadmaker recipes are specific per bread machine, so if you don't have the same breadmaker as I do, I can't help you. And if you do have the same breadmaker, you already have the recipe. But don't despair. Just about any breadmaker should include a dinner roll recipe, use it with the "dough only" setting.

Divvy up the dough into equal portions. To get that nice exterior shell, pull the outside edges down and around themselves, then gather them into a point and secure it with a pinch.

Arrange them on a cookie sheet evenly, then set them somewhere to rise. Luckily, the house was a little humid and a little warm, so rise, my little yeasty minions! RIIIIIIIIIISE!

Wa ha ha ha! Brush a little more bacon grease on top for a little browning, then bake:

Nice little bit of browning there on the underside:

Check out the lovely texture:

And it hollows nicely, creating a little bready shotglass for a bite of lamb:

Awesome. Still have a bit of bacon grease to go through, so the bacon grease shall return.

Lazy Chili

2009-05-01T15:10:00.003-04:00

It's been a lazy couple of weeks, cooking-wise. Been the same ol' same ol' - roasted chicken thighs that I tried to throw on the grill but I forgot they were coated in oil so they caught on fire, take out food from all sorts of places around the 'hood, and other such forgettable items. Like I said, I've been lazy.

So when I woke up today and said I wanted chili, I was determined to take the laziest route possible. Luckily, I've been making chili in a number of different variations to be able to pick out my basic ingredients from the store while blindfolded, asleep, and shot in the leg three times. Don't ask me how I found that out, but it's fact.

What makes this chili so lazy, you ask? I'll tell you. It's the lazy cook's best friend.

The food processor. Really, the people I know who have these things (myself included) don't use it nearly often enough. The concept is very simple - any chopping, shredding, or blending you want to do, you can just toss it into the food processor and get it done with a flick of the switch. Heck, it makes all that beef look like this:

And it takes those unwieldy vegetables and chipotles in adobo and turns them into this:

Yeah, sorry about the fuzziness on that one. Still working on how to use the girlfriend's camera. But that's all she wrote, folks. Chili's one of those things that you can just toss all your ingredients into a pot, clamp a lid on, and simmer for an hour and you've got a pot of blazing-hot, tasty, tomatoey love.

It's the perfect lazy food - it goes on forever. I'm fully planning on eating that pot of chili for the next few days (sorry, girlfriend), be it in a bowl, topped with a little cheese and the ubiquitous tater tots...

Or just slathered on a bacon-wrapped hot dog and sprinkled with those lovely, thank-God-they're-back-in-season Vidalia onions.

Mmm. Oh, hey, that reminds me - Vidalias are in season! Gotta think up something to do with those... Whaddya think, folks? Soup, maybe? Or should I think up something that involves the grill, perhaps? Decisions, decisions...

Anniversary Lamb

2009-04-28T21:26:00.008-04:00

Some of you may know my girlfriend of five years, Kate. Shortly after we started going out, I decided to take a shot at impressing her. So the first time I had her over to my old apartment for dinner, I made a leg of lamb. Cut the bone out, butterfly it a little, slather some paste in there for bonus flavor, tie it back up, sear, bake, serve.

So this past weekend, we celebrated our fifth anniversary by cooking for each other. She made grilled chicken thighs with buffalo sauce -- very good and that'll be another post. Me, I went back to that lamb.

We actually had to hit an alternate grocery store; the one we usually go to isn't big enough to carry rare items like lamb legs. Here's what 7.15 pounds of leg of lamb looks like, should you try to bludgeon someone with it.

I cut the one pound leg bone out, put it in a freezer bag. I'll boil that for soup at some point. Also, in the butterflying process, I had to trim off 2 pounds of meat that I couldn't reattach, so it went in another freezer bag to be turned into burgers at a later date. So that left 4 pounds to hit the grill. A combination of garlic, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and a little oil, slathered on the inside and rolled up, secured with cotton twine. (Okay cotton/polyester. Just make sure it's not nylon. Or jute. Eurgh.) Sorry I couldn't show the butchering process. My hands were a lot messy. But here's what's awaiting me on indirect coals:

Ten minutes, roll it, ten minutes, roll it, ten minutes, roll it, let it go until the inside temperature reaches 135. Or what you hope is 135, because my probe thermometer is on the fritz.

If it's not done, just pull it off the grill, pull the grill off the coals, and shove them all in the middle for some direct heat. Toss a box of rosemary on there too for some extra flavor.

LET IT REST. For the love of God and all that is holy, rest your meat before you tear it into small bits to devour! This was served with bacon grease dinner rolls -- stay tuned.

