Culinary Discovery

So inspired by Alton Brown and his some-what scary weight loss, I decided to try some canned sardines. Turns out, sardines are pretty damn tasty. They're basically like really good canned tuna. Boring post, I know. But still.

Recipe: hoisin chicken eggrolls.

(heavily adapted from a recipe that appeared in Gourmet magazine)
I'm not a big fan of eggrolls at most places... something about mystery fillings just bother me. So when the girlfriend was in the mood for some, I decided to make my own. This recipe started as a mu shu recipe from Gourmet magazine, but I think lends itself well to this super easy take on eggrolls. And trust me, they're way better than you'll get at your local chinese takeout joint.

HOISIN CHICKEN EGGROLLS

Ingredients
1/4 cup peanut or vegetable oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 (16-oz) bag coleslaw mix
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 packages of eggroll wrappers
2 1/2 to 3 cups coarsely shredded cooked chicken, without skin (from a 2-lb rotisserie chicken)

Preparation
(I like to begin by mixing about a tablespoon worth of soy sauce, another tablespoon of teriyaki, a teaspoon worth of fish sauce, and a pinch of salt into the chicken and stirring it around until the chicken has absorbed everything. Then just set the chicken aside covered with plastic wrap until you need it later. You're more than welcome to skip this step though.)
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over high heat until hot but not smoking, then cook eggs, stirring, until just cooked through. Transfer scrambled eggs to a plate. Add remaining 3 tablespoons oil to skillet and heat until hot but not smoking, then cook garlic and red pepper flakes, stirring, until garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add coleslaw mix and 2 tablespoons water and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until coleslaw is wilted, about 5 minutes.

Stir together soy sauce, sesame oil, remaining 2 tablespoons water, and hoisin sauce in a small bowl. Add to coleslaw mixture along with eggs and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Place about a spoon full worth into each eggroll wrapper, fold and seal with water. Deep fry in enough hot oil to submerge until golden brown. Serve with additional hoisin or soy sauce, and enjoy!



From there you can edit them as much as you like - last time we made them we added some leftover corn niblets to the mix and they turned out better than ever. So experiment with it all you want. And if you do try the recipe, please come back and let me know what you thought!

"We don't have a cow, we have a bull."

The girlfriend and I did something very uncharacteristic for us this Sunday... we actually went out. Our one-year-old residency in northern most part North Carolina has turned us into slugs. Our typical Sundays sadly consist of the two of us lying in bed all day either watching television or playing video games. But we decided we would fight our depression-like urges and join my sister's family and our father for a day of cheap bowling at the Navy base bowling alley. We all had to ride together in my sister's new van since they were the only ones with the clearance to get on the base, but that just gave me and Theresa an excuse to make faces at my 11 month old niece and take pictures when she made funny faces in return...

Wow, that's one excited baby!

Seriously, how cute is she?
Anyway, considering our lack of social interaction as of late, we were actually pretty excited... and I really don't go out of my way to hang out with Dad as much as I'd like, which is extra sad since he really is one of my favorite people. We get to the base and thereby the bowling at about noon and stay there till roughly three-ish, bowling a total of four games throughout. We're a bit of a bowling family (arguably lame as that may be): I took informal bowling lessons when I was young, and both Dad and my sister are former league bowlers. And Dad is actually pretty good. As in, he has bowled a perfect 300 game before sorta good. So my only goal when bowling is to beat him in at least one game... It's looking pretty good at the end of game two, he's only a few points ahead and so I'm feeling pretty confident about game three... and then beer comes in. You see, bowling is a drinking sport. That's kind of what you do. If you're bowling and not drinking while you're doing so... well, you're not really bowling. Not all the way at least. Originally the plan was to have a beer or two while we were there, but when I went to go pick one up at the little food counter, I saw the magic word: Pitcher. Oh, the irresistible pull of the beer pitcher. It is as wonderful as it is reputedly low-class. How can I really justify paying $3.00+ for my little bottle of beer when I could pick up a whole pitcher of frosty Yuengling for Theresa, Dad, and I for a mere eight bucks?

