Tonight I decided that I would make something that I am quite fond of,
and something that I came up with all by myself, as far as I know. This
recipe for Mac and Cheese creates a different dish than the other Mac
and Cheese dishes I’ve had in the past and it’s quite good. I’m an
ardent believer that anyone can cook, even those who do not think they
can or should. Everyone Can Cook.
Here’s how I set it up:
Ingredients:
2 1-pound boxes of Cavatappi Pasta (hollow corkscrew shaped pasta, uncut
elbow macaroni essentially)
4 cups of milk (any kind, probably good at 2%)
4 tbsp of Butter
6 tbsp of AP Flour
At least 1 pound or more of any kind of cheese you like
Procedure:
Boil the pasta until al-dente and drain and put aside. Get a deep
saucier, they are halfway between frypans and dutch ovens. Warm the
butter with low heat until it starts to bubble, just gently bubble. Then
add the AP flour in one shot. Stir like mad for about 2 minutes. Pour
milk into 4 cup plastic measuring cup and microwave for about 3-4
minutes (watch as milk can boil and take off on you and make a hell of a
mess) right before the milk boils and expands, take it out and pour it
all in the saucier on top of your roux (which is what the flour and
butter did together) and stir that for the next 4 to 5 minutes, bring up
the heat, and stare at it, boil is coming. Once the milk starts to boil,
add salt and pepper, a pinch and a few grinds of both. You now have a
finished Béchamel Sauce! Now you can augment it. You can add anything
you like to this sauce, it’s like culinary velcro. It’ll accept a huge
amount of cheese, various different kinds of cheese, whatever your
little heart desires. Start with about a pound, more if you like cheese
a lot. I wouldn’t go beyond 2-3 pounds of cheese. The sauce can also
accept any herbal additions, like Thyme or Parsley or even Sage if you
like. Rosemary is nice, but it’s really quite twiggy and resinous so
unless you got a huge hankering for Rosemary, keep that out. You could
also sweat-and-brown onions or garlic or even shallot. Keep in mind that
onion can take an insane amount of punishment but it’s cousins cannot,
garlic and shallot are very quick, say 20-30 seconds of sauté before
they are toast. You could even go with raw garlic or shallot, as they’ll
work their magic once they get to the oven. With the drained cooked
pasta, mix that with the cheese sauce in another bowl, prepare a
properly sized vessel for baking and spray Pam on it first, that’ll help
keep it from sticking to the surface later on. Get that oven up to 350
degrees and throw the mix in the vessel into the oven for half an hour.
When it comes out the top will be lightly browned and bubbly. If you
want more brown, leave it in longer. Timing is flexible as long as your
temps are right – if your oven doesn’t have an over thermometer, stop
reading, go to the market and get one right now.
It makes enough to feed two for almost a week. Four for half a week. Six
for two days. Eight to Ten well, say goodbye to it. 🙂
That’s it, that’s dinner. A little salt and pepper, maybe some garlic
salt, celery salt, or seasoned salt and you’ll be on your way. If you
are afraid of your sauce breaking (which is to say, falling apart into
oil, water, and assorted debris) don’t be. You’re cooking the entire
thing and the Béchamel has no time to fall apart. You can add various
other small amendments if this is really a huge concern for you. Ground
mustard, about 1-2 tsp is good to keep the fat and water together and it
doesn’t contribute any unusual flavors. If you are working with really
freakishly mishmashed cheese selections you might want to look into
adding Sodium Citrate to the sauce. This chemical additive can help keep
different cheeses integrated and it doesn’t affect flavor, appearance,
or edibility. Tread carefully, as sodium citrate is the path to
Velveeta. Now you know how velveeta is made, hah.
One thing to say, the roux made in the first steps is Julia’s roux. One
thing that I do is monthly or so I take a stick of butter, weigh it by
gram scale, and then cook it down until it’s bubbling and then add the
exact same weight of AP flour to that and cook for 2-3 minutes. You
don’t want to see it get any darker than white to blond to “yellow corn
kernel” color, and yes, for a roux the color is VITAL. White and yellow
are good, brown or red is good for other things, not anything like this.
