Expanding culinary horizons

Today I finally got to try Honest Tom's Taco Shop! It's a funky taco truck that I heard about through Twitter or Facebook. Aside from their usual spot in University City during the traditional school year, they smartly started popping up in Logan Circle near the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul on Fridays during Lent - to sell fish tacos. I appreciated their novel marketing and rave reviews, so I had to get there.

On my way over to 18Th and Vine St., I asked someone who works in the cafe if he'd like some tacos. He wasn't sure what one was. It gave me pause to remember that not everyone travels with their own personal gourmand to expand their culinary horizons.

I had the sweet potato tacos which even as a non-vegetarian I loved! Fresh guac, pico de gallo and what was either a homemade flour tortilla or one that was shown extra special love on the griddle out of the pkg. It was grand.

The lesson? Share your food and your lunch plans! You never know when you can brighten someones day and treat their tastebuds.

Crowd Pleasers

I love chocolate anything. I've eaten chocolate covered tortilla chips and potato chips, chocolate bars with bacon, chipotle and various salts. I can taste differences in chocolate as if I'm sipping fine wine or describing a great craft micro brew. Thanks to the various food allergies/aversions/phobias I assume are present at gatherings of more than 6 people or so, I hesitate to bring chocolate when I am responsible for dessert or an extra treat. Enter blondies.

Easy to make, essentially a bar cookie, blondies are brownies without the chocolate. They are great plain, but are also pantry friendly to accept the scant 1/4 cup of leftover nut hanging around. I've made them with half whole wheat flour, and have even substituted some olive oil if I was short on butter and a trip to the store would derail me when I'm in "the zone". My favorite combination is pressing salted cashews in the top and sprinkling with toffee pieces before baking.

In my vast cookbook collection I couldn't find a blondie recipe so I turned to the Gods of Google. I stumbled upon a fantastic blog, Whipped - complete with a post full of alliteration as a nod to V for Vendetta! You can whip it up on a whim and feel like a whiz and share the wonderment that is, BLONDIES!

Frog Burger

My first time email blogging is a burger review! Had some extra time after work before attending an author event at the Free Library (Steven Raichlen!) so I trotted across the very difficult to navigate on foot Ben Franklin Pkwy.

Frog Burger's been getting lots of press over it's chub-burger, touristy named "Love Burger" which features TWO grilled cheese sandwiches for buns! I can rarely resist but here I did and got a standard cheddar cheese burger. They didn't ask for a temp but mine came out a juicy medium. Acceptable for a place I'm not good friends with yet. I also had jalapeño fries and a Kenzinger Ale from Philadelphia Brewing Co ($2 @ happy hour!).

It was well executed. For a gourmet burger stand I want more than a potato roll fresh from a bag for a bun, even though it was grilled. Nor am I a fan of the almost shoe-string cut of the fries. Yet what it comes down to is this : Is it the best burger on the Parkway? YES. Is it destination burger worthy? NO.

What I wonder is, how did they get the license to do this? I know a little too much about opening a business in this neighborhood and it ain't easy! Outdoors and serving alcohol? Who did they blow? Service was great, BTW.

Frog Burger
Address: under the metal airplane on the lawn of The Franklin
Hours: 12-8pm 7 days/wk

Sent from my iPhone

Deep 'Za

Do not stand between me and a craving. Ever. The other day it was deep dish pizza. I've had both kinds of Chicago deep dish pizza (in Chicago!). The first - the stereotypical kind which consists of at the very minimum a two inch layer of mozzarella topped with a one inch layer of sauce. Cut into it right out of the oven and you will have cheese lava on your table. To me, this is best eaten at room temp or cold the next morning. It's tasty, but it's like ordering a 'Philly Cheese Steak' at a random pizzeria in Florida when what you should really have is a 'Cheese Steak' from Cosmi's, a tiny unassuming deli in deep South Philly.

The second deep dish pizza is the one you spend waiting an hour for a table for, even possibly standing in vehicular traffic because the sidewalk is too crowded with people waiting for the same table you are. It's from Pizano's which I've already mentioned. What to do when you can't head to Chicago on a whim for a pizza craving (and a visit with my Godson!)? Get out the Google and slice some mozzarella.

