I'm back on Blogger.

Well, it seems that not only did the Mac I was using to build the website at jarcane.info die, but my server host apparently died as well, and I can't even get ahold of the owner right now to find out what the hell's wrong.

So I'm back on blogger, and working to set up a redirect to bring jarcane.info traffic back here.  

I'm also back cooking again, so maybe I'll start writing about food and such again.  

The site to end all sites.

So, I have a new website.

It's at http://jarcane.info

It is, essentially, an attempt to consolidate all my various scattered blogs and web presences, as well as serve as a single repository for any future writing, of which I hope to make quite a lot more, as I intend to actually keep up with content updates in this new venture. I've also added a forum, with the hope of making it a great place to hang out and talk about food and games and things with all my various online friends and readers, and anyone else who happens to pop by.

Check it out, add it to your bookmarks, subscribe with your favorite feed reader. See you there!

Puerco al disco, sorta.

Last night, I caught a snippet of the Argentina episode of No Reservations, in which he visits a sort of commune there, where they prepared a rather magnificent looking dish, carne al disco, a dish of sliced beef, onions and peppers, cooked in garlic oil over an open flame in a shallow cast iron pan.

It looked absolutely amazing. So, naturally, I had to rip off the concept as best I could, and create a dish of my own inspired by what I saw. After a bit of fruitless searching on the internet for a recipe, I ultimately decided to just wing it, and we headed off to the store.

I wandered about, rounding up ingredients as inspiration struck me. I grabbed a yellow onion, a red bell pepper, one each of anaheim, habanero and yellow chiles, a can of coconut milk, a bag of key limes, a pound of linguica, and some corn tortillas.

The vegetables all got thinly sliced with a mandolin, except the habanero, which I diced. The linguica I cut into thin rounds as well. I also took out 4 thin sliced pork chops from the fridge, pounded them a bit, then seasoned with salt and lime juice and left to rest.

Come cooking time, I quickly seared the chops, then took them from the pan and tossed in the linguica, heating them a bit before tossing in all the vegetables, reducing the heat, and letting them sweat a bit, just long enough for the juices to start deglazing the pan. Then, in went the can of coconut milk, the juice of 4 of the key limes, and the pork chops. I threw a lid on top, and let them simmer on about medium heat for a bit.

For serving, the pork chops were served just with a bit of the resulting coconut sauce, while the remaining mixture of sausage and vegetables was served on tortillas as tacos. The pork was a bit dry, I think it would've been better if I'd basically poached it in the cocount milk without searing first, but the tacos were absolutely excellent. Rich, flavorful, truly a dish to be proud of.

Something to make again, that's for sure, and another pork recipe for that restaurant concept I've been pondering about lately . . .

A peace offering.

http://xkcd.com/418/

I haven't posted in even longer than usual. I haven't honestly done much lately I felt worthy of writing about. I've been on tighter finances than usual, and it's left my diet consisting of a hell of a lot of pasta and ramen.

There have been a few highlights. Homemade orichiette with butter and parmesan, for instance, probably the best damn pasta I've ever had, and I didn't even do that great a job with it. The esteemed Mr. Batali is right on when he says it's always better homemade with love, and he's equally dead on when he talks of the beauty of simplicity. Of all the pasta dishes I've prepared of late, that one was, without doubt in my mind, the absolute best.

I've also been playing with a Yucatan inspired ramen soup, made with shrimp broth and a healthy dosage of achiote. It develops this amazing, rich flavor and texture, and a gorgeous deep red color. It actually coats the side of the bowl. I also made a pretty damn nice turkey ramen with black pepper the other day.

I'm hoping soon to actually finally find a new kitchen to cook in, it's just a matter of finding the right opportunity. I stupidly let a shot at the Blacksmith slip by me out of lazyness and I'll regret that one forever. I'd really like to get a spot in a real haute cuisine sort of establishment, somewhere I can really learn the ropes, instead of the amateur fumbling about in the dark I do now.

Today's important culinary tip.

Stay away from the cheap Mexican sardines.

Thanks to a can of El Mexicano sardines, I've spent the last few days in general misery. I knew I should've stuck with a more traditional puttanesca recipe.

