Jared @The Carnivore Project, timed perfectly with March Madness, has posted the final round of The Meat Bracket, which aims to crown THE ULTIMATE MEAT.
It’s Bacon vs. Roast Chicken in the finals. Vote early and often, and don’t let bitter grapes about Tofu being shut out prevent you from performing your civic duties.
A dangerous new player in NYC’s underground gourmet scene, FM is a group of relentless carnophiles who provide dinner parties the absolute freshest meat possible. This involves bringing a soon-to-be-delicious animal to your apartment, then taking it through all stages of preparation, starting in your bathtub, and ending in your oven.
I have a lot of work to do, so here’s a post to tide all 1.7 readers of this blog over for the time being.
Blah blah blah factory farming blah blah blah foie gras rules blah blah blah best fig ever blah blah blah snooty waiter blah blah blah Russian River Valley Pinot blah blah blah Michael Pollan blah blah blah Kansas City BBQ blah blah blah sparkling vs still blah blah blah braised pork belly blah blah blah Adrià Achatz Blumenthal Cantu Dufresne blah blah blah west coast pizza sucks blah blah blah kumquat foam blah blah blah Tony Bourdain blah blah blah Fleur de Sel blah blah blah Nikon D70 blah blah blah bread recipe blah blah blah tacos and pho blah blah blah French Laundry blah blah blah fair trade coffee blah blah blah Flickr Youtube Technorati blah blah blah Rachael Ray sucks ass.
Until recently, most Americans have been appallingly ignorant of how their food is produced. That is changing. And Mr. Puck’s gift for showmanship will help advance Americans’ knowledge that they can eat well and do right all at the same time.
Good. Good for Puck. But I doubt it will have any significant effect on a society that bleats endlessly about American Idol controversies in lieu of paying actual attention to anything that imprints specificity upon their daily lives.
Start them early. What’s Next, Wine in Sippy Cups?.
Put this in a Chewbacca lunch pail with a Lunchables of Jamón serrano and Manchego cheese. Dessert can include shot of port and optional AA popup book.
Just because I wanted to indulge myself in a debilitating bout of self hatred, I endured 15 minutes of the Food Network’s “Chefography” on Sandra Lee. Fifteen minutes was all I could take — I felt myself slouching dangerously close towards self-immolation, much like a depressed goth teen cutting herself in the basement, or Michael Hutchence that split moment before asphyxiation (when he realized he was beyond the safe zone but, dammit, he still hadn’t shot his load).
The sycophantic murmurs from her friends, given in testimonial form, were probably the most banal treacle I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing since Colin Powell made a bunch of right-wing bedwetters soil their Underoos — and convinced the entire corporate media establishment to endorse a war — on the strength of single Powerpoint presentation. And it didn’t even have any cool, animated slide transitions.
One friend of hers claimed (and I paraphrase) “she is always thinking about trying something new…for instance, she’ll say to herself, next time I’ll use a smoky cheese in that omelette, maybe spinach”. That’s the kind of ingenuity rarely seen outside of a second grade show and tell.
Another friend offered up the fact “she has photos of family in every room” as evidence of her effusive humanity. By that standard anyone with a Shutterfly account is the fucking Dalai Lama. And some other crackpot lady claimed Sandra Lee has spearheaded the crock pot revival, claiming Lee realized that its “time (was) coming again, (and) what she did so smartly, was take it to a new generation, a new demographic.” That’s rich — and Kid Rock revived rap.
I know it’s low hanging fruit and bashing Sandra Lee is hardly original, but she really must either a) be fucking some exec at the Food Network or b) have a photo of the same exec in bed with a dead hooker or a live boy.
After the Sandra Lee hagiography, the “Chefography” for Bobby Flay followed. For that, I trot out an old favorite (via Je Mange le Ville) — The Staggering Dicketry of Bobby Flay.
A sample nugget (from Flay’s “Chefography”): when recounting his upbringing on the “mean” streets that gave him his worldly smarts, Flay would tell people he went to UCLA. “You went to school in California?” they would ask. “No, the University of Corner of Lexington Avenue.”
