Viewing Category: Food
I was out with some friends tonight at Denny's, after which I rather felt like I should eat something desperately healthy. So, I made a vow:
I am going to eat a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast every day for two weeks.
As challenges go, this one isn't that earth-shaking, but I'm curious to see if I notice any change at all. My working theory is that ANY mindful change at all will yield personal insights; that is, if they are really are done mindfully and contemplatively. It helps that the idea of eating oatmeal every morning seems so boring and trivia that I am half-expecting nothing significant to be yielded at all. In fact, it's almost a parody of the self-help empowerment process, which amuses me deeply. However, if I garner some kind of amazing epiphany from this exercise, I imagine that I will have to amend my model of what productivity is made of. And I will look forward to future exercises like a fortnight of watermelons and 1001 Macademian Nuts.
Any oatmeal-related facts, tips, or cautionary tales will be heartily appreciated!
It's been years since I've posted anything in the Food Category, so it is time to amend that! Yesterday was the first real snow day here in New England, so I tried roasting a duck. This duck had been in my freezer for at least a year, and I had started thawing it on Sunday with the idea of doing something exciting with it. After a bit of browsing, I came across an amazingly cheerful Boston food blog called The Hungry Mouse, which has a fabulously-detailed article on the best way to roast a duck. It's written with true passion for ducky goodness, and so I gladly followed the instructions. My duck got a little burned, but otherwise it was quite edible if dry. Check out the Flickr Photo Set if you'd like to see how the roasting went, with pictures taken at each stage.
Last Christmas, a good friend of mine surprised me an indoor electric grill. I was surprised in that Why, I never considered getting one of these way, where you're actually not sure what you're going to do with the gift. I like grilling outside and burning stuff, and the idea of doing this in my house didn't seem like quite a good idea because of two problems:
My kitchen doesn't have a good exhaust for high-heat cooking, not that my crap stove can generate the tens of thousands of BTUs I'd need to make a decent stir fry. The exhaust issue is related to the second problem:
My overly-sensitive smoke detectors, which readily go off if I even boil a lot of water. On second thought, the smoke detectors are probably just right, but it's still pretty annoying.
Because of this, I couldn't even conceive of grilling in the house. This course of action had, in the past, produced too much smoke and anxiety to be fun. So the gift, after an initial period of admiration, was left in the box unused and forgotten.
Fast forward a year, and I stumbled upon the grill again while cleaning my office. With the wisdom that advancing age must have bestowed upon me, I could immediately see a new application for the grill, and this was entirely due to the grill being in my office. You see, my office is vented to the outside. It's in the basement next to the storage room, which is also host to the litterbox for my cats. One of the first things I did after I started working down here with the cats was to figure out how to exhaust the fumes from their sandy deposits. Step 1 was to get a Littermaid Automatic Scooping Litterbox. Step 2, after the Littermaid failed to completely contain the smell, was to visit Home Depot to by an electric ventillation fan and an outside vent pipe that would fit in the tiny basement window. With one portable Ground Fault Interruptor outlet for the fan (just in case) and some duct tape to seal the vent pipe to the window, I now constantly vent the nastiness into the Great Outdoors where it belongs. There have been some additional side benefits too: visiting smokers can actually smoke in my office when it's cold out, and the smoke gets sucked outside pretty quickly.
Anyway, I reasoned, what works for cigarette smoke and litterbox odor probably would work for the gently smoking meats and sizzling steaks. So I cleared off the top of my drafting table and set up the grill:
The grill itself, a nice West Bend electric, is about the size of a large scanner, fitting approximately 4 burger patties at once with a flat area off to the side suitable for toasting buns. Unlike my mom's ancient electric skillet from the 70s, the electric grill unit is immersible in water (simplifying cleaning considerably) and has a separate drip pan that fits underneath it. The manual instructs you to fill the drip pan with water, which is a good trick to make cleanup easier (the grease doesn't harden and char). I have tried this in conventional ovens but it tends to create steam at the same time, creating a mushy gray yuckiness on the bottom of the meat. I was pleased to see that this grill didn't seem have that problem when I tested it just now with lightly-salted cross-cut beef short ribs marinated with a touch of low-sodium soy sauce. Overall cooking time was around 15 minutes per batch. While the smoky charcoal taste was lacking, the convenience of working and grilling in the same space was, dare I say, exhilarating. I can see a bit of grease that has escaped, so this isn't the sort of thing I would do every day, but it's just a bit crazy, which is what I needed today :-)
Recently, a Vietnamese market opened near me, and every Saturday morning they've been bringing in specialties like Vietnamese-style roasted chicken and pork from somewhere; this is very similar to the Chinese-style roasted meats that I like to get in Chinatown. I started getting the very intriguing Vietnamese sandwiches that they also stock on Saturday morning, as a kind of after-gym reward.