The folks over at Chowhound described them as "last on the list of over 39 canned sardines sampled. If I ever do buy a worse tasting sardine, it will go directly in the garbage." I can certainly attest to their foulness, indeed, it was rather apparent upon opening the can even, but I figured the rest of the dish would balance their overt fishyness. Indeed, the final dish was much more mild, though still a bit strong.

I didn't expect to actually get sick from the damn things though.

Catching up on events.

So the last week or so has been an almost exhausting cavalcade of new recipes and experiments, as well as an interesting new development in the form of me actually getting paid for doing this now.

Yup, that's right. The folks at Bend's Source Weekly have seen fit to give me irregular column space. The first piece, a profile of cook/owner Tammy Mills of Cross Creek Cafe, ran a few weeks ago, though due to some confusion had to be cut down considerably. I hope to post the extended profile soon.

Walking back through the menu over the last week, the biggest adventure was the smoke roasted pork tacos, for last weekend's D&D game.

I started with two roughly 6.5 lb boneless pork shoulder roasts, and brined them for two days in a brine seasons with whole dried japonica chiles, peppercorns, mustard and coriander seed, lime juice, and bistek.

This then got thrown on my smoker over hickory chips at about 250-300 for two hours, topping them off with a few slices of fresh pineapple. However, the temperature proved insufficient to get them done in a reasonable amount of time, a fact that was unfortunately largely the fault of the weather.

So I brought them inside and threw them both on a cookie sheet, and popped them in the oven for a bit. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to consider that the pan I'd grabbed had no edges on it, and the running molten fat from the pork wound up starting a bit of a fire in the bottom of the oven.

So the pig got yanked back out, and the oven left alone for a bit, and some rapid brainstorming occurred. One of my fellow players, and also a fellow cook, spotted a crock pot on the counter, and upon pointing it out, it occurred to me that if we were going to finish one of the roasts in that, we should take advantage of all the beer lying about, and cook it off in that with some more of the pineapple slices. The other roast meanwhile, went back on a proper baking sheet this time, and back in the oven at 350 degrees.

The oven roast went in for another hour, before, all of us quite hungry, we decided to pull that one out and carve into it. The thickest portion in the middle was still a bit rare in the center, but a good two thirds of it was quite done at this point, so we went ahead and carved off a healthy portion, and went about making tacos of it, served on corn tortillas with some fresh pico de gallo and a squeeze of lime. The oven pork was absolutely fantastic, moist, salty, rich with fat. The flavor was sort of like a pastrami, crossed with bacon, and the texture was perfect.

The remainder went back in the oven for another hour or so to finish, at which point we returned again to crack into both the oven and crockpot versions, which were both well and cooked by this point. The crockpot version, by contrast to it's oven compatriot, was almost a totally different animal. It was moist and tender, and the flavor of the smoke had mellowed and blended with the bite and the acidity from the beer and pineapple to create a whole different flavor from it's dry roasted counterpart.

It was well more food than any of us actually needed of course, and I wound up still having a third of the oven roast to take home, sadly leaving the crockpot one behind, having only really had the chance to give it a taste.

This wound up finding it's way into many of my recipes the following week. The next morning, we decided to make sandwiches with it, and I discovered that, now that it had chilled, I could slice it and use it rather like bacon, and so made some open faced sandwiches, by placing slices of the pork on a baking sheet under the broiler, before putting that back onto some bread with some healthy slices of pepper jack over the top. I served this with some Campbell's tomato soup, itself seasoned with a bit more of the pork, sliced thin, broiled until crisp, and then tossed back in the soup for flavor.

I also used it, sliced, then chopped into smaller pieces, to add some extra body and flavor to a few other dishes, like chicken and rice with sauce veloute, and a southwestern chicken lime pot pie. The last bit of it wound up coming full circle, and again being turned into tacos, this time diced, tossed with bistek and Tapatio, and then refried in butter on a flattop griddle.

I had considered repeating the experiment on a much smaller scale this weekend, but ultimately wound up taking a bit of a break from cooking over the last few days. However, tonight, my break ends, and I shall be returning to the kitchen to prepare a lovely spaghetti puttanesca with sardines.

A flavor trip to the real Mexico.

Recently, I hace discovered a new favorite taqueria, El Cochinito Contento in Redmond Oregon.