Kill me. Quickly.
Food Network. Check your local listings.
I ran across these buffalo patties in the freezer case at Costco. They come 8 to a package (5 oz each).
As you can see, the copywriting on the back of the package educates on the plight of this poor animal, detailing the rough and tumble history this noble creature has endured over the centuries, fighting off near extinction just so we can eat it today. What a cruel, cruel fait accompli. We are all grim, macabre, and willing merchants of death.
One selling point for buffalo meat is the relative lean meat it provides. A 5 oz patty in this case has only 12 grams of fat, whereas a typical ground chuck burger would contain around 30 grams. At 9 calories per gram of fat, that’s a quite a savings. So much of a savings, in fact, that…well, you know those burgers, that are like, double burgers? Yeah.
Verdict? Meaty. Big. Bold. Substantial. It tastes as if you took Montana and stuck it between a toasted bun and dressed it with sharp Tillamook cheddar, lettuce, tomato, and distilled vinegar sauces.
On the heels of my own Pho post, both Eat,Drink&BeMerry and Wandering Chopsticks have excellent, comprehensive posts on this Vietnamese beef noodle soup.
The new year brought new changes to the Tres Hermanos taco truck, located in North Portland on the Northeast corner of Killingsworth and Denver. Click here for my original report.
(Click menu for a detailed view). Gone is the handwritten menu, replaced a proper, printed, wide format placard with fonts and everything. The menu is much more prolific, as you can see (but not really, everything is simply just enumerated), and now includes “Super Burrits” which I assume is a misspelling. In a nod to gringos and stoners, Nachos makes a guest appearance.
But tacos is where all the hot action is. Taco prices have gone up a quarter. First trip here after the fancy new menu, I had the birria, cabeza, and barbacoa. The birria was very good, very flavorful, slightly gamey. The cabeza was decent, but the barbacoa was extremely off/odd tasting.
They now feature squirt bottles with table sauces. Prior to the printed menu, they would simply ask you if you wanted your tacos full metal jacket, and you would have to be content with what was dressed (they didn’t have bottles) but now you can squirt to your heart’s content. And they now have a bright orange habanero sauce that is absolutely dynamite. But you’ll have to ask for the salsa bottles that are in plain view behind the ordering window…and specifically for the habanero, as I think by default they don’t think patrons demand this kind of scorch.
Subsequent visits have seen me revert to my taco triumvirate — pastor, carnitas, and asada. The asada has been less crispy than in the past, but the carnitas has improved IMO, and the pastor seems even more flavorful and delicious.
The tortillas are amazing. They are now thicker, and are made to order with your tacos (each taco is double wrapped in tortillas). Warm, cozy, and wonderful. They sell them to go: ask for a dozen, pony up $2 (though last time I was charged $3?), and they will make them on the spot and wrap in foil for you to carry.
I will eat vegan. More often than you’d probably think. In fact, I enjoy it at times.
Here’s some evidence.
Tofu, broccoli, and mushroom stir fry.
I ate this with wild and brown rice.
Dark Restaurant: Where one eats in total darkness.
The first dark restaurant in Asia is officially opened on the 23 December 2006. This restaurant, located in Beijing, China, has its interior painted completely in black. Customers are greeted by a brightly lit entrance hall and will be escorted by waiters wearing night vision goggles into the pitch dark dining room to help them find their seats. Flashlights, mobile phones and even luminous watches are prohibited while in this area.
The meal will be taken in this environment with the complete loss of vision. By starving one’s sense, your other senses are stimulated to full alert – all so the theory goes – and your food will taste like it’s never tasted before. In case you are wondering about the washrooms, they are all brightly lit.
I’m not sure if I’d be too eager to sign up for this. First of all, it’s pitch dark, so what’s to prevent some perve with a night vision scope from sneaking up and giving you a finger bang against your will? And if something is shaved with truffles and you’re paying $75 for it…how do you really know? Then again, nobody is going to see you if you want to pick up your plate and hoover every last truffle to make sure.
