I want to say two words to you. Just two words. Are you listening?

Ring molds.

Today was a potluck for my friend Geoff's birthday (which is really tomorrow...I bet Halloween babies get extra candy, whereas Christmas babies get shafted with combination presents...plan accordingly, future parents), that had a Mexican theme. I wanted to avoid the use of my oven for anything because I've already burned through two years' worth of gas making popovers. Avocados were on sale so I figured I'd do something with that. Also, ceviche (though technically Peruvian in origin) doesn't require any cooking if you use the right things. So I figured, ceviche with avocados and stuff...simple and straightforward.

But I chose this occasion to practice a bit. For what you say? For when I'm sponging off of a rich wife and throwing dinner parties and the like. Indeed, the only reason I came to med school was to find a future rich doctor wife. I've failed in my first couple years so far. Since I haven't sewn one up yet, I'm doomed to take Step 1 of the boards, but I'm still keeping hope alive. In short, I'd have absolutely no problem being someone's "trophy husband" (hell I'd gladly take "consolation prize live-in boyfriend").

But what if somehow I manage to land a woman of sophistication and taste? I'd have to step up my home cooking game, and maybe borrow a few tricks from fancy restaurants.
That's where the ring molds come in. In my case, the set of biscuit cutters that I got for my chicken biscuit.

Here's some tricks that I've noticed fancy restaurants use (though I haven't been to that many...these might be outdated at this point) in order to make simple dishes look fancier:

First, deconstruct. The idea that restaurants want you to think is that by isolating the elements of a dish, you're presenting in radical form a familiar flavor, aggressively inviting the diner to consider the culinary process by which something edible comes together.
In reality, this is an awesome way to make the person eating do all the work for you. You don't have to mix your stuff together in the right amounts! Just put it all on a plate, have the person do all the work, then blame them if it doesn't turn out well! You could just criticize the ratio of the different items they put onto their fork/spoon and say it's their fault. Genius!

I deconstructed a Mexican ceviche by separating avocado from seafood from tomato. After some calculations, I figured out that each serving is about $2.50 worth of ingredients. Let's say the theoretical base price if I owned a restaurant that no one really knew about would be about $5 (I have no idea how they decide what to charge for stuff). Here's how I would mark it up. Please try to imagine a cash register "ka-ching!" sound every time you see a dollar sign:

The menu would simply say "ceviche" because that's more ironic and playful. Clearly this is not just any ceviche, but the foodie crowd would read "ceviche" then the description, and would feel smug about picking up on the chef's "cleverness" and feeling as if they were in on the joke with the chef, who is clearly their close personal friends because they go out to eat at fancy places all the time. ($6)
"ceviche" would be in all lower case letters, and the price would not have a dollar sign next to it. Also if there were a fraction of a dollar, it would be written as an actual fraction, not a decimal ($6.50...er i mean 6 1/2)



Here's the description:

Citrus-marinated ($6.75 for use of "citrus" instead of "lime") fresh sea scallops, wild caught ($7) gulf shrimp, and red onion.
Grape tomato and cilantro salsa cruda (use of the term "salsa cruda" instead of "hastily chopped" $7.50).
Chilled Haas Avocado soup (whaat...Avocado soup? $8) with cumin and cayenne.
All produce sourced from local ($8.75) organic ($9...local and organic are two words that give you license to charge anything! KA-CHING!) farms.

I garnished with lime zest. I don't describe the garnish so that it seems like a surprise and extra effort on my part ($9.25).

Second tip: Ring molds ($9.50). Food just tastes better when it's perfectly round.