Oh Yuengling, you're my best friend.

I didn't beat Dad that third game. I'd like to blame the beer, but I wasn't intoxicated at that point (yet). No no no, I just dropped the ball on that game. When it comes to sports/games/etc that I actually care about, I'm a notoriously competitive person. And while I don't usually lose my temper at other people, I get mad very quickly when I think I'm not doing something as well as I should be. So the first couple frames of the third game were harsh... Seven pins total in the first, and zero in the second. I can't remember the last time I've gotten two gutters in a row before then. I have excuses of course (I slipped once, and bent my thumb nail way back on the release on the second), but I still posted zero none the less. So anyway, I was pretty pissed at that point. Blood boiling, cussing up a storm, and all that. And that is where my friend beer really came in. Beer turns losing into a much more tolerable state. And since I was losing hard, I upped my drinking pretty well. I scored possibly an all time low that game - a 92. Theresa, who is blessed with incredible luck in all games but bowling, even beat me that game (albeit by one point).
But the bowling isn't really all that interesting, all that worth sharing. What is worth sharing, is my new culinary adventure. The modest food counter at the bowling alley had a pretty decent selection of dive-style food at ridiculous prices... and I just couldn't pass up the chance to try fried chicken livers for $3.75. I'd never had liver of any sort, and I am embracing the mentality of my culinary heroes as of late - that food, no matter how odd or unfamiliar (obviously excluding anything of any real danger), should be dove into bravely and treated rightfully like the adventure that it can be!

Damn these things are ugly, and they smelled just about as bad.

Chomp!

Okay, so honestly, they aren't that bad. And they definitely aren't at all what I expected. Texturally I expected something more 'organ-like,' chewy and gooey and all that. Not at all. Admittedly a little bit gritty, but most they were just like an exceptionally tender cut of meat (yes, the texture seemed more like super-tender beef than any chicken part). The flavor was a real shock though. Very flavorful, and definitely chicken-like, the only real off-putting part was the ridiculously strong saltiness of the livers. I mean it was salty like nothing should ever be. Flavor-wise, it was a lot like eating just the flavor packet from a package of chicken flavored ramen. So edible, and actually not bad, but sickeningly strong and saltier than any piece of meat should ever taste. The taste did linger for quite awhile though - had to end up ordering a Miller Chill to kill the taste...

Cheers!

So we bowled another game that I paid very little attention to and headed home. I know this will be far from the most interesting blog entry you'll ever read, but it was an uncharacteristically good day in my rather drab life and it seemed worth sharing with everyone. Not to get too touchy-feely on everyone, but I really think sometimes it's important to just take a moment out of life and share it with the people who matter most. Long as you have a good attitude and willingness to enjoy yourself, pretty much any activity can turn itself into a worthwhile day. It was nice to spend the day with the family - I really don't do that as often as I should. And again, I know this is a pretty boring entry, but hey, at least it's an excuse to post some cute baby pics!

Thanks for reading!

Don't Smoke The Broccolini!

Oh sweet joy of joys, how I do love Bravo's Top Chef! Even more than usual when my culinary idol Anthony Bourdain appears as a guest judge! Last night's episode was great, just like the week before. Honestly, I got a little worried about the show around the 5th ("Latin Lunch") through 8th/9th ("Restaurant Wars," 9th episode if you include the talk-show non-episode) episodes. But thankfully, it would appear that my favorite show is back to form! I never really wanted this blog to be a play-by-play rehashing of whatever I'm watching... but hell, I just have to talk about this show. On with the PBP!