Once it’s all cooked and unmercifully whisked transfer it to a bowl and
wrap it up and throw it in the fridge. You now have the worlds most
perfect thickener. It’ll thicken anything. It’s flavor neutral and very
handy. Just scrape a little out with a fork and you’re all set. The
applications are endless. You can make lump-free gravies, sauces, soups,
stews, or anything else that needs a little thickening power – just add
a little at a time and stir like mad. One thing about roux made with AP
Flour is that it only reaches maximum thickening power when the water
it’s in reaches a boil. Also, since it’s wheat flour and tossed with
water you will have a minute but present amount of gluten there. So if
you don’t like gluten, this isn’t for you.
If you try this recipe and like it, please leave a comment. I think
anyone can make this dish as it’s very forgiving if you make any
blunders. The only real OMG place is that roux in the beginning. A dark
roux will crap out on you and your Béchamel will either not form or
half-ass form and the color will be off and there will be more caramel
notes in the final dish. It’s still edible, but, just be careful of that
color.
Good Luck!
Great Cuppa
It struck me that a lot of people might not know how to get into Tea like we have. I think a basic guide is in order to help everyone get going when exploring this wonderful new world that has opened up for us. The cost to get off the ground is very low and a lot of these hints will save you a lot of time and aggravation. I’ll break it down into parts you need, many of them are durable, and ingredients, then procedure to make a spectacular cup of tea (or coffee even) cup-by-cup.
What you will need:
1) Tap water is best if you trust it. Spring water if you don’t. Avoid special waters like SmartWater or squeaky clean like vapor distilled water. If you are loath to buy your water in a jug, then Brita or Pur is your next best bet. You want your water to be freshly drawn, but it’s not essential.
2) Boiling Kettle – It’s romantic to get a teapot and put it on the stove and wait for it to whistle. This doesn’t conserve resources and is expensive in natural gas terms to run. A far better (and safer) alternative is the electric automatic boiling kettle. The model I am fond of is the one I have at work, that’s the basic plain-jane Rival Electric Kettle. I bought it at Walmart for $12. You only need one that can boil water and turn off. If you wanted to get really frou frou about it, a kettle with a thermometer that could keep water at 200 would be ideal.
3) Next you need a Finum Brewing Basket. This item is really durable. It’s got a superfine mesh which you can put your loose tea or coffee in and then insert that into your favorite cup. It has a lid which you can use to top the device to keep heat from leaking out or you can use it to receive the basket after you pull it out of the hot water in the cup. Or both. It washes up with tapwater and needs no other cleaning. Be gentle with fingertips and avoid scratching it with fingernails. If you have tea or coffee compacted in this basket, you can tip it upside down over the trash and tap the bottom with a spoon and everything will come out neat as you please.
4) Cups. If you have a mug or cup you like, use it. Preferably no more than 6 to 8 ounces. A standard coffee mug will work just fine. You know it’s sized right when you put the Finum in it, the little plastic wings rest of the edges of the cup and the bottom barely if ever touches the bottom of the cup. I can really recommend Bodum Bistro Double-Wall Mugs for this, if you have a little to spend on nice cups. Bodum mugs are made of borosilicate glass, they are double-walled and insulate to keep your fingers from burning, they retain heat very well, and they clean up in a snap. They are also totally non-reactive.
5) Timer. You need any basic timer. Your iPhone has one built in, other phones do too. You need a way to reliably countdown from 3 minutes to zero for tea or 4 minutes to zero for coffee. If you can do that, you can also set your timer to 11m30s which is how long just-off-the-boil water takes to get from scalding to drinkable.
