Read:My:Back

Attack of the Brussels Sprouts!

Maybe this is a familiar sight for those wealthy enough to shop regularly at Whole Foods, but on-the-stalk Brussels sprouts are an all new experience for modest-spending moi. Thanks to the economy, boutique grocery excursions are strictly limited to Trader Joe's (where this particular beastie was acquired.)

To be fair, the eerie overhead light in this photo makes the innocent vegetable look more like a prop from one of the Alien movies than it does in real life. The cat was accordingly terrified when I set this in front of her— she swatted at it once, startled herself, and then beat a hasty retreat to her outpost under the sofa. Granted, she's a small kitty, and this bulbous beauty is nearly twice her length, so maybe she was just feeling temporarily outgunned. But more importantly, Brussels sprouts taste heavenly when sauteed with some bacon and a little bit of chicken broth. Or for an autumnal twist, grate 'em against your mandoline and stir fry with olive oil, cranberries, and walnuts. 

That my taste buds did not come to appreciate such velvety flavors until I was well into adulthood is among the first 100 grievances I shall air in the afterlife. Savory trumps sweet once again!

Unintentional Food Hilarity

While perusing a well-known spice catalog that came in the mail a while back, I was greeted by this promotional image of a customer proudly displaying her smoked paprika, Herbes de Provence, nutmeg, and—whoa!—an entire shelf of prescription meds!

At the risk of coming off as uptight, I'd like to issue my annual plea to keep the benzodiazepines out of the Christmas cookies this year.

Seriously. Thank you.

Cast Iron Factory Porn

I just spent twenty minutes of my life searching the internet for an episode of that show Unwrapped. You know, the one hosted by Marc Summers—former host of kid programs like Double Dare, and quite possibly the mildest man in America. I actually think of Unwrapped as one of the better offerings on the Food Network, if only for its often horrifying revelations pertaining to how anything from gumballs to hot dogs to pickles are manufactured and distributed. An uneasy TV cousin to both Alton Brown and that Dirty Jobs guy, I often find myself roped into episodes of Unwrapped, even if I have only a fleeting interest in whatever the subject matter is.

Then I saw the episode about how cast iron cookware is made, and it was like watching Satyricon, 2001, Fitzcarraldo, Chelsea Girl, and a Skinemax movie all at the same time. Wow!

Naturally, I'm a big cast iron fan. In any post-apocalyptic/zombie takeover/survivalist scenario, I'm sure it would be among the first things I'd scavenge for in the wreckage of our failed society. Cast iron (skillets, in particular) are incredibly useful, satisfyingly heavy, boast a hidden health benefit, and are virtually indestructible. My wife and I have a beautiful one that she found in someone's trash on Flatbush Avenue. It was in pretty bad shape, but we cleaned it up and now use it constantly. (Interestingly, while scrubbing loose some burnt-on schmutz from the underside of its cooking surface, the manufacturer's imprint was revealed for what seemed like the first time in a century. I Googled the name, and indeed, the company that made it went out of business more than 50 years ago! As such, our skillet is already well on its way to family heirloom status, even though we're not the original owners.)

Anyhow, I'd never given much thought to how cast iron was manufactured, but the episode of Unwrapped that covered it was utterly riveting, so keep an eye out for it. As a consolation, here's a dorky, but similarly informative video put together by Le Creuset that covers a lot of the same ground. (Albeit with less molten metal being splattered around and a totally unnecessary smooth jazz/trip hop musical accompaniment.) [Link]

Forking Fantastic!

Between working crazy hours and being an expectant dad, I'm probably the last guy in your Google reader who's qualified to be dishing on dinner party-themed cookbooks. My wife and I haven't properly entertained for more than one or two people in quite a while, and with the above details in mind, I can't see that changing until the little tyke can mix or stir on command. Furthermore, one of the authors of this particular book is someone I've known for fifteen years. Granted, I haven't actually seen her for the last ten of them, but I'm not the sort to pull punches when writing about the creative endeavors of pals anyway. (And I've got the ever-shrinking Christmas card list to prove it, bub.) Nevertheless, Zora O'Neill and Tamara Reynolds' new Forking Fantastic!: Put the Party back in Dinner Party is exactly the kind of food writing I'd want to be coached by on the way to an epic, in-house gathering.

