People Who Need to STFU

I sometimes find it hard to believe that there are empty vessels who actually derive their personal ethos from the likes of Michael Pollan and this fraudulent twat...



I generally find Anthony Bourdain to be an ass, but he's got St. Alice pegged.

Framed, I Tell Ya!

Immersion Therapy

During our Thomas Keller trifecta of The French Laundry, Bouchon, and ad hoc last week, every time a waiter would describe something wonderful as having been cooked sous vide, I would catch the GF's eye and jokingly mouth the word "Christmas."

It concerns me slightly that I don't think she knows that I'm kidding and that I may actually wind up with another gadget for which I have neither space nor need. It concerns me greatly, however, that she's more than once referred to the piece of equipment that produces such tasty morsels as an immersion blender rather than an immersion circulator. I *know* she knows the difference and it's just a slip of the tongue, but I'm starting to fear for the poor retail slave that encounters her in a Williams-Sonoma or Sur La Table come December.

Dear Mr./Mrs. Fancy Pants Restaurateur,

I'm sure you paid someone a healthy sum to design your flash-heavy, browser window-resizing, have-to-download-four-PDFs-to-read-the-fuckin'-menu website, but really, enough is enough.

And once again, I'm behind the curve...

Per my last post, I just plugged "corn sorbet" into Google to see if anyone had tried it.

As it turns out, it's already being done at two dives named "Alinea" and "Le Bernardin."





Fuck.

Getting an Earful

I haven't been cooking a lot recently for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I just haven't been very inspired. When I say I haven't been "cooking," I'm not referring to churning out a steak or assembling some salad or baking a batch of simple cookies. Those are routines, or simply tasks done without much thought to the process.

I suppose that somewhere along the way, I've gained more of an appreciation for the craft of cooking... breaking things down to their essentials and then rebuilding them, balancing flavors and sensations, presentation, meal planning. With that appreciation though, it becomes difficult to get excited about making a recipe meatloaf on a Tuesday night.

This morning, however, I found a spark, which I've heard Mr. Springsteen declare requisite for starting a fire. I was thinking about corn and remembering "milking" it for the last corn chowder I made, specifically the sweetness of that liquid. And then it hit me... I'd use that as the basis for a corn sorbet.

Tomato sorbet seems to be all over the place, so there's really no reason that this shouldn't work. I imagine that in addition to milking the cob remnants that I'll blend or process the kernels in order to maximize the fluid yield before I strain the hell out of it. But, I love the questions that have filled my mind beyond that... should I lightly grill the corn first to give it an added dimension?... do I want it to be pure, sweet corn flavor or should I add something else?... salt?... a butter element?

It should be a fun experiment if nothing else.

Be-Bop-Ta-Lula, She's My Table

After the day I had yesterday, the GF suggested I buy a lottery ticket.

It's been called "The Toughest Table in America" - and I'm going. By some degree of luck or kismet, yesterday I managed to score one of the rarest dinner reservations anywhere. Bookings for Talula's Table must be made one year in advance, and only one is available each day. The restaurant opens each night for only a single party of 8-12 people, who spend the next four hours enjoying what some have called the best meal they've ever had.

I was successful on only my second attempt ever to call. My hands started to tremble when I heard the phone actually ringing instead of the busy signal I was sure to get. My head is honestly still spinning a bit. I'm not sure how to go about filling out my guest list - friends and family or fellow foodies who would be more likely to appreciate how special this should be. Luckily, that's made a little easier by some overlap in those groups, but the rest of the spots are still tough decisions.

Maybe that's why they give you a year to think about it.

Dear Nabisco...

Make it happen.


/not mine

It's official. I'm a whore.

Yes, as opposed to when it was unofficial.
Someone wants to pay me to cook.

One of the students with whom I work was so taken with the cookies that I made for our Christmas party that he wants to give me cash money to supply more for an event he's holding.

Short of fleeting "Hey, that might be cool" moments while watching Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives, I've never had any desire to produce food for profit, but I suppose I'm now a reluctant businessman.

I guess that means I need a mission statement. For now, I'm gonna go with "Primum non nocere."