The cuisine of Vietnam has fascinated me for some time, as I've been told it's a hybrid of colonial French and native Indochinese cooking traditions. The sandwich, which I just found out is called Bánh mì, is one of those interesting mashups of foodstuffs, a tantalizing collection of mystery meats nestled into a French baguette. The aroma is sweet and aromatic from the carrots and cilantro, and when I bite into the delightfully-crusty baguette, I'm delighted by the crunchiness of the vegetables and slight spiciness that pervades the ingredients. It's quite a different sandwich experience than almost anything I've had before, a melange of savory, sweet, spicy, and tart flavors playing musical chairs in my mouth. Compounding the mystery: I couldn't identify any of the meats or underlying flavors with confidence.
So today I finally decided to get to the bottom of this mystery. I bought three sandwiches: one to eat right away, one to dissect, and one "just in case" something went wrong.
For explicit pictures of sandwich dissection, read onwards! But be warned: this is not for the gastronomically faint of heart :-)
To kick off my investigation, I decided to disassemble the sandwich into its constituent components. I have been inspired by the forensic crime drama Bones, which features a crack team of quirky forensic experts that do a lot of really gross lab work to uncover evidence regarding each decomposing victim's last moments. What would I uncover? Would I be able to stomach my findings?
THE INTERIOR INGREDIENTS
The vegetable components: cilantro (green and aromatic), lightly-pickled carrots (crunchy, fresh, slightly sweet and slightly vinegary), lightly-pickled daikon/white radish (treated in a similar manner as the carrot), some slivers of onion (white, raw), a cucumber spear (raw, not pickled at all), and some small seeds which I believe were from a hot pepper.
The meat was unidentifiable to me, but appeared to be of the "loaf" variety. There were three kinds:
This was a savory, slightly sweet meat that I think was pork-based. The consistency of the meat was like a coarse-packed sausage but not as salty. It was rather mild, and kind of chewy.
This one was darker in color and with a saltier flavor than Meat #1. It appeared that there were large chunks of stewed tendon (which Asians love for the crunchy chewiness) intermixed with the actual meat, which was sort of ham-like in flavor. There were peppercorns also embedded in this meat.
A spongy, processed minced-pork meat, sort of like a chicken loaf. If you have had the Vietnamese-style fish cakes, fish balls, or pork balls, you would recognize this flavor. If you can imagine an unbattered and steamed "Pork McNugget" that was big enough to slice, you'd be pretty close what this is. I think. It was more mild, like Meat #1, but more subtle. Perhaps it was due to the slightly spongy texture of the meat.
I sampled each of the ingredients by themselves to get an idea of how they each tasted. The dominant flavors were the slightly-sweet pickle taste of the vegetables, the aromatic greenness of the cilantro, and the salty-savory-sweet taste of the meat. The peppercorns and pepper seeds added a little jolt to the the nasal passages, but didn't add much heat. Texturewise, the ingredients were all different kinds of "crunchy" with the exception of the cilantro and Meat #3. This is a sandwich that you can munch and crunch on.
THE BAGUETTE INGREDIENTS
The baguette was cut down the middle, and spread with mayonnaise (the sweeter Asian variety), some kind of minced organ meat (some form of pate; there was a light liver-like taste to it), and some kind of brown sauce (it tasted like soy sauce, possibly a soy sauce-based meat broth mixture).
I sampled the bread by itself to get a sense of its flavor. It was a nice loaf that was just salty enough, but not so salty that it would overwhelm the ingredients. It was a little stale from sitting out, but overall it was a cut above the usual run-of-the-mill sandwich roll.
