Deconstructed Baguette

Avocado Advocacy

Guacamole is obviously one of the greatest foods every created. I whip up a batch of it myself a few times a year, and while it's always good, I feel like it could be better. You really shouldn't need a recipe to make guacamole, but rather than eat mediocre guac, I decided to seek out some expert help before the last time I made it and I'm glad that I did. Here's the recipe, compliments of Alton Brown. The missing ingredient in my old standby was the half teaspoon of cumin, it really changed things around. Highly recommended.

Paradise By The Oven Light

I've probably been spending less time cooking since becoming a dad, but it feels like I've been doing it a lot more. That's probably because instead of cooking a couple times a week, I now cook once a week and attempt to make enough food in that one session to last four or five days.

That usually means making one big dish, though this week I did things differently and grilled some corn and chicken thighs and baked a meatloaf. I'm not entirely sure what happend, but I somehow managed to make the most delicious meatloaf I've ever made. I started with an old recipe and then deviated from it in several places due to a lack of ingredients, but the end result was much better than it would have been had I been able to cook it to spec. I'm going to attempt to transcribe what happened in the kitchen today so I can hopefully make it again.

1 lb ground turkey (dark meat)
1 lb ground beef (85/15)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 eggs
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup Italian style bread crumbs
1/4 cup pasta sauce (estimated)
1/8 cup chili sauce (estimated)
1-2 tbs barbecue sauce (estimated)
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tbs garlic powder
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp Sriracha sauce (estimated)
1/2 cup ketchup

Mix everything (except the ketchup) in a bowl, put it into a loaf pan, cover it with foil, and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take off the foil, reduce the heat to 350 degrees, brush the top of the loaf with the ketchup, and bake another 45-60 minutes.

Indochina

I've known of the culinary agglomeration known as Indian-style Chinese food for several years now. I first learned of it through Indian expats, all of whom seemed to yearn for it more than the traditional cuisine of their homeland. A few years later, I learned that Indo-Chinese food had reached American shores. More recently, I've heard about some of these dishes creeping their way onto Indian restaurant menus in the provinces. We popped into Taste of India last night for a quick bite before going to catch The Social Network, and much to our delight, found that they had added a small section of Indo-Chinese dishes to the end of their menu. I tried the Chili Chicken, which, as far as I understand, is the signature Indo-Chinese dish. I was a bit surprised to see that the chicken pieces were deep-fried. That's obviously part of what makes it Chinese, but I so rarely eat those kinds of dishes when I'm eating Chinese food that I've broken the Chinese food = deep fried association that tends to hold sway, especially in Americanized Chinese food. That's not the say that the Chili Chicken wasn't delicious. As one should probably expect when ordering a dish with the word "chili" in its name, it was quite spicy, though not overwhelmingly so. Michelle had another Indo-Chinese dish, the Chicken Hakka Noodles. Also a tasty dish, and the inclusion of noodles in an Indian-spiced dish gave it an even more exotic flavor. Our only complaint was that it was a bit too heavy on the noodles and too light on the chicken and vegetables. Take a close look at the menu the next time you visit your favorite Indian restaurant and see if they have any Indo-Chinese dishes, they're definitely worth a taste.

Cool As A...

If you have a couple of cucumbers that you don't know what to do with, here's a really easy and delicious salad that I made a couple days ago.

2 medium sized cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
dash of pepper

Mix it all together and refrigerate for an hour or more. Enjoy.

Thai Basil Chicken

We got some Thai basil from the farm this week, so I quickly went to the Google tonight to see what I could do with it. I found this quick and easy recipe and I was very happy with the results. I could have been convinced that it came from a restaurant, had I not prepared and cooked it myself. Try it if you have some Thai basil on hand.

Have A Drink On Me

As I've mentioned before, I can't turn away from any story about the most outrageously unhealthy "food" items produced by America's culinary-industrial complex. This recent review of the 20 Worst Drinks in America is no exception, though it felt a little strange to see an item on the list that I actually enjoy. Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot took home the honor of America's worst beer. For those who have never tried it, a 12 oz bottle of Bigfoot weighs in at 330 calories and at 32.1 grams has the same amount of carbohydrates as an entire 12 pack of Michelob Ultra. In Bigfoot's defense, it's almost 10% ABV, which means it has more alcohol than 2 full light beers and it's so heavy that by the time you've finished one, you're ready for nap. Still, the article makes a good point, beer is not the healthiest of beverages. It's nowhere near as bad as America's worst beverage, but it's a lot easier to reach into your fridge and grab a beer or three than it is to drive to your local Cold Stone Creamery and order a 2,010 calorie shake.