6) Looseleaf Tea or Coffee. You can get all your looseleaf tea mail ordered from our shop here in Portage Michigan. The shop’s name is Chocolatea and they have an online store with shipping options. Everything they sell is top-quality and I can personally vouch that if you buy from them, you will enjoy every minute of what you get in the mail. Tea is not like coffee. Tea isn’t a ticking time bomb. It doesn’t get crappy with age and it can keep for a really long time without degrading in quality. One tea, Pu-erh actually ages like wine and gets better with age, however the Pu-erh that Chocolatea sells is ready-to-rock-and-roll, so you don’t have to wait to enjoy it. If Coffee is more your thing I can recommend Dunkin Donuts Regular Roast as an acceptable coffee. Starbucks is okay, but it’s way too expensive for eh coffee. Really great coffee, at least that I’ve found can be ordered online from Death Wish Coffee. I can also personally vouch for this coffee as it is exceptional in character and packs a wallop of caffeine.
7) Gram Scale. There is a great little handy digital pocket scale at Amazon for less than $10. It’s got great resolution and a nice display and it’s small enough to be pocketable. Some people will tell you to measure tea by the teaspoon, that’s useless. Measure tea and coffee by weight! You’ll be much happier.
Procedure:
To make a great cup of Tea (everything but Yerba Mate) – put your empty Finum basket on your scale, set it to grams and tare it to zero. Then sprinkle in enough tea to get to 5 grams. Take the basket off the scale and put in your Bodum cup. Get your water to 200 degrees (or 212, it’s not really that much of a problem for everything but white teas, they’re picky at 160–170 degrees) and pour the water into your Finum basket in the cup almost to the brim. After that, set your timer to 3 minutes (10 for Yerba Mate) and watch it closely. Tea, like Coffee can oversteep/overbrew and you get a nasty cup of turpentine for your troubles. I can’t express it enough, timing is EVERYTHING. More than temperature, more than the water, more than anything else. TIME. If you are brewing Oolong you will notice that the tea is full-leaf and expands like a sponge when you steep it, so what looked like little natty bits ends up being a basket full of full tea leaves. After the cup of tea has steeped for 3 minutes, pull the Finum out, let it drip out for a few moments and put on paper towel or it’s lid. Don’t throw away your steeped tea! Then set your timer to exactly 11 minutes 30 seconds and start it. During this time the tea will go from undrinkably hot to PERFECT. You can at any time add sweeteners if you like. Splenda, Nutrasweet, Sugar, Agave Nectar, Honey, Simple Syrup, or even Golden Syrup are all great sweeteners for tea. I’ve found that Agave gives the end tea an odd flavor overtone, so tread carefully. I like my tea very sweet, so I use two packets of Splenda. You can sweeten anytime you please. After you’ve enjoyed your tea you can put the Finum back in your cup, get your water hot again and re-steep. This is called Gong-Fu, and is a well-respected tradition in China. All teas can at least re-steep three times before they kind of fall on their ass. The only notable exception to this is Oolong. Oolong can resteep ten to twenty times and the further you go, the more subtle flavors end up in your cup. A little hint, after the first steep, which is always at 3 minutes, each subsequent steep you can add a minute, up to 5. So steep 1, 3 minutes. Steep 2, 4 minutes, Steep 3, 5 minutes, Steep 4, 5 minutes. You keep going with that pattern and you won’t go wrong. If you’ve exhausted your Finum’s contents of their goodness save the remains in a cup or bowl. You can throw these remains on Hydrangea, Roses, or Blueberry bushes and the remains will contribute plant-friendly acids to the soil. Never throw used tea or coffee in the trash if you can help it. The remains shouldn’t be landfill, not when they can make acid-loving plants thrive.
