I Like Food, I Don't Like You

LeBron-ing it outta here...

2010-08-14T16:18:00.001-07:00

The answer to the question everybody wants to know...Chris, what's your decision?

Um, right now-man this is very tough-right now I'm gonna take my talents to Wordpress and start up The GI Rounds Report.

And The Award Goes To...(Also goodbye)

2010-08-06T17:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I was asked what my best dish is. I've often been asked what my favorite thing to cook is...but my best? I really don't know. Do I even have a best? How does one choose the most impressive of various feats of mediocrity?

I started looking back through my posts and realize there's a lot of crap in there...lot of stuff that people shouldn't find interesting, and some rare occasions where I managed to plate something okay-looking. I figured I had enough to put together a "best of my blog." It's like the time honored Television tradition of the clip show. I can generate a new post without generating actual content.

I realize this is pretty ridiculous. It'd be like if each TV network or movie studio held a specific awards show for the stuff they made. (Spoiler Alert: At the USA originals awards, Royal Pains and White Collar clean up. White Collar wins the coveted "Most blatant use of green screen and cutaways in order to unsuccessfully hide the fact that the chick who played Kelly Kapowski is nowhere near the rest of the cast" award).

First up is Achievement in a Television Cooking Competition-Style Dish

I'm actually quite proud of this one. This was from my first Fourth of July after graduating college. I had some people over for grilling, and I hadn't planned on anything more than ice cream sandwiches for dessert. My friends brought over some blueberries and strawberries, but they weren't quite ripe. I threw together the berries with some fresh squeezed orange and lime juice, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and a seeded jalapeno. I had to send people to the gas station to buy sugar because I hadn't stocked my pantry yet. The compote and a toasted marshmallow with the ice cream sandwich ended up being a pretty good combination. Absolutely no planning, a random assortment of ingredients, some acquired from a gas station...it was like a Quickfire...except my ass would've been cut for running out of time.

Next award is for Best Variation of a Classic Food Item, Made for Non-prostitution Purposes

These sweet potato tots were the real deal. Sweet potato tots that I've had at restaurants have been fakers...usually just a battered or breaded chunk of sweet potato. Tots gotta be grated hash style or it don't count (*cough*Richard Blais*cough*).

And logically, next is Best Variation of a Classic Food Item, Made for Prostitution Purposes

Two hot girls pooled their money and bought my ass for $75. I cooked them a meal based on their favorite movies. This was the West Side Story inspired Puerto Rico Roll. Fried plantain, avocado, and chicken wrapped in sofrito seasoned sushi rice. I undercooked the sofrito a little bit to preserve the nice green color.

The award for Best Food Item I Ripped Off of a Real Chef goes to

Laurent Tourondel's gruyere popovers from BLT Steak. I made about a million of these for a dinner party once. They got rave reviews, but it took about six hours of straight baking, and the temperature in my apartment hit 85 degrees (it was winter). My gas bill was quadruple what it normally runs. These are now reserved for special occasions/special people only.

Best dish that my sister will never make as well as I do

This is an important category, because this blog was initially started to make fun of my sister's blog. Sorry Jungjoo. Your Kimbap will never live up to mine.

Best photo that never made it onto the blog

Tie: In n' Out and Truffles

And finally...Best Dish

This porcini mushroom risotto is probably the finest dish I can consistently make. On this particular instance I had made it with a rich homemade chicken stock and fine dried porcinis as well as white truffle butter brought home from Florence. As I said in the original post, it was and still is the best dish I ever made.

Well that's it. The best of what my blog has offered in its five year history. For five years, I guess I really haven't achieved much, but I feel it's time to put this particular one to rest. Five years ago I started this to make fun of my sister's blog and food blogging in general. I'm afraid that the target has become too easy...everyone who gets Food network and has enough money to go to an expensive restaurant considers themselves a sophisticated foodie (a word that older foodies now think of as a derogatory term for the johnny-come-lately foodies...even though the only difference is that those who look down on new foodies have just been pretending longer). I don't consider myself a foodie...just someone who likes to eat and knows their way around a kitchen.

Food blogs in general have changed too. The web is saturated with hundreds of thousands of them...some are certainly worth your time, but that's a small percentage. My blog never really escaped all the noise that's out there, but at least it sounded a bit different. Now it's just another one in the pile.

Also I've softened in my old age...I need more sleep, my metabolism is slowing down, I spend a lot of time having to study and junk. The youthful punk who started "I like food, I don't like you," has matured into someone who says "I like food, and you're alright as long as you're not a complete idiot." That'd be a bit too wordy though. My content and my calmer demeanor don't quite match up to my blog's title (and lengthy URL). It's time for a new project with a different feel.

So that's it for ol' foodrulesyousuck.blogspot.com. It'll stay up as an archive, and I'm now looking into other blogging avenues but don't have anything to announce just yet.

Thanks for reading these past five years...it's been a lot of fun and I hope you enjoyed it.

Take care y'all.

On next week's episode...

2010-08-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

TV listings and previews should always include mentions of any food items that may feature prominently. That way I won't have to run all the way out to H-Mart to get ingredients in order to make it. I was watching "Heroes," which, unlike the American show of the same name, is a show that involves getting a bunch of female idols together, then putting them on teams based on a survey of their popularity, then having the unpopular team and the popular team compete against each other in various challenges. It's freaking fantastic. Also it's full of some pretty hot women, and last week they cooked. Dduk bbok gi is simple, street-foodish, and satisfying. It's got chewy rice cakes simmered in a spicy sauce with some other stuff. I like fish cake and ramen noodles, the addition of which make it Ra-bok-gi. One of the super-hot idols who is a crazy good dancer was able to make dduk bok gi pretty impressively. If only her recipe didn't contain so much corn syrup, she'd be my ideal woman. An emergent trip to H-mart became necessary, as nothing else would've done the trick for dinner.

One thing I noticed when I got to H-Mart was that it's become overrun with white people. There's always the odd non-minority shopping in H-Mart, but this was the first time the ratio was actually skewing toward the pigment-challenged. I actually overheard the following:
"Why are there so many Mexican items in a Chinese grocery?" This was said in a tone of voice that revealed the strain to politically correcticize her underlying question which I imagine was something along the lines of "I wonder if all these Mexicans were hired to shop for stuff in this ching-chong slanty-eyed people store?" Dammit white people! Y'all got Whole Foods and the Oriental Food shelf at Kroger. Let us Koreans (and Mexicans) shop in peace!

I picked up everything I needed and got to work cooking up some anchovy broth. The dduk was fresh...and this can lead to mushy meltdown, so I oven toasted it briefly (plus that makes it delicious).

The other stuff that goes in:

I'm an anti-breaker when it comes to ramen noodles. There's absolutely no reason to do it, except when making ra-bok-gi, so that the noodles distribute a bit more evenly. Some people put the soup powder packet in their sauce, but I didn't need the MSG. I used soy sauce, mirin, sugar, korean red pepper powder, and red chili paste.

In case you can't read Korean. I got level 4 spicy chili paste. But it bothers me, knowing that there's a higher spice level out there that I couldn't get my hands on. Once the sauce is ready it's pretty much a matter of just mixing everything else (boil the noodles first) in, letting it cook down for a bit, and eating it.

It was spicy enough to make me cough on the first few bites, was probably like a billion carbs, and completely devoid of any nutritional value...in other words delicious. I'm sure it would be much more delicious if I had a better camera to take pictures of it with...Samsung NX10 or Sony alpha Nex 5? Decisions decisions, and I'd only have to sell my body on the street about 12-15 times in order to afford one.

Ah Summer

2010-07-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

OBGyn is over. I delivered some babies, I smeared some paps...I saw things no human should ever see.

A pool, a grill, and some beer are in order:

What to throw on the grill? Anything on a stick is always a good bet.

Note some atypical items...green onion and lime. Marinate the skewers in a neutral oil with cumin and coriander, salt, pepper, and a touch of lime juice. I threw some Mexican oregano on there for good measure.

Take 'em off the grill, squeeze that char-marked lime over the rest of the skewer, and enjoy. Grilled green onions are the way to go. Pretty much the easiest somewhat fancy thing you can do on the grill.

Playtime is over

2010-06-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Outpatient medicine is done...now I'm in a hospital on Ob/Gyn, which means I really haven't been cooking much. My days over the past couple weeks have usually started at 6 am and when I get home I've just been falling asleep. Though I don't have too much to report on the cooking side, I've had no trouble on the eating side. I was back home while my sister was back home a few weeks ago...

Dim Sum at S and T Hong Kong Seafood Restaurant was up first.

Tofu skin salad is the shit.

Philz Coffee...strong...lightly minty fresh.

Dynamo Donuts...fancy, good.

Mom wanted to try Caesar's near Fisherman's wharf. It's far enough away that it's not touristy, but feels kitschy and fun anyway.
Cannelloni alla Romana. Something about the pork filling made it really crazy soft. Good stuff.

My sister wanted all of these:

Yeah they're pretty cool...not $20 for a piece of bread cool...but cool.

My sister and I went to Hubert Keller's Burger Bar before the symphony:

Got the sliders...they clearly charge extra for indecision. Any other burger there would've been a better value, and still more expensive and not as good as Farm Burger or Flip. I would've liked to complain to Chef Keller, but my sister said he probably wasn't there. WHHHAAAAAT?!! Why isn't Hubert Keller always at the Burger Bar inside Macy's? That would imply he's just putting his name on a sub-par product to make a cheap buck! What self-respecting chef would do such a thing?

Made two batches of these:

I think my entire caloric intake the Saturday before I left was from these.

The day after I got back to Atlanta, I got the free preview of this:

Spicy chicken sandwich at Chick-Fil-A. Full service, with a manager acting as "waitress" at a fancy table:

This was actually SUPER AWKWARD. When I made the "reservation" and printed out the little coupon, I assumed I would just be walking in, getting my sandwich to go, and leaving. I went alone. Sitting at this fancy table alone being waited on inside a Chick-Fil-A was possibly the most pathetic experience of my life. It didn't help that there were three other dudes going through the same experience. All of us sitting at separate tables...strategically positioned so we wouldn't have to look at each other's girlfriend-less faces as we ate our sandwiches...alone.

That said, fries and drink and everything else I could've wanted were free. Chick-Fil-A is the best! I went back when it "debuted" (drive-thru this time) and had it deluxe style with pepper jack cheese and all. It was even better that way I think, and actually enhanced some of the spiciness by blunting a bit of the saltiness. I normally get the regular sandwich without the lettuce and stuff, but I think I'm gonna go deluxe with the spicy.

Today I got up super early to watch the world cup. KOREA WINS!!! Whooo!! I wish I were in Korea to get in on the nationwide party that's going on. Instead I went to H-Mart to buy some Korean stuff. I figured there might be a party going there too. When I pulled up I saw a big grill going and was like...awwww yeeah the victory celebration is ON! When I got to where the grills were:

Nothing says KOREA DOMINATES GREECE like a grilled chicken taco and some Jarritos. Turns out they were promoting with a Spanish-language radio station, as the Latino population frequents this particular H-Mart more than the Korean population does (my people shop at the Johns Creek and Duluth locations generally, in addition to being industrious, polite, and good at math). Sadly...this free food was WAY BETTER than 95% of the Mexican food you can get in Atlanta.

And finally, I get to welcome someone to the desperately lonely yet overcrowded world of blogging.
My friend/med school classmate Amanda has started a food blog of her own, but instead of being about generally disliking most people and cooking, it'll be about her crippling addiction to brunch. She'll be reviewing the various places she gets her fix. If High Times had a spinoff dedicated to crack...this blog would be the brunch version of that. It is cleverly titled ATL Brunching and it's currently devoid of any content. She's been hyping the launch of her blog for over a year, and it's finally muscled its way onto the scene. Here's hoping that your audience is more diverse than mine. I recently discovered that the only people who will be reading these words are my sister and her friend who is French and therefore inherently more of a sophisticated foodist than anyone who writes food blogs could ever be. I recently saw a fat dude wearing a t-shirt that said "foodie" in big letters on it. He probably has a blog...and writes a bunch of reviews on Yelp.
Perhaps the most embarrassing reader is my mother. As soon as I found out she reads this thing my first thought was "Oh fuck...I swear on that thing all the time," (sorry mom).

To celebrate her launch, I decided to invite Amanda out for a blogger's brunch to dim sum, after all it's the original brunch. It was brunch before the word brunch was ever uttered (in fact dim sum was brunch long before the concept of the portmanteau word even existed).

We went to China Delight on Chamblee Tucker. I got nervous because there was a giant "China Delight...great for weddings and banquets!" billboard on Buford. For any non-chain restaurant, a billboard doesn't usually bode well. It screams "Hey truckers! Come on in and eat something whose sole virtue is that it occupies space in your stomach while you're on the road...we have strippers too!"

It really wasn't bad though.

No comparison to SF but fairly decent food and reasonably priced on Mon-Sat.

China Delight is coincidentally the name that Amanda goes by ~~in her evening job at some of the finer establishments along Cheshire Bridge road. You know...the kind of place that would have a billboard.~~ (EDIT):Amanda and her lack of humor would like me to clarify that she is NOT, in fact, a stripper (exotic dancer is the preferred nomenclature).

That about covers the past three weeks or so. My next couple weeks will be on outpatient Ob/Gyn so hopefully I'll get a chance to cook more, maybe even hold a "class" or a gathering. Stay tuned mom...and yes, I'm studying hard.

Soup Dumplings

2010-05-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

I overheard one of the nurses at my peds clinic talking about a place on Buford that was known for soup dumplings. I couldn't help but ask where it was because I was immediately like "oh damn I like those." We talked about how she was a fan of Joe's Shanghai and I told her about a place my sister took me in SF one time. The next week she told me she went and that it was just completely wrong. Nothing like Joe's...completely lacking in soup inside.

I then heard about a place that happened to be right across the street from my apartment complex which was supposed to have xiaolongbao. I went with some friends:

We also ordered the fish in hot oil and the pork belly with leeks. Both were good.

The dumplings are somewhat un-appetizingly labeled as "Shanghai Juice Dumplings." They looked right. That kinda collapsed bottom look from something that used to be solid now being a liquid. They tasted fine, but weren't quite right either. The skin was a bit too doughy and there was a bit too much meat filling, not a lot of broth.

Guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands and make my own soup dumplings. Out of laziness I decided not to make the skins and just use pre-made wrappers. I knew this'd be risky if they were too thin, but apparently it'd been done with some success according to posts online.

First up was making the soup.

Then turning it into an aspic with some help from gelatin. You can also boil pork skin with the soup but the gelatin was cheaper.

Filling was next...pork, ginger, garlic, scallions, some other junk:

With a little help from the freezer, the aspic was already set a couple hours later:

Then i cut it up and mixed it in with the other filling stuff:

Let's fast forward the horrible inefficiency with which I assembled the dumplings, and straight to the steamer:

Okay they look sorta similar...but awfully collapsed. Hopefully I didn't lose all of my soup...

Good not great. If I ever make these again I'm gonna have to actually make the skin dough, which is a pain. Also I would keep the meat and aspic separate. Use a much smaller amount of meat and individually put a big scoop of the aspic in each one to ensure maximum soup.