I had tried to recreate it before. I used my standard pizza dough recipe in my deep dish clay baker, pre-baked the crust, added sliced mozz and some toppings. It was OK. The crust was all wrong. You can't have a crispy/chewy crust with mile high toppings. My latest research revealed some cornmeal in the crust. It made sense to me. Cornmeal would retain crunch but minimize chew. I decided to replace 25% of the flour with cornmeal and set out to make the dough. Every time I make pizza dough I recall how I LOVE to make dough and don't make it often enough.

After it rose for a little over an hour, I oiled the clay baker, set up the dough and baked it. If you put the toppings on raw dough, you will get raw dough under cooked toppings in your finished product. While it was baking I sliced the mozz, sauteed mushrooms with some onion, spread on some crushed tomatoes (the sauce cooks along with the pizza), sprinkled it with oregano and some thick slices of Sicilian pepperoni which would self-fry in the oven and become little pepperoni crackings by the time it was cooked. All baking is done at 500 degrees, don't be shy about oven temp! After 20 minutes of cooking and 10 minutes of resting (this is crucial and hard to resist) the feasting begins.

The dough recipe will yield leftover dough. If I was thinking ahead I would have popped it into the freezer for deep dish pizza on demand in the future, but I spread it out and topped it with some of the leftover sauteed mushrooms and Asiago cheese so we had a little appetizer while the pizza was cooling.

How to Cook Everything, Except Shrimp

It's never been a secret on this blog, that I would eat shit - if Mark Bittman cooked it and declared it was fabulous. I adore his food philosophies about cooking techniques, flavor combinations and serving styles. You won't find him making anything that includes molecular gastronomy, and the iPhone app that accompanies his book is the bee's knees.

There is ONE area that I have major differences of opinion with him about. The timing on shrimp cookery. His recipes repeatedly list shrimp cooking times that if you followed, would yield chewy, overcooked, inedible crustaceans. Here's just one example. If it took 10 minutes to cook you would cry at how much shrimp you've wasted. I've even emailed him about a recipe that appears on epicurious of his where all the reviews talk about the dish being wildly overcooked. No response.

Now, I can grant him this ONE oversight - but I'm tickled how it is so consistent.

Uova in Purgatorio

If you've learned anything about me from my blog, you know that I love witty food! Eggs in purgatory falls in that category. This morning's breakfast is in honor of some well spoken gentlemen who got us out of bed by ringing our doorbell. Now, it was almost 11am so we can't be angry but anyone who disrupts our slumber on the weekend is subject to penalties.

Our at-home date movie last night was the recent remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 with John Travolta, Denzel Washington and the dude who plays a bad guy in every single movie, Luis Guzman. This tangent will make sense in a moment, I promise. I prefer the 1974 version of Pelham with Walter Mathau and Robert Shaw (the rugged sailor from Jaws) but that isn't important. The new Pelham features all the typical, iconic, NYC scenery. The ride over the Manhattan Bridge looking down on the South Street Seaport was the view of my daily commute. The other side of the bridge has The Watchtower, which was the distribution site for the well known Jehovah's Witness publication. I made note of it to Paul, because it is indeed an impressive building soon to be for sale if you're in the market. I have $120 mil laying around, don't you?

This morning our doorbell was ringing. By the chime I knew it was the front door, not our most used kitchen door. That is the best thing about wireless doorbells, having a different chime for each door - highly recommended. This told me the people at the door didn't know us so I sent Paul out of bed to see who it was. It was two men passing out The Watchtower! I believe this is only the second time I've been called on by this group since living in PA. NY and AZ were much more active.

Finally on to my witty food. I thought I was being all professional roasting breakfast sausage for this morning while we ate dinner last night. Turned out I forgot about them in the oven and well, we didn't have any breakfast sausage for this morning. I did have some leftover tomato sauce (a staple in my fridge) and some fresh mozz that had to be used up. Everyone knows how I love poached eggs, so I poached eggs in the tomato sauce, added some heat (it is purgatory, it can't be all pleasant) and placed the finished product atop slices of the fresh cheese to melt and I poured coffee. Tasty and witty.

Cotton Candy Seafood with Jose Andres

I am not a fan of molecular gastronomy. I am a fan of Jose Andres, what he has brought to this country, and what he gives back.