The combination of flavors: sweet mayonnaise and the slightly-eggy surface of the baguette dominate first. The soy sauce seemed to be like a very subtle anchoring flavor (soy sauce + pork is a comforting taste to me). The pate adds a slightly unsettling flavor; if you don't like chopped liver or liverwurst, you probably will find it disgusting. I happen to like liver these days, so it's merely an unexpected flavor for me. It probably is what helps make the sandwich taste so unique; without it, you basically have a crunchy cold cut sandwich with sweet mayonnaise.
THE CONCLUSION
This is a crunchy sandwich due to the carrots, radishes, and cucumber, and it's this texture I notice first. The meats in the sandwich, while flavorful, are not the dominant flavor at all. What dominates is the sweetness of the mayonnaise, and the lightly sweet-and-tart pickled vegetables. The savoriness of all the meat, soy sauce, and pate assert themselves more softly toward the end of each bite, acting more to provide a needed counterbalance to the sweetness of the overall experience. The meat itself is a bit chewy-crunchy too, due to the tendons that seem to be part of the sausage grind. Aromatically, the sweetness, the cilantro, and the bread assert themselves from the moment you pick up the sandwich and give its crust an anticipatory squeeze.
I can't quite think of another sandwich experience like this, and while I wouldn't go out of my way to have one every day, it certainly is a nice change from the typical fare one gets around here. So next time you come across a Vietnamese market and see a pile of sandwiches, grab one and see how you like it. If you can eat a hot dog, fabricated as they are from beef lips and pig snouts ground and stuffed into a natural intestine casing, then you should be able to eat this sandwich. My main concern was that there would be shrimp in it (I hate shrimp), but the flavor that was throwing me off turned out to be the pate.
While it's no Dibella's sub, it will do in a pinch. I will have to try different ones now to find the King of All Bánh Mì in my local area!
UPDATE: My sis points out that the awesome Porkchop Express blog has an excellent Bian Mi Basics article, detailing the ingredients further. Though I didn't need to know about the "head cheese roll".
Several years ago I stumbled upon Gothamist, which is a city blog written by locals covering New York City. I really liked the local color of the reporting, and of course there's writeups about interesting food; this writeup of by Jen Chung about how she ran into Jeffrey Steingarten at a BBQ event is a good example. It's since grown into a urban blog network covering many major cities, Austinist being one of them. When I get home, I should check out Bostonist again to see if it's gotten livelier; when it first launched, it was a bit understaffed on the writing side I thought.
Anyway, I'm in Austin and I'm hungry, so I searched Austinist for recommendations and got last year's SXSW Chowdown Guide. Just what I needed. Now I have a purpose for getting out of the hotel room.
Today's Itinerary
Kill time until around noon, when I head over to the Austin Convention Center to get registered. Maybe explore the area a bit. Study the bus routes. Do some more research on places to go and see.
Noonish - head over to the convention center, check out the Interactive Playpen,
630PM - New England Dinner with Ian, Kelley, and maybe more, so we can start to form our first day scooby gang alliances. A quick cab ride!
830PM - Then I want to check out the BlogHer Meetup because I like the whole idea of empowerment that pervades the organization, and would like to talk to people about what it means to be a part of it. There's something very similar to what they do and what I want to do, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Of course, all bets are off if I collide with anyone I know and get steered elsewhere...this seemed to happen a lot last year, and it was kind of neat to just go with the flow. We'll see how that goes.
I turned 39 at the end of December, and with that came a whole host of aches and pains. I thought I was just imagining things because I was eyeing my impending 40s with some trepidation. But then the spasms began, starting with my left hand. My left shoulder joint starting feeling like it was seizing up, and then the right shoulder blade seemed to be grating itself into little pieces. My back was killing me, each vertebra crunching against each other like little disks of sand. These were pains I had never experienced before, and the usual three-day window it normally takes my body to bounce back from a strain had stretched well into 9 days, no improvement in sight. In fact, things seemed to be getting worse, which didn't help my mood.
