Chicken biscuit quest continued

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


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

Here's what I had for dinner:


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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.