Category Archives: food

The Horror: Steak Pops

This gal thought it would be a good idea to make steak pops. You know, like cake pops. But with steaks. “How about a Meaty / Manly take on the famous Cake Pops?  I’m more of a meat person than a cake person, so I really love this treat.” All the images are from the Instructables page linked to above, showing how to create this…dare I say it, abomination.

So she turned this…

Into this…

This guy’s surely embarrassed of his hairy chest right now.

At the cost of this…

My friends, go and cook a steak now. Create some beauty in a world that destroys it.

James Bond’s Favorite Eggs

I hung out yesterday with a friend who is very enthusiastic about chickens. He has many chickens at his home, and as he sat in the garden drinking beer with me, I could tell from the way he watched my four chickens that he loved them.

He is trying to raise a bunch of Marans chickens, a French breed which it is illegal to bring into the U.S. He bought twenty chicks in Georgia, which, disappointingly, is quite legal. I guess once the chickens are here there’s no problem. This disappointed me greatly because I’d thought for a moment that I knew a chicken smuggler.

Anyway, Marans lay a dark chocolate-colored egg which is said to be super-duper delicious. My friend told me that his experience was “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure they’re good, but an egg’s an egg…wait…these are amazingly delicious!” This from someone who’s very used to the eggs of free range chickens; the Marans eggs were that outstanding. I’m really looking forward to trying some when his chickens are grown.

This friend also mentioned that Marans are James Bond’s favorite eggs. Ian Fleming loved egg dishes, and he gave James Bond a voracious appetite for eggs, particularly scrambled eggs. Here is a recipe for the Bond eggs, which has much molten butter whisked in, and was included in Ian Fleming’s short story Thrilling Cities.

From wikipedia:

When in England and not on a mission, Bond dines as simply as Fleming did on dishes such as grilled sole, oeufs en cocotte and cold roast beef with potato salad. When on a mission, however, Bond eats more extravagantly. This was partly because in 1953, when Casino Royale was published, many items of food were still rationed, and Bond was “the ideal antidote to Britain’s postwar austerity, rationing and the looming premonition of lost power”. This extravagance was more noteworthy with his contemporary readers for Bond eating exotic, local foods when abroad, at a time when most of his readership did not travel abroad.

On 1 April 1958 Fleming wrote to The Manchester Guardian in defence of his work, referring to that paper’s review of Dr. No. Whilst referring to Bond’s food and wine consumption as “gimmickery”, Fleming bemoaned that “it has become an unfortunate trade-mark. I myself abhor Wine-and-Foodmanship. My own favourite food is scrambled eggs.” Fleming was so keen on scrambled eggs that he used his short story, “007 in New York” to provide his favourite recipe for the dish: in the story, this came from the housekeeper of his friend Ivar Bryce, May, who gave her name to Bond’s own housekeeper.

Scrambled eggs are, by the way, delicious for dinner. In this iconic Ron Swanson clip (the “Turf n’ Turf), the right to consume a t-bone, a porterhouse, a whiskey, and a cigar at the same time is heralded as quintessentially American. It might be. It is certainly quintessentially testosteroney. But what remains unmentioned by Swanson is the generous serving of scrambled eggs next to the steaks. Fleming and Bond would have been proud.

Review of Greenville’s The Owl Restaurant

A word that I have not used in a good long while is “twee”. Twee bird. To-whit-to-woo-to-whee!

I stopped by The Owl restaurant on Wade Hampton in Greenville a few days ago, and it was enjoyable, if a bit precious. I went by myself, swinging by on a whim. Afterwards, when I described my experience to the wife, we agreed that we’d have to stop by together to see if the place can deliver on some of its great promise.

The restaurant opened recently, and as a place was not yet very comfortable. I popped in just after they opened that day, intending only to have a couple of beers. This put the place at a disadvantage, which I readily acknowledge. The scene at The Owl could very well be swinging at dinner time, but the lack of people there when I was in emphasized the spartan decor and overly precise layout. The space also felt half-finished, although to be fair Grumpy Kitty says that the location was an absolute sleazy wreck before The Owl took over. The building was clearly still a work in progress. The deck out back had holes in it, but one of the owners mentioned her plans to repair it, and when she does, it will be a sweet little hangout.