Hype Eating

2010-05-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

I've been eating some of the most hyped stuff you can find in Atlanta...the kinds of places that are bulletproof among the Yelp crowd. All the reviews are OMG 5 STARS! There's the occasional I'M SO SOPHISTICATED THAT I'M GOING TO GIVE THIS PLACE ONE STAR BECAUSE I'M ABOVE THE HYPE! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! MY OPINION COUNTS MORE BECAUSE IT'S DIFFERENT!

This is why I hate Yelp. I use it on my iPhone because it's the most elegant way to find nearby restaurants, but I don't use it on a real computer at all because that would mean I'd be looking at reviews. The average Yelp reviewer has absolutely no clue what they're talking about, will turn into crazy cat-owning hermits, and live in a fantasy world where the feedback on their reviews and their number of yelp friends convince them that they're a respected food writer. They review fast food places in a non-ironic manner because ironically reviewing fast food places is no longer amusing.

I recently used the Yelp app extensively in my quest to eat a choux cream pastry from every Korean bakery in the Atlanta area (Mission accomplished by the way). The reviews for each and every one of these places were ridiculous and just plain wrong. The app is now getting a bit annoying thanks to the check-in feature. Anytime you're in close proximity to a business you can "check in" there, and there's "regulars" and a leaderboard. There's one dude in Atlanta who's consistently at the top of the board, because he "checks in" at places like apartment complexes and his job. Lame.

That's him. Ladies of Atlanta, if you see this man be sure to ridicule him.

Everyone should try a place if they're interested regardless of the reviews or the hype/anti-hype. I did, took some pictures, and am throwing them up here for the two of you who will see this. This mainly serves as photo-hosting online so that they don't take up any of my endangered hard drive space. This blog has basically become a time-consuming Flickr gallery.

First up is Antico Pizza Napoletana. Hype factor high in the Atlanta area. The website has the occasional Italian word and they write prices in Euros as well as dollars. All this marketing stuff is cute and all, but can they back it up?

Amanda ate this whole pizza.

Audra and I ate this. Pizza came out fast and the crust was excellent.

This thing was good.

So was this.

Next up is Farm Burger. HYPE FACTOR OFF THE CHARTS. They opened up pretty recently and advertise 100% grass-fed beef and natural everything blah blah blah. They also have many varieties of beer in cans, from fancy to not so fancy. Trendy.

Grass-fed beef is good and all, but honestly if someone took roadkill and made it into a freaking amazing burger I wouldn't mind.

This burger also had beef tongue, beet relish and some sort of slaw which was really tasty. The beef was excellent. Fries were okay. The decor is farm-y...but the pictures of cows and pigs on the walls are maybe a bit cruel. I'll probably go back to try their bacon, oxtail relish, and roasted marrow, all of which are available condiments on their burgers. There are some interesting-looking non-fried sides too.

At one point while Bryan and I were sitting at the very end of a large communal table, some girl came up and said "I don't want to be rude," (too late) "but we have a group of six...can you move?"
1. They only had five people.
2. We were already there.
3. Her voice was incredibly annoying.
If it weren't for her voice I might've thought about it for a split second. Also one of the dudes in their party had his collar up. No way we're moving bitch.

And now an item of national hype/intrigue/disgust.
I'm no stranger to weird and possibly disgusting novelty chicken items. Who could forget Chicken Kiev juice box?

Actually that might not have gone down so well.

If you look at the nutrition facts of the double down, in terms of calories, eliminating the bun might have actually brought the count down somewhat.

It seems promising. Chicken, pepper jack cheese, bacon...kinda like a ghetto Cordon Bleu. Unfortunately, all this promise doesn't taste like anything except salt. This was probably the saltiest thing I've ever eaten besides the time a salt shaker spilled open into my soup and I kept eating it anyway.

Okay...that ends the post of food that I have not made myself. All that saved me about 8 megs of space on my computer. Totally worth it.

Should I be more specific?

2010-04-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the title of my blog should be:

I Like Fried Food, I Don't Like You...no not YOU dear loyal blog reader. I'm talking about YOU, idiot who has arrived here via a google search for "food I don't like"

That one might be a bit wordy.

I've been eating an awful lot of fried food lately though. Most days I've been managing a Fiber One Bar (or a banh mi if I'm lucky) in the car between clinics for lunch. Haven't been able to do much cooking at night either. Pasta and rice/kimchi have been my dinner staples lately. Somehow I've managed to drop five pounds since rotations started. Though I should view this as the dropping off some unnecessary poundage accumulated during boards study time, I've actually more seen this as license to eat terribly on the weekends. WHOO! Let's round it up:

I had an afternoon at Grady Eye Clinic. I went down the street to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market for a quick lunch. After I ordered the porkchop sandwich, I was wondering why it was taking so long. I was thinking "Hurry up guys...I need to be at clinic by 1, so that they can tell me they don't actually get started until 1:45 and to just hang out and be lazy until then." Turns out it took a long time because...

It was fried! Whooooo! Not much more to say. It was a deep fried porkchop on some bread with lettuce and tomato. I think there was mayo involved too.

I needed a snack on the weekend. Might as well make one:

And if I'm going to make one, it might as well be fried. Fried meatballs. Yup. This one's also self-explanatory.

Okay so not everything I've been making lately has been fried, just in case you were worried about my health.

Take this Nutella ice cream I made. Polish Nutella is better for you than American Nutella, which is why it's totally okay for me to mix it with heavy cream and egg yolks to make ice cream, then top it with more Nutella. It's good for you!

The weather has gotten beautiful in Atlanta. It's no longer raining and cold every day. It's sunny and pollen-y now. Fantastic day to head over to Hampton House and cook up fried chicken.

Made two kinds...Southern style and Korean style. Also sauteed some collard greens. Geoff made potato salad, Dan made guac that you can't see because it's already gone.

Korean style on left...brined the chicken, coated in coconut milk and a special spice/flour blend, and fried TWICE (bonus!) before being coated in a spicy sweet sauce of my own design. Southern style on the right was brined a la Thomas Keller, with some added pickling spice a la Chick-Fil-A. Buttermilk and flour/matzo meal a la Blue Ribbon. It's the bastard child recipe of a bunch of non-Southerners (with the exception of Chick-Fil-A), but I made it here in the South so it counts. I think the Korean style went over better though. Koreans and Southerners are crazy about their fried chicken for good reason.

Erin made dessert:

Perfect strawberry shortcake and vanilla ice cream. Perfect way to end the meal.

Tomorrow I start peds in the afternoons out in Suwanee. It's about an hour away from my apartment without traffic...which means it'll be about three hours realistically. This all means I might be having dinner in the car as well. At this rate I might lose even more weight, which means MORE FRIED FOOD ON THE WEEKENDS! WHOO! Stay tuned.

My long overdue final Korea post

2010-03-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

I've been back from Korea for a while, and though I've been pretty busy getting settled into becoming someone who can pretend to be doctory, not a day goes by when I don't absolutely miss the bustle of Seoul. It's not just the TV, which I've been able to keep up with thanks to the interweb, and it's not just hanging out with my sister. How could anyone not miss this?

Loaded chili cheese fries from New York Fries...a source of poutine in a subway station.

Or these:

Genuine churros in the fancy beautiful-people-filled apgujeong-dong.

I'm also nowhere near a doughnut plant anymore. So I can't eat a mascarpone-filled square doughnut, or a citron glazed cake doughnut.

I certainly wouldn't mind warming my hands over a cylinder of charcoal, followed by grilling delicious, cheap, pig skirt meat over the same charcoal (well not the exact same one... a new one).

I wanna duck back into the tent of a food stall and eat fishcake and spicy rice cakes until I explode.

I could even go for more Japanese food in Korea. This bowl of ramen with char-grilled pork was pretty fantastic.

The last meal I ate in Korea was simple and delicious. It was in a "restaurant" that all the employees ate at, right next to the more glamorous food court (everything about Incheon airport is glamorous...how many airports do you know that have 24/7 personal shoppers to help you navigate all the high-end shopping?)

Maybe one of my favorite meals in Korea was at a bo ssam chain. When I got back and told my mom that's where we'd gone, she-in the blunt Korean manner-said their food is terrible, but I liked it. I guess it's not really a fair contest for "favorite meal" because this meal was with my grandma. Hanging around Atlanta, I wanted bo ssam again, but decided that I'd maybe eaten a bit too much pork belly, and that I should use tenderloin instead.

So there it is...tenderloin bo ssam with a quick endive kimchee. Hopefully I'll be able to go back soon and make this for my grandma, but with pork belly because she says you gotta have some amount of fat for it to be tasty.

Second favorite meal? When my aunt basically went insane and cooked five different things that require a lot of time and effort, including braised kimchee and pork belly. It takes a while...

With the help of my semi-new le creuset, I went for it...and thus the pork belly embargo was officially lifted.

Yeah I miss Korea a lot. So much so that I felt like I needed to ease myself back into eating American food at restaurants. I enlisted the help of a high school friend who flew in to Atlanta (for work...and when I say he flew in that's exactly what he did...he flew the plane).

How to bridge the gap? Korean BBQ burger at Flip. Wagyu patty, braised short rib on top...pickled vegetables (which are eaten at every meal in Korea pretty much), and kimchee ketchup. The kimchee ketchup wasn't really noticeable...everything else was tasty though.

Tempura fried rutabaga and zucchini fries have appeared on the side menu. The breading on the zucchini was a bit mealy, but good.

*sigh* What am I to do? I've finished the dramas I was interested in watching, and variety shows only air on Saturdays and Sundays. I need more Korean-ness in my life right now. I googled "Paris Baguette Atlanta" and found three locations...but they had all since closed down.

The new H-Mart in Doraville is close by, and they have:

A Tous Les Jours? Dammit! So close, yet so far away. I guess I'll have to make a trip to LA, Philly, New Jersey, or New York sometime soon. I suppose I could (and definitely would), drive the hour from Lafayette to Santa Clara to hit up a PB.

More from Korea

2010-02-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

I used to think that some of the Korean-adopted Western foods were gross simply because Koreans didn't understand what the hell was going on. Now I realize that Koreans are pretty much saying "okay...that's a good idea, but we'll take it from here and make something that will suit the tastes of Koreans." That doesn't change the fact that I think the pizza here is pretty gross, but at least now I know it's not on account of Koreans simply being insane...they're just looking out for Korea.

These macarons were pretty authentic though. They were truffle and foie gras. I guess my sister and I decided that we might as well splurge on the really weird ones. The truffle one was incredibly truffley. The foie gras was too sweet to really tell what it was like.

Here's some stone pot BibimBap (mixed rice) with a bunch of seafood. Definitely a Korean dish, but it was served at a pseudo Japanese place.

This is skewered and grilled chicken gizzard. One of my favorite parts of the chicken. Also known as the "sand house (chickens eat pebbles/sand to help with digestion)" or in street food terms it can be referred to as the "crap house." On No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, there was that super annoying girl who weaseled her way into a free trip to Korea, THEN DEMONSTRATED THAT SHE KNEW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT KOREA! Good lord that was frustrating. She was like "oh yeah this is the chicken anus or whatever. It's a Korean delicacy." She knew less about Korea than I did, and she didn't know jack about food. Chicken anus is a korean delicacy? Are you kidding? It's street food...and it's eaten because you don't waste anything! It's a bonus that it's delicious. Also the gizzard certainly isn't the anus. How big do you think a chicken anus could possibly be? Koreans all over the world share a common feeling of unity and pride, because for a small country that has been dicked over by pretty much every other country on earth at some point, we've made it pretty far. We're all Koreans and we're all in it together! Not that chick from No Reserations though. She's out.

Red bean porridge. Incredibly traditional stuff from the "second best place in Seoul." It's not just old people who come here though. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Korean people is their respect and adherence to tradition in the midst of incredible modernization. This is a place where you can watch TV on your cell phone...on the subway. Whereas this kind of tech might really only be seen used by the super savvy back in the states, EVERYONE does it here...teens, grandmas, you name it. A large part of Korean tradition and behavior is an intense respect for elders. I'm always amazed when I watched "reality TV" shows here. These shows mostly feature Idols...superstars of the moment doing hilarious stuff for charity. These shows work so well because they're self contained, don't contain any D-list celebrities or non-celebrities vying for attention, and Idols here generally have gone to good high schools/collleges (if they're old enough) and are quite intelligent and funny. I was struck by one episode I saw when one of the most popular women in Korea was farming or something, and she made sure that the older farmer man was fed first before she was. You wouldn't see that shit in the states. Celebs get in trouble here if they do outrageous and idiotic things, deviating from civility is a career killer. In the states, deviating from civility and being a general jackass seems like a requirement to make your career.
I'm not really sure what that elders thing had to with food, so I'll just end it by saying that young Koreans love burgers:

Like this one from Kraze burger.

Or this one with maybe just a tad too much BBQ ranch.

But they also go back to the traditional. Eating in a communal setting is a big deal here. Why? Because we're all in it together! Whoo Korea! It's this spirit that has graced humans with perhaps the world's greatest food:

Koreans may not have invented grilling meat over charcoal, but they certainly make it the most fun. This is samgyeopsal (three layer fat). It's pork belly grilled on charcoal, and you can wrap it in perilla leaves, lettuce, with rice, grilled onions or garlic...however you want. I basically just want to eat this forever. Like...all the time...until my blood turns into mayonnaise and I keel over and die. I'd be pretty happy with that.

More communal eating can be had with a dish simply translated as "One whole chicken."

A massive pot full of broth and a stewed, cut up chicken come to your table and are put over a jet engine. We added some ground chili paste to make it spicy:

And when the chicken was gone we ordered some noodles to throw in. Freaking delicious.
However, I can't help but feel that if one were to eat a whole chicken in Korea, it should be of the deep fried variety:

Korean fried chicken is blowing up in the states too. It's seasoned with something delicious then fried, drained, fried again so the skin is super crisp and delicious. It's not heavily battered so you just get a really crispy skin. You can also get it sauced with some sort of spicy sweet garlicy sauce. Delicious. I only wish I could have tried all of the many locations and unique recipes.

Koreans are also clever, industrious, and ingenious. This is most likely due to the aforementioned fact that the country has been shat on continuously by other countries. Imagine your home state is its own country. Then imagine that all the states around you have constantly tried to invade your state, economically blackmail your state, and wipe all record of your state's history and culture from memory. Despite this, your state has managed to provide the fastest internet on the planet to the highest percentage of it's citizens. Your state is so technologically advanced that the same cell phone that you can use to watch TV on the subway also grants you access to ride that subway (buses too, it tracks your fares, transfers, you can even pay for cabs as well as vending machine items with it). Imagine that your state is so advanced that an iPhone that sets you back $30 with a contract is still a bad deal because it lacks basic features present on any other phone. Imagine your state is so advanced, it has produced this:

The corn dog with the fries attached to it. There's shit going down in Korea that even Neal Stephenson couldn't imagine in Snow Crash.

