This is fucking fantastic
June 22, 2007 at 4:53 am (food)
Move
December 14, 2006 at 9:22 pm (food)
Ok, everyone. I am going to try Blogger. I will post links here to new posts over there! As soon as I get the pics downloaded to my computer, there will be a new post today.
Early Thanksgiving
November 15, 2006 at 7:03 pm (food)
Who has their Thanksgiving Menu together? I want to know what you’re making! I have mine together because I am having the big day this Saturday. Here is what’s going down in groove town:
Mashed Potatoes w/Proscuitto & Parmesan
Brandied Giblet Gravy
Beef Stuffed Mushrooms
Red Wine & Maple Glazed Carrots
Alton Brown’s Mac & Cheese
Orange Flavored Sweet Potatoes w/ Oatmeal Cookie Topping
Spiced Cranberry Sauce
Vegetable Pasta (Food Bank Pasta)
Katherine Hepburn’s Brownies
Pumpkin Ginger Cheesecake
Rustic Porcini Mushroom Stuffing
Corn w/ Bacon & Miso Butter
Post your menu in the comments, and pictures of your feast!
Swedish Meatballs, Redux
October 29, 2006 at 6:25 am (food)
Tonight, I brought out the old trusty fiddle, as it were, and played a familiar tune. Swedish Meatballs, the dish I ate every year for my birthday until I was around seventeen or so. Some of you might recall that my results lately have been somewhat lackluster, but I was very pleased with this go around.
So, here’s the recipe, as it now stands: (like all recipes that get brought out again and again, it undergoes changes here and there every time it’s made)
Ingredients: (if you have access to organic foods in your area, I highly reccomend their use. Not only because they tend to have a more advantageous affect on our fellow living things, but because the taste changes dramatically. This dish is good with just any old brands, but with organic ingredients, it becomes transcendent.)
2 packages of ground pork sausage. Make sure it has a high fat content; this won’t work if it’s lean meat. In the words of Alton Brown, I said it was good. I didn’t say it was fat free.
3/4 cup bread crumbs. I reccomend bread crumbs with Italian seasoning.
1/2 cup of milk. This time I used raw cow’s milk, though I’ve used raw goat’s milk too.
1 egg.
3 cups beef broth.
16 ounces of sour cream.
1/4 tbsp all purpose flour.
1 tbsp corn starch.
paprika.
salt.
canola oil.
1 tbsp butter.
You will also need a muffin tin, mini if you have it, for baking the meatballs.
Fill the biggest pasta pot you have full with water. You want more water than you might think! One gallon to every pound of pasta is reccomended. Add salt!
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees on the Bake setting.
Take a large, deep skillet and warm it over medium heat. Add the oil; i just eyeball it, but I estimate I use about three tablespoons of the stuff. Add the butter and melt.
While the butter is melting, mix the meat, egg, milk, breadcrumbs, and some pepper together thouroughly. It’s important that everything be evenly distributed! This is where you get your hands messy. Don’t even try and keep clean with this one. Get in there and knead like you mean it.
Form the mixture into balls large enough that, when placed in the muffin tin, they don’t fit all the way down inside. The goal is to keep the meatball from touching the bottom of the cup.
Brown each meatball on all sides in the butter and oil. DO NOT COOK! All you want is a bit of a crust. After you get a nice, attractive browning on the ball, remove it and put it in the muffin tray. Repeat until all your meatball mix is used up.
Place the meatballs in your preheated oven for roughly fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, you can remove the tray and split one of the meatballs to judge whether they need a longer cooking time. Fire up the burner under your pasta pot.
While the meatballs are baking, add the flour to the drippings in the skillet, and whisk thouroughly. Dust the bottom of the pan with paprika, allowing the spice to char somewhat. Add the beef broth, whisking thouroughly, then add the sour cream. A little more pepper never hurt anyone either.
Let the sauce simmer for about ten minutes, being sure to stir every now and again. Mix the cornstarch with a little beef broth or cold water and add to the sauce. Allow it to boil, but remove the sauce from the heat after one minute!