I am also a fan of now knowing how to add video here. Watch out world!

You Say it's Your Birthday?

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie." - Jim Davis, creator of Garfield.

Preparations were underway for my Father-in-law's 70th birthday. The party was to be a surprise, at a casual Italian restaurant nearby. Our family tradition states that although there is a party planned, there will also be a mandatory after party. While there was an equally traditional pound cake birthday cake for the restaurant, my Mother-in-law was baking an apple spice cake for the after party. "He asked for carrot cake, but I don't know how to make that, so he's getting apple," she said. A light bulb went off in my head. I have carrots and a kick ass recipe for carrot cake cookies! Time to make a present to accompany the bottle of well aged single malt Scotch to mark the occasion.

Notice the picture is NOT carrot cake cookies. Here is the progression of my baking energy on a Saturday morning after a late Friday night out: 1 - Thinking, "Gee, I have to go to the store to get some more butter and cream cheese for the cookies." 2 - Go to the store, but also stop at Chick-fil-A to bring home their irresistible chicken biscuits for breakfast. 3 - Eat breakfast, lay on the couch because I'm still not fully awake and now have a full stomach. 4 - Think, "I really need to start the cookies." 5 - Continue to lay on the couch. You get the idea. The clock was ticking and we absolutely could not miss the surprise part of the party. I decided a carrot cake would save labor time. Throw it in the oven, cook, cool, frost. Easy-peasy as Jamie Oliver would say.

I preheat the oven, grate the carrots, decide that I know more than the food geniuses at Epicurious and alter their recipe. I sub half the sugar in the recipe for brown for added flavor and moisture, reduce total sugar by 25% just because, add a cup of raisins because carrot cake SHOULD have raisins, sub ginger extract for fresh because that's what I had in the pantry. I go to get my cake pans and... I don't have any cake pans! I use disposable ones because recipes require so many different sizes I don't want to stock them all. Also, I don't have to be delicate with disposables, worrying about scratching a dainty non-stick surface, etc. I didn't have any! What I did have was a small arsenal of disposable muffin tins leftover from a healthy muffin kick a few months ago. I also had cupcake cups. I was in business!

In the end, cupcakes are more work than cakes but less work than cookies. No one had the hassle of slicing a cake, and the look on my Father-in-law's face when I handed him one of 3 containers and told him these were only for him was priceless. ♥

I Love Breakfast!

Scrapple. It's one of the things I didn't know existed until I moved to Philadelphia. Also in that category: water ice that's different than Italian ice, cheese steaks made into hoagies, and people that dance down Broad St on New Year's Day in lavish costumes. It can be elegantly referred to as breakfast pate, or not so elegantly as a breakfast hot dog - as in, you do not want to ask what's in it. Nevertheless, when cooked properly it is crispy on the outside, lovely and soft on the inside and porky all over. This morning I served it atop a thick slice of cornbread with a maple syrup drizzle alongside a fluffy delicate mound of scrambled eggs. Not pictured: hot dark roast coffee. It's going to be a tasty weekend.

Snowed In

Here in Philadelphia we're having the snowiest winter ever. Ever. Recently, during the second blizzard in a week, I was in full baking mode after reading every status update and planting every Farmville acre on Facebook. I whipped up this recipe from Epicurious for brownie cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. The frosting was a peanut butter - butter cream. In my head it would taste like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Turns out, the frosting tastes exactly like a nutter butter cookie. Yum! The cupcake didn't pair well with the frosting, however. It was a rich brownie but the texture was distracting from the flavor of the frosting. A soft devil's food cupcake would be the perfect combo with this terrific frosting. That did not stop us from eating them all, and dueling to defeat for the last one.

It's snowing again today. Maybe it's time to turn the chocolate and peanut butter combo into a cake?

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

I love Dexter! Who doesn't? I also don't have Showtime so I'm 2 seasons behind via Netflix. No spoilers, please. Watching a series via DVD in marathon sessions is also more rewarding than a weekly fix for me. When I watch a disk I get to see the opening credits 3 or 4 times in one night. It gave me something to think about besides an average Joe guy that happens to be a vigilante killer. That chops up criminals. And throws them in the bay.