So Padma wakes our remaining contestants up at the ass-crack early hour of 6am. Cuteness and giggles and all that, I definitely think this was the most likable I've ever seen Padma. That one little scene did loads for my image of her. Surprisingly everyone seems more excited than upset at their early morning wake-up, CJ's even ready to invite Padma under the covers - he's awesome. Also, damn is Casey stacked. She should fall over more often, the way she's built. I love it. Lol. The quickfire was surprisingly straight-forward this episode. No odd ingredients, methods, budgets, or anything. Just utilize a blender while making breakfast for Padma (damn that girl has an awesome job). I predict next week's quickfire is "go get coffee for Tom C." Anyway, the chefs pretty much make decent looking breakfast. I mean, nobody is really inventing the next big thing here, but everything looks tasty and at least slightly more impressive than what's on the Denny's menu. Casey made a pretty good looking savory french toast with a terrible looking salsa (though it may be worth noting that I pretty much hate all salsa) that seemed fairly good if not boring. Sara made egg-in-a-whole. Seriously. That's not chef-level food, that's the kind of shit country mothers make to "cutesy-up" their bland breakfast offerings. Dale made a fancy looking frittata, and I'm happy to see him actually attempting a chef-level breakfast item. Hung went classic on this one with steak and eggs with Grand Marnier shake to kick it up. CJ (aka, the MAN) made incredible looking crepes by applying a little bit o' CJ logic: all girls like crepes, Padma is a girl, so Padma likes crepes. Best part is that Padma, of course, does in fact like the crepes. Hehe, good stuff. Brian just bores me now so I can't even remember what he made. Not too much exciting during the meal - Hung breaks a bottle of truffle oil, everyone runs around like always, and I was afraid that Casey was going to burn herself with the pan that kept falling off her little kerosene burner. Hung wins with a help from the almighty power of booze. Fun to watch, but damn is breakfast food boring. Ah well, least Casey looked as hot as ever. It's worth noting also that by this time, I already know who will be going home tonight. Not because of anything to do with the quickfire, but because Top Chef is very formatted show, and I've seen enough not to be able to pick out the pattern pretty easily.
Breakfast over, Padma delivers the big news: Sara and Brian are eliminated for being boring and being replaced by Sam from season 2 and Tre! No? Ah well, I can dream, can't I? Real news is that Top Chef is hitting the road, headed to Manhattan! Little do our chefs know that they won't even get to New York the state, much less into the city before the next elimination. Soon as they land in Newark Airport in NJ, Padma's waiting to let them know they're spending the night in Jersey so they can cook in the airport tomorrow. Ouch, being stuck in Newark is definitely not fun. Newark is like the New Jersey of New Jersey. Think about that for a minute. Anyway, the chefs are next tasked to prepare better version of the business class reheatable meals. Airline food. Now I've flown First Class on United airlines quite a few times in my life, and I've had a couple very decent meals, so I know that airline food can be made edible, but it's still a pretty difficult challenge. Hung's quickfire prize comes in here, he gets first choice on the protein and nobody else can use what he picks. Hung's definitely thinking about the challenge and picks moist, resilient chilean sea bass. It not only holds up to the unfriendly airline oven, the judges agree that it's pretty much perfectly cooked. Hung's a bi-polar competitor - some days he produces ridiculously horrible dishes, and some days he really knocks it out of the park like this. Dale also plays it smart by choosing an already tender chunk of filet mignon and combating the standard plane food complaint of blandness by serving it aggressively au poivre. He miscounts his portions by one, but honestly his dish looked so could that I'd certainly forgive his slip-up. Sara serves up a disgustingly over-cooked excuse for salmon with bland looking couscous... with random figs thrown in. Brian is again fairly forgettable, but he plates an oversized sirloin that is WAY bigger than any real airline would ever serve and puts rubbery lobster with trendy potatoes on the side. CJ slightly overcooks his halibut, tops it with a weird mint sauce that Anthony Bourdain says tastes like toothpaste (on his blog), and sadly serves broccolini that's so messed up that Bourdain and Tom joke that it looks like cheap, dried up ganja. Casey, rockstar that she is, wins the day with a daring and delightful meal of veal medalions and gruyére cauliflower. Looked as delicious as it sounds. I love this girl. Hot, sweet, and a hell of a chef.
Sadly, as my favorites never make it to the end on these shows, Top Chef's resident giant goes home. Turns out that broccolini was simply intolerable, CJ's sent packing and Tom says it's the worst dish of all three seasons. I was really hoping that Sara was going because... well, because she's a dumb bitch that seems to cook at about an Applebees level. I'm gonna miss CJ. He seems like the kinda guy you just wanna go out and get a beer with, ya know? I hope the one-testicle wonder has a bright future in this industry ahead of him, he deserves it. But at least Casey won - if my #1 has to leave, it certainly helps to see my #2 take the victory. Now if only they'd air some of that bikini footage during the show that they briefly flashed during the previews.... Grr.