Come to think of it, this would be a concept better suited for, say, a rib joint, so you can go totally atavistic on a bone or a plate of chicken wings without caring a whit about appearances. And truly, whoever smelt it dealt it — no need for a poker face after ripping one.
Click through and check out the masked waiters, who look like (straight out of Blade Runner) industrial designers of frozen, biorobotic Replicant eyes.
I just fucking went to Whole Foods, sat at the track sushi bar and spent $12 on 3 small fucking plates of sushi. Still hungry, got $5+ worth of mussel salad on the way out. Got back to the office, took one bite and threw it away.
$17+ for a workday lunch and I’m still hungry.
Fuck Whole Foods. Fuck you. Fucker.
After getting an earful (get it?) from those advocating for bunny wunny, food blogger makes peace. Sort of.
Lesson here? I dunno. Something. Does everything need to be distilled into an easily consumed, after-school-special-like sound bite?
Eating mammals is a messy, complicated business. We are all death merchants.
High-brow brews. “Boulevard joins brewers creating beers with the complex characteristics of wine.”
And to drink better, they’re willing to pay a premium. A Rogue Imperial India Pale Ale from Newport, Ore., goes for $13 for 750 milliliters, a price more comparable to wine than a six-pack. Even the O’Fallon Smoked Porter, which is best enjoyed with barbecue ribs, rings up at $4 per 22-ounce bottle. Boulevard craft beers will cost $7 to $13 for 750 milliliter bottles (about 24 ounces).
“A growing segment of the population wants more flavorful products, more premium products,” Gatza says. And, like wine, “they will have several different beer styles in the refrigerator, from several breweries, so that they can match beer to the occasion.”
In honor of National Potato Chip Day, I’ve decided to pay homage to a recently introduced, heavyweight contender.
Rarely does a chip come around that punches you in the solar plexus and makes you stand up and take notice.
Kettle™ brand Spicy Thai is such a chip. It is a snack that screams “Notice me! Behold me. You can’t ignore me. I am your muse. Your raison d’etre.”
Spicy Thai has really taken the industry by storm and has almost singularily redefined the snack landscape. Not since the combination of fancy nutmeats in an unguarded moment of peanut exclusionary packaging has the snack world been shaken from its complacent doldrums.
The flavor profile is simultaneously intricate, subdued, and bold. At first you’re hit with what is almost a cloying sweetness. This is simply Kettle toying with your emotions. You’re then clobbered over the head with a rush of ginger, and then a distinctly potent slow burn.
Kettle is based here in Oregon (Salem), and they do much that is to be admired. Witness the delicate prose extolling the chip on the backside of the packaging:
A Chip That Travels Far for Flavor
As true chip innovators, we love a challenge. So when a fan suggested that we take Thai cuisine’s complex balance of flavors — sweetness, spice and salt — and balance it on a chip, we reached for our passports. We’ve incorporated the refreshing sweetness and snap of ginger and the red peppery pop of Thai spice to create a collision of East and West in the crunch of the world’s most worldly chip. Have Kettle™ brand — will travel. No passport required.
Under the dominion of any other corporate stewardship, this would be mere treacle and hyperbole. In this case, truer words have never been inscribed. I would personally like to meet and thank the “fan” that compelled Kettle™ brands to conjure such a masterpiece. He/she deserves accolades and adulation, and is worthy of bestowal of the highest honors we accord to those who advance humanity and progress to the zenith of benevolent accomplishment (hint: Nobel Prize).
Built for Speed, but Looking for Love.
WATCHING a three-and-a-half-pound chicken roast in 14 minutes, time loses all meaning. The skin turns gold and crisp, juices immediately rise to the surface, and the flesh firms before your eyes. It’s dizzying and seductive, like the home makeovers on TV that compress a six-month renovation into a single afternoon.
…
TurboChef, however, has put an unusual amount of research and design energy into adapting its product for residential use. It will be introduced next month, priced at $5,995 for a solo unit and $7,895 for a TurboChef combined with a conventional oven. The company is pitching — hard — the notion that its appliance will do no less than revolutionize American home cooking.