Your Brine's All Wet

From The Great Book of Culinary Confessions... I've never been a huge fan of brining. It's practically de rigueur in today's food world, so of course I've done it. Heck, for years I was an active member of a foodie message board whose members called themselves "Briners." Still, there are a couple things that bother me.

Unlike a lot of people, I've never had a problem with pork being dry... you cook it to 138-140 and STOP. It's pretty simple. People think you have to incinerate it to make it "safe," so a lot of pork ends up being overcooked. If you cook it correctly, I don't think it needs a brine.

No, my larger issue is with poultry - turkey, specifically, with its longer cooking time and therefore increased susceptibilty to drying out. Brining will make your turkey moist... or more accurately, wet. The additional moisture resulting from standard brining is water, which tastes nothing like the natural juices of a turkey. Instead of enhancing the taste of the bird, it dilutes it. Secondly, I've always thought that the added moisture, err, wetness, produces a strange, spongy texture to the meat.

I see why people brine... a moist turkey is a hundred times better than bird reminiscent of sawdust. Still, I've always felt it was an imperfect method.

That opinion was only reinforced this Thanksgiving when I tried "dry" brining for the first time. I had first read about it last year, but it was too late to work it into the holiday plans. This year, however... Wow! I will never do the old bucket o' brine again. I didn't think turkey could be so good. The meat was very moist without being soggy, spongy, or having its flavor diluted.

You can even see in this picture how "plump" it remained after cooking...

I'm convinced the lack of residual moisture left from a wet brine also helps contribute to the great skin as well.

Another bonus (as if there had to be another)... it's super simple... no boiling/cooling brines, no buckets, no ice, no muss, no fuss (but yes, a truss).

Today, I scaled it down for a roast chicken. I combined it with (my modified version of) Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe and it was outstanding...

There are plenty of culinary things I can't do, but I think I've got this poultry thing down pat. ;)

Meat!

Why yes, I did French the rack. ;)

Fission Cuisine

I finally got around to playing with the concept of that cake I had on vacation. The result was "Irish Car Bomb" cupcakes...



Guinness cake, Bailey's cream cheese and Jameson and dulce de leche frosting.

Hummina.

... and Bookends

• I played around and made a "harvest cornbread" focaccia that tasted very much like stuffing. It would be awesome for some kind of turkey sandwich. Secret ingredients - chicken stock and a little truffle oil.

• As with dulce de leche, I'm a complete truffle oil whore.

• Anthony Bourdain says truffle oil has become a "lazy chef's way to add value."

• Anthony Bourdain can kiss my ass.

• Speaking of whores, my new motto comes from "Pretty Woman"... "Impossible relationships. My special gift is impossible relationships."

• Again with the whores... Even after a year, I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the whole blogging thing. I'm usually OK with the writing (though I still hold back a lot), but it feels weird to "advertise it." I don't think I've ever done the "hey, check me out" thing, and if I ever hold a contest to draw people to my blog, please shoot me in the head. Just not my style, I guess.

• I should really switch over to the other blog sometime. I like the title better, but I've got everything set up here the way I like it. I don't feel like coming up with a new color scheme.
  

• I can't wait for the new season of "Top Chef." The hot chick is from Baltimore.
  

• I'm getting a bit concerned about our grant situation at work. Though I've been thinking about making a (perhaps drastic) change for a long, long time, I'd rather it be on my own terms.

• Three different people have told me I should watch "The Mentalist" because the lead character reminds them of me. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
  

• Every time I see "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," I want to open my own place. Then I realize I'm both too lazy and woefully underqualified.

• Albeit a homemade mashup of clips from "Into the Wild," there's finally a YouTube video using the studio version of my theme song... David Gray's "Gathering Dust."
  

• I have some really lousy friends.

"Strange Q... kill what's inside of you"

I like BBQ. I don't love BBQ. I certainly don't live BBQ.

It's good enough, but given the obsession that surrounds it in some circles, I think it's highly overrated. I think part of that comes from the fact that it's a mystery to a lot of people. Somewhat like lobster, they think it's something they just can't prepare themselves. The truth is, it's very simple to make good BBQ, though some make it an obsession and spend a lifetime trying to master it. I have zero desire to try. The law of diminishing returns kicks in very early in learning to "Q."