The opening credits are all about Dexter's morning sequence and he is such a good serial killer he has breakfast everyday. My concern is the order of events. After shaving he cuts a piece of ham steak and sears it. And eats it. Then he fries an egg in brown butter and breaks the yolk, serving with a splash of what I hope is hot sauce. And eats it. Separately from the ham. He then brews a pot of French press coffee and squeezes blood orange juice. I get the symbolism but blood orange juice isn't especially good for drinking straight. Dexter then puts on his shoes and lastly his shirt and heads to his job at the police station with too much SPF on his lips. At least that's why I assume his lips are always purplish-pink on the show.

Who cooks the components of breakfast separately and eats them in a similar fashion? Coffee cannot wait until the end either. It should be sipped leisurely while you ponder the crappy day ahead, or grill your significant other about their day to come, right?

I'm going to go make sure the air conditioner doesn't have any glass slides in it.

Since you been gone...

It's been nearly six months since I've blogged. I've certainly been eating and cooking in that time yet have developed a preference for sharing food stuffs through facebook. With share buttons and status updates from my iPhone, I can facebook in my sleep. Yes, I used facebook as a verb. Your point?

I will try to be here more often and not stress over including perfect pics with every post and not succumbing to the anxiety of thinking my every self published monologue will be the next cover story for the NYT Dining and Wine section. Can you see how stressful I can make this? I hope you'll come back & leave a comment or two so I don't think the only people that read this are East Asian autobot spammers.

Speaking of Spam - I've still never had it! I might have to change that soon. And blog about it.

The Next Wave for Oceana

The restaurant Oceana in NY always held a special place in my heart. NYT Off the menu reports it has moved! When I was in culinary school, I approached then sous chef Michael Schenk at a food fundraiser and asked if I might be able to do my externship at Oceana. He said that they were highly coveted positions and they usually asked people to 'stage' first before setting it in stone. Stage is a time for a young chef to test a place out, and vice versa, for free. Still a common practice and very necessary. The very next night I walked into the teeny kitchen at Oceana. I didn't dare tell anyone it was my first time in a real restaurant kitchen. My nerves were so shaky I could barely plate the hearts of romaine caesar salad. Being German, Michael Schenk gave lessons on how to pour German beer in between expediting orders. The kitchen was run by uber successful Rick Moonen. It was intense. Everything smelled delicious. They took pastry so seriously there was an entirely separate kitchen for it. It was brand new to me. It was surreal.

I persevered for over a month, about 4 nights a week. I learned to chiffonnade. I made taramasalata but never learned how to spell it. It was the age of 'everything' crusted tuna loin and I was in awe that someone worked inches from a deep fryer all night. Everything had to be perfect. They cared. They taught. They were never degrading. In the end they weren't enrolled in my school's approved program and I had to leave for another restaurant. I bought Paul there for dinner, it was comp-ed (yay! $$$) and the head waiter said he recognized only my eyes, which he would see peering through the service window. They used the old school method of head waiters and side waiters. The head waiters were all in their 50s and did not tolerate the 'can't have garlic, onions cut crosswise or greens that have not been pre-chewed for me' crowd.

My time there was my first exposure to late night imbibing with the guys - this was my first experience as the only female in a kitchen, one that would happen too often. Monkey Bar across the street, still there, still notorious for changing owners more often than the bar mats - was divine.

In school I won a contest to choose the name for the new student newspaper (a la carte) and won a free dinner to any restaurant I chose. Paul and I went back to Oceana and racked up a $300 bill. I ordered calvados with an apple tart for dessert and got a rewarding nod of approval over the reading glasses of the aging waiter. To this day when we encounter a similar method of approval, we call it the 'calvados nod'. We also went there for a few anniversaries. This is how I remember white asparagus is in season in late April - it was always on the menu at that time.

The inside of Oceana was made to look like an ocean liner. The walls decked with murals to make you think you were on the open sea. They were best known for a copper fish that hung above the second floor bar, all nestled in a narrow but tall townhouse. I don't doubt that the same quality will endure in the new location. Oceana attracts and develops culinary talents (Christopher Lee before he was a somebody!) and will continue to do so. Translating the character of a townhouse with a restaurant with so much history will be hard to mimic in a modern, redesigned space. Rose just let go of Jack and he is sinking to the ocean floor.