You may have heard about Zora and Tamara without even knowing it, as their reputation is something of a legend in its own time. They're responsible for Astoria's fabled underground supper club, which, to have attended, earns one a special brand of cache amongst the food cognoscenti of the outer boroughs. With heavyweights like Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver counted in their fan base, these ladies are clearly not to be taken lightly or dismissed as yet more self-aggrandizing food bloggistas who somehow bullshat their way into a book deal. Zora and Tamara walk the walk, talk the talk (profanity included! just like in a real kitchen!), and could easily outgun any dinner party I've ever conjured.

Their secret? It's the food, dummy! The book has an appealing DIY aesthetic to it which wastes no time in dismissing all the crap that often weighs so heavily on the minds of potential party throwers. Suffice to say, matching cloth napkins, elaborate centerpieces, and heirloom crystal wine glasses have no place in the Forking Fantastic mindset. Put another way, if the sight of that skinny blonde woman on the Food Network who's always yabbering on about her "tablescape" makes you want to hurl a brick at the television, this book is your ticket to dinner party salvation. In it are recipes for all manner of crowd pleasing dishes from the simple to the complex, and the familiar to the utterly obscure. Best of all, the journey is loaded with tips and personal anecdotes from Zora and Tamara's own experiences in the trenches. As such, they'll tell you where it is and isn't OK to cut corners, but they'll also reveal why Led Zeppelin is perfectly acceptable dinnertime music, and why it's alright to ask a few of your guests to bring their own chairs, or to make due with drinking wine out of jelly jars... there's even a chart that breaks down why home cooking beats sex as a routine activity! It's that kind of disarming irreverence that mounts this guide as a perfect kitchen companion for creative weirdos who love cooking, especially for their friends. If you're anything like me, you'll have read Forking Fantastic cover to cover long before soiling a single skillet at its behest.

The Forking Fantastic homepage is here. Zora blogs at Roving Gastronome, and Tamara recounts the Sunday Night Dinner beeswax over at One Ass Kitchen. Both can be heard discussing the book and giggling like crazies on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by following this link.

Time-Lapse Photographs of the Winemaking Process

[Clockwise, from top left]

1. Grapes. Easy enough. Everybody put your hands together for noble rot!
2. Crushing. Isn't it crazy how much more delicious everything looks when it's oozing through the mouth of a pool hose?
3. Barrels. Made almost exclusively by superhuman European guys called coopers. If there's a better reason to slash and burn our way through the world's oldest and most majestic forests, I've yet to hear about it.
4. Bottling. The thing you've been working towards for a year. You're not planning on storing these babies in that blast furnace you call an apartment, I hope! 

Certainly, there are other steps along the way like pressing, racking, worrying, second-guessing, panicking, and labeling. Not to mention a whole lot of chemistry. There's also the physical labor, cuts, bruises, stained clothing, soaked workboots, and of course: sampling... delicious and wonderful sampling... But that would take up too much space, so you get the abbreviated version. Now the only question is whether or not we can resist the urge for an early taste before our projected uncorking date in late November. This, my friends, is a true test of self control.

Listen: Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood consider it all over a bottle of Summer Wine.

The Curious Diet of Pregnant Lady

I arrived home last night and discovered my wife finally submitting to the oft-stereotyped cravings of late-term pregnancy. On the counter were tubes of refrigerator dough, apples, butter, sugar, and rum extract. Then I glanced at the recipe she was working from and was horrified to see that it also called for a can of Mountain Dew. Gross! Fortunately, her pregnancy hasn't come at the expense of basic human decency, and she quickly assured me that the sonic-colored soda would not be figuring into her version of this baking exercise: apple dumplings with ungodly amounts of butter and sugar.