Interesting mix of traditional and non-traditional food here. It just comes down to the fact that Koreans love good food. No matter where in the world it's from...if it's tasty Koreans will like it. They'll probably adapt it to Korean tastes, and therefore foreigners may brand them ripoff artists, but adaptation to local tastes happens all over the world. How does pizza, pasta, Indian, Mexican, Thai etc. etc. in the US compare to the authentic counterparts in the countries of origin? Shrimp, bacon, corn, and weird cheese sauce on pizza is just Koreans looking out for other Koreans. That's fine with me, though I wouldn't go so far as to eat it.

I'll probably post some more stuff I eat, though my time here is sadly growing short. One thing I've noticed is that I wasted some luggage space by bringing my digital camera. My iPhone camera is more than adequate for the snaps that I take day in and day out. But lately I've been thinking that I want to take better food pictures. I noticed that there are absolutely NO ADS for point and shoot cameras here. There's no Ashton Kutcher whoring himself for some girly touch screen camera. However, I've seen a million ads for SLRs/Micro Four Thirds/other interchangeable lens cameras. It's rare that SLRs are advertised back in the states.

My sister pointed out that there's no market for point and shoot cameras here. Everyone's cell phone has like a 7 megapixel camera with flash, face/smile recognition, and image stabilization (another iPhone shortcoming). People here use an SLR for the great stuff, and their phone for just about everything else. I've been tempted into buying an entry level hybrid interchangeable lens camera here that's not on sale in the US...could better photography of food for my three readers soon follow? We shall see.

Korea 2010

2010-01-30T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've fled to Korea to relax after taking the boards. This is probably the longest stretch of time I've spent in Korea since I started really appreciating food...and the great thing about Korea is that there's plenty of food to appreciate. My sister is here learning Korean, so the timing was perfect.

There's the incredibly famous Myeongdong Gyoja which my parents frequented, and we usually eat here every time we come to Korea (last time I was here, there was a line about a mile long stretching out of the place so we passed).

It's known for dumplings and kal guksu (handcut noodles), and every foreign blogger's writeup will mention these two things.

I don't remember the soup always containing small dumplings, but there they were and they were good.

I think the REAL draw of Myeongdong Gyoja is their insanely strong Kimchi. It's on the earlier side of fermentation (which I like), and not only has insane levels of Korean ground chili powder, but also of garlic. The garlic level on this kimchi is unbelievable. It really is meant to be slightly washed in your soup. It's understandable why many Americans would shy away from this kimchi, because it's not only on the spicier end of the kimchi spectrum, but because they're worried about their breath smelling garlicky for days on end (garlic breath really cramps the Asian fetishist's game).

Also in Myeongdong is a branch of the famous Doughnut Plant NYC. The doughnut wars are still pretty fierce in Korea. Dunkin' Donuts (which is a much nicer cafe experience in Korea than in the US) now occupies the most expensive real estate in Korea (a three story location in the heart of Myeongdong...previously occupied by a Starbucks).

Doughnut plant donuts are ridiculously expensive, but they're tasty. The Tres Leches is really good, the creme brulee actually has a crispy creme brulee style crust (but the custard is so-so and the doughnut itself is a bit too chewy). The blackout is maybe a little too cocoa-powdery on the verge of being a bit bland. We'll be back for more though.

Today we're hanging out in Insadong, which has a lot of stores for traditional Korean items. There's also a lot of street food here...and a lot of tourists.
We passed by some people pounding rice for fresh ddeok (rice cake). I don't think I've ever had ddeok that was super freshly made and still warm. Good stuff.

This is a special type of hoddeok made with some corn flour as well as sweet rice flour. Hoddeok is a family favorite. It's a sweet rice dough filled with a cinnamon sugar mixture then fried in a shallow pool of oil on a very hot griddle. It ends up being a delicious chewy caramel-filled pancake. With the addition of the corn flour, it puffs up and gains a very crisp outer layer, while the inside remains super chewy.

Right now I'm sitting in a cafe that overlooks Ssamzie market plaza (which seems to be pretty new). It has a chic-ly low ceiling in the loft area (can't stand up all the ay low), and serves up a decent latte as well as a nice Belgian waffle.

Asians love Belgian waffles...probably because they're freaking delicious.

This square was featured in a variety show bit last week, in which one of the members of a comedy troupe was dressed up as a Navi from Avatar and was ordered around by the other members. There's a food stand here where he ordered something that now has a crazy line. They have pictures of the episode and everything. Best free advertising ever. Sorry it's not subtitled, but check out 7:38 for a moment of genius.

Proust was the O.G. Oprah

2009-12-25T23:31:00.000-08:00

There's no doubt that the Madeleine owes its fancy-pants notoriety to Marcel Proust. Would this tiny cake fetch $2 apiece at coffee shops had he not tediously described the crumbs in his tea spoon? Nope. Would this masturbatory exercise in intellectual foodie smugness have been given space on Slate's servers if the Proust-Madeleine connection weren't so well known? Actually it's quite possible. Forget about that one...that's a bad example (and by the way, if following Julia Child's directions in preparing the molds by brushing with butter and flour, a certain amount of micro-crumbs are definitely present on the shell side after removal).

The publicity generated by Proust's 7-or-so paragraph Madeleine shout-out dwarfs any kind of hype generated for the favorite things of Oprah, undoubtedly the most influential person in media...and possibly the planet (Would sales of Anna Karenina in non-school bookstores have increased 100-fold had it not been for her book club? Nope. Would Jonathan Franzen have been exposed as a complete douche had it not been for Oprah's wisdom? Wait...another bad example. Doucheosity of that magnitude always manifests.)

Sometimes people ask me what I've cooked most in my lifetime. Recently I've come to realize that it's the Madeleine. I first made them for 8th-grade Francais avec Madame Windfuhr (my sister knew her as Frau Windfuhr...she taught both German and French). I really didn't know what I was getting into when I decided this was going to be my contribution to the class holiday party (I'm so glad I didn't decide to do a Bûche de Noël). This was in the infancy of my cooking ability, and I was unfamiliar with the concept of needing a shell-shaped pan to make a shell-shaped cake. So my first step was to acquire a pan, which involved telling my mom (likely three days before the day they were due) that I needed a Madeleine pan...and while she was at it, a recipe.

Two different recipes were used for the very first batch I made. One called for Amaretto and orange flower water. It was fussy and overly sweet. The other was Julia Child's recipe, requiring lemon zest and browned butter. I've come to realize now that any recipe that calls for liqueurs or ground up nuts etc. are probably doing so in order to avoid browning the butter. This was the first time I'd ever attempted browned butter, and it was under my mom's watchful eye. I suppose this is why I've never been too afraid to do it, as I distinctly remember the first instant when the butter darkened and gave off that unmistakably nutty aroma, then my mom telling me it was ready to come off the stove and into the ice bath.

After determining that Julia Child's recipe was the best (and that our oven at the time ran 50 degrees hot), I had plenty of opportunities to fine tune the method, as my mother's infatuation with the little French cake developed instantly. I've tried less labor-intensive ways of making the Madeleine pan nonstick (nothing worked as well as the original), including silicone molds (terrible). I've tried straining out the solids from the browned butter (not worth the effort), and dipping in chocolate (also not really worth the effort). I'd conservatively estimate that I've averaged two or three batches of Madeleines per year since the 8th grade. I've made far more packets of EasyMac and instant ramen, but nothing from scratch. Any time I needed to contribute something for a French class party, the Madeleine pan made an appearance. At one point in high school, I think I demonstrated how to make them en Francais ("et maintenant, faites la le beurre noisette"). Unfortunately, this knowledge did not help me on the AP test. Nowadays I couldn't use l'imparfait to save my life (Is it if my life were in a habitual state of danger in the past? If my life were in danger for an unspecified amount of time in the past? Both?), but I can make a pretty decent Madeleine.

I suppose I owe a debt of gratitude to Proust, though let's face it...À la Recherche du Temps Perdu can be some pretty boring-ass shit. However, I can safely say that there is no possible way I would have known about Madeleines in junior high had it not been for him. The canelé and the macaron are also delicious French pastries, but I've only come to know about those recently. Maybe someday this blog will serve as my (rambling...sorry) memoir. I wonder what food item I will make famous. I suppose the chicken biscuit is what I've written about most lately. It certainly wouldn't be difficult to write a couple thousand words about my first chicken biscuit for (regrettably) it was only a couple years ago. That's why you shouldn't judge me for eating them so often. I'm simply trying to make up for temps perdu.

Do reality TV stars continue to exist if no one is watching them?

2009-11-16T05:33:00.001-08:00

Debatable, which is probably why they're always doing stuff to keep themselves on TMZ. It seems like reality TV chefs have similar challenges. It used to be that someone had to establish a few really good restaurants before they could think about a shot at TV. Once they got there, they could either take the respected PBS cooking show route, the pseudo-cooking make-sure-it-contains-a-processed-food-we-can-shill Food Network route, or the ego-driven shameless-self-promotion-followed-by-crash 'n burn-route (aka "The Rocco"). All three can lead to celebrity and further success running a restaurant empire.

Top Chef has changed that formula.

Take for example Richard Blais, runner up on season 4 of the Bravo show that was never quite as good as Project Runway. Leading up to his time on the show, his résumé included a two year executive chef position at a restaurant that's now a Ted's Montana grill, a self-titled restaurant that failed within six months, a firing from another place, then a decent review from the AJC at a once-trendy restaurant that has since drowned in the sea of Atlanta's slickly-decorated-and-overpriced restaurants with indistinguishable $20+ entrees (bonus trendy appeal if it's located in what was once a warehouse or housing projects...nothing makes a restaurant experience better than the knowledge that your grilled hanger steak came at the expense of a few displaced undesirable poor people).

His bio mentions that he's studied under Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, and Ferran Adria. These are some of the most famous names in their extremely different disciplines. Who really knows what "studied under" means on Wikipedia. Boulud keeps an office over Daniel (according to After Hours with Daniel), so I could walk into his restaurant, read the menu, then technically say I've "studied under Daniel Boulud" on the .01% likelihood he was in his office at that moment. Judging by his work on Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, it doesn't seem that Blais could possibly reach the lofty heights of his mentors' talents. I haven't actually tried Boulud's or Adria's food, but Blais doesn't have the instinct for perfectly executed California cuisine or the ability for all-out playful, challenging, befuddling molecular gastronomy. "Sorta perfect" execution and "sorta impressive but now somewhat common" molecular gastronomy wouldn't do in a fine dining restaurant...but it works perfectly for a burger joint.

My old college roommate Dan came down to Atlanta for the weekend. Our bond was forged mainly through being gluttons. During our freshman year, Trader Joe's had not yet come to Amherst, so when my mother sent Peanut Butter Cups and Crack Cookies (crispy oatmeal chocolate chip), Dan was always close by. He repaid her kindness by making her physically ill with his stench when he came to California. Sophomore year when we were living in the same room, the Pinocchio's number, along with their two-for-one pizza coupons were always in use. Junior year when he was abroad in Florence and I went to visit him, our tourist style was basically "Big church, big church, pretty art...what's for lunch?" Suite life senior year centered around tea-time eats in the lower common room. Naturally I wanted to take him to a hot restaurant that everyone was raving about but was also moderately priced. Dan's visit gave the perfect excuse to check out Flip Burger Boutique which I had been hearing about constantly but hadn't yet tried.

Let's talk about the milkshakes. Earlier I mentioned that his molecular gastronomy isn't on the level of a Ferran Adria, Jose Andres, or Wylie Dufresne. That's perfectly fine for a burger place. It's cool if there's something entertaining, as long as it doesn't seriously freak you out and it works well...basically it has to taste good. Using liquid nitrogen to make milkshakes could be a gigantic gimmick. After thinking about it, it may be that nitrogen allows for a liquid milk shake base, and instead of having to make separate ice cream base then churn and freeze it, (a long process), one can simply add just enough liquid nitrogen while mixing to create a milkshake consistency, but not too much to make ice cream (as anyone who's taken a high school level or below science class sometime in their life has done). Also, the whole freezing/churning process of ice cream might do undesirable things to ingredients like Krispy Kreme doughnut bits or pistachios. Either that or it could be a huge gimmick...I'll let you know after I try the foie gras. Given that Blais has talked about opening a creamery either next door or nearby makes me think that yes...they do make ice cream with liquid nitrogen, then make a milkshake in the normal way, then for show just pour a bit of liquid nitrogen on the top of the shake for flair.

I tried (over the course of two visits with friends) the Krispy Kreme, Pumpkin Pie, Pistachio White Truffle, Nutella and Burnt Marshmallow, and the Key Lime Cheesecake.

The pumpkin pie gave the most accurate taste experience to its namesake food. As you can see, they'll split a milkshake for you if you ask. Audra and Erin ordered these (Erin's is quite appropriately sized).

This is a shot of Dan's Nutella and Burnt Marshmallow shake (though on facebook, Amanda Cai-or The 'Da as I like to call her-tagged herself on this photo. This is because she was jealous that Audra and Erin were tagged on their milkshakes, but by the time photos had been taken, she had already inhaled her shake. Right now if Amanda is reading this she's probably upset, even more so because there isn't anything I've said that's untrue). The burnt marshmallow was fine...simple torch job on the top ones, but it seemed like the mound underneath were still "raw." The shake itself tasted like a good solid chocolate milkshake.

The pistachio white chocolate was quite good, but you have to stir it all together first. The shake itself is nicely pistachio-laden. The whipped cream contains a lot of white truffle oil/flavor. I started drinking from the bottom, which led to too little white truffle early on then a bit too much later. Together though, they make for a shake that tastes like Italy. Don't ask why...it just does.

Krispy Kreme tasted extremely accurate as well, but that might be better for splitting, and Key Lime Cheesecake was also delicious. It had graham cracker crust bits on the bottom, had a nice lime flavor without being too sour, and later I was able to taste the cheesecake-ness of it (which had been masked by the cold up until then). Again, one that requires mixing well first.

So the liquid nitrogen for milkshakes may be a complete gimmick to up the price, but it does serve a more functional purpose in the kitchen. The french fries are cut, blanched/par-fried in duck fat, then flash frozen in liquid nitrogen. Why are McDonald's fries so crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside? They're blanched then flash frozen. Fried once (a la in-n-out) makes for either weirdly crisp throughout or just kinda so-so soft. Even blanch frying then crisping later (which I do at home) can lead to uneven results, with fries sometimes becoming too brown before they're really done. The freezing process makes for a nice and uniformly crisp outside of the fry with a great texture on the inside. Frying in duck fat is nice, but I've read reviews on Yelp where people say that the duck flavor is great. Anyone who thinks they're tasting duck is fooling themselves. Think about what an unseasoned duck would taste like, then imagine if you'd be able to taste a thin layer of that over potato, salt, and parsley (not to mention ketchup and smoked mayo). Try taking rendered bacon fat and spreading it on toast. How much bacon do you taste? How much stronger does bacon taste than duck? In any case, stop fooling yourselves. Things fried in duck fat certainly taste DIFFERENT than if they'd been fried in say canola. Duck fat is more pleasantly neutral and feels lighter on the lips, whereas other oils are more raw/oily neutral tasting. Duck fat is also less likely to go rancid so there are definitely benefits. In any case, it's a bit of a moot point because they fry things WELL at Flip. This means that the things they're frying aren't sponging up massive amounts of oil (think steak fries from your school cafeteria).