Here's where I went wrong:


I mean look at those bowls. They're just so...round.
Despite the fact that food tastes better when it is perfectly round, it tastes worse if it's in the same shape as the plate it's on.
I could've charged much more for square ($9.75), or better yet an unnamed geometric shape ($10). The motherlode were if it were served on some sort of bowl carved out of pink sea salt ($12) that was cooled to the perfect avocado soup temperature ($13), thus keeping the dish cool and adding a subtle saltiness. If at all possible, use some sort of squeeze bottle to put sauce on ($13)
Oh yeah...the owner of the restaurant is a celebrity ($16). That celebrity is Jay-Z ($17), co-owned by Kanye West ($16.50). Also I'm Asian, so by definition making Mexican food is fusion ($18). Also my restaurant is in Vegas ($25).

So as is, I served a

ceviche 9 1/2

that cost me $2.50 and required absolutely no cooking whatsoever. I just stole $7 from your pocket. I'm gonna need that to pay for Step 1...unless someone wants to bail me out in time...ladies?

Buttermilk frying...and something completely different

There seems to be a bit of a debate as to how to do Southern Fried Chicken. Should you use a traditional brine or should you pseudo-brine in buttermilk instead? The benefits of using buttermilk are well-known, with its slight acidity helping creating for a more tender chicken. In my opinion, after trying both methods, buttermilk doesn't contribute a whole lot to flavor. If anything, my poultry rub (that always sounds dirty) has to be a bit stronger for buttermilk frying. For my chicken biscuit, I decided to use buttermilk for a crust, having already been happy with how the brine's turned out. I did give it an hour or two in buttermilk just to make sure it really stuck.


And there it is. It makes for a nice dark crust, but one that's a bit heavy and thick. Interestingly, using buttermilk makes the overall taste of the chicken sweeter (the Coke is more noticeable). I think I prefer egg and flour or Panko, but this is certainly on the table and will be up for review.

In other news, I used an Amazon.com gift card to order some psych books, and with the leftover, I got something I've been meaning to get ever since BLT Steak. Here's my first attempt at popovers, with my brand new popover pan.


Not bad I think. I used a bit of bread flour just to make sure they held together, but I think I'm cool to use all AP from now on, and maybe the weaker dough will puff bigger.
I also topped a couple with some gruyere:


This was shredded by the food processor, and I think ended up being a bit too heavy. I don't actually own a cheese grater though, so we'll see if microplaned gruyere is too light and burns right away.

Say hello to the biscuit

This is it...


Sweet potato, cake flour, buttermilk.


A few of you will be trying some of these tomorrow. They're decent if you microwave them for a few seconds.


The final chicken biscuit tasting panel will try small pieces of each type of chicken on these mini versions...

Even More Fried Chicken...

Interesting timing of this NY Times Article. Southern Fried Chicken has no flavor? I disagree. I'm a huge fan of Korean fried chicken and other creative forms of fried chicken, but to say Southern Fried Chicken is only in the crust is insulting. Interestingly, I do use a generous amount of Old Bay to season my flour/cornmeal, as well as smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder among a few other things. When I fry whole birds I like to shallow fry, but for these thin breast cuts I've been straight deep frying in a combination of Safflower and Canola oil. Peanut is just so damn expensive...though they do sell 35 pounds at Costco for 29 bucks.

I'm happy to report that the brine is done. The combination of Coca-Cola and a light pickling spice is perfect. It led to some incredibly moist and flavorful results.

Today I tested egg dredge methods for the crust. Each piece of chicken starts with a coat of seasoned flour, then a dip in egg, then another dip in either...

More seasoned flour:


Probably the most traditional result so far, and nice crisp crust. One of the finalists for sure.

Seasoned cornmeal:


The crispiest crust and the most "staying power" in terms of crispness, but also a bit dry and gritty. At this point, pure cornmeal has been abandoned. In the future buttermilk testing, I'll test out how it is to mix a bit of cornmeal into the flour.

Panko:


I wasn't really thinking about doing this, but the flour-egg dredge method is how I start out frying things Katsu style too. Although it started out as a dark horse, this is definitely gonna be one of the finalists. I'll have to adjust the initial flour dredge to have more seasoning, but the panko crust is incredibly crisp and light. It also fries faster so there's not as much danger of the chicken drying out.