Recipe for Success

At least half of the meals that I cook are loosely based on a recipe, if not completely improvised. The results are mixed at best, but every once in a while, I create something good. My most recent concoction came out quite while, so I've decided to record it for posterity.

Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, shredded
1 large eggplant, cut into bite-sized strips
2 onions, finely chopped
3 tbs oyster sauce
2 tbs rice wine
2 tsp sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
chili sauce (as much or as little as you want)
2 tbs corn starch
2 tsp water (just enough to make a paste out of the corn starch)
1 tbs soy sauce
oil

Instructions

• In a large bowl, mix the eggplant with the oyster sauce, sugar, 1 tbs of rice wine, and chili sauce until all of the pieces are coated
• Shred the chicken breasts and mix with the soy sauce and the rest of the rice wine
• Mix the water and corn starch with some soy sauce and chili sauce and set aside
• In a large wok, brown the chicken with the onions
• Remove the chicken & onions and saute the eggplant
• When the eggplant is almost done, add the chicken back in and mix together
• Add the water & corn starch mixture and mix well, then simmer covered on low heat for about five minutes

Double Fantasy

As you may have heard, KFC was recently test marketing the Double Down, a bun-less chicken sandwich. Apparently, Americans still have too much dignity to eat bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of boneless friend chicken, because I haven't seen any Double Down related advertising in several months. I recently saw a commercial for a very similar menu item called the Doublicious, which appears to be the same ingredients that were included in the Double Down (boneless fried chicken, bacon, and cheese) served on a sweet Hawaiian bun. The only Doublicious sighting I could find (other than the commercial that I saw) comes from Nebraska. Does this mean that the Doublicious is a retooled Double Down that is once again being test marketed in Omaha and Providence? It's hard to say, since with the exception of the aforementioned post, the Internet is blissfully unaware of the Doublicious right now. One thing is for sure - if this concoction sounds appetizing to you, you might want to get to a participating KFC before time runs out.

Dakar

We tried Dakar, a new Senegalese restaurant in Central Falls last Friday before going to see The SantaLand Diaries at the Gamm Theater. There aren't a lot of dining choices near the Gamm, so Dakar is a nice addition to the area. We had the place to ourselves once the couple that was dining when we arrived left, which is never a good sign for a restaurant on Friday night (or any other night), but the food and the service was good. Our waiter (who was also the host, bus boy, and possibly, the chef) greeted us by asking if we had ever been the Senegal. It was nice that he didn't assume we had never visited his home country (though we haven't), even though it's a place that most Americans have never even heard of.

As for the food, I really liked the ginger juice. It was very strong, but I love ginger and ginger-based drinks especially. I also enjoyed the Naem appetizer that we tried. They are Senegalese-style egg rolls and according to our waiter, they were brought back to Senegal by soldiers who fought for their colonial power (France) in Vietnam. Regardless of how you feel about colonialism, we can all agree that is has given us some great fusion cuisine. I had the Lamb Yassa for dinner. The lamb was a bit on the dry side, but the dish still had a lot of flavor.

I haven't eaten much African cuisine, but my meal at Dakar was one of my favorites. Hopefully the next time we eat there, we won't be the only patrons.

¡hispanic!

I snapped this picture at my local Shaw's supermarket. They put these helpful exclamatory signs on each door in the freezer section. It's kind of fun to walk down the aisles reading the signs with the proper emphasis (breakfast! ice cream! kosher!), but I think they should have gone all out and included an inverted exclamation point on the hispanic foods sign.