Recipes that work, really

As a rule, I don't believe in paying for access to a website. I pay for Internet service, and that's plenty. Even for the once yearly, research only, porn search - there's plenty to be had for free. Same with recipes. Cook's Illustrated is different. Their content is worth paying for. Videos, recipes, product and cookware testing - Cook's Illustrated satisfies the annoying 2 year old inside that only asks, "Why?".

Until July 31st yearly access is 50% off. I recently ditched many food mag subscriptions because I found that I toss them into a pile that I intend to read, but don't get to. I use this website more than any mag, and this is cheaper!

Go. Really. Celebrate Christmas in July and buy yourself something useful. Now.
Cook's Illustrated

Crab Eggs Benny

I love poached eggs & hollandaise sauce should be a food group. On a rare weekend when I don't have the roommate lurking to see if the coffee is ready, I am free to create and tap into the culinary skill which is easily suppressed when I'm perturbed.

Perched on rounds of toasted potato bread are lump crab cakes, poached eggs and super lemony hollandaise. It reminds me I need to make some herbed white wine vinegar - project for next week! I really do want to attempt some Scotch eggs as my next breakfast project. Soon! I can't beleive it has been more than 2 years since salmon eggs benny.

Dagoba

I have eaten a lot of chocolate in my time. Amedei still reigns king for me. I picked up this Dagoba bar at Whole Foods - 74% dark chocolate with dried cranberries and raisins. What surprised me most was the gold ingot format of the bars. The divisions often represent portions of bars - not here. Nearly impossible to divide the bar with these divisions other than in half. I proclaimed it, "Not terribly nuanced, but not bad for $2.99."

Braciole

I hadn't had Braciole in at least 6 years since leaving Brooklyn. Then, yesterday, my new facebook food friend, Kevin D Weeks posted a recipe for it. I longed for the days of walking to Bari pork store on 18th Ave in Bensonhurst. When I gave the Philadelphia Pizza Club a tour of Brooklyn, we stopped at Bari before heading back to Philly. They have some of the best cheese and parsley sausage around, and Braciole, of course.

Yes, we all know that Braciole in some circles refers to a different kind of, um, meat. Even the Braciole wiki refers to the slang meaning. Make a dirty joke, grow up, and get over it. I've never made my own Braciole, but supermarkets in Philaburbia seem to never have heard of it. Below, my journey to Braciole.

I started with a boneless pork shoulder, great for braising.

Took the net off, letting it get room temp for easier pounding.

Making good use of the food processor, shredded provolone.

Took the crusts off a loaf of roasted garlic bread for the filling.

Chopped parsley and garlic.

Action shot! Adding oil to the breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley and grated parm.

Finished filling.

Chef snack! Bread crust with filling, provolone and a drizzle of evo.

Pork fillets. Gave my butcher skills a workout.

Larger pieces about to be pounded.








Pressed the filling on.

Provolone on one side so it doesn't all fall out.

Rolled and secured with toothpicks. Use butcher twine if you're adventurous.

Fast forward, brown in pot - deglaze with red wine - add tomato sauce, simmer, cover, braise for 45 min

The finished product. Not in photo - rigatoni.

It was delicious - and I gave my husband the Braciole. ;)

KFC

Wasn't their motto, "We do chicken right"? Well, I can certainly see why they ditched it. I knew that KFC fried chicken is a guilty pleasure of Pinky's. He worked at Roy Rogers in high school and developed a taste for it, then most of the Roy's disappeared. He was kind enough to have it on nights when I wouldn't be home for dinner - and dispose of the packaging before I got home. The first time I took a bite (age 25 or so) the salt content knocked me over. Sometimes I would steal a piece of his if it was in the fridge. Luckily, it has been in the fridge less and less since we discovered I make pretty decent fried chicken (and slamming buffalo wings!).