"So this is how it begins," I thought gloomily. "Total body distintegration. Just in time for my 40s." I mentallly flipped through the various exotic illnesses that could be afflicting me, my imagination fueled by the recent House marathon I had taken in over Christmas, none of them particularly amusing in this context. I feel into a dark mood, lacking energy and clarity. I stayed in the house for almost the entire week, talking to no one, pushing at projects in a vain attempt to keep my mind off the imminent physical collapse of my body.
Then yesterday, I grudgingly went to have dinner with a group of friends at a very nice Sze-Chuan restaurant in Billerica that serves what is possibly the best Chinese food I've had in the area. Grouchy and in pain, I nevertheless put on my best face to fulfill my social obligation. Why? I know from experience that when I put myself in a place where I'm forced to deal with different realities, new insights always arise.
As usual, the company and meal were excellent, which helped lift my spirits. My friends, however, noticed that I was having some back pain because I was making very odd contorted stretching motions. I explained myself.
"You've never done THAT before, Dave," commented B with some concern.
The other B nodded. "You should take some Alleve to make the swelling go down. That will help."
I nodded grimly. I'd taken some pain medicine, which is a rarity for me since I don't like putting drugs in my body. I also knew it was just a temporary measure, because this type of pain was something entirely new to me. The "Lion's Head" soup, a specialty that I normally enjoyed, failed to register on my tongue at all as I stewed in my thoughts. I noted with disconsolation that I'd finished the bowl without remembering to enjoy it. "Yes, I've been taking some Tylenol, but this back pain is something new I haven't experienced before. I'm worried it's something really bad."
P, who had come a little later than the rest of us, perked up at the mention of my back problems. "Oh, I had that a while ago, and it turned out that I was just really dehydrated."
This was an unexpected diagnosis, and I found the idea that dehydration and back pain were related interesting. I had noticed that I was drinking unusually little water recently, and I pressed for more details.
"I was googling for information on back pain," answered P, "and one of the first things that popped up was dehydration and chiropractice. Apparently, when you don't drink enough water, your body isn't 'lubed up' enough and your muscles shrink, which causes joints to rub together more. So I drank a lot more water, and the pain went away."
When I got home, I started drinking water to make up for lost time. Normally, you're supposed to drink at least 64oz a day. I had been probably doing less than 24 oz of liquid a day for several weeks, since I was just not feeling that thirsty. I drank water throughout the next day as well, and you know what? I felt better. The crackly pain in my back went away after about 12 hours. The knife-like pain in my right shoulder turned into a regular throbbing. I felt...juicier! Apparently I had been turning my muscles into beef jerky by not drinking enough water. The numbness and spasms in my arms and hands have also started to fade away. It might be too early to call, but I can say that drinking water seems to make a palpable difference in the way I'm feeling. A quick Google seemed to corroborate P's diagnosis:
The human body also has its emergency calls for water. These are localized emergency calls. We call these heartburn, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, migraine headaches, colitis pain, fibromyalgiac pain, even angina pain -- signs of dehydration in the body. -- from Joint pain, back pain, arthritis cause by chronic dehydration, says doctor
Pain may be a warning of localized thirst; that is, the pain signal may be a warning of dehydration in that specific area (a regional thirst), for example low back pain, migraine headache, joint pain, and angina. Chronic dehydration may contribute to a reduction in lymph flow, which in turn may contribute to or cause varied problems. -- from Diagnose Me: Condition: Dehydration
I knew that drinking water was good for you, but I had never bothered to find out what could go wrong when you are a pint or two low. Dehydration is usually mentioned as a cause of death only when you're reading about shipwrecks, which is outside the realm of our everyday experience.
So the moral of the story: DRINK LOTS OF WATER. Or else!
UPDATE: There are many excellent reader insights in the comments below, presenting a multitude of views. Well worth reading.
My sister Emily recently sent me a link to the culinary revelation that is Meat Cake, a "less-girly cake" made from fine American meat products! Since we had our traditional Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago with Dad, this holiday weekend was a good time to do something different. The idea to make a Thanksgiving Meat Cake was based on the thanksgiving sandwiches I used to get from a Boston deli when I worked in Fort Point Channel. There's a similar Martha Stewart Meatloaf Cake too, but we drew our inspiration from the Black Widow Bakery version because it's steeped in awesomeness!