I Made A Salad Today

2009-04-26T17:49:00.004-04:00

That's right. I know I have a reputation for just making colossally unhealthy (yet delicious) things. Many of you were quite recently at my much-touted Rock and Roll Fryathon, in fact. But I just want to let you know, gentle readers, that I'm still capable of making things like this:

That, my friends, is a spinach and apple salad with sliced mushrooms and grape tomatoes in a dijon, honey, and red wine vinaigrette. It's topped with gorgonzola, toasted hazelnuts, and still-hot herb-rubbed sirloin, and served with three honkin' huge muenster-parmesan croutons.

Now don't tell anyone. I've got a reputation to uphold.

Burgers at Shake Shack

2009-04-23T13:33:00.001-04:00

Caution. This post may contain some explicit language. The burger I ate today was that fucking good.

It's been a week since our last post, and there's a good reason for that. She's sitting about two or three feet to my right. But enough with the excuses; none of you really want to hear about it here. You want to hear the word on what I'm eating.

And the word, my friends, is burgers.

That's right, motherfuckers. Today, Zack has proven once again that he is a true seeker of the delicious, for at his behest, I made a pilgrimage to a place I should have been to a long, long time ago: The Shake Shack.

At 11:30, my ladyfriend and I arrived at the little stand in Madison Park and attached ourselves to the already-substantial line formed at the ordering station. We were joined forthwith by Count Zackula and his cohort Sebastian, and spent the next ten minutes in line discussing what to get. Both of them were old hands at the joint, and assured me that no meal at the Shack would be complete without getting at least the Double Stack: a burger augmented by a deep-fried cheese-stuffed portobello mushroom.

But no, that would not be enough for me. I needed something more. I needed the Shack Stack - cheeseburger, awesome mushroom thing, cheeseburger.

And so we ordered. We were given a buzzer to await the arrival of our meal.

I clutched this plastic vibrator like a spinster on a Saturday night, waiting impatiently as customer after customer rose to retrieve their deliciousness. I gave the mental finger to each one in turn. Up yours, girl who's talking on the phone, picking at her fries rather than eating her burger. Screw you, guy who got a friggin' hot dog. Your mother, batch of interns who ordered like ninety things to bring back to the office. You don't appreciate what you've got. You don't deserve it.

At long last, ol' #34 buzzed. Giggling like an imp on meth, I scurried to the window to claim my prize.

That's what a burger order should look like. A cardboard box with a fry boat, a plastic cup of tasty beverage (Abita Root Beer in my case), and a gut bomb wrapped in greasy wax paper.

Fuck yes.

Staring down that fried portobello was like getting your first hooker. You're nervous, you know you should have brought protection, but you already paid, so...

Uhnf.

I bit into the burger, and the crispy disc of mushroomy goodness ejaculated its hot, cheesy love lava into my mouth. It was as if the burger had bought my taste buds a few drinks, taken them out for a ride to a Makeout Point, and nailed them in the backseat of their Camaro. Two months later, my taste buds would decide to keep the baby as a reminder of that magical night of passion.

So, yes, it's safe to say I enjoyed the experience. And it would seem that I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

That, my friends, is a lot of people waiting for their chance to get mouthfucked by this burger. Bless their zeal.

Zack says the next place we're hitting up is an arepa joint, one that's got plenty of chorizo on the menu. I can't wait to get some hot, greasy sausage in my mouth.

Corned Beef Soup

2009-04-16T21:29:00.006-04:00

Here's a story that happened a few weeks ago. Way back around St. Patrick's, we made a corned beef. (Hands up all of you who are surprised that it's the Alton Brown recipe. No one? Good.) But when you cook the thing in that massive pot of water, you're left with, well, a massive pot of water. Except this pot happens to taste of corned beef. Waste not, want not. So what do you do?

Just throw in some more potatoes, carrots, and cabbage, like you're making another corned beef. Of course, you've got to add some beef to that. Choose your favorite cut, or find the thing labeled "stew meat", or if you're lucky to find it, a couple of pounds of brisket cubed.

Of course, the beef winds up tasting corned, what with it steeped in the leftovers of an already corned beef. Two for the price of one! There's this strange side effect though. The first time around, I made it without the saltpeter -- the stuff that turns it pink. Second time --

-- huh. Wonder how that happened. Still, tastes pretty good.

Sometimes I Make Gross Things Because I Can

2009-04-13T18:15:00.002-04:00

I like to think of myself as somewhat of a culinarian. I enjoy the finer points of food appreciation - the nuances of herbs in a rich slow-braise, the delicate interplay between fish flesh and baby spinach. But now and again, I just come up with a terrible idea. A deliciously terrible idea.

It starts with meat. Ground beef, to be precise, mixed in with a little bacon and my favorite flavor of Tabasco.

Then it moves on to America's favorite childhood potato product - tots.

"Oh no! We seem to have fallen into this corningware dish! And we are liberally sprinkled with this delicious meat mixture!"

"What's this? Cheese? Gadzooks, it's everywhere!"

"Oh, dear! Is that a 400 degree oven we're being thrust into? Eeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Totchos. Like nachos. With tater tots.