As for Coffee, put your empty, clean Finum basket on your scale, tare it to zero and sprinkle in 10 grams of ground coffee. A standard grind will be fine, you’ll get a little camp-coffee or grit at the bottom of your cup as the solids drop out of solution, but it’s not unpleasant. When I drink the cup of coffee to 25% full I like to swirl the remains around which picks up the sediment off the bottom and then I drink the remains. If you like coffee and don’t mind a wee touch of grit, it’s not bad. If you can swing it, a grind set for French Press will be even better and have less grit in the end. I don’t have a grinder and I don’t really want one. I’m fine with standard yokel coffee with standard yokel grind. Get your water to boiling. I would let it sit for about 10–20 seconds off the boil in order to get it down to 205–210 degrees. If you can get to-order 200 degree water, that’s ideal. Pour the water in the Finum in your cup just shy of the brim (most coffee will wetten and then start to bubble and float, bring that wet ground coffee almost up to the brim but do not try to agitate it to help it along, that will ruin your cup of coffee) and set your timer for 4 minutes exactly. You may catch what smells like burning coffee, whatever you do, don’t freak out. It’s not really burning. When the timer goes off, pull the Finum out and rest it on it’s lid. Set your timer for 11 minutes 30 seconds and then add whatever sweetener you like. I prefer, again, two packets of Splenda. You will notice that the final brew has an oil-slick on the surface and the rim of your cup will look filthy. That’s an unavoidable consequence of brewing the coffee directly without the paper filter. The paper filter strips out a LOT of really great tasting compounds. After you have brewed a cup of Coffee, you have to toss the contents, there is no Gong-Fu with Coffee. Once it’s done, it’s plant food. The only thing left after a brewing is tannins, acids, and the chemical nasty that you don’t ever want to drink. Plants love it, you’re all done with it. The really handy thing with preparing coffee this way is you need nothing more than what you already have for tea and the Finum is made of non-reactive stainless steel so you can brew for your entire life and there isn’t any crosstalk between tea or coffee assuming you clean the Finum out well. Another nice part is you only brew the coffee cup-by-cup. This way, you get the convenience of a Keurig machine without the expense and the wasted plastic cup. The only waste from the design I use is the grounds or exhausted leaves and those are plant food, so nothing is really wasted.
Anyone should be able to get started for less than $50 depending on your tastes. The kettle is $12 ish, the Finum is about $12, the scale is $10, and the glasses are $25. That comes out to $59. If you have your own cups or mugs, you can slash that down. If you have a kitchen scale you can slash it further. I like the handy little gram scale there because it’s easy to toss in my backpack for when I go to work. The durable parts are just that, they should last a very long time. The Finum, if you take care of it, should last forever. The scale will eat batteries and the kettle might be lost if you are really mean and rough with it. One thing to note about the kettle, and all kettles are that if you decide to go with tap water, you’ll eventually scale up your kettle and either have to clean it somehow, scrape it down somehow, or replace it. If you pass your water thru a Brita or Pur filter (or in the case of my workplace, a reverse-osmosis undersink filter) then you won’t ever have to worry about that.
For your investment, and of course the looseleaf teas from Chocolatea or the coffee from Deathwish, You’ll get to enjoy some of the best tasting hot beverages possible. There are so many blends at Chocolatea it’s dizzying. Plus you’ll be patronizing American businesses. Chocolatea is in Portage, Michigan and Deathwish is out of Saratoga Springs, New York. I find that I love tea made this way, and Coffee? I actually like drinking it this way more than percolated or brewed in an expensive coffeemaker. There is something special about brewing coffee like tea, it seems more direct and honest somehow. I know that there are a lot more flavors and essential oils in the coffee that I brew this way, where coffee that passes through a paper filter loses a lot of it’s subtler features. I could also swear that standard coffee loses some of it’s caffeine. The stuff I make seems to have more punch to it.
If you don’t find what you are looking for on the Chocolatea online store just let me know and I can get it myself and ship it to you personally. Of course that offer really is meant for family, but I could be bought for the right price. If you are reading this and you are in Southwest Michigan, you owe it to yourself to visit Chocolatea in Portage. Everything they do is excellent, they are fair, kind, and pleasant to do business with.