Unfortunately, it's also very easy to make bad BBQ. Very, very bad BBQ.

While I certainly don't live in a BBQ hotbed (heh), there are a couple of places in the region to get some decent Q. That said, none of them are very convenient, which makes it worth my while to just make my own from time-to-time.

When some signs went up for a new, local BBQ carryout this summer, I was intrigued - it would be a nice change of pace from the standard pizza/sub/seafood/Chinese fare.

I finally got a chance to try it today. The menu had the basics - pulled pork, ribs, brisket - along with a lot of standard local stuff like pit beef/ham/turkey. Hmmm... when a place like that tries to do too much, they normally don't do any of it very well.

I wanted to get a good sense of the place so I ordered a half rack of ribs and a pulled pork sandwich. The pulled pork came with Eastern NC-style sauce. Given the choice of Eastern NC, Western NC, or SC-style sauces, Eastern would be about my eighth choice, but I digress...

My first bite of the sandwich... dry, stringy, tasteless... hmm... maybe I just got a section with more bread than meat and no sauce... second bite... hmm... the bread is now soggy, the meat still dry - but at least it now has a taste... sort of like bleach.

At that point, I had to open the sandwich up to make sure what was inside was actually meant for human consumption. It looked like actual food... sorta. The pork itself was brownish-gray and was shredded or chopped very finely - certainly not "pulled." It showed no evidence of bark or "brownies" (which wasn't on the menu, so they weren't saving it to be sold separately), nor any sign of seasoning or smoke at all. The only evidence of "sauce" was a couple of red pepper flakes and the soggy bun.

I'm still amazed that I took one more bite before tossing it in the trash. Must've been the sheer shock factor.

At this point, I was pretty frightened of the ribs, but hey, how much worse could they be?

They weren't quite as bad as the "pulled pork," but that's not saying much. Their sauce was unremarkable and clearly mass-produced, but inoffensive. The ribs themselves also showed no sign of smoke, but yet achieved the head-shaking combination of being both dry and undercooked (the heat was probably too high). The meat was "done" but still clung very tightly to the bones. It wasn't worth trying to gnaw off, anyway.

At least I didn't order the brisket. ;)

Thanks... for nothing

I've had occasion to see and talk to my cousin Mary quite a bit over the last month or so. She's about a half-a-generation older than me, but very cool and very funny. She's also a pretty decent cook. Though I wouldn't (yet) classify her as a "foodie," she takes more interest and pride in her cooking than most folks.

I had dinner at her house around Christmas last year and she made a beef tenderloin. I asked her if she had trimmed it herself and she gave me one of those "I didn't know you could" looks. We then got into a long conversation about cooking... blah, blah, blah.

She must've had that conversation in mind when she called a couple weeks ago and invited us to Thanksgiving. She said that she hoped that I'd plan and cook the meal with her so she could "learn a thing or two."

I really like cooking with (and for) people who appreciate the craft, so I was really excited at the prospect of cooking a holiday meal with her. I've been thinking of doing a huge, blow-out meal for a small crowd for some time, and this seemed like a great opportunity (or at least good practice).

Actually, I was so excited by the idea that I was awake until about 2:30 that night thinking about possibilities for the meal. Let's just say there was a cranberry and Grand Marnier sorbet intermezzo involved. ;)

I e-mailed her the next morning and simply asked "How ambitious are you feeling?"

Her reply: "Well, if you're thinking about brining a turkey, we tried that a couple of years ago and it didn't go over too well..."

The remnants of a nine-course menu now reside at the bottom of my paper shredder.

With a palate like this, it's a wonder I'm not a sommelier...

I just went to the fridge to grab a swig of milk before bed and as I drank, I thought that while not sour, it tasted a little "off." So I looked for the date on the side of the jug...

AUG 25.

Twenty minutes ago.


*flexes taste buds*

Zen and the Art of Cheesecake Maintenance

Until recently, I had been fairly ambivalent about cheesecake. It was never really my dessert of choice, but I'd been around the springform pan a time or two. Some specimens were better than others, but cheesecake's the type of thing that even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

A couple months ago, I picked up a slice at my favorite Italian take-out place. Their cannoli are amazing, but were sold out that night (much to my luck).