Needless to say, after the hellish day I'd had, buttery sweets that scrape the upper regions of the heart attack index were just what I was in the mood for, and these dumplings met the challenge with style. We didn't have any ice cream to serve with them, which is just as well, since even our scaled-back version caused my left arm to seize up a few times. With cardiac arrest only a few daunting mouthfuls away, I switched to red wine in a useless effort to undo the damage. Several hours later, I was still trying to brush the residual sugar out of my teeth before retiring to bed with what felt like a basketball in my stomach. I still have my doubts about cooking anything with Mountain Dew (and really, because I cannot stress this enough: we skipped that ingredient!), but even without, these apple treats were pretty damn godhead.

Listen: Bill Cosby deconstructs the apple.

Baked Apple Pancakes, or Whatever

I make the suckiest pancakes in the observable universe. I've tried Bisquick, from-scratch recipes, straight-up ordinary, with and without foreign ingredients (carrot-orange juice, anyone?), but the end result is always the same: dense and mealy bellybombs that inspire little more than an immediate return to bed.

Fortunately, there's a cheater's version which doesn't involve any advanced spatula or timing skills. The trick is to let your oven do the work instead of the stovetop. Truth be told, these are more like giant popovers than pancakes, but since they use all the same ingredients and taste good with maple syrup poured over them, I see no reason not to cast these beauties as pancakes... of a sort.

This recipe was poached from DJ Trouble and first appeared in WFMU's To Serve Man cookbook, from a couple of years ago. Her version called for pears, but they can easily be switched out for apples (as seen here.) To that end, here's what you need:

3 eggs
3/4 cups milk
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1 ripe pear or apple, thinly sliced, skin on or off as per your preference
2 tbsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 tbsp butter

1. Put a 12 inch cast iron skillet in a cold oven, and dial up 450 degrees. Let skillet and oven heat up for 15 minutes. 
2. In a medium bowl, whisk up the eggs, milk, flour, extract, and salt. In another bowl, toss the fruit with the sugar and cinnamon until evenly coated.
3. Using a cloth pothandle (hot! hot!), remove the skillet from the oven. Add the butter and swirl it around until melted and the entire bottom is coated.
4. Add the fruit to the skillet and spread it out in an even layer. Admire the wondrous scent of apples and sugar landing on hot, buttered iron.
5. Pour the batter on top, and return skillet to the hot oven. Let cook for 25-30 minutes, or until top has puffed up and is golden brown. Cut into pizza-shaped slices, and serve with syrup. Mmmm!

(In case you're wondering, hotbutterediron.com is currently available as a domain name. Have at it.)

Ethiopian Food on the Cheap

In celebration of the hopeful glimmers on the global solvency front, I did something last night which I haven't done in ages: met a friend for drinks down on Avenue C, and then continued on to dinner. That is to say, in a real restaurant—the kind I have not darkened the halls of with any frequency since the entire economy decided to set up shop at the bottom of the toilet.

We went to Awash—the downtown satellite location of the popular Ethiopian eatery up on Amsterdam and 106th Street. My lack of recent familiarity with restaurant food notwithstanding, I feel justified in referring to this place as the bomb. The people who run it are incredibly sweet, the food is ready in a jiffy, and the quality is outstanding. (And that's not just in comparison to the reviled Pakistani-Indian joints that crowd around either side of its 6th Street address.) Granted, my experience with Ethiopian food is limited, but Awash far surpasses any other I've dined on in recent memory. The injera (pancake-like bread) was outstandingly fluffy and moist, and the chicken, lamb, carrots, lentils, and collared greens we scooped up with portions of it were no less enthralling. It took considerable effort to roll ourselves back onto the street after such a gargantuan meal—one which should be noted set us back less than twenty bucks each, including a hefty tip.