If you decide to follow any of this, I would love it if you would leave a comment letting other people know how you got along with these ideas. Did they work for you? If you try it and you don’t like it, the only thing you might not be able to use is the Finum, everything else can be pressed into service doing other things.
Good luck and enjoy the tea and coffee!
Throw It Back
I used to fret and worry about my relationship with alcohol. What did it mean? Is the drinking itself bad or is it the reason behind the drinking the really bad part? Maybe it was a combination of both. Next month I’ll turn 37 years old and quickly plowing myself into my 40’s. So what preciousness is to save that I’m holding onto?
Americans have a really funny way of dealing with alcohol. We used to love it, then we hated it, then we prohibited it completely and all the while our relationship and use of the substance has not changed. I notice this a lot when I go to purchase alcohol from shops, especially here in Michigan. People are so, I suppose the emotion they must feel is embarrassment, because the shops all reflexively wrap bottles of alcohol in brown paper wrappers. Like it’s shameful or embarrassing to be seen in polite society with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Jamesons, or Captain Morgan. Wine never really got the sharp end of the stick, and neither really did beer. Both of those spirits are too weak to be of mention. You’ll go to the bathroom a lot before you’ll feel much in the way of an effect from those particular drinks. It’s the harder liquors that surprise me. First off, Michigan rigidly controls the price of spirits right down to what retailers are allowed to sell the spirits for. It doesn’t matter who sells what, they all get their prices out of this dog-eared pale-blue booklet that the state hands them. I sometimes wonder why the state of Michigan thinks it’s the sole arbiter of the price and availability of spirits in their state borders? As if they could control their citizenry with laws. Hah. But there it is, artificial price fixing for no good reason. A 750ml bottle of Jameson’s Whiskey is $25 in Michigan and $17 in Illinois. The only reason I’d buy liquor in Michigan is out of laziness.
And as it turns out, my favorite liquors are Jamesons, what a shocker, and as funny as it seems, the low-brow rums, Bacardi’s Oakheart and Newfoundland’s Screech. I don’t really care for the specialty long-aged rums and apparently I prefer just the english-speaking rums of the world, as the rest aren’t very much to my liking. But really where it’s at is my relationship to a bottle of Jamesons.
What is my relationship to alcohol? I drink liberally and I become intoxicated and I enjoy myself. I do not make a mess of myself by drinking beyond my personal limit, nor do I operate any machinery while under the influence. That last bit is a lie, of course, as machinery includes my iPhone and my computer, so a few bouts of drunk twittering won’t send me to jail. I’ve never operated a motor vehicle, and almost always I’m the designated driver because, well, lets face it, I have control and money issues. So back to drinking. It’s a joy. It brings warmth and happiness into my life. Not that my life was bereft of warmth and happiness before, but while intoxicated it makes many things feel better. Many things are easier to cope with. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I share my feelings, some would say, too readily. There was a humorous picture of a boy stating what I often times find myself thinking, especially sober, and that is “We’re all thinking it, I just said it.” So we get down to the reasons why I drink.
I like to drink because it feels good. I like to drink because it tastes good. Wine is principally what I’m getting at, as there is a universe of delicious flavors in wine and more people should go exploring to see what they like. Beer? When I was a kid and very sensitive to bitters, beer was awful. As I age however, beer has become like water. It’s a drink with food, it makes you belch, and makes you have to see a man about a horse quite often. In many ways, beer and wine are somewhat okay ways to replace water, especially if you question the quality of water. I personally have never felt that the water where I live is good for me. Now, before people get really worked up, the gentle reader should be aware that I was raised on the worlds best water. The city supply of Syracuse, New York. That water is drawn from Skaneateles Lake and is some of the best tasting water on the planet. I am sorry that more people don’t understand just how wonderful it is to walk up to the tap in your house, turn it on and be able to drink what comes out without even a single iota of worry, and enjoying the taste, which is the way water should taste. It should not taste like a chlorinated fish bowl. So the water is a big reason for the more simpler spirits. But that doesn’t touch on the stronger ones. Here again I like the taste, or perhaps, in the case of Jamesons, I’m genetically predisposed to enjoy the taste, I do sometimes wonder about that. I also enjoy the feeling it gives me, and then, and what everyone really wants to know, is the social aspects to my alcoholism.