If anyone needs me, I'll be happily cramming these things into my mouth. If I should drop dead of a heart attack, rest assured that I died the way I lived.

Happy.

Fried Chicken at Dirty Bird To Go

2009-04-10T14:13:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite things about doing work for my friends is that I'll more often than not get paid in food. And when that food is fried chicken, well, that's pretty much all I need to hear to get out of the house... especially if Zack's the one doing the summoning. His knowledge of tech is rivaled only by his appreciation for delicious.

Dirty Bird To Go is a tiny little chicken shack on W. 14th - one of those joints where the kitchen is way bigger than the seating area. I think there were a whopping two tables in the place, both adorned with salt, pepper, and two kinds of hot sauce. That pretty much sold me right there.

First up were the sides.

The kale was delightfully garlicky without being laden with butter or bacon fat. The mac and cheese was a careful balance between cheese and mac, with neither overpowering the other. The smashed potatoes with gravy were simply delicious - everything I ever wanted in the side, deftly dodging the common pitfalls of overworking and oversalting. All in all, the sides were simple, but very skillfully done.

But I was there for chicken, and Dirty Bird did not disappoint.

The chicken arrived, picture perfect with two wedges of cornbread and way too freaking hot to put in my mouth. Ha! Like that was going to stop me.

Aaaaaaah. The crust was thin, but substantial. Crunchy, but not mouth-cuttingly so. And it did a good job of staying put when I bit into it. The meat was moist, dripping with chickeny goodness, coating my hands and falling onto the plate where it could be absorbed by the cornbread. The cornbread which, until blessed with a drizzle of fallen chickeny goodness, had been somewhat pallid in flavor.

It was then that I realized something. The cornbread was kind of boring... but perfect with the chicken. I took a bite of chicken and followed it with the kale. The textures melded together beautifully, with the garlic just punching through enough. The mac and cheese got a shot of meaty goodness and that crunch from the crust when eaten in tandem with the chicken. And the mashed potatoes... I can't really describe the combination without sounding like a pervert.

Dirty Bird knows their chicken. And they know how to bring the best out of their chicken in their sides, which is a beautiful and rare thing to experience. If you get the chance, make a break for it - it's some of the best fried chicken in the Village.

Bacon grease biscuits

2009-04-09T21:47:00.010-04:00

Waste not, want not. I've been hanging on to the drippings from every pound of bacon for about... 5 years? I'd kept them in one of those quart-sized containers that Chinese food places deliver soup in, and to keep it from going rancid, I'd kept it in the freezer. Now that causes the cheap plastic to become very brittle, very quickly. When I moved in with my girlfriend, she dropped it. Twice. After shattering two containers, she blurted out, "You have this thing, but you never use it!"

Let's fix that, shall we?

Ho-kay. St. Alton's biscuit recipe is our target tonight. Note that there's 2 T of butter and 2 T of shortening, which will be switched out for bacon grease. The rest of the recipe will be left alone. Mostly.

The bacon grease complies nicely when you mush it into the flour mixture. Now, most people roll the dough out and then cut them with a round cutter. Then they say "when you reroll the dough, the second batch won't be as fluffy." Then why reroll? Unless your biscuits must be round, just plunk them down in a big rectangle, then use a pizza cutter to divide them.

And heck, while I've got the bacon grease out, let's brush melted bacon grease on the tops to add some browning and flavor.

You want fluffy? Here you go:

You want flaky? Here you go:

You want a tuna croquette stuck in the middle? We can do that too:

They've got just a hint of bacon flavor. Definitely there, but not quite to the point where it's clobbering you over the head. Very nice.

Beer-battered Chicken

2009-04-08T21:09:00.005-04:00

I might have mentioned at some point that I love frying things, particularly chicken. And since I still had four chicken thighs left over after cacciatore last week, I thought I'd put a little somethin' somethin' to the test.

You see, I have long pooh-poohed the concept of batter-fried chicken. It's just not a practical method of frying; the chicken takes so long to cook in the oil that the batter just burns to a crisp. No, if you want to batter-fry chicken, it had better be boneless and cut up into little pieces if it's got a hope of achieving a balance between golden-brown and cooked all the way through. Right?

Wrong. The solution, my friends, is to par-cook the chicken. I know, it's a fairly obvious idea, something I should have been able to come up with on my own. But the thing is, why would I have bothered? I did well enough with my standard breading procedures for the concept to not cross my mind.

But I'm always open to new ideas, and since it had been ages since I had beer-battered anything, I figured I'd try something out.

The spare chicken had been sitting in the fridge in a brine for a few days. I figured that since I was cold-storing it anyway, it might as well be acquiring some extra flavor while I decided what to do with it.

The brine was nothing new. Salt, peppercorns, a little rosemary, some parsley, all dissolved in the dreaded Clamweiser. Don't you judge me, I gotta get rid of it somehow.

