Quick Winter Hit

It’s cold. Deb is making soup. I’m staying inside, menu planning with my crock pot and blogging while it sits happily, with no other purpose than to feed me.

I’m making “gumbo” (I have no shrimp, so it gets air quotes) today, then I’m going to make a big pot of chili tomorrow. I also think I’ll make black bean hummus (since I soaked beans in it last week). Sorry, I did not mean for this to be a crock pot blog.

I also have lots of high carbon footprint fruit, since I was feeling a bit of scurvy the other day. Apples? Strawberries? Clementines? Sure, why not. I’ll become a locavore NEXT year.

What’s keeping your house warm while you burrow deeper into the couch?

 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Crockpot

I know what you’re thinking, if you’re reading this at all. They go away with no notice, and they come back with this? Hey man, the internet’s free. You don’t like our content creation schedule, you can go read one of a million other food blogs.

Unless you know us. Then you’re trapped.

So shortly before the holidays, I acquired a slow-cooker. It is a beast of a thing – not the twelve-inch footprint with the country kitchen style I remember from my youth, but this bad boy, in the five quart model.

Look at this thing!

Acquiring the device has made me think a bit, not so similar to Hillary’s slow-cooker musing on the nature of aging, but more about the types of things one would cook in it.

I made chili. That wasn’t hard. (Though I did learn that you really want to sear your meat before having it sit for 6 hours.)

I made a Cajun-inspired chicken stew. It warmed me up.

But then I realized I had only used the massive appliance on Sundays. Sundays when I was home, watching football, able to spring to the rescue if the DeLonghi masterminds had accidentally installed a fuse that didn’t agree with the 70s era electrical in my apartment. It was time to let something cook all day.

So I made a Moroccan inspired chicken, chickpea, and tomato stew. I made up a recipe after some googling, both for the stew and some Ras al-Hanout. I seared the chicken, thickened the sauce (I did learn from those early experiences), threw everything in the pot and stuck it in the refrigerator. Then, the next morning before work, I put it on low, and … I went to work.

I even worked late that night! And you know what? The house didn’t burn down! (This is a real concern of mine.) Perhaps I can work full days and still feed myself healthy meals with more than one food group represented. Hillary, you were right. Surprisingly, this thing does make you more mature!

why I will never hire a bartender for a house party

 

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Hillary-silence for this rant on yet another fake-trend NYT article. (Lest you think I exaggerate, check out Slate’s series on these.)

I’m not sure why this article on how hiring a bartender for your parties is a sign of being a grown-up hit so close to home, although I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that all graduate students live as though they’re perpetually nineteen. (Present company included.) It did irritate me enough, however, that I feel compelled to list all the reasons why it is a stupid idea to a) do this and b) use it as some sort of maturity barometer.

1) Mixing your own drinks is fun and gives you street cred

2) Bartenders are really effing expensive and you can probably bribe a friend to do it for a pan of brownies

3) Actual quote from the article:

“In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.”

“If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”

I’m never going to be able to afford to be a real adult with my own apartment, anyway, but if I ever get there, I’m going to have a party and mix all the damn drinks myself.

 

Master Class

I might be the only person who understands the title reference – Master Class is a movie based on a play about a fictionalized master class, where trained opera singers would sing and get critiqued by, well, masters. In the movie/play, the diva teacher is Maria Callas. She does not take kindly to the young singers in training.

The cooking class/demonstration I attended tonight was absolutely NOTHING like that. It was held by my all-time favorite Top Chef, Carla Hall.

Amazing chef and teacher

The demo was just rocking. Carla, if possible, has more personality in real life than she did on TV. She is super tall and poised and has more presence than anyone I’ve ever seen before. But she was personable and down-to-earth. She talked to everyone, and made each of us feel super special just for being near her.  Although she doesn’t drink, she had her business partner do wine pairings for each of the (delicious) courses and he was super knowledgeable and the wines were great.

And the food? I’m surprised she gave us the recipes. She made a delicious roasted pumpkin soup (I’ll be making it), a mushroom lasagna (I and a friend who I went with hate mushrooms and we basically licked our plates), braised pork belly with wilted collards and brussels sprouts leaves (I would make those greens this moment if I had collards in my fridge, that’s how good they are), and banana pudding. Which I love. And she gave me a second tasting portion. (Thanks to Twitter. Boo on everyone who ever said social media wasn’t good for the world!)

But aside from being delicious, the food was accessible. She was great about sharing what mistakes she’d made, what ingredients we could sub, how we could make these recipes on our own. We walked into the room as Carla fans, we left full, happy, and in love.

Also, Top Chef All-Stars starts tomorrow night on Bravo. I know who I’m rooting for!

HOOTIE HOO!!

Happy Thanksgiving from Sturgeon HQ

Hi all!

Thanks for all your reading especially as we’ve all been too swamped to post lately. Whether you’re making homemade boozy cranberry sauce or Daniel Chang’s Crack Pie (which I’ll post about after we eat it), may your Thanksgiving be delicious and heartwarming.

an age of electricity

So I have to admit, I haven’t written a lot recently. But I have somewhat of an excuse: I moved a couple weekends ago, and my new kitchen has *gasp* AN ELECTRIC RANGE.