So here's how it went!
Building our Cake
We started with a basic turkey meatloaf recipe (without the apples). We doubled the ingredients to get two 9" cake pans filled.
The original recipe called for an hour in the oven, but the 9" cake pans we used make thinner patties and will cook faster. Since turkey tends to dry out fast, we used the "toothpick test" to check when the loaf was cooked. Our cook time was 25min for the first stage, followed by a quick glazing with cranberry sauce, finished with another 5min under the broiler to dry it out.
You'll notice the that our raw meatloaf cakepans have a dimple in the middle. We thought it would help compensate for the meatloaf's tendency to expand and rise in the middle. It would also provide a place for the stuffing layer to hold on to.
After the meatloaf layers cooled (about 30 minutes), we piled instant turkey stuffing between them and stacked them up. I have a spinning cheese platter that Em's boyfriend Robert gave me a few years ago for Christmas; with a circular piece of freezer paper on top of it, this worked well as an impromptu cake frosting platform.
Being lazy, we used prepared mashed potatoes from the local supermarket for the frosting. I've never frosted a cake before, so I just glopped the stuff on all around and then spun the platter, using a large sillicon spatula dipped in warm water to slowly smooth it out. It's a bit wobbly and uneven, but that just adds to its charm :-) A neat swirly pattern on the top formed, so we left it and garnished it with clusters of whole cranberries Em picked out of the canned cranberry sauce. We didn't have very many, so we just made a simple pattern, then garnished with a bit of paprika, ground pepper, and flakes of Morton's Kosher Salt.
Having our Cake (and Eating it Too)
After taking a zillion pictures of the cake---much to the disgruntlement of Em's boyfriend, waiting with fork and knife at the ready---we drizzled some plates with mushroom gravy and laid big slices o' turkey cake on them.
The verdict?
Turkey Meatloaf Cake is very filling, with all the sleep-inducing powers of a full turkey dinner. We all took 2 hour naps after having just one slice. The wine probably helped with that, too :-)
Turkey meatloaf doesn't really taste like turkey. I would describe the flavor as "meat"; ground turkey tastes pretty similar to lean ground beef and ground pork to me. It's not bad, but it doesn't deliver that great roasted turkey flavor one would get from a turkey sub.
Putting mashed potatoes in the middle would have given this a more authentic "layer cake look". I had been worried about the two layers holding together, so I avoided slippery ingredients in the middle layer. We noticed, however, that the mashed potatoes tend to stiffen as they cool. They probably would hold equally well as a center filling.
For next time, we're thinking of trying more of a baklava style layered cake, using real roasted turkey layered with stuffing, potatoes, and gravy, to get better flavor. But then we'd end up cooking Thanksgiving dinner again, and it's not really that different from turkey casserole.
Anyway, the big win is this: WE MADE MEAT CAKE! MUA HA HA HA!
This July 4th my sister and I attemped to recreate bien dang, which is a kind of ready-made boxed lunch that we used to get in Taiwan. My sister and I remember it from road trips; there was a particular rest station between Taipei and Kaoshiung that had pork chop boxed lunches that I liked. The box included interesting vegetables, eggs, and pickles, but it was the pork chop that I really looked forward to most. The photo above is our best approximation of a real bien dang.
I've been trying to recreate the chinese porkchop recipe based on experimentation, and I think I almost have the seasoning correct. However, there are a lot of variations in the recipe. One of my buddies shares a similar passion for pai-gu fan (pork chop rice, I think it means). And then there's this example that my sis found on Bribe Me With a Muffin; as a bonus, this blog yielded tons of Boston-area foodie information and clued me in to a firm called Design Continuum (they apparently did some work on the $100 laptop UI)...but I digress.
Our bien dang re-creation has a ways to go before we really nail it--they were a bit dry, and I didn't season the pork chops enough--however, we have made significant progress: you can read more on our documented Flickr photoset. Sis and I will likely plan a trip down to the Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown to recalibrate our taste buds; there are also several more Taiwanese restaurants that I want to visit. Yay!