Double Trouble

I've seen this commercial for KFC's latest menu item a few times so I assumed that it was taking American by storm. I learned today that this new culinary creation is currently being test marketed in Providence and Omaha, so I'm one of the lucky few able to experience the deliciousness of the Double Down, which is ostensibly a bacon and cheese sandwich with a bun made out of boneless pieces of fried chicken. For the record, I have yet to try one and have no plans to do so. My lack of interest may lead directly to the Double Down not testing well enough to merit a nationwide release, but it's a chance I'm willing take.

Normally, this is where I would go into full snark mode, but after The AV Club called it "the Reichstag fire of health care reform", I don't think there's anything else that can be said. I hope that I have an opportunity to use that analogy somewhere else, though. But is the Double Down really that bad? The concept seems a little dated. The bun-less sandwich sounds like something straight out of the Atkins craze of a few years back. The bacon seems forced, and I feel like the current incarnation of the add bacon to everything craze is starting to fizzle out. Other than that, I don't see how this is much different than other items on the menus of America's fast food restaurants. Don't get me wrong, the Double Down is kind of disgusting and definitely not something you should eat on a regular basis if you care about your health, but it isn't a new low in the field of culinary arts.

Case in point, last night I dined on some deep-friend clam-infused dough balls. Clam cakes, as they're usually known in these parts, are a Southeastern New England institution and a staple of seaside seafood shacks. Clam cakes have a better name than the Double Down and a simplicity that makes the Double Down look even more thrown together by comparison, but are they really all that different? If clam cakes can be considered a classic comfort food cherished across generations, can the Double Down really be considered a harbinger of the end of the times?

Restaurants need to innovate in order to attract customers. For fast food restaurants, that means either offering more calories per dollar than their competitors or combining a limited set of ingredients in new ways. Most innovations across the food service industry will be forgotten as quickly as they appear. A select few will become part of humanity's culinary lexicon for a few years, a few generations, or, if they're really good, forever. I'm not predicting that every greasy spoon will someday serve a version of the Double Down, I'm just saying that the difference between a beloved culinary institution and an affront to good taste on a plate is smaller than we think.

Fasting

Submitted without comment.

Chinese-Americana

We went to check out a small exhibit chronicling the early history of Chinese restaurants in Providence at the Johnson & Wales Culinary Arts Museum. The three restaurants profiled were all long gone before I arrived in Rhode Island, so I don't have any memories of dining at them, or any other old time Chinese-American restaurants for that matter. Still, it was an interesting exhibit. My favorite part was an old newspaper ad from one of the three restaurants (Mee Hong, I believe). There wasn't a date on the clipping but it appeared to be from the 1960s. The ad was targeting local college students and listed each of the local schools along with a selling point for the students at that institution. I don't remember each of the selling points verbatim, but they boiled down to the following:

• Brown: Authenticity
• RISD: Decor
• URI: Value
• PC: Alcohol
• Bryant: American-Style Food
• RIC: Highchairs
  

40+ years later, the ad probably still resonates pretty well with its intended audiences.

Polenta Surprise

The weather was so nice today that grilling was a given. I pulled out my grilling bible and found a couple new recipes that I decided to modify and put together. Such culinary ingenuity can be a dangerous proposition, but it turned out really well today. The first recipe was for penne pasta and grilled duck breast with tomatoes and mushrooms. I took a lot of liberties with this one, substituting chicken thighs for the duck breast, nothing for the mushrooms, and the second recipe for the penne. The second recipe was for grilled parmesan polenta crostini. I did this one by the book, though I omitted the cheese since I didn't have any. This was my first time grilling polenta, and I was very impressed with the way it came out. The grilled polenta also made an excellent pasta substitute. The dish looked a little ridiculous, circular slices of grilled polenta on the bottom of the plate topped with a chunky tomato sauce and large pieces of grilled chicken thigh, but it tasted excellent.

All the Tea in China

As you may know, I tend to read food labels fairly thoroughly. Recently, I've come across some highly suspicious information on some food packages. For starters, I was reading the description on a box of Trader Joe's Earl Gray tea and read the following

The earliest recorded evidence of the cultivation of tea plants comes from China in the 14th century...

This is, of course, completely wrong. Tea has been an important part of Chinese culture for millenia. According to Wikipedia, records of tea consumption in China date back to the 10th century BC. The earliest record I could find for recorded evidence of tea cultivation, not just consumption, is a work from the late 8th century called The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu, so Trader Joe's is off by at least 500 years.