All I know is, I don’t know how to cook on it properly, if I ever did. Things heat differently and to date unpredictably, and the science I halfway remember suggests to me that there’s some kind of conduction thing going on between the stove coil and the underside of the pan that doesn’t happen with a gas flame. So, while I’ve written about kitchen fail before, there’s the kind where you learn something for next time, and then there’s the kind where you just are kind of flummoxed and need to calm down a little bit and get in a few more trials before you can expect one without an error at the end.

So I haven’t stopped cooking, but right now it’s nothing to write home about.

A Halloween Quick Hit

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Enjoy that one day a year when even foodies are allowed to admit their love for the corn-syrup laden, cheap chocolate formed brilliance of Kit Kats and Milky Ways. Or my favorites, Reese’s.

And in the original spirit of the holiday, here’s something really scary… American closed-mindedness to the outside world and its customs and foodways.

A Houston-based food writer decided to see what we thought of foreign diets and what people in those countries said they eat often, and compared the two. It’s mostly frightening.

Wonderful use of the Venn Diagram, I must say.

Vegan for A Weekend

Hillary is many things I am not and cannot be. She is an honorary Kentucky colonel, to the best of my knowledge, and a graduate student. After this weekend, I also realized she is a far superior temporary vegan than I ever will be.

I had an old friend in for the weekend from New York, and she’s a committed vegan, so I thought I’d try out the meatless-cheeseless-eggless routine on my own. Here’s the meal-by-meal:



Friday dinner:

• “Appetizer” 3 chicken wings, 2 Miller Lites (The Bottom Line’s Friday countdown was calling me)
• Actual dinner at Cafe Green
  • Chili “cheese” “fries” – they were more like roasted potatoes with good chili and some vaguely cheese-inspired sauce (pretty tasty)
  • “Paella” – basically rice and veggie stir-fry in a tomato-based sauce
  • My friend had the Macaroni and “cheese” with cornbread (crumbly), candied yams (too sweet) and kale (really good, but it’s in season) – the mac and cheese had the same sauce as the fries, pretty good

Saturday brunch at Sticky Fingers:

• I had pancakes with tofu scramble and homefries – the pancakes were good, the real maple syrup got points, the tofu scramble was over-seasoned with tumeric
• My friend had the French Toast, which was tasty, but too sweet for my taste (I prefer to salt it)
• Aaron had the breakfast burrito, which threw the home fries, tofu scramble, veggies, and beans and salsa into a wrap – I think he won.
• Oh, and the sticky bun my friend and I had after our adventures was pretty darn good too.

Saturday dinner at Satay Club:

• Aaron and I shared the Peking Duck and the Satay Club rice (by this point I realized I failed at the vegan thing…)
• My friend had the tofu in thai sauce with vegetables that was phenomenal.
• We also shared the sauteed string beans with the table.

Sunday brunch from the Tenleytown Whole Foods:

• 2 regular muffins, 1 vegan scone
• Fruit salad made from pineapple, honeycrisp apples, and other stuff we had lying around the house
• Midnight Moon (one of my favorite cheeses, on sale at Whole Foods!)

So long story short, I can’t do the vegan thing. I could definitely manage vegetarian for a while (and have cut back on meat a lot recently), but I think it’s the protein, or the lack of butter and cheese. And chicken wings, peking duck, etc. etc.

But that was a pretty good vegan sticky bun…

Sam vs Several More Prominent Food Writers on Chicago

So I was in Chicago a month ago, more or less, and have been planning to do some kind of follow-up / rundown / food journal throughout the intervening time. And a month is a long enough intervening time that even my mom was like, “So why haven’t you posted about it yet?” Well, I have to say that I’ve ended up stumbling across several pieces from other blogs that shed some interesting light on my week there, and I thought it would be useful to put excerpts up alongside my thoughts.

First up: Roger Ebert on Steak ‘n Shake.

If you haven’t read his whole piece yet, please, that’s why they invented tabbed browsing. It’s hard for me to describe exactly why I find his writing so resonant, but I think it has something to do with the appreciation for detail:

The motto of Steak ‘n Shake is “In Sight It Must be Right.” No comma. This achieves the perfection of a haiku. There is no skullduggery going on in the back room. Take a seat at the counter, and everything is happening before your very eyes. Acolytes in ecclesiastical black and white, bow ties and little paper soldier caps, perform at altars of the griddle, the condiments, the “sides.”

The writing takes the things that everyone who has ever eaten at a Steak ‘n Shake has experienced and makes them personal. This is writing about his Steak ‘n Shake (and, as he notes, David Letterman’s), and he says, “I do not expect to convert you.”

Well, in the true-belonging-memory-ownership sense, I wasn’t converted, nor could I be. But while I was in Chicago, we did make sure to go on a pilgrimage up to Evanston for some steakburgers. I had a Wisconsin Butterburger and a health bar shake, both of which were definitely enjoyable. And having read Mr. Ebert’s account of it before going primed us to notice the distinctiveness of the restaurant, in a way that normally requires regular visits over an extended period of time (don’t get me started on Chipotle’s visit-to-visit variations in flavor). Getting some background on Steak ‘n Shake’s respect for its tradition — and original menu — also lent our meal  a tasty sort of authenticity.