After extracting the chicken, I gave some thought as to how I wanted to par-cook it. All the recipes I had read online made it seem like poaching was the way to go, but I had my reservations. Poaching was well and good, but would it really add any significant flavor to my brined chicken thighs?

In the end, I settled on roasting them. There was a lot of flavor to be made here - salting, peppering, and garlic powdering the outside would create a nice, well-seasoned crust. Not to mention the wonders of the Maillard reaction. Much to my surprise (and chagrin), the lengthy brining backfired on me. So much moisture had flooded the chickenflesh that it all gooshed out when the chicken hit the pan. Rather than the almost-crispy crust I usually get from a nice pre-roast pan-sear, I was left with pallid, rubbery skin when I turned them over.

Oh, well. It still got some nice color in the oven.

Next up was the batter. I figured I'd keep it simple. Just some flour, a little baking soda, a pinch of salt, and, of course, beer. In this case, Magic Hat's lovely flagship, a bottle of #9.

As with most of my cooking, there really wasn't much measuring going on. I was thinking I'd go for a nice pancake batter consistency, but it had been so long since I had made pancakes that I forgot what that was like. Come to think of it, I haven't had pancakes in so long that I can't remember what they're like. Great. Now I want pancakes.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the batter. It was thick enough to achieve a good coat for the chicken, so while it was resting in the fridge next to the chicken, I preheated the fryer.

At the beep-beep-beep, the chickens got a little dip in the batter...

And into the fryer they went.

At once, I knew something was wrong. The chicken dropped to the bottom of the basket and stayed there. I shook the basket a little. No movement. I poked at the chicken with the tongs. No movement. I rather suddenly realized that I had made a rookie mistake when it comes to batter-frying things. Always swish the battered material around for a bit before releasing it into the oil, or that batter'll wrap itself around whatever it lands on and not let go. The end result was a patch of exposed chicken on the initial two specimens.

(sigh) Well, if at first you don't succeed, fry, fry again, right? Right. Second run came out a lot better.

Ain't it cute? Like a big poof of fried chicken. Definitely a stern contrast to the crunchy crusts that the various dredge processes net.

Like a poof it looked, and like a poof it tasted. Crisp, but with a certain leavened give that the baking soda and beer afforded it. The inside was juicy as all get-out, especially since I had managed to overcook the chicken just a tidge in the roasting stage. And very beery in flavor. As predicted, roasting the chicken beforehand brought an explosion of toasty goodness to the table, too. All in all, I'd say the experiment was a success, though as an alternative method of frying, it's not my favorite. But it's definitely something to try again, something to take another couple of swings at to iron out the problems.

It was only later, whilst I was snacking on dessert, that I realized I probably should have kept the batter around just a little while longer...

Ah, well. C'est la vie. Next time.

Chicken Cacciatore

2009-04-03T19:11:00.004-04:00

So I was sitting on the couch the other day, watching TV, when I started thinking about chicken. Despite how odd that might seem to some of you, me thinking about chicken is actually a quite common occurrence. Standing in the shower, scrubbing away the sleep, I think of chicken. Looking out the window at the spring rains as they bring life back to the soil, I think of chicken. Gently holding hands with Courtney... She asks quietly, looking soulfully in my eyes, "What are you thinking about?" I return her delicate, meaningful gaze and reply, with all the seriousness in my heart, "Chicken."

But I digress. It occurred to me that, in my entire adult life, I have never attempted to make chicken cacciatore. I remembered my mother making it, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it tasted like. I knew it was red and smelled tomatoey, but I really couldn't remember the flavor. So, after a little websurfing for recipes and a quick visit to the Key Food across the street, I was ready to take a whack at it.

I managed to pick up two things about chicken cacciatore while rooting around online. First, it involves flour-crusted chicken braised in a tomato sauce. Second, what goes into the sauce is pretty much anyone's guess. The options were wide and varied - just the way I liked it.

Now, like all things that are good and beautiful in this world, my cacciatore started with bacon.

I'm not going to explain or defend my choice. It's bacon, people. C'mon now.

While I was letting the bacon crisp up and render out, I set about disassembling my vegetables.

Mushrooms were on sale, in case you couldn't tell. There's something relaxing about cutting apart veggies in preparation for cooking; getting the peppers, onion, and garlic into a small dice seemed to take no time at all. The shrooms were stemmed and sliced thin.

Now, the greatest thing about starting with half a pound of bacon is the bacon fat.

Mmm. Bacon fat. The second greatest cooking medium in creation. What do I use it for? Well... I could use it to brown these chicken thighs that've been dredged in flour.

Or I could use it to brown up these here mushrooms.

And when I'm done with the mushrooms, there's still plenty left to sweat out these vegetables.

Mmm. Now, while the veggies were softening up (with a liberal application of crushed red pepper, dried oregano, and dried basil), it was time to assemble the liquids that were going to make up the rest of our sauce.