The fried bread and butter pickles (made in house) are fantastic. Don't let them sit too long though, as they turn a bit slimy and overpoweringly briny when cold. It won't be hard to eat them quickly though. Try them without the ranch first, then dip if you like.

The fried okra was the most impressive fried item of the day. Split down the middle (with what I imagine is a pretty sharp blade) instead of the more traditional segments, the sliminess is kept in check and the result is fried okra that's light and crisp like potato chips (with a few chewy ones every now and then...those are good too). Comes with a sriracha ranch.

There are those fries next to the farm burger. Here's where the Alice Waters influence comes in (wiki says he also studied at Chez Panisse...THERE TOO? SERIOUSLY, IT JUST SEEMS MADE UP AT THIS POINT). Organic grass-fed beef, heirloom tomatoes, local blah blah blah blah. It was a tasty burger. The beef was certainly of higher quality than any other burger I've had in recent memory, and it was cooked well. Flip doesn't seem to suffer from the temeprature inconsistency issues that places like The Vortex do. Nice amount of char on the outside of the burger, still slightly pink on the inside.

The steak tartare burger was phenomenal. Great texture, great flavor, sous-vide egg yolk takes out some of the rawness of normal tartare (eat a raw egg yolk, then eat an over easy or poached egg yolk for comparison, they're both runny but different).

I also tried the Philly the next night, which had "American Cheez Whiz" on it. This was more like a foam/whip cheese that tasted like Port Salut than actual cheez whiz. The burger sits on ketchup, then is topped with onions and peppers and the cheese stuff. This makes for a burger patty that is prone to sliding right out of the light brioche buns (from Alon's). It's a terrible mess, but also terribly fun. Delicious too. I had bites of the ossobucco, which had a nice gremolata, and the rBQ, which was basically a better than average pulled pork sandwich with brisket instead of pig.

I won't really pass final judgment on the burgers until I follow Marla's advice. She said to really judge the place I should try the the flip, their most basic burger. I was too excited to try the more creative things at the time, but now I realize she was absolutely right. The burgers aren't outlandishly expensive (the most expensive is the foie gras-laden A5, which at $39 is $7 more expensive than Daniel Boulud's db bistro moderne burger which comes with fries and adds truffle, but lacks Kobe beef) so if the flip is really solid that would make me happy. I think it was 6 or 7 bucks. The burgers are, however, a bit small to eat without a side which costs extra. The fried items are quite reasonably priced, for smaller but not inadequate portions. The non-fried sides are a bit more pricey.

I'll stop talking about the food for a bit now, as I'm wandering way too close into typical uninformed restaurant review territory. People often form an opinion of a restaurant before they even take a bite of food, either having read other reviews on yelp, or maybe they've seen the place on a Rachel Ray show, and gush about it. Otherwise, people will be negative for the sake of being negative. JUST GO EAT AT THE PLACE AND FIND OUT YOURSELF for god's sake. I'll just say this...it's good, I liked it, you should at least try it.

Will the hype last? I think the prices are pretty reasonable, but the menu needs some editing, and maybe more than one burger special. I haven't tried most of the non-beef burgers and I haven't tried some of the beef burgers. Dan and I went back the next night for dinner. In retrospect, for me at least, it was more the excitement of the novelty/creativity of the burgers and shakes than the food itself that drew me back (that and the fried items...I'd go just to eat the fried stuff). I'll have to go back and try the flip, and there are still things on the menu I want to try, and things I don't really want to try. After I'm through with those, I wonder if there's something that'll really COMPEL me to go unless someone comes into town. The drive is similar in length to that of a Banh Mi place that is excellent and where a sandwich is no more than $2.50.

There's no doubt that maybe 50-70% of the hype is Richard Blais's TV success. It's a solid restaurant no doubt, and to be fair Blais was a finalist, but I'd probably be raging at Flip if it cost any more. There was a bonafide Richard Blais sighting when he came out to talk to the front of the house, and Audra almost passed out with excitement. He's not really well established enough to avoid being hands on in the restaurant. The same could be said for a lot of other famous chefs out there now though. I think Blais is pretty smart in the way he digs in and gets involved. He shows his face which everyone gets excited about, and he's friendly and gracious and is willing to take pictures with people. He knows that some of the fame is from the show, and embraces that, but doesn't charge you for it. If he tried to get away with that he would tank. Think about how many Top Chef, America's Next Top Model, Project Runway WINNERS etc. etc. etc. go on to have really famous careers. Can you even name all of them? If you remember Top Chef's season one winner, Harold Dieterle, he opened a restaurant in NYC called Perilla. By the NY Times's review (1 star), he tried hard not to make himself too visible, probably not wanting to take advantage of his reality show celebrity (either that or he was too arrogant to think that the majority of his patrons were there for a different reason). The nicest thing Zagat had to say about it was "the understated verging on spare interior is in sharp contrast to the emphatic pricing." Snap.

In any case, Flip fills a perfect role. Upscale burgers at a reasonable price. Going to a really fancy restaurant is a great experience, but the prices prohibit your brain from craving a return trip. Flip is priced so that you can go back and try all the different burgers. If you don't get a milkshake (which you really don't have to), a meal is really very reasonable. I'll be going back, as I have unfinished business (they were out of Korean BBQ on the second night, which was my initial choice). I'm sure that anyone who goes will likely find reasons to make a return trip. It may be curiosity, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because it's never a bad thing if there are multiple items on the menu that pique your interest. Once the novelty wears off, hopefully things rotate a bit or there's one particular burger I really want to go back for. Maybe it'll be the A5 with a foie gras shake, hopefully not...for my wallet's sake. I'm not really too concerned with my health.

Is reality TV good for restaurants? I can't say. There are a few other restaurants here in Atlanta with Top Chef alums, some of whom have gone pretty far in the contest, and I hear they're good. Still, how many Top Chef alums do you suppose will win James Beard foundation awards as well? Yeah that's what I thought too.

Pop quiz

2009-11-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

Is anything not enhanced by the addition of a fried egg?
Hint: If you had to think about it, you're wrong.
Fried eggs on pizza? Delicious. Fried eggs on chocolate cake? Rich and creamy!
In fact...fry up an egg right now. Then eat some of it. Then fry up another egg and put it on top of your other fried egg. Better right?

Fried eggs make everything better. Just ask The Vortex what makes the Double Coronary Bypass Burger is so good (and trust me...it is). Is it the grilled cheese sandwich buns? The five slices of bacon? Well...yes those definitely help. But the two fried eggs certainly heighten the deliciously artery clogging experience.

This is probably why chilaquiles are most delicious in their breakfasty fried egg form. For the Mexican potluck I mentioned in the last post I also made some of this:

If you want to make some salsa verde yourself, just get a bunch of green things, chop 'em up and mix them together. In this case:

Tomatillos (roasted)
Green tomato (because there weren't that many good tomatillos at the market...also roasted).

Poblanos (charred...love that gas stove)

Scallions
Cilantro
Lime Juice
Garlic (not all that green, but let it in anyway)

When it's done, have a really fun Mexican potluck of some sort. Drink heavily.
The next morning, cut up some (preferably stale) corn tortillas into strips or wedges. Fry them in a little bit of oil then dump in a good amount of salsa and simmer (this really could be any type of salsa).
Experienced Tip: DO NOT USE TORTILLA CHIPS, even if you're at a lake house and the night before, all the real tortillas were used up making drunk food quesadillas. You'll end up with a thick salsa corn paste, but not chilaquiles.
After simmering for a bit, they'll be good as is. Put a little bit of queso fresco (or cotija because I had that in my fridge already) on top and you're good to go. Onions are good, sour cream, chicken, anything you can think of. But I guarantee you it will be even better if you put any type of fried egg on top. Scrambled works, sunny side up if you like to live on the edge, I used over-easy.

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

2009-10-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-10-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-07T22:21:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-06T23:40:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-05T17:51:00.001-07:00

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.

I Didn't Really Like Breakfast Food Until I Came To The South

2009-09-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

The chicken biscuit is quite possibly the perfect food, anytime anywhere. I think it's almost impossible to get a bad chicken biscuit wherever you are, simply because it's such a perfectly conceived food. Chick-Fil-A? Delicious. Gas station in South Carolina? Delicious.
My sister and dad are breakfast food fiends. There was a time growing up when I would always try to order off the lunch menu if we went out for breakfast (eggs used to make me throw up actually...i wasn't picky...my stomach just couldn't handle them for some reason...chocolate too...those were dark dark times). Going to Millie's Kitchen and eating a burger and coffee cake was probably the worst possible thing for your health, but it sure was delicious. The chicken biscuit is like a gateway breakfast food for someone like me. Chicken fried steak...though delicious...is a bit much. Fried chicken on a biscuit? That's the perfect amount of unhealthy in the morning. I do like breakfast foods a lot now...though I'm not really in the habit of eating breakfast on a daily basis. But sometimes on the weekend I get up and cook myself a little something like eggs, or hash browns...or that time I made corned beef hash with leftovers from St. Patty's day.
Since coming to school I've been introduced to the world of the lake house (it's not just a shitty Keanu Reeves remake of a Korean movie that makes absolutely no sense...how do they have conversations back and forth on written letters through a time portal mailbox? RIDICULOUS). I have found that I suck at waterskiing (in my case it's more like watertainting...think about it) and hate getting up in the morning early enough to go out on the boat for the best conditions. I'm much happier getting a bit more sleep and cooking breakfast for everyone when they get back, then heading out later for tubing/jetskiing etc.
I made a promise to myself that I would make fantastic chicken biscuits for all next time I go to the lake. But opportunities for that to happen are quickly disappearing. Still, nothing's stopping me from learning how to make a chicken biscuit.
In the coming months, this blog will prominently feature updates on my project of making a phenomenal chicken biscuit. This is a food that deserves this kind of attention (I've gotta study for/take the boards at some point in there too). I'll be trying out different types of biscuits and testing out all sorts of fried chicken. I'll be devising my own brines, crust methods, frying methods etc. But first let's start with biscuits:

Batch #1: Sweet potato biscuits.

Sure anyone can pop open a can of pillsbury's or mix up some bisquick and make some pretty delicious biscuits. I want something more. Something that's undeniably handmade and special. Let's put some freaking sweet potato into a biscuit:

It starts here:

Baked a monstrous sweet potato for an hour, then let it cool and pureed it silky smooth.
I then used organic whole wheat (mom would be proud) pastry flour...trying to infuse a bit of my California heritage into something Southern. Used baking powder and baking soda, cut in butter, mixed in the sweet potato puree, and used a bit of pourable yogurt to bring it all together. Had to use a glass as a biscuit cutter and the final results are as follows:

Disappointing really. They're too thin, as they don't rise nearly as much thanks to the sweet potato. They're dome shaped due to the very blunt drinking glass mashing down the sides of the biscuit round instead of cutting through...and I'm forced to use a processor to cut the butter in due to my incredibly warm hands preventing me from using that thumb rolling technique that leads to nice and flaky results. The inside looks like this:

Next time I'll mix in the cold sweet potato puree by hand after cutting in frozen butter into the flour mixture, which will hopefully keep some of those big globs of butter intact. I'll make the dough thicker and find a better biscuit cutting device, all while using the ice bath/frozen glove technique I use while making truffles.

Also, almost all biscuit recipes call for more shortening than butter...but I'm not gonna go down that road. Shortening makes for some damn good biscuits (and fried chicken too), but it's an abomination against nature. Screw California though...whole wheat pastry flour is out. I'm gonna go full throttle with bleached cake flour.

And for no particular reason...one of the sexiest things you'll ever see:

The Chick-Fil-A nuggets party platter.

Why are you still here?

2009-09-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

The other day I noticed that I've had this blog for over four years now. I don't think I've ever been able to keep something up for this long, and a lot has happened in four years. I went back and looked at my first posts for fun, and realized that my blog content has changed a lot over the years. When did this food blog stop being about making fun of people and start being about...well...food? What happened? Maybe it's because I started dating...but even now that I'm not I still am a lot friendlier than I was before. Perhaps it's because the only people I ever interact with now are my classmates, all of whom are pretty terrific people. I genuinely like the four people that actually read this blog and don't end up here accidentally, but I never foresaw that anyone would actually read this thing.

And when did I stop making fun of my sister? Is it because it's just way too easy to make fun of someone pushing thirty who's unmarried and living with her parents? (hahaha...still got it)

Is it time to change my blog title?

Not yet...aside from the four aforementioned "serious" readers (and admit it, you're only here as a break from facebook), the majority of the people that land here on my blog are absolute morons who are brought here by google. I've already talked about the people who come here with the google search "foods i don't like," (it leads to more specific results than their first attempt that included "and i'm too much of a complete idiot to know myself and am expecting google to tell me"). Let's take a look at some of the most recent keywords that have landed here:

tempura soba
shrimp tempura soba - it didn't work, we're not dating anymore. Make something else you asian fetishist creeps.

pseudoplastic foods
food pseudoplastic - Try wikipedia for your third grade science report next time you punk kids.

Hamptons dinners - if you can't afford to have a personal assistant look this up for you, you shouldn't be eating there. Get a job.

im fucked for the mcat
i hate the fucking mcat
i fucked up the mcat - Hope you enjoy dental school.

I like I Don't like grammar food - you're beyond help.

i don't like restaurant food - don't go to a restaurant jackass.

Whew...that's better.

Cooking Lessons

2009-08-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

At various points, a few people in my class have asked me to teach them how to cook something. To some degree, there's not too many things that I cook that are really interesting at all for people to learn, or that they couldn't just figure out from reading some recipe instructions, but gnocchi is something that may be useful to have someone show you how to do the first time. So, I gathered a few of the people who have asked for cooking "lessons" at my place.

Of course, wine and antipasti are the most important part of cooking any meal:

Then it was on to making the dough. The basic recipe I used goes a little something like this:

For 4 people:
1 lb. starchier potatoes (King Edwards are great, russets if you can't get those)
1 egg yolk
Roughly 1 cup 00 flour (AP is fine if you don't have 00)

Cover the potatoes in their skins with water in a pot, put it on the flame and bring to a boil. Simmer until cooked. For faster cooking, peel and cut potatoes first then boil, but you have to dry them out over a low flame or in a low oven after that. Peel each potato (try to do this before people arrive or they'll be really bored and start taking pictures of you peeling potatoes).

Mash 'em (ricer is cool, food mill would be best if you're lucky enough to own one of those) then stir in the egg and about half the flour. Then flour a board and gently incorporate more flour (try not to knead too hard so as not to develop gluten) until a workable dough forms. I had each person add a different ingredient, roasted garlic, basil, cheese, and spinach. In the end the additions didn't make a huge difference in flavor.

Roll it out into a rope and cut it up.

Optionally, you can roll each one off the tines of a fork to create grooves.

Boil 'em until they float then give them another minute or so, drain, sauce, enjoy.
Everyone did a phenomenal job.

Denise made a design for aprons for all future students to wear...which is a great idea...and I love the 'stache.