The best aspect of the layout is the Waffle House kitchen setup. By that I mean that you can see the kitchen. I love that. And not just see it through a glass darkly, the way you can through some big diner window. I mean face to face, Waffle House style. You see everything, en plein air, freeballing. Kudos to The Owl for doing that. Between the freeballing kitchen and the plenitude of windows, there’s a lot of potential for the ambiance.

I took a seat at the bar, which was a little primitive (a good thing) and featured space-age collapsing hydraulic bar stools (a bad thing). My 300 pounds surely pushed through the weight limit for the stools, but I feel like any man of substance would have dropped uncomfortably low in those things. There were no taps, but the beer and liquor selection was excellent.

I didn’t order any liquor or cocktails, but I could see that they fresh-squeeze their juice for individual drinks. They also had several fun and funky selections besides the tried-and-true standbys. Not least amongst those selections is stuff from Dark Corner Distillery, “South Carolina’s first legal moonshine distillery”.

There are a few little things they do that I thought very cool. The food menu had seven items, plus a chef’s special. Water is served in big shareable glass bottles. The bill is paid instantaneously on the waiter’s iPad (yes, I’m easily impressed here in the Upstate of South Kackalacky). So there’s little paper, no plastic.

I enjoyed three beers and chatted up the bartender and one of the owners (the wife in a husband-wife team). I had planned on having only beers, but the menu interested me, so I ordered a root salad appetizer sort of thing that was up on the special board.

I was very disappointed.

The salad consisted of two baby carrots, a quarter of a turnip, and half a (very) small beet. It was dressed very lightly, as I had requested, and sprinkled with goat cheese and “soil”, which I believe was ground brown bread (pumpernickel?) and seeds. It was very prettily arranged, and my photo does no justice to it, as I’d already begun to eat, and I have a terrible phone.I know saying “very disappointed” in a review is harsh, but I can’t get around it. The salad straight up offended me. It was tasty, don’t get me wrong. And I have no complaints about getting my money’s worth. I payed $5.50 for a snack, which is about right. My problem was that the salad was so miniscule, it ought not to have even existed. Two baby carrots, a quarter of a turnip, and half a (very) small beet. I would have gladly payed double for double the food.

I had been eagerly awaiting the locally sourced salad, so my disappointment was magnified when the it arrived, delicious but offensively tiny. It was like being at a Subway where the girl thinks I ordered a salad because I’m on a diet when really I just like salad, but times one hundred.

One of the strengths of much of the locally sourced, slow food, organic, etcetera etcetera movement is the combination of sophistication with heartiness. I am strongly biased toward heartiness, as all who know me know. Alas that my experience was not hearty. Perhaps if I ordered a full-on dinner it would be.

Undeniably, though, both atmosphere and food have promise, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

And perhaps I’ll come at dinner time, which would be more fair.

Love The Creamy

Creamy can mean a lot of things. Texture, mouthfeel, viscosity, color, smoothness…

These things are, in their own ways, perfectly creamy.

Scrambled eggs.

Milkshakes.

Avocados.

Camembert.

Caramel.

A woman’s skin.

My Wife’s No Sweet-Pea, She’s Champion of England

I was flipping through the pages of Hobby Farm Home magazine when I came upon an article concerning the cultivation of garden plants that are described as both beautiful and good for eating. And I thought, huh, that’s exactly how I’d describe my wife.

First off, let’s establish that my wife is no sweet pea. The sweet pea is tall, and its flowers are exceptionally beautiful, but its fruit is not edible. In fact, it can be toxic if ingested in quantity. Which is like a lot of women, although not mine. And according to wikipedia, “symptoms of toxicity were portrayed by the character ‘alex supertramp’ in the movie ‘Into the Wild’.” There you go, wikipedia says that sweet peas are the super tramps of the garden world. All the gourds and pumpkins gossip about the sweet pea when it does the walk of shame on Saturday morning.

When I think about wanting a wife, I want to think about more than just flowers that are pretty to look at. Yeah, I want that, but if I can’t eat the fruit, I think I’ll be staying away. I want something with pure white flowers, hardy under difficult conditions, with big pods that can fill your mouth.

It's got big pods, too.

I want a Champion of England.

Sure, it’s kind of an old-school sort of breed, but it’s only fallen out of favor because farmers can’t machine-harvest climbing vines. I’m a one garden kind of man. I want a plant that will make excellent use of the garden I can give it, and a climbing vine will give the most fruit in a small space. I just have to be willing to carefully pick everything by hand.