A small Mexican market on 6th, tucked in it's back corner by the butcher counter is a little taqueria, that serves some absolutely fantastic, and really authentic tacos and menudo that is simply to die for. The taco selection is a smörgåsbord of nasty bits, from tongue, to tripas, to cabeza, my personal favorite. Fatty, tender head meats on a warm corn tortilla with some chopped onion and cilantro, all it needs is a little squirt of lime to be one of the best things I've ever eaten. For the less adventurous, there's also some fantastic adovada, azada, and al pastor as well.

And the best part? Tacos are a mere $1.50 each. The amazing menudo, which takes me two sittings to finish? $5.50. It's an absolute steal, for some of the best damn REAL Mexican food you'll find short of travelling there.

-----------------------

The other night I found myself with a strange craving for fish. I don't often eat seafood these days, largely because I've been quite broke, and any sort of seafood has a tendency to cost an arm and a leg.

But the power of one of my strange cravings is not to be trifled with, and rather than find myself fighting off said craving for the literal weeks it was likely to linger, I instead wound up going to the nearby Safeway to take a look at their seafood stock, hoping actually that they had gotten a share of the massive shipments of smelt that the Redmond Safeway has been getting of late.

They did not turn out to have any such, but they did have some surprisingly nice, surprisingly fresh, sole, which I acquired immediately, and then set about wandering through the store, trying to come up with a recipe for it. Wandering through the "ethnic food" aisle, I somehow hit upon the concept of poaching it in some kind of green salsa.

A brief perusal of my available options in the store, led me to promptly check out, and rush over to the Colima Market to acquire some real ingredients, in the form of two tomatillos, one each of pasilla and Anaheim peppers, two limes, cilantro, shrimp boullion, and bistek.

A sudden flash of inspiration on the way back home led to me swinging back by the Safeway for a can of coconut milk for which I was horridly over charged, and a can of Jumex mango nectar.

Once home, the tomatillos and the peppers were roughly chopped and tossed in the food processor, along with the juice of both limes, a healthy dose of cilantro, a sprinkling of bistek, salt, pepper, and Tapatio. this all got pulsed until very finely chopped but not quite pureed, essentially making a nice mild tomatillo salsa.

This then went into a saute pan, along with the coconut milk, a cube of the shrimp bouillion, more bistek and tapatio, a splash of the mango nectar, and salt and pepper. Into the resulting liquid went about 3/4 to 1 lb of sole fillets, on a high flame until the liquid just started to simmer, then reduced to a very low flame, covered, and them simmered for about 15 minutes, then removed from the flame and let to set for another 10 while the rice I intended to serve it over finished cooking.

For the rice, I made a 2 cup helping, substituting some of the liquid for half a lime's juice and some more of the mango nectar, and also adding a touch more bistek, tapatio, a couple whole sprigs of cilantro, and some salt and pepper. This gets brought to a boil and then covered and reduced to a very low flame for about 20 minutes, then taken off the flame and left to sit for about 10 minutes with the lid still on.

Once it's all done, fluff the rice with a fork, serve some out over the plate, and then top with sole and the left over cooking liquid.

The sole is positively melt in you mouth tender, and the sauce is tangy, sweet, savory, all at once, and almost no trace of heat surprisingly enough.

It was a great meal, and my dining companion said it was the closest to Yucatan style cuisine he's had since living there.

A fine evening.

Last night I finally got another opportunity to make my chicken Alfredo, and I must say, it was quite possibly the best batch of the stuff I've ever made.

The chicken was a little bit different this time. Usually I would go for fresh chicken, cut into chunks, and then sauteed. Once cooked through, in would go the butter, cream, cheese, and fettucine.

This time however, we'd gotten a killer deal on a rotisserie chicken from the nearby Costco. $5 for a whole chicken is rather tough to pass up. So I took the breasts of the chicken, pulled them apart, and then took the shredded chicken and tossed it in the saute pan with a whole stick of butter, a couple cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.

The chicken, by itself, was already incredibly delicious once it had been cooking in the butter for a while, and soaked up all kinds of wonderful fat and flavor. Once tossed together with the pasta, a pint of heavy cream, and about 5 oz of grated Asiago cheese, and then simmered for a while to thicken, it produced a rich pasta dish that felt like it was making love to your mouth.

Now, to cap the night with a cocktail, I continued my experimentation with cachaca. I havent' had the budget for my regular trips to Hola lately, and when I found that the East Bend Liquor Store stocks the stuff for about the price of two caipirinhas at Hola, I figured I would give a shot at making my own caipirinhas.