By this point, the smell of the red wine reducing was enough to get me salivating. If it's one thing I love, it's an apartment that smells like food. Once the wine was reduced by half (or so, I never actually measure), it was time to dump in the tomatoes and stock... and my secret weapon.

Mmm. Capers. I happen to know for a fact that two people very dear to me aren't fond of them, but I can't resist. They're all briney and vinegary and little explosions of flavor in everything you put them in. I didn't even bother draining them; I just dropped the brine into the sauce with the rest of it. By now, the sauce was looking pretty hearty.

It was time for the final push. I stirred in the bacon, wedged the chicken thighs in there, put on the lid and set the pot to simmer for 30 of the longest minutes of my life.

In the meantime, I had to fix myself up something to put the chicken on. The answer, of course, was spaghetti. Because I have a lot of it lying around.

After tossing it with parsley and (say it with me now, folks) bacon fat, everything was ready to serve. And serve it I did.

Complete with a fistful of romano on top. That, my friends, is not bad for my first try.

Tacos at Taco Chulo

2009-03-31T23:16:00.008-04:00

I helped my friend Damon move today. Now, as an incredibly sedentary individual, I can attest to the suckitude of such a task, coupled with the fact that Damon a) has the heaviest freakin' furniture of all mankind, and b) keeps moving into freakin' walkups. Seriously. I think that bookcase is made of granite.

But the evening did have a pleasant ending. Williamsburg has some tasty tacos in the form of Taco Chulo.

And so, beaten and bloody (I took a nasty spill carrying one of his ancient speakers up the stone porch), we settled into our seats. His brother and his brother's friend had already ordered up some guac and pico.

Tasty enough, but I'm a little guacced out from all the experimenting we've been doing at the homestead. Both dips were a little on the acidic side for me. And I mean citrus acidic, not tomato acidic.

But we weren't here for the guac, we were here for the tacos. Sure enough, they arrived with all the mouthwatering appeal of the tacos I had in Puerto Vallarta. None of this tex-mex crap piled with deli lettuce and overloaded with cheddar. Damon's monstrosity, some fish thing called the Juicy, was particularly impressive.

It came with two tortillas, so the taco was free to perform meiosis. My plate was a little more humble, consisting of two simple, non-fancily named tacos.

The first was their carne asada. Tasty, to be certain, but not spectacular. Nothing really popped. The chorizo, though... damn. It made me wish my other taco had been chorizo rather than carne asada. It also made me wish the bowls of guacamole and pico de gallo were replaced by bowls of chorizo. Something about this oily, spicy Mexican sausage reaffirms all that is good and beautiful in life.

Like any good taco, it left my hand a mess.

But hey, that's the mark of good finger food. Sorry about the terrible photo quality today, folks - the lighting in the place was particularly bad. Until next time!

Chili Verde

2009-03-29T14:21:00.003-04:00

Something unusual happened today. I walked into the Key Foods across the street, strolled into their produce section, and came across some fine-looking jalapenos. I know to some of you, that doesn't sound all that impressive. But considering that the average pepper that comes out of that train wreck of a supermarket looks like a Martian's scrotum, I was pretty excited. I picked up a bunch of them and scurried home, post-haste.

But what to do with these things? I rolled around ideas while snagging all the layabout vegetation I had stocked up. All together, they painted a pretty picture.

As I disassembled them, my thoughts turned to my buddy Paul, and how he had made a chicken chili earlier in the week. Now, I've made chili. I've made a lot of chili in my day. But for some reason, I had never gotten around to making a chicken chili. In fact, I didn't really know how to make a chicken chili. Luckily, the old chili principle still held - throw a bunch of stuff into a pot and let it simmer. The veggies went on the stovetop:

And I popped across the street once more to snag a can of beans and some chicken broth. The thought had occurred to use beer instead of broth, but I figured I'd play it a little closer to the book the first time around. Non-veggie team, assemble!

The rest of the process really wasn't that complicated. I spiced the vegetation, stirred in the broth, and let it simmer for half an hour while I diced and browned the chicken. Once the veggies were nice and soft, a run in the blender with a wad of parsley left me with a lovely, vibrantly green and just-thick-enough chili base.

Then came the stir-ins.

chickenchickenchicken

beansbeansbeans

Back to the stove for another half an hour, just to get the flavors to meld, and the chili was ready to eat.

Mmm. A wad of shredded Muenster and a couple of tortilla chips. That's how chili is done. Chalk another recipe up for mental storage; this one's a keeper. Maybe next time, a box of corn should get thrown in there, too...

Dad's Chicken and Potato Salad

2009-03-26T16:34:00.004-04:00

If you've been keeping up with this blog at all, then you are aware of two things: chicken is on sale at the moment, and I have too much mayo in the fridge. "Self," I asked myself. "What can I do with a lot of chicken and a lot of mayo?"

The answer, of course, is to make that tasty deli standard, (insert stuff here) salad!