Time to sell the Jetta.
Today I felt like getting a sandwich. I work in exurbia, and if I want to expand beyond our campus cafeteria my sandwich choices are corporately limited, i.e. Subway and Quiznos. I opt for the latter, as eating Subway is akin to listening to Phil Collin’s Sussudio (i.e. like Cabel Sasser claims, “…it’s like not eating anything at all!”). Plus, it’s been painful watching Jerrod devolve over the years into a sanctimonious, smug pig-fucker.
Quiznos, it should be mentioned, allows you to dress your sandwich with as many pickled peppers (3 kinds!), pickles, and dressings (3 kinds!) as you’d like. For an obsessively compulsive condiment and garnish hoarder like myself, that is like oxycontin.
So I headed over to Quiznos’ presence on the Interweb to see if there were any ground-breaking announcements that would sway my impending auto excursion to its friendly environs one way or another.
Nothing to see, outside of the odd choice in subject matter for the home page poll.
This type of Sophie’s Choice strikes me as a bit uneven for a corporate entity with a finely honed commercial image. A card-carrying member of the hoi polloi, such a myself, might even be given pause during his innocent search for a toasted sandwich. Perhaps the website poll editor today was stricken by a bout of existential suffering that manifests via deep ruminations of life’s ethical conundrums.
If so, here are a few other poll options I feel would capture the spirit of the moment:
boy_asunder (via Portlandfood.org), bless his soul, was kind enough to scout a menu from the soon-to-be Biwa, which he posted to his site.
So many good things there I don’t know where to start. Well, I do. The ramen. Pork belly also makes a few appearances. Homemade kimchi. Pork cheek. Various grilled succulents.
Excuse me, I need to go towel off.
Mayor tells Muni to investigate eliminating fares.
Margaret Cliver, a 50-year-old Mission District resident who commutes by bus, fears the same problems on Muni.
“Gavin Newsom must have taken a leave of his senses to even consider this. Muni is already overloaded with stinky crazies, loud-mouth-behaved louts and other zoological forms of low life. The day it becomes entirely free, it will become a dumpster on wheels, and I, along with the rest of those who currently attempt to use the system, will give up on it entirely,” Cliver said.
“Other zoological forms of low life” = instant classic. Gives this lady a blog.
Priests to purify site after Bush visit.
Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
Noted without comment.
Philadelphia’s BYO Revolution. “How Budget-Minded Brown-Baggers Have Energized A City’s Dining Scene”.
We were at Pumpkin, a 28-seat restaurant owned by a young couple in a neighborhood that, depending on your outlook, could be called emerging, marginal or flat-out dicey. The candlelit former deli has a single storefront window and an open kitchen. Gauzy orange curtains hang from exposed fixtures, and the secondhand tables, pushed tight together, are covered in butcher paper. The short, frequently changing menu is printed on a single sheet of paper. The food, such as braised veal cheeks, pan-seared sea scallops or a pork chop served over spaetzle, is admirable and at times approaches outstanding.
In other words, Pumpkin follows the pattern of cool BYOBs all over Philadelphia, where crowds of people with brown paper bags of wine and beer in tow wait patiently for tables.
…
Over the past decade, Philadelphia has experienced an astounding boom in BYOB dining. When Audrey Claire opened in 1996, it was one of only two fine-dining BYOBs in the city, along with longtime favorite Dmitri’s. Now, in the metropolitan region, there are more than 240.
Beats standing in a cheesesteak line for hours at Geno’s and having your genitals scalded with a ladle of hot industrial whiz because you speak French or something.
EatDrink&BeMerry asked for a Pho recipe, so here’s mine.
This Portland-centric info won’t help EatDrink&BeMerry, but he lives in Southern California, the land of Ranch 99 markets and over a quarter of a million Vietnamese, so I’m sure he’ll manage. (After all, he’s a resourceful guy who managed to score an entire segment in Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations LA episode!)