You may have noticed that there were no men in this class (there almost was when Amanda pretended to have a headache and was going to send her boyfriend over instead, then pretended to miraculously recover just in time when she couldn't get a hold of him...women). I assure you this is not in an attempt to emulate other TV chefs who give cooking "lessons" as a veiled excuse to flirt with bored housewives (bonus points if the chef himself is married and/or has a foreign accent...see Tyler Florence in Food 911, Danny Boome in Rescue Chef, or the absolute winner, Curtis Strong in Take Home Chef). It's actually because dudes never ask me to teach them HOW to cook, but rather ask me WHAT to cook in order to impress the ladies, and would likely find it a bit awkward to have a private lesson on "romantic dinners." It seems like a bit of a bad strategy to ask a single dude how to woo the ladies, but we're not that smart.

The Door-to-Door Meat Salesman of Endocrine Test Week

2009-08-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

Friday is the endocrine and reproductive health exam. I was sitting in a classroom studying when I get a call from Erin:
"Chris, what are your plans for dinner?"
This is always a good sign, because it means some sort of awesome dinner is about to be proposed...this goes double for a test week when the answer is usually "I'll probably just microwave a lean pocket, then out of the need to stress eat, microwave two more."

Apparently a meat salesman (think Omaha Steaks) had a box full of meat that needed selling, and in a last ditch effort to meet a bonus quota, sold it to her at cost. Tonight was gonna be burgers.

What goes great with burgers? Pretty much any type of potato really. I like burger places with multiple potato options, like the Vortex. There you can get fries, tater tots, or sweet potato fries. But why sweet potato fries and not sweet potater tots? Clearly something needed to be done. I was almost certain the idea of the sweet potato tot had already been done somewhere. A quick google search yielded no recipe ideas, but a few pictures and references to Atlanta's own FLIP Burger Boutique (still gotta try it). Judging from the pictures, it seems they cheat a bit by serving little cylinders of tempura fried sweet potato. Their cheatery cheater version looked delicious, but I wouldn't really call that a tot...more of a glorified steak fry. It's gotta have that shredded hash-browny texture to it. So I'd have to take matters into my own hands.

Bought a few organic jewel sweet potatoes, shredded them with my food processor, shredded in a bit of shallot just for kicks, added an egg and some flour, a bit of salt, switched to the processing blade, gave the whole thing a quick pulse and voila:

Unappealing sweet potato tot "batter." I tried dishing them into small sizes and then forming them, but they would just fall apart. I decided to dish out individual portions, freeze them, and then fry them. In retrospect this was completely unnecessary, because I thought they'd be more frozen, but that wasn't necessary. Just pop the whole bowl into the freezer until the mix is cool and easier to work with (or fridge if you have more time...but like I said before...test week...I don't have time to sit around waiting for my homemade sweet potato tots to cool down in the fridge.)

Give 'em a deep fry until they're pretty darn brown in 360 degree oil:

Sprinkle on a bit of salt and enjoy.

There you have it, no need to make the tough choice between tater tots and sweet potato fries, when you can have the best of both worlds.

Downtown Restaurant Week, BLT Steak

2009-08-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about restaurant weeks. I love the idea of getting people to go out and try restaurants they wouldn't normally try because they might be a bit too expensive. I have absolutely no problem with a prix fixe menu, and I even find it okay if there's only one option for one of the courses. What I don't like is how, sometimes, a restaurant will treat the week with disdain and contempt. I've been to restaurants where they feel their name and reputation makes the idea of restaurant week beneath them...as if it's a hassle for them to serve the unwashed masses while they could be making much more money off of their beloved hard-drinking, power-lunching corporate regulars. It is these restaurants that let the quality of their service drop to zero, that don't make available anything else on their menu to prixe fixers, and-should you want to drink any-force you to buy a "restaurant week" bottle of wine at the same price as the prix fixe meal itself (a bottle that likely cost them no more than $0.50). Some of these restaurants also miss the point entirely, and the prix fixe meal really offers no savings over the price of those items a la carte.

BLT Steak at the downtown W hotel really gets what restaurant week should be about. They treat it as a chance to open their doors to a lot of new people who will want to come back for a special occasion if their experience is good. They want to showcase their kitchen rather than begrudgingly churn out their most profitable menu items. The service was excellent, the food was phenomenal, and at no time did I feel that any corners of the normal BLT experience were being cut. I really don't care that our admittedly great bottle of wine was massively expensive, because I had the entire impressive list to choose from. It was the kind of place where you say to yourself "well the wine is how they make money so I understand...it's a fantastic place," instead of "these hacks are trying to rob me with squeeze-bottled sauce and a $12 glass of carlo rossi."

The restaurant week dinner menu was $25 for three courses. We were started with an amuse bouche of toast and chicken liver pate.

Smooth and creamy, perfectly seasoned with consumption on toast in mind. The aggressiveness and tang of iron that turns people off of liver was completely gone, leaving only a fluffy, luxuriant richness. It really felt like a gift.

We then got the famous gruyere popovers, and their reputation is well deserved.

Served with unsalted butter and smoked sea salt. These popovers are far better than the famous Judie's in Amherst ones, which are really known more for their massive size and the delicious apple butter that comes with them. The gruyere made a nice frico crust on the popover, without being burnt. They give you a little recipe card, and I'll be trying my hand (and probably failing) at them for sure.

This meal turned into a belated/impromptu birthday celebration, and walking to our table we passed the raw bar and at that point knew I was going to get oysters. I chose to get a half dozen Kumamotos:

Fresh, delicately briny, and melty. My only issue was that I happened to get one which wasn't completely released from the shell, but I'm a big boy who can operate a fork so all was well.

The entree choices were:
Duck terrine with sweet potato chutney

I ordered this and it was rich and good. Speckled with a bit of pistachio, it was a on the salty side on its own (even on bread), but this was calmed down by the sweet potato chutney, which in and of itself was too sweet. Together they were balanced, but the overall effect was off-putting to some of my dining companions. I think it was the weakest of the entrees.

Roasted beets with endive, walnuts, and humboldt fog.

Perfectly cooked beets, nicely prepared/slightly caramelized endive and walnuts concealing a little mound of Humboldt fog, which is one of my favorite cheeses on the planet.

The big winner was Erin, who ordered the Gazpacho Andalou with Tabasco sorbet.

The last time I've had a tomato dish that can equal this one was the tomato and basil gelatin at Cibreo in Florence. Subtle and uncomplicatedly good on its own, the Tabasco sorbet added depth. Outstanding stuff.

The main choices were:
Hanger steak with roasted shallot and herb butter.

Hands down the best prepared hanger steak I've ever had. It was a more than generous 8 ounces, and was perfectly cooked. Nice and peppery on the outside, the herb butter didn't add much but the meat was so good on its own that it didn't matter. The shallot was well roasted and looked beautiful, but everything was overshadowed by the steak itself. This steak's preparation, flavor, and tenderness rivaled much more expensive cuts I've had in other steakhouses, and I won't even get started on some of the rubbery and dry onglet/hanger preparations I've had when trying to get a decent steak frites.
They were served with a side of jalapeno mashed potatoes.

Maybe my favorite part of the meal. I love potatoes. I love spicy things. I love rich creamy mashed potatoes that are also nicely spicy. Enough said.

Garlic herbs stuffed chicken with english pea and morels sauce.

Great traditional english pea and morel sauce, especially the mushrooms. The chicken itself was nicely seasoned and well cooked.
Horseradish crusted scottish salmon, cauliflower and horseradish sauce.

Delicious. I normally don't like to order fish in restaurants because it's inevitably drowned in something that kills (sometimes deliberately) the taste of the fish. This salmon was cooked through, but not a second too much. Great natural flavor, all the accompaniments were well cooked and appropriately understated.

I also got a side to share: Gorgonzola and grits.

Phenomenal. Creamy and delicious, coarser ground grits with a perfect amount of gorgonzola. It was crusted with another cheese, maybe gruyere that was nicely broiled to toastiness and had a bit of tomato coulis on top. Excellent steakhouse side that should be adopted at places outside the south.

Whew...still with me? I was feeling pretty heavy at this point too, but luckily there was a good break before dessert came out.

Carrot cake with ginger ice cream:

Liked it, but for my taste the ginger was a bit too subtle and the rest of the dish a bit too sweet.

The break was on account that these guys had just been popped into the oven, then needed to cool: Georgia peach and blueberry cobbler with chamomile ice cream.

Winner. The fruit wasn't oversweetened/seasoned nor overcooked. The peaches still had just the right amount of bite while being pleasantly warmed through. I'm still not sure how such a good crust was achieved...imagine a croissant...then imagine the best shortbread you've ever had. Then imagine that you had infinitely thin layers of that shortbread making a croissant, and that this was then placed on top of a cobbler.
The subtleties of the chamomile ice cream were completely lost on me at this point.

And a nice surprise with my red velvet cake with coconut cream cheese ice cream:

A birthday candle and a song. The red velvet cake was moist and rich, the frosting a nice balance between tangy and sweet. The ice cream was the weaker part of the plate. The ice cream itself was nice, maybe a bit too sweet, but I was distracted by the coconut. I would've preferred to have the coconut be toasted, because the texture of the untoasted dry coconut was a bit too much to get through. Good overall though, and it was nice that they made the plate up like they did.

With the bill came petits fours, a hybrid brownie/cookie thing which had a crisp cookie-like exterior that gave way to a fudge-brownieish interior. I don't even remember it at this point. I remember it being rich, but at this point I was pretty delirious.

After it was all done, the staff was nice enough to take some pictures, validate our parking and send us on our way. As I write this I'm still massively full. I was about to burst as we left:

Notice my distended gut casting a shadow over the bottom part of my hipstery ensemble.

On one hand, I'm a bit envious of people who get to eat like this regularly. On the other, tonight was incredibly special because I felt invited into an experience I wouldn't have been able to take part in otherwise, and the fact that I was able to share it with so many good people (who let me steal off their plates) made it unforgettable. I feel life would be more depressing if a fantastic restaurant's food was no longer a joyful surprise for my palate. What impressed me most about BLT Steak, especially during restaurant week, is that they managed to make every plate of food coming out of the kitchen feel like a gift, not an obligation.

Hint of lime tortilla chips

2009-08-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

A few friends and I were staying at a beach house in Florida. When we went to go food shopping and got to tortilla chips a mini-debate broke out:

"Should we get regular chips or...*suggestively*hint of lime?"
"Just get regular...more versatile...less covered in powder."
"I would snort that powder."

We ended up getting hint of lime, and sure they're tasty, but my big problem with them is that nowhere in nature does a superfine lime powder exist. Sure you can buy dehydrated lime juice, but the real reason hint of lime achieves such tastiness is (admittedly delicious) monosodium glutamate. It's probably why I get a mild headache shortly after eating them (my monosodium glutamate tolerance varies, correlating with how much instant ramen I'm eating at that point in my life). In order to save my poor addicted friends, I set out to make my own lime-kissed tortilla chips.

I stacked and cut a mix of blue and yellow corn tortillas into wedges (if you want to be thorough, cut the tips off the wedges...I almost stabbed myself many times with these incredibly sharp points).

I then tossed them in a mix of sea salt, lime juice, and just a tiny bit of agave nectar, then put them out on racks to let them dry:

It'll take a couple hours at most, and if you don't have enough racks, which i don't, shift 'em around a bit so the ones on the bottom get dry too.

After that it was a simple deep fry job. I gave them a little insurance zesting with lime, and a sprinkle of sea salt. They end up being quite subtle, not really producing that all out sour kick you get from the powder, but I think they turned out pretty well. Maybe I'll splash a bit of tequila into the lime juice mixture next time, just to see what happens. Or maybe the harder sour kick can be achieved by supplementing the lime juice with maybe one lemon or so. I thought about putting zest into the lime juice mixture before tossing, but figured it would probably just burn on frying.

The Hamptons Dinner

2009-07-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

Okay so Hampton Terrace isn't really the Hamptons, but the houses are still nice, and since some of my favorite people in the world have moved there, I threw them a little housewarming dinner.

The antipasto was Carciofi in Gratella

Grilled artichokes splashed with a bit of balsamic.

Then two types of grilled pizzas, one for each side of their house:

Guys' side: Pizza Due
White pie with ricotta and fior di latte, chicken sausage, roasted garlic, and broccoli di ciccio.

Gals' side: Pizza Quattro
Handmade tomato sauce, fior di latte, bresaola, arugula (does anyone else think calling it rocket is inherently more pretentious? At least in America I think it is...when restaurants have "rocket" on the menu it's just kinda like, "okay stop trying to be British just so you can drive up your price." In fact, I think there should be a rule that if a restaurant in America calls it "rocket," then you shouldn't have to tip...if they think they're British, then I'm just going to assume that service charge is included), lemon juice, olive oil.

Dolce was Gelato alla vaniglia con olio e sale

Shamelessly ripped off from Pizzeria Picco, who probably ripped it off of some Italian dude/dudette. Vanilla gelato with olive oil and sea salt.

Pseudoplastic fluids of interest

2009-06-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Specifically catsup/catchup/ketchup...but blood and whipped cream are cool too.
It's renal test week, which means I've been occasionally hitting drive thrus to maximize my time for studying/thinking about studying but not actually studying and instead doing things that will have no impact on anyone's lives whatsoever (Hello random person who accidentally googled their way here...welcome to my food blog).

Perhaps it's the economy, but has anyone noticed that these places are in the practice of not giving you ketchup? You have to specifically ask for it, and even then it's a bit of a crapshoot as to whether they actually take the time to toss a few packets in for you. What the hell? In order to ensure my fries never went ketchup-less again, I decided to make it myself. This also coincided with a sale on cans of San Marazano tomatoes as well as Vidalia onion season. In any case:

I started with pickling spice-infused cider vinegar

Sauteed bell pepper, vidalia onions, and garlic

Added the tomatoes, cooked it down, strained and added the vinegar and some brown sugar, then blended it up to make this:

It gets redder as the blendy air escapes and it cools. It's pretty frackin' delicious...but it is missing that sweet ~~diabetes-inducing tang of High Fructose Corn Syrup~~.
*The Corn Refiner's Association would like to emphasize that freebasing HFCS is just as safe as eating corn, and in no way leads to any negative health problems including but not limited to morbid obesity. Enjoy the completely safe and all natural taste of HFCS today, and visit Sweet Surprise for scientific research funded entirely by exorbitant corn refining profits.*

Date Auction

2009-03-28T12:49:00.001-07:00

I was auctioned off to raise money for a group that's going to go on a surgical trip to Haiti (check out The Emory Medishare Site for more info). For my date, I decided to cook a meal based on the winner's favorite movies. In the end, two ladies pooled their money to buy me, and they came up with 5 different movies.

West Side Story:

Puerto Rico Roll (like a california roll, but made with fried plantain, avocado, shredded chicken, and sofrito-seasoned sushi rice)

Pretty Woman:

Terribly blurry picture...sorry.