The general giddiness of the evening derailed my intention of photographing the beautiful platter of food which was delivered to our table, so pictured here is a similar one, originally snapped by Flickr user Abbyladybug. (Licensed for re-use via Creative Commons.) If you happen to be passing through the East Village (I know, who does that anymore!?), Awash is a brilliant spot for a thoughtfully prepared feast. For your pre-dining pleasure, here's a track from Ethiopian sax god Getatchew Mekuria, as first heard on his amazing collaboration with the Ex. [Download MP3]

Fear Not the Slow Cooker

Why? Because it serves nobly in the creation of Irish Guinness Stew, which is delicious, if not the easiest dinner you can whip together once the weather starts turning crummy. Guinness Stew is a great example of what I like to call "garbage cooking". That's not a slur upon its content or nutritional value, but rather, a reference to the anything-goes style of ingredient gathering that precedes making it. Furthermore, the slow cooker really does most of the legwork—the human participant is much more the robot-monkey-arm in this case, since his/her primary duty is to simply dump everything into the cooker and flick the power on. After that's done with, the chef has a good 7 or 8 hours to wander away from the kitchen, take a nap, download pornography, or watch the Harry Potter movies in any desired order.

I always thought of slow-cookers as the province of 1970s housewives—those whose only method of culinary recourse was to boil an assortment of meats and vegetables into a lifeless paste, spoon the sad mixture into a serving bowl, and then string up the "Mission Accomplished" banner over the mantle. Well, maybe that was the case a long time ago, but ever since we inherited a brand new slow cooker from a friend who'd convinced herself that it would burn down her building, my tune has changed considerably. If you've got a slow cooker taking up space in your pantry which you have yet to fool around with, allow me to recommend this incredibly easy means by which to christen it. And seriously, this barely even counts as cooking. Irish Guinness Stew takes about as much effort to make as getting up at 4 AM to go take a leak does. How's that for an enticing visual to point you towards the kitchen?

Here's what you need:

1.5 - 2 pound package of cubed beef for stew.
1 bag of baby carrots
1 onion, quartered and separated
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1 or 2 potatoes. Maybe 1 potato and one yam, just for variety's sake and because Autumn started yesterday while you weren't paying attention.
1 package frozen peas
1 32 oz. container of good beef stock. I recommend the Trader Joe's brand, but College Inn works fine, too.
1 can of Guinness draught beer
1 small can of tomato paste
brown sugar
2 bay leaves
red wine
flour
butter
olive oil
salt & pepper
Worcestershire Sauce
fresh sprig rosemary
fresh sprig thyme

1. In a big skillet, heat up some olive oil with a shnick of butter. When that's hot, cook up the onion and garlic with a little bit of brown sugar (1-2 tsp). Keep the flame low, and keep stirring everything around, so the sugar doesn't burn. Cook for 5 minutes, then scrape all contents into your slow cooker.
2. In a mixing bowl, douse your cubed beef with some salt, pepper, and flour. Coat well, and then brown it all up evenly (another five minutes) in the dirty skillet you just used. (Add more olive oil, obviously, so it doesn't stick.) Just as it's finishing up, throw a splash of red wine into the hot pan and scrape off all the deliciously crusty bits that have formed. Scrape everything into the slow cooker. (Note: From here on out, the robot-monkey-arm I mentioned above takes over. Feel free to take all your clothes off, tie one arm behind your back, or recite favorite movie dialogs while you tackle the remaining steps, which are ridiculously easy.)
3. To the slow cooker, add the following: 2/3 bag of baby carrots, several splashes of Worcestershire Sauce, the beef stock, the can of Guinness, tomato paste, bay leaves, and mix well. Top with the rosemary and thyme. Cover. Dial up "low" on your slow cooker. Wash dirty skillet.
4. Five hours later, wander back into the kitchen, which by now should be smelling pretty fantastic. Dice up your potato and/or yam into small cubes. Add them to the slow cooker, along with the frozen peas, some salt and pepper to taste, and let cook for another two hours. If you're feeling anxious, you can bump the heat up to "high", but patience will yield the greatest results.
5. Boil some egg noodles, rice, quinoa, couscous, or whatever starch/grain you're feeling the most attracted to, and serve it up with steamy helpings of stew. Crack open another Guinness and celebrate your Celtic heritage, even if you don't have any. If necessary, crank up the Irish hip-hop genius of Krisma and Sinisista to enhance the fantasy.
   