There’s a short list of stores I would consider for an all-inclusive Pho run. They are in my order of preference:
1. Thanh Thao market, 65th and Sandy.
2. Hong Phat market on Prescott and 99th.
3. Fubonn
4. Uwajimaya
Certainly, there are other stores.
The first two market are Vietnamese, Fubonn is pan-Asian, as is Uwajimaya, though the latter obviously primarily Japanese. But Uwajimaya sells fresh rice noodles, has an incomparable selection of Asian produce, and you can find bones necessary to make a fine stock.
But it’s at Vietnamese markets like Than Thao where you’re going to have certain details taken care for you. Like at the butcher counter you can get pre-bagged portions of beef leg soup bones, and oxtails by the pound.
I like to buy my meat pre-sliced from Thanh Thao market on 65th and Sandy – it’s lean, consistently thin slices of the eye of round. At $3.29/lb, it’s a bargain.
If you are slicing it from home from your own eye, you can freeze it for an hour before slicing. It’s key to get the meat as thin as possible. If for some reason round is unavailable, you could also in a pinch use london broil, but keep it cheap and lean. This is peasant food, and something like strip or ribeye would be wasteful. That’s not to say a frou-frou version of Pho Tai couldn’t be something like, say, raw buffalo carpaccio draped on fresh rice tagliatelli and poached with scalding hot, anise-and-lovage-scented brown veal stock, topped with julienne of cinnamon basil and saw leaf herb, but you wouldn’t see me making this in my humble kitchen (even if I had the ambition).
Pho Tai basically means Pho with raw, lean beef (“Tai”). This is my favorite type of Pho, but it is also very good with braised, tender beef (commonly brisket — Chin), or with lean, cooked flank (Nam). With two types of meat? Pho Tai Chin.
I like a fragrant broth. Many people would probably be bothered by the variety and proliferation of aromatics and spices in my Pho broth. I don’t care. I live life to the fullest, with wanton disregard for prudes and haters.
Put the bones in a large stockpot and cover with water…say a full 12 inches over the bones themselves, and crank up the heat.
My mom impressed the following method upon me: peel the onion, and then stud that thing with cloves, really sticking the points deep into the onion flesh to make sure they are firmly implanted. Turn on the flame of your gas stove (or you can use a creme brulee or crackpipe torch) and, using tongs, scald that allium, turning to toast all the clove points and to get an even char all over the onion. Throw into the stockpot, and repeat with ginger.
Put the rest of the spices into a dry cast iron pan, and toast over high heat for a minute, and dump into the pot. Add carrots (unpeeled) and celery.
Disclaimer: for a clear broth, some people say to boil the bones, and skim off the “foam”. But I prefer just to allow everything to simmer for a buttload of time (the impurities seem to melt and evaporate away) and then strain.
So…bring everything to a healthy boil, then add rock sugar and reduce to simmer. Personally, I would have started this around 8am or 8pm, because this is going to take a while. Simmer for 6-8 hours. Yes…even overnight on the lowest of low settings.
Strain broth through a fine sieve (it helps to own more than one stockpot — I own three. But I am a notorious hoarder). Sometimes I’ll cool the broth in the fridge, and skim off the coagulated fat “sheet” that accumulates. Other times I’ll just eat an unctuous first bowl of Pho, and then cool and skim later.
Bring back to a healthy simmer, and season with fish sauce (3 tablespoons?), salt, and a couple teaspoons of MSG. Do this in stages, and taste constantly. There is no magic formula — everything is approximate and requires constant salty bootstrapping to get it just right.
Use fresh, thin rice noodles. Usually 99 cents for an entire pound. Blanch in boiling water for no more than 20 seconds, and then strain and bowl immediately.
Bring the broth to a roiling boil. Drape thin slices of Tai over the noodles. Top with:
Using a ladle, skim the scalding, boiling broth over the noodles, beef, and garnishes. Hit that soup with a couple dashes of nuoc mam (fish sauce) and the juice of half a lime, and give it a few grinds of white and black pepper. Enjoy.
FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug. Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk.
The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency’s own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.
The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.
The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotics, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.
But for some reason I watched it three times straight.
I blame fluoride.