Pull the noodles two minutes earlier than usual. In other words: Al dente, or the state of being springy to the tooth yet soft enough that you don’t get starch on your teeth, should be about two minutes away when you drain the pasta.
Shake the water off, but not too vigourously. You want a little water to help the sauce adhere. Immediately throw the noodles in with the sauce, and fold them in. The pasta will absorb a good amount of the sauce, leaving you with a succulent plate of tangible indulgence.
So there you have it. For now I am satisfied with the latest tweaks to the recipe that has accompanied me through life. All I ask is that you make it with care, and try and share it with someone(s) you love.
*I apologize for the spelling errors. It’s late.
Bobby Flay and Your Last Meal on Earth
August 23, 2006 at 7:57 am (food)
Recently, I came across a picture of Food Network’s darling, Bobby Flay. Above his oft-glimpsed pearly whites, the words “Bobby Flay Cooks America” were printed This statement is more true than I am sure the marketing drones who came up with it realized. Bobby Flay does indeed cook America; sadly it is the cross section of America that is easily taken in by cheap food tricks.
What is a cheap food trick, you ask?
Most food prepared tableside. For example, Bananas Foster. Bananas Foster is probably one of the easiest things in the world to make. It is basically just fruit in carmalized sugar. The punch comes from the fact that the waiter lights it on fire in front of you. The pyrotechnics convince most people that the dish is much more difficult to control than it is, and they feel special because they are purchasing the right to be the center of attention for just a moment. That’s just one example.
These sleights of hand are just fine by me. At a nice restaurant these food tricks are just, well, icing on the cake. At least they are for a certain dining out personality type. And really, that’s what dining out should be, an enjoyable experience. If your idea of enjoyment is to be wowed by leaping flames and decorated plates, please, I have no desire to get in your way.
What gets me about Flay is that his whole career is a cheap food trick. He counts on his personality and his gimmicky shtick to distract people from the fact that he’s not really innovating. Hell, he isn’t making anything Mexican mothers haven’t made for generations. He’s just doing it without the slow cooking, without the attention to detail, and without a real feel for spiciing his dishes. He does what will appeal. Bobby Flay is the dimestore romance novel of modern cooking. Comforting, familiar, but different enough that one gets a little thrill from participating. One feels as though they are drawn into his orbit for a time, which feels glamourous, much as the reader of the aforementioned romance novel frequently has a vicarious and somewhat naughty experience as they read.
This ability to talk a good game is the only trait I can think of that can explain his success. (That, and the sad state of the average American’s palette) I have yet to see the man make anything that really distingushes him as a chef. Mostly I see lazy regurgitations of tex mex favorites, which are really secondary to him flirting with all the women in a given shot and standing on the counter.
Now, instead of the miserably mediocre, what about the transcendent? You know, soul food, soul food in the sense that it satisfies some deep, gnawing emotional need. The food that you would ask for if it were your last meal on earth.
This seems to be a favorite question among food lovers. This time I didn’t even have to think. Swedish meatballs with noodles (and not just a few noodles, I want mountains.), warm brownies, a bottle of Pinot Noir, warm biscuits with strawberry jam, and a vanilla latte made with the finest Sumatran espresso. Of course since the list of things I don’t like to eat only has about four items on it, this answer is wont to change.
What about you? What’s your last meal on earth, before you go to the chair?
PSA
August 23, 2006 at 7:41 am (food)
To anyone out there who might be reading this, fear not. I shall have a new entry soon.
Food Bank Cuisine
July 19, 2006 at 6:41 pm (food, recipe, vegetarian)
I’m very poor, and this fact of life has caused me to go to the local food bank on several occasions. I’m well aware that food banks tend to have quite a bit of fattening or otherwise unhealthy choices, and frankly who are we to turn up our noses at free food? Often we have nothing at home. We might have hungry children. Yes, some food is definately better than none. Still, our choices are frequently the sort of foods that are really a double edged sword. Yes, we get to eat that night, our kids get to eat, but later down the line we pay for it in medical bills (heart disease, heart attacks, morbid obesity, diabetes and diabetes related problems) and in unnecesary suffering.