Keeping with the China theme, I was standing in line at my local Chinese grocery store when I noticed some good-sized bags of whole black and white peppercorns. I knew we were running low, I grabbed one of each. At $2.50 for a 7oz bag, it's at least 4 times cheaper than pepper at the regular grocery store. When I got home and cracked into one of bags, I noticed something strange on the nutrition facts label.

According to the label, one serving of pepper contains 12.3% of your daily fat allowance! I read the label a little closer and noticed that the serving size is 3.5 oz. I know the Chinese like their food a little spicier than Americans, but 3.5 oz is more than an entire grocery store-sized spice container (the bottle of Spice Islands whole white pepper that this package replaced is 2.7 oz). As if that wasn't bad enough, the 7 oz package lists that it contains four 3.5 oz servings. Still, you can't beat those prices.

Vegging Out

We dined at the Garden Grille [warning - audio link] for the first time on Friday. I was quite impressed with my meal, the Mixed Grille. I've had dinners that were entirely comprised of meat and I once had a dinner in Kyoto that was comprised almost entirely of tofu, but I think Friday was the first time I've ever had a dinner that was entirely comprised of vegetables. I had a plate asparagus, eggplant, sweet potato, onions, peppers, squash, and mushrooms all grilled to perfection. Highly recommended.

Baby, You Got a Stew Goin'!

I've been doing a lot of cooking this week. I made another batch of Ming Tsai's Red Rendang so I had to use it up. One of the dishes that I used it on was a lamb stew that I did in a slow cooker. When I opened up the cooker after letting it stew, I was overwhelmed by the smell of lemongrass. The lemongrass flavor was barely noticeable in the paste and I wasn't overwhelmed by it while eating the stew, only while smelling it. Lemongrass and fish sauce, both Southeast Asian standbys, are ingredients that I find tasty but can't really stand the smell of when they get too strong. I'm told that even people who enjoy the taste of the durian feel the same way about it, so maybe it's just a characteristic of Southeast Asian food.

I've also been enjoying some Trader Joe's English Cheddar with Caramelized Onions. Some friends of ours introduced us to it recently. It's probably something I never would have picked out on my own, but the two tastes go together so well that I'm surprised all cheddar cheeses (and possibly, all cheeses) aren't alloyed with caramelized onions.

Your Window To Weight Gain

You know those articles about the worst possible things you can order while dining out? I'm as addicted to those articles as many Americans are to the artery-clogging entrees being peddled by our beloved chain restaurants. Men's Health recently did an Academy Awards-style review, giving out a worst thing to eat award in 20 different categories. Chili's and On The Border each walked away with three awards. Chili's had the Worst Starter, Worst Chicken Entree, and Worst Dessert, while On The Border had the Worst Nachos, Worst Fish Entree, and Worst Salad. Of course, as bad as some of these dishes are, none of them are anywhere near as bad for you as the Bacon Explosion (assuming you eat the entire roll yourself).

Infamous Bowls

Some people complain about how the proliferation of huge restaurant chains has destroyed America's regional diversity. What these people fail to realize is that restaurant chains don't destroy regional culture; they demarcate it. Take Bob Evans for example. That middle American dining institution has no franchises in New England and only a handful of them in the other northeastern states (unless you consider Pennsylvania part of the northeast - PA is lousy with Bob Evans franchises).

I had kind of forgotten about Bob Evans until I was back home for Thanksgiving and saw a commercial advertising their answer to KFC's Famous Bowls. It's called the Chicken Fried Deep Dish Dinner, and it takes the KFC Famous Bowl and goes a step further by adding a biscuit into the mix. I've always been fascinated by the Famous Bowl. I'm convinced that the dish was created when someone at KFC headquarters walked into the test kitchen and demanded that the chefs create a new dish that incorporated all existing KFC menu items. I'm not the only one who is fascinated by the Famous Bowl either - comedian Patton Oswalt has carved out a niche for himself in the comedy world with his Famous Bowls routine. With Bob Evans' recent shot across the bow in the Famous Bowls Wars, both of us should have plenty of material to feed our Famous Bowls obsession for the foreseeable future.