In any case, I've got a bunch of fried chicken in my fridge. In defense of Southern Fried Chicken, one of its best qualities...which doesn't work with sauced versions...is that it's just as good at room temperature (or cold) as it is when piping hot.

It just comes down to my buttermilk frying results (that'll be next week...I'm off to Chicago tomorrow) and another crack at sweet potato biscuits, then I'll need to enlist the help of some judges for focus group testing.

The chicken...round one

So where did we leave off? That's right, I made a pickle brine, threw some chicken in it, then fried it.
The chicken itself was too briny. There was a lot of flavor, and it was moist and all that, but it was like eating a pickle...a chicken textured pickle. My next brine will omit the vinegar and use less pickling spice. I'll also probably brine it for less time.

As for which crust I'm going to go with, I tried a few different things out.

Seasoned cornmeal:


Though it doesn't look pretty, it's tasty, but can border on a bit dry. This is definitely something I'm gonna have to follow up on.

Seasoned 00 flour:


00 flour is so fine it's almost like making a corn starch batter. This was light and crisp, but maybe a bit weak for a chicken biscuit.

Batter:


Stay away from this. The extra juiciness afforded by the brine generates massive amounts of pickle flavored steam which turns the initially crisp batter soggy in a matter of minutes. My guess is that Chick-fil-a uses an egg dip then flour, so it's a bit drier and thinner than a batter, but also they fry their stuff in a pressure cooker, which I don't own.

For my next brine, I'll be replacing the vinegar with the liquid that flows through the veins of Atlanta...good ol' Coca-Cola. Also I'll be testing out the flour-egg-flour dip method for frying, as well as a combination brine-buttermilk-flour/cornmeal crust method.

Man cannot live on chicken biscuits alone...no matter how hard he tries

So I might've been pretty close to getting scurvy. I figured I should balance things out with a few fruits or vegetables or something. Well, I used pickle brine on my chicken (will post about that tomorrow/later today) so that's technically a vegetable right? Figured I should eat some fruit. What better way to eat fruit than with frozen yogurt?

This whole frozen yogurt insanity actually started in 2002 with Korea's Red Mango. Pinkberry is a filthy knockoff, though many people give it credit for starting the craze. These must be the same people that think General Tso's chicken is an ancient Chinese secret, and that the Star Wars prequels were awesome.

The first time I had Red Mango in Korea I was blown away. I had no idea it was supposedly healthy at the time, but it didn't matter. The yogurt was unbelievably smooth, rich, and instead of artificial vanilla sweetness, was tart and well...yogurty. The fresh fruit toppings reminded me of my other favorite yogurt spot in the Dayton's basement in Minneapolis (now a Macy's...I wonder if that yogurt place is still there...) A subsequent trip to Korea was Red Mango-less, and therefore a disappointment.

A couple years later, when rumors started emerging from Southern California of a Red Mango-like yogurt shop, I started to get excited...but also suspicious. "What a ripoff of my beloved Red Mango!" I thought to myself...but mostly I was pissed that someone had stolen MY idea to rip off Red Mango and make a billion dollars by opening up in the states. Still...when I saw those American Express Plum Card commercials and saw those Korean people had opened up Pinkberry, I was like "maybe they're affiliated...maybe they renamed Red Mango to Pink Berry for the states...because those names are way too similar." But nope...no affiliation...just a straight rip off.

Oh well...maybe it'll be just as good and it won't matter. I tried Pinkberry though...AND IT WAS FUCKING TERRIBLE! Why are people going crazy over this shit?! How could those Korean American guys in that American Express commercial take something so good and fuck it up so bad? I understand if someone decides to pawn off the crap that Korea deems unsuitable for domestic use on other countries to make a few bucks (see "Winter Sonata" and "The Lake House"), but Red Mango was something from Korea to be proud of! I henceforth label you Pinkberry people TRAITORS TO KOREA (though to be fair, I too may have earned that label after the infamous Buford Highway Karaoke incident of 2008...but that was mostly Topel's fault).