P.S. I realize one can achieve the same effect by using a big stock pot with a low flame underneath it. But a live flame requires more careful attention. Not to mention that instructing you thusly would've ruined the rare opportunity to scatter leaves on my slow cooker for a backyard photo shoot.

Roasted Pork Shoulder—Supermarket Sweepstakes Gold!

It's fun to march into the kitchen and arrogantly roast up a giant slab of meat without a plan. Or a recipe, for that matter. The practice was recently re-visited when I won a seven pound pork shoulder from my local grocery store. The last thing I won from such a place was a VHS copy of the Titanic movie, which offered thrills that were fleeting at best. This was way better—I love pork and am always interested in experimenting with different methods of cooking it. On the grill, in the oven, cured, smoked... I don't care how intelligent pigs are alleged to be in comparison to other barnyard critters. If they were smart enough to organize a resistance, they'd have begun fighting back by now.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, my family dined regularly on oven roasted pork chops which were pale gray in color, dry, and utterly flavorless. Were there no sauces or marinades, you ask? Alas, such comestibles were not permitted in suburban New Jersey until the 1990s, following the integration of other exotic foods such as roasted red peppers. And Ranch dressing. It wasn't until many years later—at a friend's wedding in the deep south—that I came to appreciate pig meat's full and glorious potential. The pulled pork served at that wedding reception was so amazingly delicious, the memory of it has actually eclipsed many of the ceremony's other details. (Though not the part where I drunkenly threw a chair into a swimming pool during the peak of the afterparty. Certain friends have made it difficult for me to forget about that, regardless of my many years of effort.)

Anyway, I didn't have the foggiest notion of what I'd end up doing with an entire pork shoulder, so I took it home and threw it into the back of the freezer, where it was promptly forgotten. Then, last week, my wife came home with some hastily scrawled notes on a sheet of legal paper. This wasn't a recipe—at least not the kind that I'm used to dealing with. No, this was just a short list of spices recommended by a colleague of hers. At the bottom of the sheet were the words "oil", "oven", "300 degrees", and "don't touch for three hours".

We were ready.

To a medium mixing bowl, we added generous quantities of chopped fresh cilantro, powdered garlic, black pepper, Adobo, oregano, and Sazon con Cilantro. (It's in the Goya section.) Then we added enough vegetable oil to mix it all into a pasty rub, which was then massaged into all sides of the pork shoulder. We poked a haphazard series of slits into the roast and randomly inserted quartered cloves of garlic into them. We probably used 7-8 cloves in total, but this was a bigass hunk of meat. If you're garlic-phobic, use less.

After marinating it all day, we plopped it skin side up into the big cast-iron baking dish, dialed up a slow n' low 300 degrees on the oven, and then let all the wonderful flavors slowly melt into one another for the next 3.5 hours. Although longer cooking time would've yielded a more shreddable consistency, I could tell just by the look of it that some seriously juicy delights would soon be plated.

Lacking any knowledge of the bone structure lurking within this mighty pile of flesh, (and now being too hungry to bother with further research), I chose a side at random and began cutting. The magnificent slices that slid effortlessly from the carving knife were a sight to behold, and I'd amassed a significant pile of meat before the first appearance of bone. We plated it up with sauteed greens and rice (the latter seasoned with more of the Sazon con Cilantro, which turned it pink!) and a juicy good time was had by all. After the roast had cooled, I tore into the remains bare-handed and wound up with a big bone resembling a prop from either the Flintstones, or the first 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As of this writing, that bone is resting comfortably in the freezer, waiting for the next day that's cool enough to make broth. Or perhaps we should just get a dog.