And yes, it’s a little temperamental when you first plant it. You have to make sure that the seeds don’t rot, which they’re prone to do. This can come from overwatering. Of course, if you neglect the plant early on, you’ll get very little fruit at all, even if it survives. Finding the balance is key; and putting your pea in a little compost never hurt. It’ll need plenty of moisture to germinate, but with the right skill and luck, you’ll get all the moisture you need.

Any climbing pea is a joy to the gardener not only because of its fruit and flowers, but because of its effect on the heartier parts of the garden. Feel free to plant your carrot and potatoes right under the pea bush, peas help provide the nitrogen that will make your tubers virile and strong.

Your carrot and potatoes.

The peas of the Champion of England are tasty both when younger and when mature, but the mature peas are definitely sweeter. Immature peas will require more careful preparation before eating, but the mature peas will pop beautifully in your mouth with only the slightest pressure from your tongue. Either way, you will be sure to think all the work you put into cultivating your Champion of England well worth all the hard work.

If you don’t yet have a pea plant, I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, I sure would like to get hold of a Champion of England.” I’m sure you would. Unfortunately, they are extremely difficult to obtain. Many folks complain that although they’ve searched high and low, they can find no one who sells Champions of England. They’ve become extremely rare. In 2010 this catalogue said they had seeds, but also said that the plant is nearly extinct. The Champion of England is a rare jewel.

But don’t lose hope. If you can’t find a Champion of England, there are many other excellent varieties of climbing pea out there. Just remember that if you want a pea like my wife, beautiful with flowers in the spring and heavy with fruit even into the winter, you’ll have to put in plenty of work. But it’s work well worth it, rewarding both the eyes and the tongue.

How To Make Your Own Pepper Sauce

This is a guest post from Paul Griffin, a chef in Charleston, South Carolina. This post came about in response to a recent post I had about Tabasco; it turns out Paul actually makes his own Tabasco-style sauce.

Note from Paul: This recipe is adapted from Linda Zeidrich’s “The Joy of Pickling”, which is a fantastic book that I recommend constantly to people who are interested in fermented foods, canning, and/or pickling.

This may look a bit daunting, but it’s actually quite simple. The most difficult work you will do is cutting the tops off of your peppers and halving them. So no excuses, alright?.

All you need to do this is:

Peppers. I usually use red (i.e. ripe) jalapenos, preferably from a local farm. Remember, the better the raw product, the better the end product, so get the best peppers you can find.

Pickling salt. It’s very fine so you don’t generally have to boil your brine to get it to dissolve. Don’t substitute table salt or kosher salt because they have different weights for the same volume, your ratio will be off. Also, if you use table salt, you’ll be adding iodine to your brine, which you don’t want. Furthermore, you’ll have a box of pickling salt sitting around, which might be an extra encouragement to get you into doing some canning and pickling!

Water. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.

A container (I use a pitcher for large batches) that can hold all of the peppers with some room to spare.

A large ziploc type bag that will reach to the sides of your container. With a 1 gallon pitcher, I find that a gallon-size bag is perfect.

Stem and halve, but do not seed, the peppers. Put them into the container. Make your brine with a ratio of 2.5 Tbsp pickling salt to 1 quart of water. The salt should dissolve with some vigorous stirring. You’ll want appx. 1 quart of brine for each pound of peppers. Pour just enough brine into the container to completely cover the peppers, which should be about half of your brine. Push the empty ziploc  bag into the container and fill it with the remaining brine. This will act as a weight to keep the peppers submerged, as well as keeping the surface of the brine from contacting air (yeast will grow on the surface if it is kept in contact with air, which is not what you want). Furthermore, should the bag become punctured, it is full of brine and will not alter the ratio of salt to water in the container.

Label the container with the date and leave it at room temperature. I just leave mine on the kitchen counter.

The next day, make sure the brine is still covering the peppers and add more if necessary (sometimes they can absorb enough brine to swell over the top of the brine).

The brine will probably get a bit cloudy in the next few days, but this is not a problem. What is a (minor) problem is if a scum develops in the jar. This generally means that yeast is growing in your brine. You can check for this by picking up the brine bag and running your finger along the bottom of it. If it feels slimy, rinse it thoroughly with hot water, wiping off all of the scum, and skim any scum off of the surface of the brine in your container with a spoon or small ladle, then replace the bag.