That cheesecake was a revolution for me. It's very difficult to describe. The texture, the balance, the clean, even bright flavor... all were very different than any other cheesecake I'd ever had.

Since then, I've played around with a few cheesecakes at home. Luckily, I found an amazing recipe right off the bat and have done enough research to make some small, but substantial tweaks (both in ingredients and technique) that make it even better. People seem to like it. ;)

That basic recipe has become a great springboard for experimentation.

The most recent trial was a marbled dulce de leche version. Serious nommage.

Yes, I am a dulce de leche whore.

Eating Vermont

I have way too many pictures of Vermont to detail online, but I promised a few people that I'd post some food pics, so here goes. It's obviously not everything, but just some of the dishes, etc. that I liked or found interesting.

I had been to The Countryman's Pleasure on a previous trip and enjoyed it a lot. On that trip, it was a blind choice out of a travel guide made late one evening, after having checked out and declined someone's recommended eatery. Although it was obvious we were the last table seated that night, they made us feel right at home and never rushed us. I knew I had found a great place when the waitress started describing the daily specials with the words "Our mushroom hunter..."

TCP is right outside of Killington, VT and was a very convenient choice for dinner our first night.

It was also a good chance to test my two main food goals for the trip - eating Vermont (or regional) products and going with the specialties of the house.

Although I'm not a "beer guy" (liquor, baby!), I started with a Vermont beer - Otter Creek Copper Ale. (I'd also have Trout River, Switchback, and Long Trail brews before the week was through).

Probably my most adventurous foray into eating local came in the first dish - fiddlehead toast...

I had seen fiddleheads when hiking in Vermont before, and knew they were foraged and eaten, but I had never had the opportunity to try them.

The plating made us chuckle a bit (yes, we're twelve), but the food was interesting. Sauteed fiddlehead ferns on toast with diced ham, cheese, and hollandaise. It's very difficult to describe the taste of fiddleheads - sort of a cross between asparagus and green beans. I probably won't be ordering them again, but I can say I've had them, TYVM.

The chef at TCP is an Austrian immigrant, so I was determined to try one of his specialties. I chose Jaeger schnitzel - pork medallions with mushrooms, apples, and Calvados. I wasn't sure how the mushrooms and apples would work together, but they did just fine...

The spaetzle, of course, was just killer.

...

I did a ton of research into where to eat in Vermont, and one of the places I was most excited about was a small breakfast joint - the type that might be featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives. Blanche & Bill's Pancake House is pretty nondescript. We almost drove right by it, but "Jill," the voice of my (awesome!) new Garmin GPS, was on the case.

It's the kind of place with maybe two dozen seats and hand-written signs on the wall...

Not much, huh? What if I said it's been hailed in both Gourmet magazine and the New York Times?

Like the building in which they're served, the pancakes aren't much to look at...

... but they're outstanding. Fluffly, tangy, and an unusual tinge of crispness around their circumference. I can't imagine a better pancake.

Unfortunately, Bill of Blanche & Bill's passed away a number of years ago and Blanche is getting along in age and wants to retire. The business is currently for sale and its future uncertain. I'm glad I got the chance to experience it.

...

One of my favorite regions of Vermont is the Northeast Kingdom - the three little-populated but stunningly-beautiful counties in the northeast corner of the state. The top of the fire tower on the peak of Burke Mountain is one of my favorite places anywhere.

Unfortunately, a small population usually equates to a less-than-thriving food scene. Before I began researching the possibilities, I wondered where the heck we were going to eat up there. My camping experiences gave me enough confidence in the event that we had to forage for chanterelles or, um, fiddleheads, but luckily that wouldn't be needed.

In my readings, I found a couple of places that got outstanding reviews, and deservedly so. The first of these was Elements restaurant in St. Johnsbury. I can't recommend this place highly enough.

Elements has a very cool and contemporary vibe without making you feel as if you should stand behind the velvet rope waiting to get in. As we saw later in the week at Hen of the Wood, locating your restaurant in an old mill isn't a requisite for Vermont awesomeness, but it certainly helps.

