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.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
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 . . .
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 . . .
Monday, January 14, 2008
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."
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."
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