The other part of the problem is that knowing how to cook even basic items is becoming an art rather than a skill. That is, it is becoming the world of a priveleged few, taking the ability to compose healthier, cheaper items away from the average person.
So I’ve decided to be a (albeit tiny) part of the solution. The following recipe is made with items I found at the foodbank. I even found the portabello mushrooms there. I’ve added a few things for taste that have to be purchased, but what’s wonderful about this dish is how easily it takes adaptions and substitutions. Don’t like jalapenos? No problem. Through in some anchos instead. Can’t get your hands on Marsala wine? Just as good without it.
1 Green Bell Pepper
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Orange Bell Pepper
1 Yellow Bell Pepper
1 Onion (I prefer purple, but whatever’s available is just great)
1 Large Portabello Mushroom
1 Chille of your choice (I’m using habanero for this) 
Garlic
Seasonings (I use black pepper, Tobasco, a little salt, maybe some red pepper flakes)
Olive oil. Try and get extra virgin.
Marsala wine. (Optional)
Tomato sauce. You can use jarred sauce for this and it will still taste great. Just try and avoid things like Ragu, which have a lot of sugar added. If you’re lucky enough to live in a city that cares about organic food you might be able to score some real tomatoes or organic canned sauce there.
Take a large sauce pan. I got mine at Goodwill for a dollar. As far as knives go I was lucky enough to get a really nice one for my birthday, but I spent many weeks chopping all of this stuff with a butter knife. (hey, it was all I had!)
Anyway. Put a small amount of olive oil into the pan, just enough to coat the bottom. Set aside. Take all your veggies and chop them. I think this dish works better with a rough, larger cut. Heat your pan just a bit, then add the onions, sweating them for a minute or two. If you want a very spicy pasta, half a habanaro and saute it in the oil before adding anything else. After a minute, remove the chile. Trust me, do not leave it in. Even with just a saute the pasta will be hot enough to knock your socks off.
Then add all the other vegetables. If you have marsala wine (or any wine, really) add about 1/4 of a cup to the veggies. Let it cook for a minute, a minute and a half. Season as you see fit, add as much garlic as you like. Add the tomatoes/tomato sauce and turn the heat down to a very low medium. Then let the whole mixture simmer until it gets nice and thick. Throw it on pasta and you’re done. You can make enough to keep portions in your fridge and eat it over several days.
Cheap (if not free, if you can find all of this at the food bank) and healthy. I was lucky enough to find everything at the food bank except the wine and the habanero.
Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook
July 10, 2006 at 8:03 pm (cookbooks, food)
I haven’t posted much lately because I spent the last week in Dallas, Texas at the National Federation of the Blind’s convention. I won’t go into details here, but you can read about my misadventures, new blindness technology, and other issues raised at convention over at Ever More Hideous.
As far as food goes, I’ve been reading Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, which is as entertaining as it is informative. Bourdain delivers sound cooking adviicce that the home cook can use as a bedrock for their burgeoning love of food and cooking. Bourdain uses the same scathing wit that he employs in Kitchen Confidential, his account of his checkered career in food.
In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain details his blundering mishaps and cocaine fueled stints in the trenches of a variety of doomed kitchens before finally settled at Les Halles, proving that whether his direction is up or down, his pace is always meteoric. His Les Halles cookbook feels like the work of a man who has finally realized his age, and now that he’s found his home at Les Halles, he no longer seems driven to leave destruction in his wake. His cookbook does more good than harm, outfitting the novice home adventurer not just with a variety of French recipes it would behoove any serious foodie to have passing familiarity with, but with advice on everything from how to organize one’s cooking space to how to choose the proper knife for the job.
Frankly, though, even if the book were complete rubbish I would feel indebted to Bourdain for providing a list of companies in the back of the book that offer hard to get food items. Having recently secured an apartment with an honest to god pantry, I look forward to stocking it through the twin marvels of Bourdain’s food knowledge and the immense power of the internet.
Here’s what I’m browsing right now: Dean Deluca
Happy buying!