Today, the part of Stuff will be played by chicken and potatoes.

Whenever I make a creamy salad, be it potato, chicken, tuna, cactus, or Advil, I always start with my dad's basic recipe. It's a time-honored tradition, and it has stood the test of time for a good reason. It's delicious. It starts off with a 4:2:1:1 of mayo, relish, cider vinegar and mustard.

This, of course, is backed up by a diced red onion, salt, and pepper. Here's where I start deviating from my dad's recipe, though. I like a little zing in my salad, so I throw in a healthy amount of chipotle Tabasco backed up with a couple of spoonfuls of briny, punchy capers.

Now that we've got the dressing down, it's time we move on to the bulk of the salad. The potato is diced fine:

And then, for no other reason than I have a deep fryer and I can, deep fried. In your face, convention.

Mmm. Fried. It'll be the death of me someday.

Now, sometime in between chopping and frying the potatoes, I came to the realization that I had completely forgotten the celery. I wasn't surprised, mind you - I have a tendency to forget vital ingredients when I'm cooking. I've made a mac and cheese without the cheese. Lucky for me, salads like this are forgiving when it comes to timing.

As for the chicken, I can't leave well enough alone there, either. Last weekend, my roommate's friend brought by an inordinate amount of what we now affectionately call Clamweiser. Yes, that's beer and Clamato in one can. So thoughtful of Anheuser-Busch to combine them for us so that we, the consumers, would not have to think to put them together. Because those there are two great tastes that taste great together.

We sure as hell aren't going to drink it, so I might as well poach the chicken in it.

Anything after that is somewhat less than exciting. Once all the ingredients were cooked, cut up (the chicken turns pink, but I was so overjoyed that it had finally finished cooking that I forgot to take a picture), and folded together with a mess of fresh-chopped parsley, they came together in a tasty amalgam that looked a lot like this.

Actually, it looked exactly like that. Into the fridge for an hour or two for the flavors to really meld, and we are hot to trot.

For the record, poaching the chicken in Clamweiser didn't really do anything for the taste. But it was a good excuse to get rid of a can of that putrid stuff. As for frying the potatoes, it added a wonderful crunch to the salad back before it went into the fridge, but afterwards, there was little textural difference between them and boiled potatoes. Neat side effect, though - they don't fall apart and turn into mush like boiled potatoes do in this sort of recipe.

Well, this should feed me for at least four or five days. Time to get some bread and make some sammiches. Onward!

I Have Too Much Mayonnaise

2009-03-25T15:22:00.003-04:00

So.

I have too much mayonnaise in my fridge.

It's shocking, but it's true. There's four pounds of mayonnaise sitting in the door of my fridge, right next to the ginger ale.

What does four pounds of mayonnaise look like? I'm glad you asked.

Hmm. It's not really that impressive sitting on the counter by itself. We'll need some reference photos.

Here is four pounds of mayonnaise next to a bottle of Tabasco brand hot sauce.

This is four pounds of mayonnaise wearing one of my hats, to keep the kitchen lights out of its... uh, label.

This is four pounds of mayonnaise chilling out and playing Rock Band with the hamster.

"Okay," you may say. "Raoul, I'll grant that that's a fair amount of mayonnaise. I'll even say that it's a lot of mayonnaise. But can you really say that you have too much mayonnaise?"

Yes. I certainly can. And I'll tell you why. It's a little thing I call the Mailbox Test. If I have a condiment, and I can fit it in my mailbox, then I do not have too much of it. For example:

I do not have too much sweet relish.

I do not have too much teriyaki sauce.

I have too much mayonnaise.

There you have it, folks. Until next time.

Pi Parmesan Crackers

2009-03-24T21:43:00.007-04:00

Hi! This is Bayani, Raoul's middle brother. If he ever mentions a Diko, that's me. I'm working up to Raoul's level of ingredient quality. My specialities are desserts, experiments, being a nerd, and being a packrat. Yes, they're actually all relevant to my cooking style. But let's start off by looking at something I'm tinkering with for a party.

A little background: I've got a friend who every year throws a pie party. People bring pie, both sweet and savory. And then there's me. I bring objects shaped like pi. As in the Greek letter, the one you keep seeing around circles. Year one, it was cookies. Year two, donuts. Year three, puff pastry. (As an aside, I went to Copper Gifts, and asked them to make me a custom pi cookie cutter. Turns out it's a stock shape.)

This year, I'm going with something different. I saw St. Alton making parmesan crisps. Basically, if you spread a little parmesan cheese on a silpat and bake it at 300 degrees for 6 minutes and let it cool, it becomes a little savory cracker. Immediately, I figure I can shape these things.

You can probably do this with any metal cookie cutter. Just set it down on a silpat or piece of parchment paper, and spray the inside of the cutter with some non-stick spray. Pack a little shredded parmesan in there, and try to push it into the corners. Grind on a little pepper or shake on some paprika, if you're feeling sassy. Slide it all into a 300 degree oven, and go do something else for 5-6 minutes.