We also went strawberry picking for the first time. I had no idea how awesome fresh strawberries were; as kids in rural New Jersey, my sis and I would sometimes come across wild strawberries in the field behind our house in Perrineville. Usually they were scrawny things with bugs inside, picked over by birds and rabbits. Not very appetizing, plus we were too small to know what a ripe berry looked like...we picked them all indiscriminately! Anyway, commercial strawberries are much more interesting...check out the strawberry picking photoset for a peek. We bought some baking soda biscuits and made strawberry shortcake; this was something I don't think we had growing up, so it was good to be introduced to something new. I asked the kids manning the strawberry picking booth how to make the stuff, and they were somewhat surprised that I had to ask how to do it.
To round out the July 4th Weekend, we also decided to make S'mores. I'd never had one, but I wanted to toast marshmallows so we got the stuff: marshmallows, sticks, Hershey's Chocolate, and Graham Crackers. Now, I'm not a fan of Hershey's Chocolate (it's mostly sugary and without character), but I had to establish the baseline for future comparison. The picture shows one exceptionally well-charred marshmallow that, despite its ghastly appearance, smelled quite wonderful My sister's boyfriend got to eat it; I got to take the picture.
Speaking of death and chocolate, sis and I were at the Mall and stopped by the Lindt chocolate store. They had (gasp) 99% Cocoa Chocolate Bars. I like the 70% and find the 85% rather harsh, but despite that I had to buy a bar. I haven't tried it yet; I probably will buy a few more bars of this first "just in case". I expect that the tasting experience will similar to licking a piece of charcoal, or it might be like ingesting the ashes from a very fine cigar. Yes, I really am looking forward to this.
We also consumed a fair amount of Pocky and fancy I-Mei Cookies, but that's a post for another day.
Last May my sister Emily had a tremendous idea for Memorial Day: relive the hot dogs of our youth. Actually, that's not quite correct...we wanted to relive the hot dog that our Dad remembers from his pastorin' days back in the '60s: the Rochester White Hot. Dad used to live in Upstate NY as an assistant pastor in Brighton before I was born. As it so happened, I went to both the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology for grad schoolin', so this bit of Americana overlaps both of our personal histories. I must have even been the same age as Dad when he was in the area...eerie!
Every time Dad visits, we ask him if there was anything he misses from living in the US. Without fail he says, "White hots. And good cheese." For a long time I thought this just meant any of the white hot dogs you can get in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, but Dad said these weren't quite right. We even went to a German deli staffed by authentic German frauleins and looked at the white sausages there, but even these were not the hots we were looking for. They were good, but they not the White Hots of Dad's memory. Not even close.
Em dug up this link to The American Museum of Natural History, which at one time featured a selection of ball park franks as part of their Baseball as America exhibition. Apparently, Rochester NY has a regional hot dog that's produced most famously by Zweigles. It's made of uncured, unsmoked pork, which is what gives it the white color. The American Museum of Natural History's description goes into a bit more detail on how the hotdog is served:
Split and griddled, this dog is served on a toasted bun and topped with a hot sauce (a meat chili made from a secret Rochester recipe), chopped onions, and any one of a variety of mustards.
Emily further recalled the joy of another Rochester brand, Nance's Sharp and Creamy Mustard, that she had once enjoyed at my house. It's one of my favorite mustards, though I wish I could remember who first recommended it to me. Em likes it too, so I was able to get a bottle of it at the local Hannaford's supermarket.
Dad was originally planning to visit this June (sadly cancelled), so Emily arranged to order a variety pack of Zweigles Hots from NewYorkStyleDeli.com. The prices are a bit high if you pick and choose, but the specials are actually pretty reasonable when you consider the hassle of shipping perishable food overnight. Our package arrived just prior to the Memorial Day weekend in a nifty red cooler with freezer packs all around it. NY Style Deli also included two paper Zweigles hats to wear while grilling...an unexpectedly awesome touch :-)
Here's a pack of genuine Zweigle's White Hots. Since they're uncured, they're highly perishable, so once you open the package you're pretty much committing yourself to eating them all or freezing them later. I don't really like to freeze hot dogs because it seems to do terrible things to their texture...I could just be imagining that though.