Pasta alla Bella Donna (like pasta puttanesca, but fancier. Green peppercorns and capers, manzanilla olives, oven-dried heirloom tomatoes)

Monsoon Wedding:

Tandoori game hen with aloo gobhi mash. (no picture of this one)

Chocolat:

Another crappy picture...this one cuz i had to use flash to offset the "mood lighting."

Risotto al cioccolato, Dark chocolate orange and ginger creme brulee, and Safron-infused coconut milk and white chocolate ice cream.

I think they enjoyed the meal, though one of them was crying at the end...I'm hoping it wasn't because the food was so bad and more because the ending to "West Side Story" is kind of a downer.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-18T22:54:00.001-07:00

So I was busy on the actual day, but it worked out because it gave my homemade corned beef an extra day to brine. It's actually not quite as cool when not still red inside, but I suppose it's healthier, though I'd be willing to subject my body to a bit of curing salt to complete the look. Delicious with a Guinness shake. I just mixed ketchup with the sour cream-based sauce to make dressing for Reubens.

Fried Things

2009-02-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get the urge to deep fry something, I usually go on a streak of deep frying things over the next couple days before getting rid of the oil...it'd be a waste not to right?
First was the fried chicken sandwich from Bakesale Betty's, but instead of buttermilk breading which takes time, I just panko crusted it. This was mainly an excuse to make the slaw that they put on the sandwich. It's almost as good when you make it at home. I used cilantro instead of parsley.

After a partial oil refresh and filtering, I decided to try out munchkin-like doughnut holes from a Korean mix.

They were so chewy that I decided to cover them in chocolate in order to hide the fact that they didn't work.

Finally, with all that leftover slaw that I had, I decided that I needed something fried to eat along with it, so I made wings. They were lightly dusted with potato starch before being blanched, dried, then fried again. The sauce was butter, soy, ginger, sriracha and chili-garlic sauce with a splash of balsamic vinegar.

That'll be it for home-fried foods for a long time. Once I get it out of my system and my apartment smells like deep-friedness I won't fry anything for a while. Especially with our cardio module coming up, although you think I would've learned after our Nutrition module. Then again, those two weeks were complete bullshit.

These same people must google "I'm an Idiot"

2009-01-15T17:03:00.000-08:00

The stat tracking service built into my blog tells me that people in the US, Canada, UK, and the Netherlands have all landed on my page via the google search "Foods I Don't Like," and this term accounts for about 70% of keyword activity. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you google "Foods I Don't Like," my blog is the number one site! Whooo!!! We did it!

So first off...WELCOME PICKY EATERS! YOU HAVE A TERRIBLE PERSONALITY FLAW! SACK UP AND JUST EAT WITHOUT COMPLAINING! UNLESS IT CAUSES YOUR THROAT TO SWELL UP AND COMPROMISE YOUR AIRWAY, CHOMP IT DOWN AND SHUT YOUR YAPPER!

Second...why did you have to perform a google search for foods that you don't like? Isn't that really one of those things that you should know better than google?

Failures...Tasty Failures

2009-01-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

In an issue of Men's Health awhile back, Eric Ripert talked about Egg and Soldiers being a pretty healthy late-night post-drinking food. That's where you soft boil eggs then dunk sticks of toast into them. But what if you don't want your late night drunk food to be healthy? What if, like me, your after-party routine is usually Steak n' Shake? I remember my sister telling me about a cleverly named "Fried Egg" at SPQR. It was a soft boiled egg that was then breaded and deep fried. I tried to replicate it.

First I boil-simmered eggs (four minutes) and then dunked them in ice water. Peeled, floured, dipped in egg (eggs dipped in egg...that one was new), and panko breaded, followed by a quick fry. They ended up looking nice enough:

I then cut them open to find out if it worked and...fail!

They ended up being medium-boiled eggs. I doubt if the super-quick fry was enough to harden the yolk that much (especially since I had cooled them down), so they must've become medium-boiled in the actual boiling phase. The whites were plenty firm to peel without any trouble, so next time it'll be all about getting the perfect soft-boiled time right. Still, I put them on toast and topped with another failure:

I tried to replicate Papalote's delicious salsa, but it really needs to be made with a powerful blender (I wonder if a stick blender would work?), because my food processor left sand-sized flecks of pepitas. I knew I should've gotten that 1000-watt blender on woot when I had the chance.

A few Atlanta eats

2008-08-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

So I've moved to Atlanta for medical school. Just like I had a "First Post From New Apartment" when I moved into my Amherst place, I figured I should post something or other from my new residence. I am excited that I now have a gas stove to play around with, and have ordered a round-bottom wok/ring off of amazon. There's also a Whole Foods right next to my complex that I can walk to. Unfortunately, it isn't that large so it's missing things like bulk spices, has a limited selection of bulk grains and staples, and doesn't even have puffed kamut cereal, which means it's difficult to make the granola on my sister's blog. They were running a special on bone-in pork chops however, so I made this:

Brined pork chops with mushroom risotto and grilled zucchini. I installed some ceiling light fixtures from IKEA that can accommodate compact fluorescent bulbs, but food looks disgusting under them. Oh well.
Atlanta is home of The Varsity, which has curbside service.

It doesn't feel that cool in a Honda Civic coupe...the car just feels kinda cramped and it gets really hot, but if I had my dad's old Chevy Nova I'm sure it'd be super badass. They're famous for chili dogs (apparently they serve over two miles of hot dogs each day) and the chili slaw dog was freaking delicious.

Onion rings are good, but fries are so-so. As great as it is that places like In-N-Out and The Varsity freshly cut their potatoes...this usually means that they aren't fried twice and end up being a bit soggy.
On the drive down here, somewhere at a gas station in South Carolina, I had a fried chicken biscuit, which was the most delicious food item I've ever gotten from a gas station.

I'm sure there'll be more stuff to write about...either that or med school will occupy my entire existence and I'll never post on this thing again.

America in Crisis

2008-06-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Hungry FDA Official Orders Massive Pot Pie Recall

What is one to do in these trying times when no store-bought pot pie is safe?

Make your own chicken pot pie. This pot pie is completely safe...with a puff-pastry crispy flaky golden brown crust for added protection. I didn't get a good picture of the filling, but I used whole wheat flour for the roux and a minimal amount of heavy cream (because I had to save it to make Joe-Joe custard ice cream...as a reward for making such a relatively healthy pot pie).

The Real Iron Chef is Finally Here Again

2008-05-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

Thank you Fine Living Network for bringing back the original Iron Chef (even if it is dubbed), but shame on you for replacing the Backdraft theme with some crappy .midi that seems like it was hastily cobbled together by a four year old with GarageBand.

Mushroom Risotto Among Other Things

2008-03-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've posted anything and the 3 people who read this blog have been wondering what's been going on. I suppose that the novelty of having my own kitchen has somewhat worn off and now that I'm cooking all the time it's just kinda like...meh. I keep thinking when I cook something new that I should take a picture of it and put it on my blog, but inevitably I just end up eating it and forgetting about the picture. That is why you will not see pictures of prosciutto and ricotta stuffed cappellaci with truffle cream sauce, chipotle hush puppies, or Mexican style "lasagna" made with chicken in a roasted tomatillo and cilantro puree layered with black beans and queso blanco. I do have a smattering of random pictures I remembered to take which are presented now:

Kimbap - It took me freaking hours to make this stuff. I never realized how much work it involved. Pretty though right?

Gyoza - Made these with Toki. She's responsible for them looking neatly crimped.

Recently I made something that demanded I take a picture of it, because I can safely say that it was the best dish I have ever made, and I'll probably never make anything as delicious ever again. When I go home over the holidays to Lafayette and I see the popular high school kids at the Round-Up (local dive bar) because they never left town I always used to enjoy how hilariously depressing their lives were. Now I understand what it's like...I've peaked and from here on out it's all downhill. Ah well...here are the steps to making porcini mushroom risotto.

Night before: Open porcini mushrooms brought back from Florence that were GhettoVac Packed (TM). This involves sucking the air out of a ziploc bag containing dried porcinis until the air and porcini dust are solidly in your own lungs, no longer in the bag. Soak.

Heat liquid and chicken stock in pot. Briefly toast arborio rice in olive oil. Open bottle of white truffle infused olive oil snuck through customs in shoe and curse euro-dollar conversion rate, then add a few drops to pan shortly before addition of dry white wine. Slowly incorporate stock/soaking liquid mixture into pan.

When rice is nearly finished absorbing liquid, lightly chop and add porcinis to pan. Add pat of butter, then open jar of white truffle butter which cost too much (optional: curse euro exchange rate again) but take comfort in the fact that you bought the good stuff and didn't end up with the monosodio glutamato-laden mystery paste your sister bought. Hahahahahahahaha sucker. Add small spoonful of MSG-free white truffle butter to pan.

Grate parmigiano reggiano into pan. Stir. Plate. Eat.

Recommended Garnishes:
Grated parmigiano
Black pepper
Fresh thyme
2-inch thick dry-aged porterhouse steak - Rare

London

2007-04-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my girlfriend who's studying abroad in London. We went into Borough Market on her birthday. This place is incredible, and I can't wait to go back.
We started at Neal's Yard Dairy where we bought some Irish Cooleeney. It's a soft cheese made from unpasteurised cow's milk (delicious unpasteurised cow's milk).

It's pretty much a cheese paradise.

Right next door is Monmouth Coffee.

In the greenmarket area is the famous Raclette guy. Cheese bubbles under a heating element and is scraped off onto potatoes and gherkins. It's delicious and greasy.

The toasted cheese sandwich is also available here. It's the grilled cheese sandwich that every other grilled cheese sandwich wants to be.

We also ate a venison sausage sandwich with grilled onions and lettuce (we chose the cranberry and bitter orange sauces...with a bit of tabasco for good measure).

Since everything costs double in the pound-dollar conversion, I did some cooking to save some money. This dish was inspired by something I ate in Bordeaux. It was a shrimp salad in an avocado half over salad. I used chicken instead, and mixed mayonnaise, ketchup, fresh chilis, garlic, and lemon juice and stuffed an avocado. This was put over an arugula salad drizzled with olive oil, lemon juice, and balsamic vinegar.

Whew...I underestimated how spicy the chilis would be. Who knew British people can handle spicy peppers?

The next day (after a visit to Waitrose), I made a spinach and smoked English cheddar omelette with jalapeno home fries.

Nougatine

2007-01-17T16:45:00.000-08:00

In New York I had a prix fixe lunch at Nougatine (the casual dining room adjacent to Jean Georges in the Trump Tower). At only 24 bucks, it's a steal.

First course was carrot and citrus soup with cumin crisp. Segments of orange and grapefruit accompanied the creamy carrot soup with that delicious cumin cracker thing. There were also bits of candied ginger and that um...green stuff.

Next I had the pineapple glazed short ribs with ginger and mushroom ravioli and mint. Outstanding.

For dessert, chocolate cake with cocoa nib ice cream. It's much more complex than it sounds, but it's hard to describe.

First meal in New York

2007-01-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

So I'm here in New York staying at the Westin Times Square for the Chamber Music America conference. Though Times Square itself is a wasteland in terms of food (unless you count the fanciest McDonald's on the planet as noteworthy), I popped up to Columbus Circle to check out the Time Warner center. I popped up to the fourth floor to marvel at the Per Se menu and to stare at the doorway to Masa. To console myself for not having the $300+ necessary to eat at either of these places, I went downstairs to Bakery Bouchon. Though pricey, the food is good (not to mention my department is picking up the tab).

I had a roast beef sandwich, and although the beef itself was not the best I've had, the palladin bread it came on was pretty damn tasty, as were the garlic aioli and carmelized onions. It also had fontina cheese, and arugula, and came with two cornichons.

Then there was the macaron.
There was a trio of special winter macarons, and I had a hard time deciding between blood orange and chestnut. I ended up choosing blood orange. Good lord it was fantastic. Crisp outside, chewy, dense, almondy on the inside, with a delicious blood orange jelly/marmalade in between the cookies.

The latte was nothing spectacular.

Tempura Soba

2006-11-06T21:20:00.000-08:00

"So what do you want me to cook for you?" I asked my Japanese friend.
"Asian."
"Asian?"
"Asian."

So I decided on tempura soba. A Korean guy cooking Japanese food for a Japanese person? That's right baby...balls of steel.

I started by making dashi.

Konbu

Katsuoboshi

This is mixed with a bit of salt, soy sauce, and mirin to make the broth. The same dashi is mixed with soy sauce, mirin, and sugar to make the tempura dipping sauce.

Here's what I fried up:

Zucchini, shrimp (wild caught 16-20 size), green beans, and fennel.

The finished product:

Leftovers

2006-10-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm heading home for a long weekend, where I'm sure to fatten up by a good 5 pounds or so. But to get rid of some stuff I had lying around in the apartment I made this:

Leftover couscous, raw almonds toasted in butter and spices, and shrimp sauteed with curry powder and cayenne pepper. Mostly I'm just excited about how the picture turned out.

Chicken Cacciatore

2006-09-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

I threw together this chicken cacciatore with polenta. It had a bunch of stuff in it..capers, canned plum tomatoes, mashed anchovies, basil, garlic, roasted red pepper, and a few other things I threw in there that I can't really remember at this point. The secret seasoning? My own blood. Indeed...no longer just an expression about putting hard work into something...I actually cut my index finger while slicing the garlic and I'm pretty sure the knife didn't stop until it hit bone. Salty!

Pyromaniacal tendencies

2006-08-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

Despite never being in the Boy Scouts, I do enjoy fire, which is why I pulled out the old torch. My friend Narae has returned for the year and we went to Costco, where she got some strawberries. I had some left in my fridge, and since these were kind of the sour ones, so I had an idea. First I set up a little suspended cooling rack contraption to hold strawberries with toothpicks stuck in them. I rolled the strawberries in sugar then torched 'em. Then I added a second coat of sugar and torched them again. This results in a little shell of just about the best tasting strawberry hard candy you'll ever taste.

I then decided to use some of the leftover chocolate from the 1 pound bar I used for the cookies. I melted this up with a bit of balsamic vinegar, ginger juice, and a bit of oil (so that it would actually melt) to dip the strawberries.

Cookie Monster

2006-08-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

I made a batch of some dark chocolate chunk cookies. Only slightly sweet, buttery and a tiny bit salty on the crispy edge, soft in the middle. After baking two batches of 6, I had more batter than two cookies, but not enough for three. The solution? One gigantic cookie as an affront to God.

I've included a quarter for scale comparison...

I can't even palm it.

Ahh the sweet smell of deep fried (sort of) success

2006-08-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Mmm...cast iron skillet fried chicken. So it's not technically deep fried, but it certainly was mostly submerged in...wait for it...shortening. That's right...shortening...the abomination against nature of the frying fats. But damn it makes for some delicious fried chicken.

Hmm...

2006-08-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

So, do you think I can turn this thing into fried chicken tomorrow? We'll see.

Butchering a chicken is really pretty tough...especially if your knife is duller than you thought it'd be. Also it doesn't help to have warm hands. Is there any part of cooking that doesn't punish you for having good circulation?

Stuff

2006-08-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

So I took the plunge and bought a chimney starter for my meager little grill, and I tested it out by grilling up some pork loin, which i basically threw a bunch of stuff in my pantry on and grilled up. It was pretty good, especially with rosemary roasted potatoes and avocado butter (ah Good Eats, permanent resident of my DVR).