Fast forward, present day, fast food is sometimes in our rotation after the gym. That can't make sense, can it? Well, if you're avoiding carbs, and it's 8pm - the last thing I'm doing after a long day is making dinner. Sometimes we head to Boston Market where it's easy to assemble a carb friendly meal (double side of creamed spinach or creamed spinach and broccoli or green beans), other times we might head to the salad bar of our gourmet grocery. Last night we went to KFC for their grilled chicken which is being promoted by Sandra Lee. That should have been a sign. I despise this woman mostly because she matches her shirt to the background decor on her show and it makes me want to puke. Pinky said he had KFC's grilled chicken when he was fully a bachelor one of the other million times we've tried to avoid carbs, and it was decent. Well. Last night's chicken was far from decent.

Have you ever seen a grill in a KFC? Nope. I submit that the chicken is flash grilled with the skin off for appearance sake, then frozen and shipped where it sits in a hot oven for hours until someone is silly enough to order it. If they left the skin on it would help the flavor, but not the fat content, and grilled chicken skin doesn't exactly adhere well to the meat. The piece of chicken was so small I thought they were doing a Cornish hen promo for a minute. Dry, sad, a shameful waste of an animal who gave its life for my stomach.

And the sides. Yikes. Pinky's green beans may have been green at some point, but were not when they got to his plate. Coleslaw was acceptable, and my corn on the cob wasn't awful, until they told me they only had ketchup packs of government invented margarine to smear on it. My side salad would have been acceptable if they provided anything other than a SPORK to eat it with. How very junior high of them. Wait, the food in junior high was better. The 'veal' patties weren't half bad when you piled it with every condiment available. I should have taken a cue from when I ordered the salad and they reacted as if the health department just walked in. I take it that is not a common request there. Blah.

Late Dinner

Empty out the fridge scramble: potatoes, grilled asparagus and black forest ham - scrambled into eggs, topped with crumbled blue cheese. Even better with cracked black pepper.

Taste the soup!

I love a last moment to shine. On this chilly, rainy Spring day I thought about split pea soup on the way to work. I don't like hot soup in the summer. I just can't do it. Maybe some tortellini with broth, but no chicken noodle, no kale cold remedy soup, no spicy Asian broth-y pho-like anything.

Forgive the horn tooting, but I am a master soup blender/puree-er. In a professional kitchen, when you are first relegated to the salad station, after you prep your station you get to do the tasks no one else will do. In some cases not even the illegal immigrant hires will do these tasks. Peel grapes. Surgically remove veins from raw foie gras, puree soup. Not "make" soup mind you - this is after another chef has crafted the soup it gets passed to you. First you puree the soup with a home-depot version of a hand blender, then into the almighty Vita Mix blender, strain through a chinois "chino fino" in kitchen Spanish, using a ladle to press the solids. Depending on the soup sometimes you'd have to repeat this ordeal. White gazpacho was the worst. Trying to get stale bread and almonds smooth was an uphill battle. If I never see another chestnut again I'll be OK. Later on in my past career I never worked the grill station that put out the soup so I never got to make soup and pass it to an alternate peon, but I relished being done with those tasks when I took on hot appetizers & risotto.

Translating this skill to my home cooking life, I especially love soup during a week when I'm trying to only spend $50 on groceries for 7 days, when it's cold, and when there is an odd leftover. I can build an amazingly fast soup with a rotisserie chicken, some boxed stock, carrots, spinach and pasta (a MacGuyver recipe!) but I adore pureed vegetable based soups. One I make repeatedly - sweet potato with caramelized onions. I roast sweet potatoes, slice and caramelize a load of onions, and combine them with some stock in the food processor. Swirl in some apple butter and it's an elegant first course. Simmering some vegetables with onions, maybe garlic, and stock and then pureeing is the method for any veggie soup. This works for cauliflower, mushrooms, peas, asparagus, parsnips, and carrots. For carrot soup I like to throw in a load of ginger and big scoop of peanut butter, and garnish with wasabi peanuts. Easy. Cheap. When I want a garnish for cauliflower soup I slice up some Aidell's chicken apple sausage. For tonight's split pea I made a quick ham stock with the Easter Ham bone, sauteed onions in olive oil, added the split peas, stock and herbs with a bay leaf wrapped around it and puttered around facebook while it simmered. Then I pureed it, put it back in the pot, and added some leftover ham and shredded carrots because peas and carrots are funny together.

Maybe this summer I'll work on some cucumber soups (garnish with curry-coconut sorbet??) but I am retiring the soup portion of my dijon colored Le Creuset 6 QT until the fall.