Our variety pack included some Red Hots, which we grilled for comparison. There were some skinless skinnier hot dogs too, but I didn't bother to take a picture.
Emily also found a recipe for the secret Rochester meat sauce mentioned by the museum. I don't have the link, but it was similar to this one on David Rosengarten's site. It's possible that this meat sauce is related to the "hot sauce" they put on the infamous Rochester Garbage Plate, a "specialty" that I never dared try myself when I lived in the area. I must admit I am curious now, looking at this picture. NewYorkStyleDeli.com sells a Hot Meat Sauce Mix for $2.99 too, but what fun is that?
With all our preparations complete, we had a problem: neither of us had ever seen or eaten an authentic Rochester White Hot. I wasn't even sure what one looked like. There was a small, low-resolution photo of the American Museum of Natural History site, so we used that as our model. Here are a few quick photos I took before eating. Unfortunately my indoor lighting setup is half-broken and I've been having some white balancing problems (my gray card may be too old), so the color is a little off:
I later re-read the recipe, and noted that pan-fried hots are split in half; not sure if that would have been more authentic. But they were still pretty darn good. If there are any Rochester natives reading this, send me a picture of the real thing!
Flavor Comments:
Nance's Sharp and Creamy Mustard, if you haven't had it, has a nice kick to it. It has a similar punch to that of wasabi, though not as overpowering as in the case of the really fresh stuff (you know, the kind that makes you think you're about to die). The mustard is also a little sweet.
The White Hots themselves I found rather mild. They're also not very salty compared to a lot of other hot dogs (Nathan's, for example), so the condiments you choose play a major part in defining the taste. Even when charred, the white hots stayed pretty mellow.
The meat sauce, as we prepared it, was also mild and fragrant. It's got a bit of cinnamon and thyme in it, and adds to the overall sweetness of the plate. It was not very meaty or flavorful by itself, but it added a welcome beefy taste to the hot dog that would otherwise be missing. I think even if the bits of beef were more charred, it would help; the sauce is simmered for a long time, so browing the ground beef very thoroughly might help next time.
I definitely wanted pickles and potato chips with this. It helps balance the slight sweetness. I reached for them immediately. I wonder what they use in Rochester?
For the bun, I probably would also choose a more neutral-flavored one rather than a sweetish one next time. I think for such a mild dog, the selection of bun would go a long way to making it "just right". We used some buns from the supermarket, and you know how those are.
For the Fourth of July, Em and I will be recreating bien dang, the taiwan lunchbox one buys when travelling. I remember these fondly from car trips and train rides we took when first arriving in Taiwan; they're also readily available for the lunchtime crowd in any town or city. I have been working on recreating the pork chop recipe so we can make these and maybe drive somewhere to eat them :-)
My sister found a recipe for an Italian pasta dish called Bucatini Alla Carbonara, and made it for us on Memorial Day. She told me she'd heard about the dish from one of her online buds, someone from Italy who loves this dish.
Here's another view of it, nestled on top of a lot of kitchen clutter:
It's nice to have Italian food that isn't Spaghetti and Meatballs, Lasagna, or Veal Parmigiani. I am convinced that those food items are the equivalent of Chinese-American staples like Sweet and Sour Pork, General Tso's Chicken, and Beef with Brocolli...sorta ethnic, but varying wildly in quality and completely lacking in authenticity.
I think the main problem with these foods is that people know how the dishes are supposed to look, which makes it easy to meet expectations through visual presentation alone. That doesn't mean that the food is good. It's often mushy, overcooked, oversalted, and lacking in distinct flavor. I think of most bad Italian food I've had as "red and noodly with sausage and green peppers", bad chinese as "fried and sweetish-brown with celery and carrots", bad mexican as "beany, cheesy, and crunchy", and bad thai as "coconut and lemon grass in brown sauce". At my favorite restaurants, the dishes have to transcend these stereotypes for me to feel happy. There are a couple kinds of food that I still don't really have a good feel for and enjoy most of the time: korean and indian; I am still developing my palate, I guess.
Oh, the Bucatini Alla Carbonara was excellent...good job, sis! You can make it for me anytime :-D
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