After 3 weeks on the counter, start tasting your peppers (carefully if you used hot peppers. They might be fermented, but they’re still hot) and brine. They should be mildly sour. I like the acidity of a really sour sauce, so I usually let mine sit for 4-5 weeks. Once the peppers are as sour as you’d like, strain the brine into a non-reactive (i.e. stainless steel) pan, boil it, skimming any scum (it generally looks like foam) that develops, then cool it completely. You can just pour the brine over the peppers and store them in the fridge at this point, but I like to make hot sauce, so I put the peppers and brine (use less or more brine, depending on how thin you want your sauce. Remember that you can always add more brine if it’s too thick, but you can’t take it out if it’s too thin) into the blender and puree them for a good minute or two.

Strain the puree through a fine mesh or cheesecloth into a bowl. You’ll want to use a spoon or spatula to really push through as much liquid as you can. You’ll have really tasty tabasco-style hot sauce (albeit not aged for three years in a barrel) in the bowl and some spicy hot chile paste in your strainer. I usually put some of the sauce into a cruet and the rest into a mason jar and keep both in the fridge, where it will be good for months and months (but you’ll probably consume it all long before that). Note that after a few hours of sitting, the sauce will separate. This is normal, just shake the bottle before you use the sauce. Most commercial hot sauces use a bit of xantham gum to prevent this separation, but you’ll enjoy the shaking because it will remind you that you made this sauce yourself.

For the paste, you can just use it as is, but if you want to go the extra mile, mince as much garlic as you think you’d like, and mix it in with the paste for an outstanding chile paste that is much hotter than the sauce, due to consisting mostly of the seeds and rib flesh, which is where most of the capsaicin resides in a pepper.

Once you feel you’ve mastered the basic technique, you can start experimenting with adding other ingredients to your recipe. Garlic and onions are obvious candidates. Some people like to add allspice and peppercorns. I have even seen people add charcoal, just to get extra smoky flavor.

Use your imagination, and enjoy!

For My Love Tabasco Has Rewarded Me

Tabasco is one of those companies, like Guinness, that has the sort of history and ethic that I am proud to give my patronage to. Obviously, I wouldn’t use it if I didn’t like it, but I do like it, and it only helps that the company is awesome. There’s a pretty solid history of the company over at wikipedia.

I love that Tabasco has icon status across the country and around much of the world without doing all the things we are told is necessary to become an icon. Starbucks recently streamlined their logo because they thought it a vital part of taking the step from being a very successful company to a “global brand”. People have to be able to glance and recognize the fruits of our marketing: Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks! Massive marketing campaigns, streamlined visual profile, get that recognition and loyalty!

Or you could just make an amazing product, maintain its integrity, manage your resources well, and expand with care. Starbucks went through a huge expansion a few years ago, trying to generate that revenue for its shareholders, and they overextended themselves. Closed a ton of stores. Got some people fired.

Not streamlined. Highly recognizable.

Tabasco has had trouble of its own, and big growth of its own, but like Guinness, its expansion has been controlled by the family (I believe that in Tabasco’s case all the stock is owned by the family, or inherited from it), and the integrity of the brand and product maintained. They don’t bring trouble on themselves. No existential crises about staying true to their core values, or wondering whether they’re diluting the brand by being more like McDonald’s, or whatever the dilution might be.

Their core value is being a family that sells hot sauce. And there can’t be any dilution when we’re talking hot sauce!

Beer is to be made with water, barley, hops, and yeast. That is all. You may choose to enjoy a gimmicky addition or process occasionally (a lambic, some coffee added), but you very rightly resent beer makers who try to pass off unnoticed substitute ingredients…rice or corn syrup being chief among those.

And so it must be with hot sauce. There is not a sacred quadrivium as there is in beer, but please, no oil, no water, no tomatoes, no sugar. What is more pure and holy in the hot sauce world than Tabasco? Tabasco peppers, vinegar, salt. Aged in white oak barrels for a couple of years. No overweening ambition, just simple perfection. Light mouthfeel, simple and beautiful flavor profile.

Boys and girls, I am now the proud owner of a gallon jug of Tabasco Pepper Sauce. I participated in a Facebook thang called Tabasco Nation, which I didn’t tell anyone about because I didn’t want Tabasco to run out of the grand prize, that magnificent glass gallon jug. But now that the prize is safely in my hands I feel that my fears were silly, and that you still have time to get one for yourself. Especially since a lot of the “points” you earn toward prizes can be earned all at once. As soon as you join you can do the activities from weeks past and rack up some points pretty quickly

Remember that I'm 6'9" and can easily palm a basketball. This thing is huge.