When it comes out, it might stick to the sides of the cutter. Just poke them out and let them hang out on a cooling rack.

So there it is. A pi-shaped appetizer to make any geek proud. Even the ones who only know pi to seven places.

Nubbins, Part 2

2009-03-23T19:36:00.002-04:00

Just a quick update here, folks. This is what happens when the aforementioned nubbins are fried in seasoned bread crumbs instead of flour:

Note the darker color to the crust. Bread crumbs should only be used on fried things that are going in the oil for a short amount of time, and preferably at a lower temperature. Bread burns faster than raw flour does.

In cases like these, the crust comes out a bit crunchier, a texture I quite enjoy. Really, at this point, it's a matter of preference.

Now, if you'll pardon me... (nom)

Nubbins

2009-03-23T16:27:00.004-04:00

Being ass-end-up broke does funny things to your lifestyle. For one thing, you almost immediately shed your social life. You go days at a time without breathing fresh air. And your diet tends to be dictated entirely by what's on sale that week. For example:

Looks like I'm eating chicken! Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. My love of chicken is longstanding and passionate, and while I'm typically a legs-and-thighs kind of man, I'm not going to take breasts for granted when they're so amicably available.

Now, I'd like to take a minute here to discuss my love affair with fried food. I don't remember when it started. Perhaps I always have loved the fried. But when I started cooking on a regular basis, fried chicken became one of the fastest dishes I mastered.

And when I say mastered, I don't mean my fried chicken is the greatest fried chicken on the face of the planet. Fried chicken is like philosophy, or God. The more you learn about it, the more you realize you know nothing at all; when I say that I have mastered fried chicken, I mean that fried chicken has mastered me. Over the years, I have studied, practiced, and developed more techniques for frying chicken than I've had girlfriends.

Now, with that said, it really should come as no surprise that my first instinct was to fry these chicken breasts. To me, that means a buttermilk soak.

And so, trimmed and cut into 1/2" pieces and soaking in buttermilk and hot sauce (measurements be damned, I shoot for a lusty pink color), my three pounds of chicken breasts went into the fridge. Now, they say an eight hour buttermilk soak lets some crazy enzymatic reaction happen that tenderizes the chicken. I'm in no mood to disagree, but I have noticed that the difference is really only noticeable on relatively small pieces of chicken. Larger pieces benefit more from a brine, in my opinion, and that allows for a dry-wet-dry crusting procedure that lets me season them more comprehensively.

But I digress. It's dinnertime. The nice thing about having a tub of buttermilk-soaked chicken is that you can pick out and cook whatever amount you want. Ten little nubbins get the roll-around in flour...

...And three minutes in 375 degree oil.

It's important to remember to hit these guys with salt and pepper when they're still hot - the seasonings will actually stick to the crust as the oil drains away.

And that, my friends, is the best chicken nugget you'll ever put in your mouth. Golden-crispy on the outside, juicy and gummably tender on the inside. McDonald's can go f#@k itself.

So the next time you've got a craving for something you'd ordinarily shell out $6 for, make it your damn self. Fry on, ladies and gentlemen. Fry on.

The Weekender

2009-03-13T21:33:00.003-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call your attention to a series of exhibits. First of all, I'd like you to take a look at this:

That's what a 9.21 lb. pork shoulder looks like after braising for 10 hours in a slow cooker with onions, garlic, apple, rosemary, sage, thyme, and beer. Pretty tasty-looking, huh? Well, take a look at that very same pork shoulder after it's been pulled and tossed with a little bit of barbecue sauce and the drippings from its long, delicious braise.

Now, if I could call your attention away from the pork. Don't worry, we'll get back to it in due time. But for now, I'd like to show you these.

They're exactly what they look like, ladies and gentlemen. They are, in fact, hot dogs warmly embraced by two strips of bacon each. And as anyone knows, the best way to cook hot dogs wrapped in bacon is to deep-fry them.

Here, for instance, is an example of one of those bacon-wrapped hot dogs resting gently on a bun with mustard, relish, and chopped pickled jalapenos. Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it? But we're not done with it yet. Oh no. We are not.

We're going to take that pulled pork we prepared earlier. And we're going to put it on that bacon-wrapped hot dog. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Weekender.

Why The Weekender? Damned if I know. The concept of a bacon-wrapped hot dog topped with pulled pork blew out enough fuses in my brain to keep me from coming up with a good name. It's my disgusting creation, I'm allowed to name it.

Soak it in, folks. I've got another bad idea involving hot dogs, but you'll just have to wait and see...

Baked Ziti

2009-03-08T17:45:00.002-04:00

Growing up, baked ziti was one of the recipes that my brothers and I picked up pretty quickly. The principle was simple - a jar of tomato sauce, some meat, whatever veggies are on hand, some ricotta mixed in. Mix it all up with a pound of ziti, pour it out into a baking dish, and top with mozzarella. Throw it into the oven and bake until the cheese melts and the pasta gets all bubbly. Mmm.