With that cast iron pan I got, I made some cornbread, with bacon, chives, and chipotle peper. The bottom is fried in rendered bacon fat! The first batch I made was horribly dry (very unfortunate since it was for guests). But I fixed that problem by adding half a stick of melted butter. Melted butter pretty much fixes everything that duct tape can't.

And yes...here it is...the legendary Global fluted Santoku knife. I never thought I'd hold this box in my hands, but here it is. Actually I'm selling it to my sister, for the price of 1 penny. Korean superstition forbids giving knives or blades of any kind as gifts, because it means your cutting off all ties/relations with that person so I have to sell it to her.

The benefits of living alone

2006-08-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

Rice krispies treats anytime.
The fluffernutter sandwich seems to be the official food of Massachusetts, so marshmallow creme is available everywhere. So why not have rice krispies treats all the time?
Other things in my fridge/pantry that wouldn't normally be at home:
Ice cream
Oreos
Carbs...delicious carbs

I also got some new kitchen toys including a microplane, a mini food processor, a probe thermometer, a propane torch (on sale at ACE hardware), and a 12" cast iron pan, which I'm not sure why we don't have at home, because it was only 15 bucks on Amazon.com

Snacks

2006-07-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like watching Fresh Prince and Saved by the Bell reruns on the DVR with a snack.

Grilled chicken, bacon, aioli, arugula, grilled scallion, grilled jalapeno, sourdough toasted with roasted garlic paste and gorgonzola.

Mmm...ramen. This is only marginally harder to make than instant ramen, and a billion times better.

Fourth o' July

2006-07-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

You're supposed to eat ridiculously too much...because overconsumption is what America is all about (did you see the nathan's hot dog contest?). Anywho, I made gorgonzola, roasted garlic, and bacon stuffed burgers. The meat itself was seasoned with some green onions sauteed in the bacon drippings, ketchup, worcestershire, granulated garlic, and paprika. Here's what the inside looks like:

A few friends came over and brought corn on the cob and Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat beer.

For dessert, they brought some strawberries and blueberries. I used 'em to whip up a compote with orange juice, lime juice, a jalapeno pepper, and some balsamic vinegar (though after I sent them out for sugar...seeing as I had absolutely none in the apartment). I topped an ice cream sandwich with the compote, then put a toasted marshmallow on top. Look how it ended up being patriotic!

Aioli

2006-07-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

To use up some of that garlic I roasted yesterday, and to go on tomorrow's burgers, I made some Aioli (from the Provencal verb "aioler" meaning "to charge Americans more for mayonnaise"). I made it with egg yolks, sea salt, pepper, paprika, mustard powder, lemon juice, roasted garlic, a bit of olive oil and a crapload of canola oil. Here's the result:

After furious hand whisking for a while, the aioli started to get thick and I switched over to an electric beater...this also illustrates my desperate need for an apron or something...as demonstrated by my shirt:

First Post From the new Apartment

2006-07-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm settling in to my new apartment, and my fridge/pantry finally have some stuff inside. For the fourth, I'm gonna make some gorgonzola, bacon, roasted garlic stuffed burgers. I roasted up a bunch of garlic today, and I thought "Man I shouldn't waste the olive oil that ran out into the roasting pan." So I sliced up some tomatoes, brushed them with the oil, and broiled them and topped 'em with some cheese and an anchovy fillet. I took the same roasting pan and then added some white wine and roasted garlic. I tossed some fettucine in there and then plated it with the tomatoes on top. Here's how it looked:

More blogginess!

2006-05-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Watch this space...New posts about food are coming. It's been quite a while since I've written anything. I've been terribly busy with my mustache competition, thesis, graduating, etc. But the good news is I've been officially offered a job by the college as the concert manager. I'll be in an apartment and cooking for myself, which means I'll be eating instant Ramen 6 nights out of 7...but on that 7th night, i'll hopefully have some blog-worthy material. I just have to get through finals, graduation, job training, etc. before I can get back to the things that REALLY matter...food, and making fun of waste-of-planet-space idiots.

Super Bowl Party

2006-02-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

I've always thrown a Super Bowl party for the people I live with/around. This year, I made:

Guacamole with plenty of cilantro, garlic, habanero and jalapeno peppers.

Tuscan white bean dip with roasted garlic and rosemary olive oil. I roasted garlic in a toaster oven with some rosemary and thyme, then blended it up with cannelini beans and the rosemary infused olive oil. Served it up with some bruschetta (which is pronounced BrusKEtta...none of that "shh" shit). Also, bruschetta can simply be toast rubbed with garlic...it doesn't have to have a bunch of stuff piled on it. It's a subset of a larger category of crostini. Right then...

I also made a cream cheese and chili dip and spinach and mushroom quesadillas.

Christmas Rib Roast

2006-02-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Yeah I know...Christmas was a really freaking long time ago, but I've been too busy with my new mustache growing contest to put up any pictures.

My sister and I made a rib roast, which basically involves sticking meat into an oven.

Here are pictures.

Bûche de noël

2006-01-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

This thing took all day, would've taken two if it weren't for our kitchenaid stand mixer. The cake was an orange-almond spongecake. The frosting was made with whipped cream, italian merengue, chocolate, and coffee. The mushrooms were piped Italian merengue dried on a silpat for a couple hours. The cake ended up being ridiculously sweet. Oh well, at least it looked nice.

Adventures in Not Food

2005-12-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

Don't really know how to explain this one.
Swallowing a magic grow capsule

Turkey Day Pictures

2005-12-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

Out of extreme laziness, I haven't posted any Thanksgiving related stuff yet. I had to mention, however, a commercial for "Bob's Discount Furniture," involving two computer animated turkeys that had Bob and his wife's heads superimposed on them. They sang a song where the only words were "gobble gobble gobble gobble" and some little snippets about the furniture they were selling, e.g. "gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble There's a Bar that Hides AWAAAY!" Classic.
On to the pictures:
The night before Thaksgiving I made the desserts, starting with Madeleienes. I tested out new silicon madeleine molds versus my traditional metal one. The silicon mold smelled terrible as it was baking, overbrowned the edges of the shell and didn't brown the body of the shell at all. There was also no hump on the back of the madeleine, which is just (picture a french dude saying this...) OUTREEEGEOUS! So, silicon madeleine molds are REJECTED. Somewhere, a curmudgeony old French luddite is saying "Roh ho ho ho hoooo." New for 2005 to the madeleines was chocolate. Using Trader Joe's Belgian Pound plus 70% dark, melted over a makeshift double boiler and tempered (by stirring in unmelted pieces off the heat), I dipped or decorated about half of the madeleines I had made. Tempering the chocolate ensures the chocolate adheres, makes for a nice smooth look, and ensures the chocolate doesn't crumble when bitten into.

While preparing the madeleines, I decided that they wouldn't be enough as a dessert, so I decided to make something else. At first I thought "Tiramisu," which I make for any occasion, and also "pumpkin pie," in honor of Thanksgiving. Combining the two ideas gave me the idea for a mascarpone pumpkin cheesecake. I had no idea how I was going to make a cheesecake or what you have to do to make cheesecake, but I consulted some basic recipes online and went from there. I made the cheesecake's crust out of Trader Joe's Triple Ginger Snaps and melted butter. The filling was half mascarpone, half regular cream cheese (due to mascarpone's different texture and high cost), eggs, brown sugar, pumpkin, flour, heavy cream, and some spices. I garnished it with heavy cream whipped up with a bit of superfine sugar and brandy.

The cheesecake was rather light, wasn't too sweet, and had a slightly stronger flavor of cheese than a regular cheesecake.

Here are a few pictures of what my sister made (I did most of the grunt work), because she's even lazier about posting pictures than I am.

The turkey, brined overnight and (almost) completely cooked. The beautiful skin was achieved by not being afraid to massage and coat the entire turkey in a layer of butter.

A beet and fennel salad with citrus vinaigrette a la Thomas Keller. Finished with gorgonzola and orange zest. I call this one "mastercard salad."

Mixed vegetables in some sort of Asian-y dressing in a kabocha squash bowl. Eat the bowl...go on I dare ya.

The wine, a 1987 Chateau Duhart-Milon Rothschild Pauillac. It's no Charles Shaw, but it was still good.

This table is much too small to hold all of the food we made, so it was served up buffet style in the kitchen.

Kalbi

2005-11-14T08:46:00.000-08:00

My parents brought me 30 pieces of kalbi over family weekend. All I had to do was microwave it, cook up some rice, wash some lettuce, buy some chili paste, and slice up some green onions and a feast ensued. Check out Owen's (upper left of the picture) chopstick technique. If it doesn't impress you, what if I told you that he's white? Oh yeah...now you're impressed.

Happy Halloween Everybody!

2005-10-31T19:38:00.000-08:00

Yup...that's about all there is to that post. Eat a caramel apple. Pumpkin seeds too.

Distributing smallpox infested blankets to natives...followed by tea

2005-10-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

Amherst College and the town of Amherst is named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces during the French and Indian wars, pioneer of germ warfare, and securer of Canada for England. Although the college has long since put away the china depicting mounted Englishmen chasing Natives, and has substituted smallpox infested blankets with cod nuggets in Valentine to make people sick, the British tradition of tea time lives on right here in the first floor suite of Jenkins dormitory. Thanks to my suitemate Katie spending her summer in London, and the fact that all of us are terrible snobs (and face it...if you're reading this shit, so are you) we have a fine assortment of teas to enjoy each day. Today was Twining's reserve afternoon tea, which is described as a traditional tasting tea ("traditional" of course joining "umami" as one of the lesser known taste receptors in the tongue). I decided to make a special plate of snacks today, for no other reason than the fact that I went to Trader Joe's yesterday.
Clockwise from the "top" of the plate: Pumpernickel cocktail square with manchego cheese and pumpkin butter, Grilled brie finger sandiwch, Rice cracker with roasted red pepper tapenade, almond biscotti, macadamia lacey.
Notice the extra fancy, scallop shell design plate, made of what the French call papier.

Gyoza and Guinness Shakes

2005-10-23T22:39:00.001-07:00

I went to Trader Joe's while I was extremely hungry today. It's never a good idea to go grocery shopping while you're hungry, and this goes triple for Trader Joe's. I came away with pita chips, cookies, chocolate toffee almonds, pumpernickel cocktail squares (fancy name for little square pieces of bread), manchego cheese, and pumpkin butter (like apple...but pumpkin...you get the idea). The last three things, when put together, make an excellent tea-time snack. I also decided to buy a midnight snack. Seeing as the college night lasts until about 4 am, and I don't eat breakfast, a midnight meal is the equivalent of a light dinner. I decided on Trader Joe's chicken gyoza. The problem I've always had with their gyoza is that you have to brown them first in oil, then add water to the pan to steam them. This obliterates any crispiness achieved during the oil frying, and the gyoza turn into a mushy, muddled mess where it's impossible to distinguish the gyoza skin from the filling. I heard that Jacques Pepin recommends just throwing oil and water together in the pan and cooking them that way, but that didn't really work for me. It did, however, achieve a wonderful grease/water spray pattern all over the cooking surface. I decided to try an alternate method today. Using an electric (and illegal-in-the-dorm) skillet, I first browned two sides of the gyoza. After two sides had been browned, I moved them to one side of the skillet and flipped them onto the other side. I immediately placed a folded up wet paper towel across the skillet. Once the paper towel is in place, you can pour the water on the other side of the towel and cover up the skillet. The towel acts as a barrier and releases steam while the gyoza are on the protected side and the uncooked side of the gyoza fries up without being drowned in water. All three sides stay brown and crispy and the inside cooked through and moist. Deep fried goodness with only about a tablespoon of oil. Of course, you might not like your gyoza crispy, but that would make you a terrible person.
The perfect accompaniment to any food is the Guinness Milkshake. Take a bottle of Guinness Draught and blend up with a very generous amount of vanilla ice cream. It's a foolproof recipe, so I can't really imagine how anyone could fuck it up, but it's quite possible my sister will find a way. Before you spit on your miniMac in indignation my dear, I have two words for you: Boca Negra.

Eat it Sis!

2005-09-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

My darling sister has posted on her blog something entitled "Snack Foods That Will Be the Death of Me #1." Haha. I pity your meager attempt to kill yourself with circus animals, but you have a long way to go. Tonight in Valentine (my dining hall), Chicken Kiev was on the menu. In order to enjoy all the unhealthiness, without that filling breaded chicken part, I did the brilliantly unthinkable. I turned my Chicken Kiev into a juice box.

Go ahead Jungjoo, I dare you to find a better way to get a shot of garlicky saturated fat goodness.

Oh wait, this wasn't a contest?

Nothing food-related can gross me out unless it had to do with my case of food poisoning in Korea. Absolutely nothing. This came close. To see what happened when I accidentally got a bit of the butter in my mouth, click here.

Orchestra Grilling

2005-09-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's finally happened. Following in celebrity chef Dave Lieberman's footsteps, I too have been named executive chef of something that needs absolutely no culinary direction whatsoever. Just as Lieberman is executive chef of Delta's Song Airlines, I have been named Executive Chef (well...social coordinator actually...but they're often the same thing) of the Amherst College Orchestra. After being granted the title of ACO's executive chef, I was determined to create more opportunities to use my skills (or lack thereof) than my celebrity counterpart.
What exactly does the executive chef of a budget airline do anyway? "For this snack box, I decided to pair yogurt with fruit. I really like the way the slightly sour creaminess of the yogurt contrasts with the tart sweetness of the citrus fruits. I've also included a Danish, the crispy flakiness of which provides a nice textural complement to the smooth yogurt."
Or...
"For this flight, I decided to go with the Fiesta Snack mix. The fiesta snack mix adds more of an international flair than plain pretzels. This will be paired with a lovely 2005 Diet Pepsi."

In any case, I created my first opportunity with the orchestra barbecue. Not content to serve the standard grilled fare of burgers and dogs, I ambitiously (read foolishly) decided to set up a grilled pizza line. People could top their own pizzas and bring 'em to me to finish on the grill. The toppings included ricotta, grated mozarella, fresh mozarella, parmesan, sausage, pepperoni, roasted peppers, fresh basil, tomato, garlic, grilled red onion, and mushrooms. My trusty team and I bought pre-made pizza dough at Big Y. The dough re-rose overnight in the fridge, causing it to bust open the door to my mini college fridge. In the morning, after smacking it down again, it was almost impossible to work with, but somehow we managed to make 50 rounds (sorta) of pizza dough. They were then given an intial grilling:
This grilled side was then topped with sauce and whatever toppings each person wanted. This was followed by a second grilling, raw side down, in order to melt the cheese and finish the crust. If you feel like doing this at home (because it's really pretty easy), I recommend using a mixture of brown butter and honey to brush the dough with before grilling, rather than olive oil. it gives the crust a nicer color and a bit of sweetness, which is good with that charry carcinogenic charcoal grilled flavor. Mmm...cancerous.
With the leftover dough, we made a huge pizza topped with every topping that was available.
During cooking, one of the sausages sprung a hole in the casing, causing a fountain of rendered sausage fat to stream out for a good 45 seconds, feeding a glorious flare up. That had nothing to do with anything, except that the sausage was the first toping to run out, and so we didn't have any to put on our giant pizza.
The whole thing is pretty foolproof. Any combination of toppings works well as long as they're cooked beforehand. My favorite combination to make at home is figs, prosciutto, fresh basil, and fresh mozarella. Just as it's coming off of the grill give it a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Why I like Anthony Bourdain's New Show

2005-09-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

Strippers.
Seriously...just watch the episode where he tours New Jersey. His "Sopranos" themed bus tour takes him to the Bada Bing club, where he decides to prematurely end his tour ride. He then calls his mother to wish her happy birthday from the strip club, claiming he's at the library. In order to keep things food related, he orders a hoagie. Hoagies at this place apparently come with a side of stripper, as one of them sits down next to him to keep him company and is genuinely interested in what he has to say.