Next: Hot Doug’s vs Francis Lam on Wiener’s Circle

Lesson one is clearly that, in order to run a successful hot dog-selling enterprise larger than a cart, you have to have a pun prepared. (let’s not forget Denver’s (and, according to google, several other cities’ non-related) Mustard’s Last Stand)

Lesson two is that iconic city-associated-food restaurants can vary wildly, and must be chosen with caution. This is because, in case you didn’t read Lam’s piece, he ended up having an awful time at a place restaurant that specializes in them, while my meal at Hot Doug’s comes with my recommendation, qualified only by the need to get there early to avoid waiting in line too long.

By Lam’s account, Wiener’s Circle (when filled with post-bar drunks) becomes “a face-twisting orgy of aggression” filled with “a chorus of curses and racial epithets.” When I walked passed it on my way downtown, my friend pointed it out and observed that it was both famous and not worth it. Combine epithets with long lines, and really, what hot dog would be worth it?

Hot Doug’s is somehow completely, totally different, possibly created by the universe to balance out the negative energies of WC. It’s clean and sunny inside. The menu offers the iconic Chicago dog (including day-glo green relish), but also extends to other classic sausages and, indeed, a regularly-changing list of variations (e.g. the current Beef Hot Link with Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce) and game meats. Their motto?

“There are no two finer words in the English language than ‘Encased Meats,’ my friend.”

They have duck-fat fries on Fridays and Saturdays. Four types of mustard. Almost everything is named after someone.

Most importantly, though, the restaurant is designed to be a great place to sit and eat (once you’re done standing in line, which I assume they disavow as soon as it extends out the door). Doug himself mans the register, and I have never seen anyone man a register with that great an attitude. When you’re indecisive, he’s happy to offer suggestions, but not in a snappy/impatient way. When you need to place a special order, they are accommodating — my friend got extra sausages to-go for a lazy significant other, which Hot Doug’s arranged to be made just as we were on our way out so they’d be as fresh as possible. Doug stands there at his counter like a life-lesson on how to remain laid-back in the face of a stressful situation (an unending stream of customers from open to close) or maybe just how to defuse people who walk into a place all wired up on nervous expectation.

I had a thuringer (the Marty Allen) and a veal-and-pork weisswurt with goat cheese. Both were superb. We got a couple orders of duck-fat fries for the table, which were delightful and generous to a fault with the portions. Picking just two of the twenty-ish menu items, though, was almost painful, and I wish I could go back again and again til I get through the whole menu.

As we left, I realized that Hot Doug’s greatness is as a planned system. Doug, working the register, gets to be friendly and take his time with every customer because it’s a small restaurant with maybe three guys working in a small (open) kitchen. By limiting the rate of orders, the grill can turn tickets around almost immediately, and as a bonus, tables turn over at about the same pace as new groups are trying to sit down. During our whole waiting in line + eating experience, I saw one group standing because there were no open tables for about three minutes, not even long enough for their food to be ready. All of the tasks have been scaled just-so, which would be an achievement even if it weren’t coupled with hot good their encased meats are.

We went on Saturday morning for brunch, allowing us to get the duck-fat fries AND to get in line before it opened, so the wait wasn’t completely ridiculous. A definite win.

And: Buffet-eating tactics with Milkmiracle

I may have mentioned before that I am an heir to several generations’ wisdom as to how to eat at a buffet. The primary objective is, of course, to maximize value, even at the expense of eating what you most enjoy. Thus: maxims like “no fried foods until you’ve finished at least two plates of The Expensive Stuff.” So when I recently received a link to Anirban’s tips on Indian (/Pakistani / Bangladeshi) buffet-eating, I knew it was going to have to get linked here. And, while I was in Chicago, we did stop for a midafternoon snack at the sort of Indian restaurant with a lunch buffet, so I figure that’s close enough.

While there is a lot of common ground between what my approach and that of Milkmiracle, there are a few discrepancies. We would both advise against ordering expensive drinks off the menu, I was taught that more than one glass of water is appetite-suppressing and must be avoided (even if consumed an hour or more before the meal). And though both of us advocate skipping cheap-to-make foods, Milkmiracle also encourages the diner to skip picking the bones clean of meat, which is, for me, a Never Event. The goal is to maximize your value, not rip off the restaurant by wasting food, and I remain stonily unimpressed by the person who reports eating 40 hot wings but who left all sorts of bits on the ends of drumsticks and between wingbones. That’s the meat equivalent of 25, 30 wings, tops.

Wearing it on your sleeve (or chest, whatever)

Usually, when I wear food, it’s not on purpose. And a major reason my wardrobe leans toward the darker colors and the easily machine-washable fabrics.

But this past weekend at the City Paper’s Crafty Bastards fair, I saw a shirt with a message I could endorse even more wholeheartedly than my last foray into combining my food preferences and fashion.

Is there a food you love enough to wear?

It’s the perfect combination! It might not be fancy, but it’s sure cuter than a shirt with foie gras and caviar, no?