Of course, the important part of baked ziti is waiting for a few minutes to let the pasta cool down and set. Traditionally, I have a history of being the guy that just crams hot food into my mouth with no regard for temperature, but this was enough to dissuade me:

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for baked pasta dishes. They were the stuff of family dinners growing up; just thinking about it conjures up memories of everyone shuffling into the kitchen, grabbing a bowlful of the stuff and sitting down to eat, chattering and laughing as we ate. So it was only appropriate this weekend, hanging out with Kuya and Angela, Paul and Andy and Tatay, all of us sitting around the kitchen table, laughing and goofing off with big ol' bowls of ziti.

You see that? That's what a bowl of family looks like.

Cheers, guys. Until next time.

Steak at Peter Luger

2009-02-27T22:23:00.006-05:00

That's right, you read it correctly. Peter Luger. The granddaddy of all steakhouses. Now, I understand some of you will read that, and say something like "Oh, I don't know. I've been to Outback." To those people, I ask a simple favor - find yourself a sturdy wrench, then beat yourself about the head and neck with it.

Steak is something special; a meal so simple that it holds so many pitfalls and traps for the uncautious cook. And of course, when it's done right... Well. Peter Luger's has a reputation to uphold. Their meat is peerless in quality and impeccably dry-aged. Their technique is unstoppable. Steakhouses like this are a classic example of a place that knows what it does and does it well.

That being said, let's take a look at the steak.

Mmm. Man. Look at that. That's a serious medium-rare there. And see how, even though it's effectively raw in the middle there, you can see the structure of the meat fibers? It's not all chewy and sinewy. That's one of the neat effects of dry-aging - the moisture that is evaporated out of the meat leaves behind a sturdier, more easily-chewed protein structure.

Now, it is said that a man cannot survive on steak alone. (Actually, the original saying had to do with bread, but bear with me. I'm segueing.) And as much as the steak was an utter delight, the sides were just as wonderful.

We stuck to the creamed spinach (far more spinach than cream, had a wonderfully spinachy flavor and pudding-like texture) and the German fried potatoes (freshly crunchy and a flawless counterpoint to the spinach and meat). Both were, again, devastatingly simple and perfectly prepared.

And, of course, no steak dinner is complete without a bone to gnaw on.

Now, as I said, steak is a special thing. And what special thing was I celebrating tonight? Why, my dear brother's birthday. It's a time-honored tradition to embarrass the crap out of whoever's birthday it is by alerting the staff. Sure enough, at the end of our meal, we got a goofy song from the waitstaff and this honking monstrosity:

Which, by the way, was just as ridiculously sweet and delicious as it looked.

So that was that. I've officially eaten at Peter Luger. Now, I've eaten at some serious steakhouses - Dylan Prime, Gallagher's, Frankie and Johnny's - and I can honestly say that if Luger's steak was superior, it was by a marginal amount. But you don't go for the superlative. You go for the experience.

And, if you're lucky, someone else is paying.

As an addendum, I'd like to point out that I don't have anything against Outback. Hell, I've had some pretty explicit dreams about those loaded fries of theirs. Just... remember. That's a steakhouse in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.

Until next time, dear readers.

Happy birthday, Kuya!

Spaghetti Bolognese

2009-02-22T21:47:00.005-05:00

It was a quiet Sunday, one of those Sundays that you just wake up whenever and stumble out of your room. I was hung over, or not, and I waddled out into the living room. Perry, my stalwart roommate, bade me good waking with the following question:

"Hey, if I get you ingredients, will you make Bolognese?"

"Uh... yeah."

"Cool."

True to his word, he got me the ingredients.

Mmm. Meatloaf mix, that wonderful combination of beef, pork, and veal. Onions and garlic, the only vegetables necessary. Fresh parsley. Looks good enough to eat. But what should I cook it in?

Oooooooooh. This big pan with butter! Of course. Browning meat in butter's the obvious choice.

The process isn't really all that exciting. You add things to the pan, one by one. The meat, then the chopped veggies. The tomato sauce. A little broth to thin it out, a little cream to tighten it up, and some fresh parsley and Parmesan to add a sharp, bright zing to it, and you've got yourself a big ol' bowl of happy.

I tell you, if you've never had a tomato sauce with a touch of cream, you're missing out. Something about that milky mouth feel spreads all over your mouth and numbs out the acidity of the tomatoes. The delicate, crumbly texture of the meat goes great with the pasta, though I probably would have preferred something that hung on to the meat bits a little better. Perhaps rotini, or shells.

Regardless, one of the most basic things you can cook yourself for dinner is a good pasta and sauce combination. Once you get the technique down, your options are damn near limitless. So go on, play with your food.