The picture above is good for two reasons. One, it shows how cool the inside of the restaurant is, and two, it captures the rarest of all Vermont creatures... a black man.

There are 600,000 people living in Vermont, fourteen of whom are black. Yes, I counted.

Oddly enough, 87% of those 600,000 drive a Subaru Outback.

Anyway, back to the food, some of the finest on the trip... We started with clam chowder. I'm a sucker for seafood soup and this was some of the best I've had...

Another vow I made before the trip was to order a cheese plate whenever one was offered, knowing Vermont's thriving artisan cheese industry very well. This was one of the best, although I didn't catch the name of the cheese at the bottom of the picture (the others are a camembert and a bleu).

I was in the mood for beef...

... although the blackened catfish turned out to be a good choice as well...


About this point, I started to really appreciate the new camera. I was taking good pictures, handheld, in a darkish restaurant without using a flash (so as not to disturb other diners). Sweet.

Speaking of sweet, OMG, the dessert. It had to be one of the best dishes I've had anywhere at any time. Guinness cake layered with Bailey's-flavored cream cheese icing, covered with chocolate ganache and sitting in a pool of Jameson-flavored dulce de leche sauce. Died-and-gone-to-heaven good. I will be making this in the future.

This dessert taught me one thing about myself... I apparently "don't share well." LOL

Later in the night, I ran with scissors.

...

Breakfast is my least favorite meal, but I appreciate a good one. I've watched enough Food Network to know that I shouldn't pass up a local institution like the Miss Lyndonville diner, or the "Miss L" as the locals call it. All the reviews I had read mentioned that the lines could get very, very long on the weekends. Although the service was said to be quick, I was concerned about going on a Sunday morning.

Luckily, we got there just before the rush.

Really good food, hot and fast. I'd love to sit there on a February morning with snow falling outside talking about the upcoming Red Sawx season.

Other the atmosphere and the speed of the service, the highlight of the Miss L was the sausage. We agreed that it was the best we'd ever had.

By the time we were done, the line was typically beginning to spill out the door...

...

One of my sightseeing goals on this trip was Lake Memphremagog, which crosses the border between Vermont and Canada (and which provided me the opportunity to violate international law).

At the southern end of the lake sits the town of Newport, where we dined at the appropriately-named Lago Trattoria. It's a little funky to find a well-regarded Italian/Mediterranean restaurant in the middle of Nowhere, Vermont, but hey, when at Memphremagog, you do as the Memphremagonians do!

Lago was a prime example of one of the restaurant trends I liked seeing on this trip - an open kitchen.

When you're not so close that it becomes obtrusive, I think it's cool to be able to peek in on what's going on in the kitchen. I couldn't see everything the chef and his sous were doing, by I caught enough of their movements to know when our food was on its way...

... the turning of the pepper grinder over the carpaccio...


... the sprinkling of herbs over the mussels...


... and the toss of the skillet in making frutti di mare pasta...


It was also at Lago that I discovered that chocolate hazelnut gelato is one of the least photogenic foods. I'll just leave that picture to your imagination. LOL

...

We made our way down to Stowe - probably my favorite town in my favorite state. There were two restaurants in the are that I really wanted to hit, but I wasn't feeling great the first day and we decided to cancel our reservation to be safe. :( We'll just have to save that for next time. ;)

Luckily, I was well enough to keep our reservation for the next night - Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, VT. I haven't been so excited for a restaurant since Morimoto.

Executive Chef and co-owner Eric Warnstedt was recently named by Food & Wine magazine as one of the 10 best new chefs in America. Former winners are a virtual who's who of chefs... Thomas Keller, David Chang, Grant Achatz, Daniel Boulud...

This was very possibly an "I knew him when..." meal. As such, when I read that he offered a chef's tasting menu, I was all over it. The tasting menu has to be reserved in advance, so I was looking forward to it for weeks, even though I had no idea what we'd be having!

From what I read, Warnstedt's all about using fresh, local ingredients in simple, new American cooking. That fit right in line with what I wanted to get from "eating Vermont."