It was bland, overly sweet, and icy as hell. It was like spoiled milk mixed with corn syrup and poured over hospital ice chips. There was no way you could call this shit yogurt...and the California FDA agreed with me:
Only 69,000 bacterial cultures per gram? That's well short of the 10 million required to be called frozen yogurt.
To borrow a joke from Aziz Ansari...if Pinkberry was a drug dealer I would've shot him in the face. Did you think I wasn't gonna count that shit?! Also, you guys at Pinkberry are TOTAL DICKS for claiming you could cure colon cancer.
Perhaps it's gotten better now that they've changed their recipe to be actual yogurt, but they still make their yogurt from powder, and now that Red Mango has formally opened in the states, there's no need to ever go to Pinkberry again. I'm pleased to say that Red Mango is just as good here as it was in Korea. It didn't suffer the pitfalls of a famous institution from abroad opening up in the states and not being nearly as good (talking about you GROM...it's not our fault that you didn't look into the fact that you wouldn't be able to get all your fancypants ingredients here. Geographically, Torino:The Rest of Italy::Upper West Side:Staten Island and New Jersey...I'm sure the Sicilian almonds are coming in nicely on top of Fresh Kills right about now).


Ah Red Mango...thank god you're in...Walnut Creek. Damn, I'm in Atlanta. Enter Yoforia...another Red Mango knockoff, but this one has some pretty bold claims on its website (which looks exactly like Red Mango/Pinkberry's sites). Organic milk and yogurt? Could this place finally live up to Red Mango?

In a word: no.
In two words: Definitely no.
In more than two: What the fuck is this shit?


First they make a huge pile up the middle then try to squeeze the fruit around the sides...they then squish it down with the lid, but all this leads to not that much fruit. Red Mango builds the base layer, puts the fruit on in a layer, then puts more yogurt on top.


Next you'll notice the grittiness. It was just as disappointing as Pinkberry. Completely bland, aggressively cold, and grittily icy. When it melted, it melted down to grit...I have a feeling that all those claims of organic milk and yogurt are complete crap, and that this yogurt too is made from a powder, possibly supplied by IFDPrep (italian freeze dried prep), cielo, only8, or any of the other knockoff suppliers, evidenced by the sign:


If that's too small to read, it says "Italian frozen yogurt," which is a bit bizarre. You can tell if it's a knockoff if they don't carry the Live and Active Culture seal from the National Yogurt Association (yeah it really exists and Red Mango was the first to get it). If these guys were large enough to be on the radar, they'd probably get into trouble for calling themselves "yogurt." Sorry Atlanta, nothing but cheap pretenders here. Guess I'll have to wait until another trip home to Korea or California.

Chicken biscuit quest continued

After the somewhat disappointing sweet potato biscuit result (tasty but not really biscuit shaped), I went back to basics. I figured I should make a normal biscuit to compare the sweet potato biscuits to (a baseline biscuit if you will), and see if it's even worth the effort to do all that potato business. This time I got myself an actual cutter, some cake flour, some fresh baking powder, and it made a huge difference. I also wore gloves kept in the freezer while handling the dough. Here are the results:


Very pleasantly biscuity, flaky, etc. They split nicely by hand. Just a wee bit on the salty side. I really think that sweet potato does actually make a difference. It's subtle, but the tang from the dairy and the chemical leavening is pleasantly dampened a bit, and they're a bit moister. Also, the biscuit is not quite as salty, which will be good when I slap a piece of chicken on there. Maybe with all the changes I made, the next sweet potato batch will be successful.

Here's what I had for dinner:


I've also made my first brine for chicken frying (that'll start up tomorrow). This is a straight pickle brine. Unfiltered cider vinegar, water, sugar, salt, pickling spice, a few chiles de arbol, and a couple cloves of garlic.