One of the features of Tabasco Nation was the “Drop Counter”, in which we were asked to record the number of drops we consumed each day. Attention Tabasco Marketing Department, please note: even though there was no extra reward for using more Tabasco sauce, my consumption dramatically increased when I started reporting my “drops” per day. Cleverly done, Tabasco. Cleverly done.

After my second prize, a bottle of “Family Edition” made from hyper-aged peppers, arrived at the house, I started getting very very excited about the prospect of winning the big kahuna, and the kids picked up on it. One of the kids wanted to know how much “passion” I had to show for Tabasco in order to win this prize. I told him that I didn’t have to show any passion at all, really…but I added that I have a ton of passion for it anyway.

I like lots of hot sauces. You can find me a hotter, I’ll enjoy it. You can find me a fuller-flavored one, I’ll dig it. You can find me a sharper one, I’ll relish it.

You won’t find a more perfect one.

Here’s the video on receiving the jug for my YouTube channel. You can watch it on YouTube instead of here if you wish to read the comments and see how excited for me the regular viewers were.

Jam Color Spectrum

Sad little note: wordpress didn’t let me link to the photo sources in the captions. alpineberry, Crunchy Catholic Momma, The Hungerstruck.

Noticed something new about myself, and I don’t know exactly what brought the whole conclusion together, although I do know what the catalyst was.

I was happily chewing on a slice of my daughter’s bread, which was slathered in soft butter and a thick layer of apricot jam. Unable to contain myself, I exclaimed “Wow! I sure love apricot jam!” (And yes, I sounded as if I were trapped in a 50s sitcom.) My wife laughed and said “I know!” She knows, does she? And then I realized that for the past several years most of the jams in our pantry have been peach and apricot, my favorites! She just made it happen, asi no mas! Good wifeing that. Excellent, really, Sweet quiet competence and consideration is what I’m talking about.

I got to thinking about jams. The strawberry jam wifey has been known to make. The blackberry and boysenberry jams my in-laws bring back from Montana and put in our Christmas stockings. And all that peach and apricot! And it was then that I realized the following.

Apricot jam...pass the toast! (alpineberry)

I love all orange-colored jams. I love apricot. I love peach. I love mango. I love peach-mango. I love guava (and yes, the Smucker’s version is orange). I love pinapple and apricot-pineapple and marmalade and peach-mango-habanero.

I like well enough some of the darker jams. The ones of darker hue but livelier shades: blueberry, Concord grape, strawberry.

But there are a few jams that trouble me. Jams that I had always steered clear of, subconsciously, not even admitting to myself until a few years ago that I don’t like raspberry jam. That’s the worst of the lot, but I also avoid blackberry and boysenberry as well.

I do not like blackberry jams. I do not like them, Sam I Am. (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

I have decided that the color of the fruit and jam must reflect the liveliness of the flavor. And I’m sticking to that, like a blackberry seed sticks to that little space between your teeth. The brighter the color, the brighter the zing, the more fun it is to mix with sugar.

And so I am surprised to discover my preference for Mediterranean and tropical flavors carries over even into jam, the very concept of which I didn’t get excited about until we moved from Brazil to Canada in my youth and I discovered the glories of the blueberry. This personal revelation (which I know you care deeply about) regarding flavor palettes was brought about by a realization concerning color palettes: “Huh, my favorite jams are all orange-colored.”

Can anything redeem the rich, dull, heavy jams of the frozen north? Yea, verily. The same way sour milk and bitter greens redeem the general cuisine. Bring forth the sour cherry jam and the currant preserves!

Let bitterness redeem these sweet times! (The HungerStruck)

Searching In The Right Places

Someone found this site by searching for “free cartoon images of brussels sprouts”. I love that. Because I love brussels sprouts.

Remember, it’s not the Book of Revelations, it’s just one Revelation. To St. John. The Book of Revelation. Or even better, the Revelation of St. John. And it’s not brussel sprouts. It’s brussels sprouts.

As in, “No, thank you, m’am. I believe I’ll only have one more brussels sprout.”

You think I don’t hear you saying it wrong, but I do.