He didn't disappoint. I haven't had time to reflect on it fully yet, but it's probably the best dinner I've had (yes, even camping!). The crazy thing for me was that each dish seemed to use a bare minimum of ingredients, but it was symbiosis at its best. The other cool thing is knowing that you can't hide ingredients when doing that. Everything has to be top-notch.

The tasting menu was advertised at four courses, but we were given both an extra course and dessert for a total of six. When you include the wine pairings for each course, we were very, very happy by the end of the night.


Another open kitchen. Warnstedt's the guy on the left, in the blue baseball hat...

The only disappointment of the night was the fact that I didn't get a written menu detailing each course. I'll share pictures of my two favorites and a little of what I remember about the rest.

The first course was probably my favorite. A sparkling wine from Sonoma, a shooter of wild chanterelle and sweet corn soup (which I think was topped with truffle oil), and some sort of toast topped with local bleu cheese and the most amazing bacon ever...


The second course was a salad of cucumber, the most tender beets I've ever had, chevre, sunflower seeds, and a buttermilk dressing, ingredients all produced in Vermont. That was paired with a pinot gris.

After that was a bowl of calamari. Very tender, but I didn't catch any of the details. Something a little spicy, but I'm not sure what. Pinot blanc.

Next was the "bonus" course - a smoked cheese (didn't catch what kind) polenta with wild chanterelles and more of that best bacon ever. The reason you're not seeing a picture of that was that we had already dug in before I remembered to take a shot. Very yummy, paired with a Grenache.

The main course was duck breast on rutabaga puree with Swiss chard and an awesome blackberry sauce. Tender. Simple. Perfect.

I believe that is a Petite Sirah reflected in the plate.

At that point we're stuffed and we know there's still another course. If it was something substantial, I don't think we could've made it through. Luckily, like just about everything else, it was perfect - local blueberries in a lavender creme fraiche with an almond tuile I still think about.

And pinot noir for good measure. LOL

We got to exchange thank yous with the chef at the end of the night. One way or another, I'm betting we'll see him again.

...

In the same vein as eating chicken wings a couple hours after the omakase menu at Morimoto, we were gourmet-ed out by the time we hit Burlington. I had some restaurants picked out as possibilities, but we found ourselves having burgers and fries, err, frys at local legend Al's French Frys. The fries, err, frys were good, but when you've grown up eating the best, little else compare. ;)

...

Vermont has become a great state for foodies. Outside of the emerging restaurant scene is a fine network of producers, large and small. We were fortunate to experience a few of those as well - Lake Champlain Chocolates, Ben & Jerry's, Dakin Farm, Cabot Creamery... and we would've hit King Arthur Flour if I realized how close we were.

Next time. ;)

How Do You Say "Jones" in Italian?

I'm not sure what triggered it, but I have a major focaccia craving going on. And since I have a new bag of King Arthur 00 flour at home, I'm fairly sure there's going to be some baking happening this weekend. I make some pretty tasty focaccia ifidosaysomyself.

The only question is whether I play around with it or go with the tried-and-true sea salt and rosemary.


Maybe something with cheese...


Or as pizza crust...


Or baked on the grill...


I have both truffle oil and truffle salt, so I'm thinking I may try to incorporate one of those - maybe with some goat cheese.

Of course, I do also have one or two hundred tomatoes on hand... LOL

Baltimore via Vermont

I'm always skeptical when I see my hometown foods interpreted by outsiders. While Guy Fieri may not have butchered pit beef, rest assured that when you order something like "Maryland crab cakes" outside of the Chesapeake region, you're generally getting nothing like the real thing.

I just was browsing the King Arthur Flour site and came across their version of Baltimore's Berger Cookies.


Apparently, that's the updated version, as their first interpretation had been done without the benefit of ever having tasted one. ("Maryland crab cake" makers take note!)

Berger Cookies are the type of local goodie that gets sent in care packages to homesick former residents and internet friends. They're definitely over-the-top, but that's what makes them awesome.

Based on appearances alone, it looks like bakers in Vermont have come remarkably close, at least enough to induce a Berger craving. I've very tempted to rush home, whip up some batter, form the cookies, bake them, mix up some ganache, wait for the...

Screw it - I'm just going to the store. :)