No exciting food stuff going on lately, thanks to classes starting soon. In honor of my last day of freedom, I grilled up some Bratwursts and portabella mushrooms with hummus and feta for the vegetarians. The important food development though, involves the building of my suite's bar.
I'll cook something when I get the time. Pictures will be posted.

5 Reasons why Boston is a Shithole if You're a Food Lover...

2005-08-27T22:26:00.000-07:00

1. The Bostonian accent is probably the most ignorant sounding accent in the world, barely edging out the Australian.
2. Drunk Bostonians ARE the most ignorant people in the world, and there's no shortage of them at all hours of the day.
3. The vendors at the Farmer's Market are incredibly racist, and will start yelling at you if you even look at their produce in the wrong way...let alone try to get some sense of it's freshness/quality. You will then experience 1 and 2, above.
4. A restaurant that you actually have to DRIVE to get to? Good luck getting there...or anywhere ever again.
5. The only good place for breakfast in Boston is Dunkin' Donuts. That isn't a compliment to Dunkin' Donuts.

It ain't all bad I suppose. The Quincy market is a lot of fun, and the lobster at Todd English's Kingfish Hall was well worth the wait. It's served lobster boil style, with steamers, potatoes, kielbasa, corn on the cob, and a slice of blueberry pound cake which is surprisingly tasty after soaking up all the butter that's been sloshing around on the plate. Still, the overall experience in the city leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

The MCAT: Perfect Opportunity to Explain my Blog's Title

2005-08-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Some people wonder why my blog's title is "I like food, I don't like you." They say things like, "But Chris, that's so mean! I came to your blog expecting to read that special brand of pseudo-intellectual bullshit that's wiped fresh onto the toilet tissue that is the food blog. You know, the kind of blog that's created when people delude themselves into thinking they're even REMOTELY qualified to be a food critic? I'm also a huge fan of Rachael Ray!! Heehee! I ALWAYS say E.V.O.O. ever since I started watching her show!"
Well boo freakin' hoo whiny little bitches, and I FUCKING HATE RACHAEL RAY. Her's is the most vomit-inducing show on television, beating out even Nip/Tuck and My Super Sweet 16. She spends the entire show giggling and pretending to be all cute. "I prewashed my vegetables when I brought them home from the store because I'm SOO cute! TEehee! We do this all the time back in Buffalo where I'm from. Isn't that so CUTE of me?! I'm gonna add a little dash of E.V.O.O. here! Isn't my abbreviation super cute?!" For fuck's sake, Buffalo is a wasteland, you're not cute, and would IT KILL YOU TO TAKE THE 20 EXTRA MILLISECONDS TO SAY EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL? Maybe she's worried that "30.000002 minute meals" wouldn't be as catchy. But I digress...

The MCAT.

I took it at the Holiday Inn Walnut Creek, which was probably the nicest possible place to take it. There were big tables, lots of space, only a few people so things went quickly, and the proctors let us have food and drinks in the room. I started at 8:00 and got out of there by 4:00. Had I taken it at U.C. Berkeley, I would've been there until 6:00. Anyway, the MCAT made me realize how much people just suck at life in general. Maybe it's just pre-meds, whom I hate with a passion. In the world of professional whining, pre-med students are the fucking team captains. After the first section of the test, several people complained that the time had been cut short by 30 seconds. Others were complaining that the room was too warm but the air conditioners were too loud. After the test, several girls were complaining about being too distracted by the proctors walking around (which they're supposed to do). "Omigod...she was like...walking back and forth and that like...totally broke my concentration, and that's like, totally the last thing I needed when I'm trying to like, focus every one of my three brain cells on this test." (That's actually what the girl said...word for word...except for the word "three" which I added in myself. Artistic license and so forth). Aren't these exactly the kind of people you'd want as doctors? "This operating room is too hot, I can't fucking concentrate with all those nurses walking around. This fucking patient bled faster than he was supposed to, I didn't have enough time to finish operating!" The 30 extra seconds wouldn't have helped solve the fact that you're dumb and you have the attention span of a flea. I had a fluorescent light constantly flickering over my head, and I didn't complain. If I had started to have a seizure I would've just gotten up, walked out onto the Holiday Inn's pool deck and retched into the hot tub. Then I would've sit back down and kept bubbling in like crazy...like a man dammit. (Had I also started to convulse, I'm confident that I would've convulsed in a manly fashion).
There was this tool in the Princeton Review program who wasn't in my class, but I met in a special Physics review session. He was in the testing center. When we got out of the test he instantly started complaining to everybody... "BRO! I totally fucked that shit up! I don't think I even broke a 30 BRO!" Then he got on the phone...
"No...NO....I FUCKED IT UP! IT FUCKING DIDN'T GO WELL! I DON'T FUCKING WANNA TALK ABOUT IT OKAY? JUST PICK ME UP MOM!"

So the MCAT was full of shitty people, as is life in general, so that's where that part of the title comes from...now for the good part.

In celebration of the MCAT being over my family went out to a nice dinner. We chose Pearl Oyster Bar on College Ave. in the Rockridge Area (Oakland). My sister had heard about it somehow (though I'm not surprised...I don't think she actually works...I think she just surfs the internet all day and looks for different restaurants). I later read about it in a magazine and saw a picture of the Tartare trio that they served there. They serve a variety of small plates (almost all involving seafood), and the prices aren't outrageous. We started with a dozen oysters, 2 each of 6 different varieties. I had the Kumamoto, which was quite sweet, and the Hama Hama, which had a pretty neutral flavor but had an incredibly creamy texture. The oysters were nicely presented on Rock Salt and seaweed, and came with Mignonette sauce as well as horseradish and cocktail sauce by request. There was no grit or bits of shell in the oysters, and they separated nicely (I think you should be able to slurp an oyster right off its shell...forks be damned). Next came the crab cakes. Two little crab cakes served with cucumber and two sauces on the sides of the plate. They were easy to share, and damn good. The spicy smokey fries with aioli had a nice barbecue flavor, but the aioli could've been a little more exciting. The tartare trio I had been looking forward to was well worth it. Small cubes of tuna, salmon, and halibut were dressed with a little bit of parsley, some really fancy "estate" olive oils, and each had a different salt from a different country. I can't remember exactly which fish had which super exotic salt, but the salt was nice and coarse. This made it so it didn't uniformly salt the fish, but instead led to some bites having a bit of a salty crunch to contrast the soft fish. All three varities of fish were excellent. Next was a calamari made with local squid. The calamari was good, but the standout part of the dish was the slaw that it was served with. Made with Napa cabbage, Thai basil, fresh mint, cilantro, pea sprouts, and lightly dressed with fish sauce and lime juice, it was the perfect accompaniment to the calamari. It was also served with Sriracha sauce, a sauce that I would be content to put on absolutely anything.
The surprise of the night was the Bruschetta, topped with caramelized red onions, grilled peaches, sonoma goat cheese, and hazelnuts. The grilled peach had a creamy texture that matched the goat cheese perfectly.
The one thing Pearl lacks is a full bar. After the MCAT I could've used a Martini or two, but Pearl only offers Sake cocktails, wine, and beer. I was happy with my Anchor Steam (brewed in SF! And with a name that just sounds like it should be had with seafood), and the wine list is pretty good.

Pearl
5634 College Ave.
Oakland, CA 94618

If you want something done right...

2005-08-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

The utter lack of General Tso's chicken on the West coast has forced me to take drastic measures. I sniffed around the house, trying to remember what gives General Tso's that crack-laced quality and addictive flavor, and threw some things together in an educated guess. I consulted recipes online, but they all varied so wildly that I just ditched 'em, deciding to forge my own path. The one thing they had in common was a cornstarch batter for the chicken. I mixed coriander, white pepper, egg white, soy sauce, and corn starch together to form a batter that resembled ooblek (if you've never made ooblek I highly encourage it...just throw corn starch and water together and have fun). I had trouble with my first batch of chicken pieces sticking together, decreasing the crispy golden brown surface area. To fix the problem I threw some oil into the batter, and vigilantly broke them up while frying (which was pretty dangerous...I gotta figure out a better way). General Tso's is usually made with dark meat, which is why it's so tender, but I didn't have any chicken thighs lying around, so I used breast pieces instead, not as good, but they worked. They fried up pretty quickly, and on their own they make some pretty damn good chicken nuggets. You could easily season the batter more if you were gonna eat these on their own. I'd also recommend battering hunks of cheese with this batter and frying them up, giving you something close to a cheese curd (Midwesterners will know what I'm talking about).

I wasn't about to stop though, determined to be eating General Tso's before the day ended (or High Fidelity came on Comedy Central), I threw together a sauce. I mixed equal parts dry sherry and vinegar (I used white, but prety much anything that isn't sweet will do) with soy sauce, sugar, corn starch, garlic, ginger, chili paste, hoisin sauce, and chicken broth. I couldn't tell you measurements...the liquid pretty much filled up a soup bowl. I took some of the frying oil and sauteed scallions and dried hot chilis before dumping the sauce in. I reduced it quite a bit, letting the sugar and corn starch do their thing, before dumping in the chicken pieces and giving it a toss. Here's the final result:

It tasted pretty damn close, certainly far better than anything I've tried in California Restaurants. It could've been a little more vinegary and a bit more spicy. Also I couldn't find any broccoli in the house.

I have tasted the future...

2005-08-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

I popped in to the Japanese supermarket for Hot Garlic Shrimp Chips the other day, and discovered the Calorie Mate. Labelled as "Balanced Food," the Calorie Mate Block is described as the nutritionally balanced source of easy energy for people on the go. Surely this is the future of food. Japan has brought us the robotic dog (if your real dog sucks then just get a machine instead), the PlayStation 2 (if your wife/girlfriend sucks then just get a machine instead), and the pill that makes your bowel movements odorless so as to not offend the toilet that is quite frankly smarter than most of my classmates at Amherst, seeing as how it possesses the intelligence required to flush. Finally, an advancement in food technology on par with the advancements in the eventual receptacles of that food. The Calorie Mate is so futuristic, so incredibly ahead of its time, that Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has not felt the need to update the ingredients in the past 22 years that it's been available on the market. It even contains margarine which, Scientologists have informed me, will completely replace butter within the next ten years. The other ingredients include wheat flour, soy protein, wheat protein, cocoa powder, and almond...all much less offensive than Calorie Mate's futuristic foodstuff cousin, Soylent Green. So how does the future taste? Like nothing, nothing at all. In the future we won't have time for such petty distractions as "flavor" while we're piloting our flying Hondas and cleaning up after our robotic dogs. As for it's nutritional benefits, I really couldn't tell you. I didn't have any of Otsuka Pharmaceutical's other futuristic product, Pocari Sweat, to wash it down with, so i settled for an Asahi. That pretty much negated any nutritional benefits there might have been.

Interestingly enough...all food in the future will resemble Walker's Shortbread.

Kirala isn't a real Japanese restaurant

2005-08-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

That's right. It isn't. Sure it's good, the sushi had generous slices of fish and the robata items were very good. I could go into more detail about what exactly the food did to my palate and how i was "bouncing around in anticipation for the next course" and shit, but
1) I don't want to sound like a complete tool.
2) You can get plenty of that on my sister's blog (Quit your whining I just gave you free advertising).
Kirala's food wasn't flawless though. The spicy sardine from the grill wasn't actually spicy, and the assorted nigiri that came with the sushi dinners included tamago and ebi, cheap fillers that lovers of raw fish would be happier without. At Kirala's prices, the inclusion of these particular (read "crappy") pieces of sushi is disappointing (as is their inclusion of fake grass on your plate. I fucking hate that fake grass...who the hell decided that all sushi should be served with fake grass?). If you go for sushi, you're much better off ordering your favorites a la carte, provided your waitress doesn't choose to selectively tune you out if you change your mind, then "accidentally" bring you the sushi you didn't want and still charge you the 6 bucks for it. Also, we were at a table near the entrance to the bathroom and right by the most crowded area of the bar, cut off from the main dining area by loud drunk college people (two of whom smelled strangely similar to strippers...trust me I know the smell).
None of these flaws, however, are what make Kirala unauthentic. They've overlooked the one thing that makes every Japanese restaurant a Japanese restaurant.
There's no fake food displayed in the window.
Seriously, just hop on a plane and go to Tokyo right now. Every restaurant has ultra-realistic models of the food they serve in a display window. In fact, if it weren't for those ultra-realistic models, many visitors to Japan (including my family) would starve, or eat delicious Mos Burger every day (Don't ask me what the hell the website says, I freaking don't speak Japanese...all I know is that at their website, you can "Catch the latest MOS news and charge yourself with joy").
So in the end, Kirala has good food, but suffers from a gross lack of authenticity. You should sitll go check it out though, you might get to see strippers.

Kirala
2100 Ward St
Berkeley, CA 94705

One of the great mysteries of life...

2005-08-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Why the hell do white people love Honey Walnut Shrimp so much? Yesterday, dining with my family at a fantastic Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, I noticed that every non-Asian party in the restaurant had ordered Honey Walnut Shrimp (although I am often inclined to exaggerate, this is actually true). Don't get me wrong. Fried shrimp is fucking fantastic. I'll eat that any day. Candied walnuts are also great. But when you take fried shrimp and you roll it in a sauce that resembles a bodily fluid, I'll pass. Perhaps this "special" sauce is the reason the dish is so popular, and maybe this is also the reason Fear Factor is still on the air. In order to find answers to these troubling questions, I consulted the most comprehensive source of knowledge in the universe, Google. The wise and almighty Google directed me to About.com's Chinese food section. There, I was greeted by:
Rhonda Parkinson, My Guide to Chinese Food
Hmm...well that doesn't seem very authentic. But I bet she spent a bunch of time in China or something right? "Rhonda has a Master's degree in Political Science from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. In the cooking department, she has taken several courses in Chinese and Asian cooking."
Well thank God there's a true expert out there to tell us all about Chinese food. She's taken not one, not two, but an unspecified "SEVERAL" courses in Chinese cooking. By the sixth grade, I had taken SEVERAL sex ed courses, which I'm sure, qualified me as an expert on having sex.

I'd bet you anything that Rhonda Parkinson and her family can't get enough Honey Walnut Shrimp.