I drink because Hell is other people. This is very general and expansive and it’s not really meant to hurt others feelings, but lets face it, unless I’m in love with you or we are exceptionally close, Sartre’s statement about Hell being other people eventually finds it’s mark. I can endure a lot of things from people, especially when I have no other choice. I can be whatever I need to be to endure the situation. That’s the blessing that comes with a monumentally strong sense of self-monitoring. In work meetings I can be calm and reserved and measured, that sort of thing. Generally however I can’t stand humanity. In all the ways we are unique and special and loving, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the baser things that bother me, the odd behaviors, the many varied ways we abuse each other and in many ways, so effortlessly and lets face it, callously. It can range from being a real prat to being incidentally and nebulously a horrible human being. So what comes of all these unpleasant feelings? Being exposed to people who chew too loudly, snort, wheeze, moan, whine, or in one way or another do whatever they can to be as awful to others as they can, where is there to go? Where can anyone go if they are trapped in that situation? I am forever thankful for alcohol. “Please pass the wine” is a far more pleasant thing to say than dragging out (or dragging up) the varied unpleasantnesses that surround some social situations. I find that it’s almost always more preferable to prepend potentially unpleasant social interactions with a precautionary buffer of alcohol in my system. If I am nursing a beer or a glass of wine, of throwing back shots of Jamesons, I can eventually reach a place where the things that upset me no longer really bother me, and in a way, alcohol makes everything better. So yes, I drink, at least as a partial reason, to cope with the people in my life. I am not going to point fingers at who makes me drink, that would just be courting disaster, but in a general sense, Hell is other people.
So to get back to the beginning, is it a problem? Should I be concerned? The answer is, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to fret over what drinking means to me, I’m just going to enjoy my life and all the things in it and if I spend my time in a beer bottle or a bottle of Jamesons, then that’s where I want to be. For pleasure, for joy, for happiness, and to escape Hell, at least for a short while. Anything can be endured as long as there is a break to it, a stop, a discontinuity to horribleness. In many ways, alcohol is a blessing to endurance.
Making Sandwiches
I was raised with an appreciation for the simplest sandwich possible. The venerable Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich. It’s something that my father makes, some would say it’s the only thing he knows how to make, beyond fudge, and it’s something that I’ve just refined.
The refinement I’ve made adapts something my father does but always seemed unusual to me. He adds butter to the sandwich and as far as I can remember, he butters the side of the bread that eventually carries the peanut butter component. I’ve noticed for a long time that when I make a PB&J that the side of the sandwich that carries the jelly (or in my preference jam or preserves) always ends up being slightly soggy because the bread sucks up the water from the jelly/jam/preserves and carries that mush through, so you’ve got a dry slice and a damp slice. This makes for an okay PB&J, but it can be better. I’ve adapted my fathers use of butter to act as a water barrier on the jelly/jam/preserve side of the sandwich. By spreading a thin layer of butter on that side, you create a waterproof block against that slice of bread. After the butter, then the jelly/jam/preserves go on and you join the sandwich together. It can stay that way for a while, or at least until lunchtime and the bread isn’t damp or soggy. Plus the butter adds a little extra something to the sandwich that I like.
So if you are also fond of PB&J’s then I suggest you explore adding a little butter to the side where you spread your jelly/jam/preserves. You’ll be glad for a equally dry bread-edged sandwich.
American Dining
American dining has a cultural crisis looming on the horizon. Partially it is based on our weak-kneed economy which pushes many of these establishments to the edge of failure, so far away from profitability as to be sorrowfully laughable. Beyond the weak economy, American restaurants have a distinct series of problems that they really have to face.