The first experiment was atrocious. For one, I couldn't find any decent limes at the shops we went to that day, so I wound up having to settle for lime juice. For two, I just plain fucked up the recipe. Not enough lime juice, too much brown sugar, too much cachaca. It was unpleasant to drink, and neither myself, nor my drinking buddy, were able to finish them. There were brief moments that almost tasted like the real thing, but mostly it was awful.

So last night, I basically gave up on trying to do a traditional caipirinha, with the intention of trying again at a later date with some real limes perhaps. Instead, I wound up doing something similar, only this time, I cut back a hair on the brown sugar, only used about a shot of cachaca, and finished it off with some 7-up.

The resulting mix was fantastic, the same kind of refreshing, mellow, "I-can-drink-this-all-day" feeling you get from a caipirinha, it just doesn't actually taste much of anything like one.

For whom the bell tolls.

Well, it seems my time has come at the Japanese restaurant.

I was informed today, whilst in the midst of my lunch I might add, that my employer no longer desires my services for the dinner shift, leaving only the now ever so brief morning period (currently a whopping two hours on average), and thus cutting my hours to roughly enough to buy me a hell of a lot of ramen.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to culture difference. Put simply, the kind of kitchen culture and attitude which comes naturally to me is one that more resembles Gordon Ramsay's behavior or what Anthony Bourdain describes when he speaks of life in the professional kitchen, while what they are expecting is apparently some coddled little whelp who takes a heap of shit and asks politely for more. These are the kind of people who probably watch Ramsay on Hell's Kitchen and think "What an awful man", whereas I am the type of person who would be sitting in the audience and probably beating him to the punch.

I admit, unwaveringly, that I am an ill-tempered bastard when the chips are down. I swear like a fucking sailor, I'm constantly in a near or outright rage, and I quite simply have no patience nor do I possess any capacity to put up with much shit. I swear at myself, I swear about the customers, about the orders, about the prep, about fucking everything. As Bourdain put it in an interview at the Google campus, the kitchen becomes a world of hyperbolic black and white, only in my case, things have a far greater tendency to be evil horrible bastards than great saviors, with the sole exception of my sous chef, whom I now realize I will not be working with again.

The engine of my rage however, had become downright turbocharged over the last several months however. Stuck, alone, fighting a seemingly constantly losing battle just to keep my head above water, working my ass harder and harder everyday it seemed, for less and less reward. Even on the two glorious nights out of my workweek when I actually had a second cook to assist, more often than not, he'd be stolen away to the sushi bar, leaving me alone trying to battle through a dinner rush, running what is essentially three or four stations at once. I had at least one episode which could be best described as a near nervous breakdown, complete with alternating bouts of violent destruction and near tears, and pushed through only by the sheer motivating power that is the call of "Order up!"

But for all that, I must say that in, say, Yoko's, my alma mater, the kind of furious temper that si known to overcome me in the heat of a hard rush or a massive prep crunch, never seemed out of place to anyone, never did anyone bat an eye. Certainly there were more than a few confrontations, with waitstaff, with fellow cooks, even the occasional one with the boss whom I otherwise got on quite well with. There were definite shouting matches, and in a few occasion, even threats of violence. But it's a high stress environment, and at the end of the day, everyone seemed to somehow accept that this was simply part of the job, the curse of the kitchen. The same son of a bitch who threatened to beat the shit out of me in the middle of the kitchen, and whose face I was sorely tempted to slam into the the hot grill, would wind up giving me a ride home a few weeks later. Honestly, I seemed to be the one who had the most problems with taking that shit home with me.

And for better or for worse, that's just the kind of environment I expect in a kitchen, and I know I'm not alone in this, or Bourdain wouldn't sell out so many damn book signings. It's liberating in a sense, and in some ways helps keep the blood flowing. The kitchen is a warzone, and you absolutely cannot let those bastards keep you down. The orders are the enemy, the tools of the trade your weapons, and the food your ammunition. It is nothing short of a battle for your own survival, but when you constantly find yourself outgunned, outmanned, ill-equipped, and poorly supplied, after a while the most battle-hardened soldier is gonna find his morale seriously tested.