And to finish off, I just want to say that all the negative attention Casey's been getting is bullshit. A lot of folks are talking about how's she's only on the show because she's hot. Ridiculous. Yes, she is hot. But she can cook, so who cares? Wouldn't it be more ridiculous if they only chose ugly people for the competition? Why the assumption that just because she's pretty, she has to be relying solely on that fact? Weak. I'd still be supporting her if she didn't look like she did, and I'm pretty sure Padma is already there to cover the sex appeal aspect of the show, so lay off the girl.
That being said, I will continue to happily drool whenever she's on screen. lol.

Damn, looks like she's about to pop out of that jacket.


Heavenly.


If you aren't already watching Top Chef, I highly recommend it. Even if you aren't much of a foodie, it's still a fierce competition that I really think most people can get into. Keep your eyes open for marathons on Bravo, they seem to run them fairly often for Top Chef.

Till next time friends!

Records, Toasts, and Trends.

Wow, what's this? Four posts, all in the same month? Sadly, that's practically a record for me. You should all join me in a little toast to my minor achievement...

...Speaking of toast, let's talk food! Food trends, to be precise. Anyone who doesn't really pay attention to the food world may not even realize that our overall eating habits move in trends just the same as any other cultural fashion, but trust me, food trends certainly do exist. I wasn't even alive in the 70s, but I've heard many tales of the fondue-filled fun of the 70s disco decade. It wasn't that long ago either, that sushi was a strange and often off-putting concept, rather than a practical standard dish for anyone of decent culture. And I'm sure everyone remembers the scarcity of bread items during the protein-heavy Atkins diet wave. The examples could go on indefinitely...
But it is a few of the modern food trends that are of particular interest to me. First let us discuss the totally tantalizing thistle that adorns my 'food entry' image, the globe artichoke. I know I'm a little bit behind the curve here, as the 'choke invasion has been happening for quite some time now, but I still couldn't be more excited about artichokes. While there are still some of the more rural parts of America that may not get too much exposure to them, artichokes are everywhere these days. It's almost impossible to find a metropolitan restaurant that doesn't have an artichoke dish of some kind. And for good reason - artichokes are hot sellers these days. Heck, even I can barely overcome the magnetic draw given to a menu description added by the simple words "with artichokes." Artichoke dips, grilled artichokes, deep fried artichokes, stuffed artichokes, artichokes in pasta, and on and on.... Artichokes fit into almost any application you can think of. Great news if you're like me and typically shy away from eating most vegetables. Do yourself a favor and try making an artichoke dish or two at home from fresh ones - they're pretty damn easy to handle once you understand how they're put together.
The other food trend I want to talk about is the pomegranate. Man, is this fruit popular right now. It's showing up just about everywhere in every form aside from home kitchens as a raw, whole pomegranate. It's become especially popular in the drink world. Not only is the juice of this fruit touted as nothing short of a super-healthy miracle elixir, the juice has become the best friend for trendy bartenders at upper-casual restaurants. It makes sense though, the super-strong sweet and tart juice pretty much plays well with anything. Pometinis are already becoming a classic, pomegranate margaritas turn the otherwise blasé drink into an exotic treat, and pomegranate mojitos are an ultra-modern marriage of two hype-heavy drinks. Of course it's not just the juice that's popular, but it's certainly the main attraction. Enticingly-crafted bottles of POM brand juice are a common sight at damn near any grocery store these days. As far as I'm concerned though, those bottles can keep sitting there. Talk about expensive! Yes, they're pretty. And yes, they're popular. But really folks, you can get the same damn stuff for literally half the price in the ethnic section of some upper-scale grocery stores, or for at least slightly less under the Archer Farms imprint at Target stores. You also can always just buy your own fresh pomegranates. A good one will have plenty of natural juices ready to leak out on it's own, and it's not too difficult a venture to further juice one - though I will admit that it's not the easiest thing in the world... It'll even share a little secret for getting the good stuff out of the fruit with minimal damage to it:

If you've never seen a fresh pomegranate before - that's what they look like, inside and out. The waxy red outer hull as well as the pale yellowish-white "walls" inside the fruit are both basically inedible, so the trick is to get the red seed-looking pods (they're called arils, and they're actually seed casings around a small hard seed inside each one) out of the fruit while taking as little of the walls with them. If you search online you'll find a lot of different ways to accomplish the task, but probably two the first as well as most common answers you'll come across are threading and submersion. I've never tried threading, and honestly, I never will. The basic idea is that you sew with a needle and thread through all of the arils and pluck them out on the thread, thus leading all the walls behind. I can't think of a more ridiculous waste of time, so no thanks on that one. Submersion is certainly a good idea, so much so that even Alton Brown (a minor hero of mine) recommends it. It's certainly easier - just get a large bowl of water and crack your fruit open while it's under water. Then gently scoop out the arils with your fingers, and don't worry too much about any of the membrane that breaks loose. The membrane walls will float to the top, ready to be skimmed off, while the tasty arils sink to the bottom. Pretty good, and certainly easy enough... but I'm still not happy with it. Why? Because just think of all that delicious juice that normally would be dripping out now being subtly washed away. Okay okay, so without actually breaking into the arils themselves you're not going to get more than just over half a shot glass worth of juice anyway, but that's more than enough for me to want to save it! So I use the speedy trick I picked up watching Iron Chef and a few other professional chefs - the wooden spoon beating. Couldn't be easier. Cut a pomegranate standing up in half horizontally (you should have a top and bottom half, not two sides) and place one half cut side down on top of your left hand, with your left hand hovering just slightly over the top of a large bowl. Now using your other hand, firmly hit the skin side of the fruit opposite your hand with the flat of a wooden spoon repeatedly. Continue until you've gotten all of the arils and juice out, and then move on to the other half. Bam, there you go. A bowl full of arils, juice, and with about as little pieces of membrane as possible. Yes, it is a little bit messier, but if you're careful and you practice at it, it won't be that much trouble. In the end it's all just a matter of preference of course.
Of course there are plenty of other minor and major food trends I could mention here, but that isn't exactly the point of this entry... I just want to draw attention to the existence of food trends as a whole. Not only to help you get excited about what's happening in the food world out there, but also to help you to not miss out. Food trends are like any other sort of trend - no matter how hot they are now, they eventually fade. Sure, we'll always be eating artichokes and pomegranate and even fondue somewhere in the world, but if you miss out on a food trend that may have tickled your fancy, your potential access to whatever it was may suddenly become considerably less. And then there is the potential to see some new food innovations and have an effect on the market - the food industry is willing to experiment with buzz-worthy items to a point of risking loss, but if you find something you love and actively support it, that once-novelty item like pomegranate ice cream may just make the jump into everyday standard! Most important of all though, is just that following food trends, silly as it may be, is a chance to really get excited about food. I don't know about you, but I'm not content to just consider food the necessary means to life... I want food to be a part of actually experiencing that life. Hope you'll agree, and keep your eyes open and your mouth ready for something new! Happy eating!