The bastards nearly killed me this time, and for my service, I get bucked out. But this ronin doesn't know anything left but fighting the good fight, and that means it's time to find a new banner to fight for, and a more rough and tumble troop to serve with.

And I'm seriously thinking it might be time for some more advanced training.

A piece of home, with a twist.

As a kid, one of our favorite cheap meals in my family was the wiener wrap. You roll up some hotdogs and grated cheese inside cheap canned biscuit dough, and pop 'em in the oven for however long the package directions on the can say. It's a bit Sandra Lee, and admittedly chock full of all kinds of artificial preservatives and everything else, but it's a tasty bit of homemade junk food regardless.

Tonight, while sitting about waiting for a diagnostic on a spare PC I had sitting around, I got a sudden craving for the things, and decided they'd be a cheap alternative to what I'd originally planned, which was having some of Abby's Pizza's delicious chicken and spuds delivered.

So I marched off through the winter wonderland to Ray's, and after wandering indecisively for half an hour as is my custom, wound up deciding to get a little more fancy with them.

For the meat, I went with some fresh hot Italian sausage from the meat dept., for the cheese, some grated Asiago, and for the dough, some croissant dough.

The dough concerned me a little, I think it may've been past it's shelf life a bit as it smelled fermented. But it was late, and I didn't feel like trudging back through the snow to go get another one or something.

It took me several tries before I finally figured out how best to roll the sausages up in the dough, but once I did, I put them in the oven at 350 for about 18 minutes or so. They still looked kind of pale at this point, so I gave them another 2 minutes to get them nice and golden brown.

They looked fine at first when I pulled them out, until I started trying to take them off the pan. They'd cooked together on the sides, and for some reason this caused the dough to not cook completely on the sides, so they had to go back in the oven for another 5 minutes to finish them off.

I finally got them done however, and they proved quite tasty. Probably could've used a bit more cheese I think, and they were very heavy, and kinda greasy, but still rather tasty and quite filling too. I was only able to eat 2, and the second one was rather pushing it I think. I'll have leftovers now for lunch at work tomorrow, and possibly dinner as well.

Try the caipirinha.

I have discovered a new favorite drink.

Hola! makes caipirinhas.

Yet again, Bourdain has failed to steer me wrong.

It was a couple weeks ago I had my first one. We were out for the evening's meal, and I decided to have a cocktail. Without really thinking about it, I ordered my usual gin and tonic, and noted a look of disappointment on the face of my waiter.

As I idly sipped my gin and waited for my food, I picked up the drink menu, and my eyes wandered down and immediately noticed something I had not seen the last time: caipirinhas.

In that very instant, I knew I had to try one. I could not pass up the opportunity to consume a beverage that my personal idol has spoken so glowingly of, so without hesitation, I ordered one.

The waiter brought me the fresh caipirinhas, which adds to the usual mix of lime, cachaca, and sugar, some hibiscus nectar, mango, grilled pineapple, and a few other things I've now forgotten, because the instant you taste it, a wave of pure bliss over comes all of your synapses, and the only thing you can think about at that point is moving to the beaches of Brazil and drinking caipirinhas all day.

It is one of those moments much like the previously discussed climactic moment in Ratatouille, where a food transcends beyond merely tasting great, but actually takes you somewhere else altogether.

So this recent Saturday, when it came time to make dinner plans, the first thing that came to mind was caipirinhas, as I was nursing a bit of a hangover from a night of pounding Henry Weinhard's and playing Rock Band all night, and figured, what better "hair of the dog" solution than the magical nectar that is the caipirinha?

However, a sudden craving for tempura in my dining companion led to us deciding to first take our meal at Yoko's. We wound up getting the veggie tempura, the spicy Thai roll, Batman roll, spicy albacore roll, broiled mussels, and some seared albacore sashimi. Phelan was our sushi chef for the evening, and, as always, everything he made for us was absolutely fantastic. I've known Phelan for years, I got my start in the business of food at Yoko's downtown years ago, and he makes some excellent sushi.

After we wrapped up our fantastic meal however, we decided to end the evening with a nightcap of caipirinhas. This time, a slight misunderstanding with our waiter led to us getting the regular caipirinhas, and I was initially concerned once I realized that we had not been served the same drink as before.

All such doubt of course, instantly disappeared from my thoughts the second I tasted it, because it was still every bit the heavenly drink the fresh caipirinha is, just different. More pure and simple, but no less amazing. You will be served fantastically by either, and I would have a hard time choosing any preference between them.



For yesterday's meal, I finally executed a plan I'd been intending to try for some weeks now. At work I had attempted to make a rolled, breaded veal dish, stuffed with a "Peppadew" goat cheese, but the veal I had used was largely dismal, and the breading didn't adhere well. However, the goat cheese itself, once it had melted and blended with the hint of honey mustard I'd added, was incredible, and I knew from that moment I had to do something with it.

My friend had mentioned that he had a ton of ham, and so this rolled about in my brain a bit before deciding that I wanted to do some kind of goat cheese cordon bleu dish. Eventually, I decided to go all pretentious fusion cuisine, and make goat cheese Cordon Bleu wontons.

So I mixed the remaining "peppadew" goat cheese, with some other three pepper stuff, shredded ham, minced chicken, some garlic, honey mustard, and a few spices. The mixtured got put in the wonton's crab puff style, and dropped in the deep fryer.

Unfortunately, they just weren't that great. The oil was on it's second usage, and it started going funky quick, and somehow, the process wasn't hot enough to get the goat cheese to melt properly. Plus my wontons weren't staying terribly well sealed, which meant the insides getting a lot of grease in them.

The filling also needed something else, like some vegetable of some kind, or some apple. Something light and crisp to cut through the heaviness of all that meat and goat cheese. I tried it in a panini this morning and, while it melted properly and tastes pretty good, it's damn heavy on it's own, and the buttery grilled bread only exacerbates the problem.

However, one thing all this experimentation has succeeded in is breaking me of a fear of goat cheese that came from some truly foul Carre du Berry that was my only previous experience with the stuff. In fact, I've come to rather like the stuff, in moderation of course . . .

The Buffet of the Damned.

There is something about buffet restaurants that has always unnerved me as a cook. I was never quite sure what it was, exactly. Sure the food is generally frozen crap, and generally focused on pure quantity with quality of any sort rarely entering the picture except by pure chance, but the same could be said of much fast food or even the average chain restaurant.

Recently however, my eating companion and I visited a new restaurant, the King's Buffet in Bend, OR, and it was upon leaving that restaurant, feeling slightly unsettled, that I finally realized what it was that had been bothering me all this time.

Buffets are for people who hate food.

This might seem like a contradiction of basic logic. After all, what better place for a lover of food than a place where you can eat your fill of any of a staggering array of dishes. Selection, quantity, and all self service too!

This is of course, pure bullshit, but it is the kind of twist in logic that keeps bringing me back to the places from time to time, despite my almost irrational fear of them. However, there is another clue to the true nature of these places in the other reason I usually wind up in them: desperation.

And from this I return to the point that these are not places for people who love food, but rather, they are for people who see food as some sort of onerous obligation, and who would rather be done with it altogether were it not for that bothersome aspect of biology whereby the lack of consumption is liable to result in death.

So, rather than concentrate at all on what they eat, they take the route of the purest swine, and belly up to the nearest trough, and eat whatever vile slop flows past them until they can but roll about in the mud like an over bloated sow. How better to delay any further need for sustenance than simply cramming your gullet past it's limit. The goal is not satisfaction here, indeed, the goal is perverted into the reverse, to cram such massive slop buckets worth of garbage in your face that your body is now utterly repulsed by the mere thought of food.

You can see it in the faces of the patrons. The only ones who generally don't bear at least some hint of a depressing pallor are the children, who are by nature generally happy to eat basically anything. There is a strange, downtrodden grimace that afflicts the face of a buffet patron, as if the very soul of their palate has been drained from them, and they are now left only with a hatred of food and those who craft it.

The buffet is, to me, hostile territory, like the pious marching into the gates of hell. I cannot help but feel unnerved and out of place in a buffet, because it's very nature is poison to the pursuit of true cuisine. That sense of dread and fear is simply a manifestation of the very same bone chilling shiver that afflicts a man confronted with a place of pure evil, an infernal sacrificial altar upon which food is offered up for the slaughter in the name of a darker, twisted faith that worships only blind consumption and gluttony for gluttony's sake.

It may be that there are still buffets out there taken in a spirit of a love of food, I have heard good things about the true traditional smörgåsbord, but until presented with such, I can only intone that old saying, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."