The first issue with the American dining experience that strikes me immediately is that many restaurants that attempt to create a valuable dining atmosphere by dimming the house lights. The idea runs that if the lights are subdued then people will see it as romantic and attach those warm feelings to the place where they dine. In America, this is a problem because what is seen as good if you take it only so far is seen as much better if you take it way too far. Many restauranteurs have said time and time again that people eat first with their eyes. To see food is the first step in creating a lasting impression on your customers. In America the lights are so dim that it is nearly impossible for someone with 20/20 vision to clearly read 10-point text that is being held in their own hands. The lighting in these establishments is dimmed to the point of unpleasantness. You can’t really see who you are dining with, the food looks muddy and dull and the entire experience is one of tragedy. As an example of this, I just dined at an establishment, which shall remain nameless, in which the house lighting was so poor that I needed my smartphone’s illumination to read text on a card that I had in my own hands. When the food was delivered the lighting was barely enough to identify what was on my plate. It was the first step in a very unsatisfying evening. So, what’s the advice that I have for restaurant hosts? Turn up your house lights. If you are hiding in the dark then we can conclude one of these situations may be true:
- The food is ugly, and so it’s dark to protect your mistakes.
- The host is ugly, and so it’s dark to protect your feelings.
- The guests are ugly, and so it’s dark to protect other guests feelings.
- The decor in the establishment is ugly, and so it’s dark to cover the decorating transgressions.
The upshot is, when it’s too dark to read words on paper, when your guests are using their phones to find their food, then there is either something wrong with ugly or you are just trying too hard to amplify romance and have landed directly in the dimly lit antechamber of hell, a place that is referred to as heck. Many American restaurants have embraced heck to such passionate levels as to take the breath away. This is a shame, because in many of these establishments the only way you can navigate is with echolocation, so not having the sound of your breath bouncing off obstacles is a true peril for the diner.
The next issue has to do with communication. In this regard, there is way too much communication in the American dining experience. The procedure is always like running the gauntlet, the host is often nervous and like Mrs. Peacock they suffer from a pressure of speech. They arrive tableside and disgorge in an effluent of chatter. You cannot engage in a conversation because you are constantly being interrupted by a curious host who, wrapped up in good intentions is obsessed with making sure that everything is running smoothly. This has infantilized American diners. We can’t operate our dining experience without a chatty, clucking, obsessive hen buzzing the table every 2 minutes. Even here American restauranteurs make tragic mistakes, especially when it comes to effusive apologies. The protestations of sorrow from some hosts fly so fast and so thick that you often times wish they would just get a gun, load every chamber, point it at their heads and pull the trigger. If you are so sorry, then die for it. If you aren’t, then shut up. Some hosts just cannot leave well enough alone. That’s why in America dining is an olympic speed sport. How fast can you choke down the food? You have to because to endure dining is running a verbal gauntlet and since you cannot have a cogent conversation with a solid train of thought while you dine, it’s more advantageous to skip real conversation and switch to smalltalk which entertains nobody. All that is left is the food. In the dark. With perhaps an ugly host, you can’t be sure.
What is to be done about this problem? American restauranteurs need to take a page from the French way of dining. Collect the order, then silently orbit the dining room, spotting low beverages, spotting soiled napkins, that sort of thing. Be conscientious enough to spot silently and silently tend to what needs tending. If the diners wish to engage in an interruptive exchange they should be the ones to initiate contact. A fussing clucking chattery mother hen would have alienated every french diner in the restaurant. There is something here that bears to be understood. Keep your chattery teeth to yourself.
Then we get to the food, which begs the ancillary point of pricing. If you are going to cast yourself as destination dining, produce output that is worthy of your aim. Here’s an example – I just dined on a plate of chicken, green beans, and potatoes in a butter sauce for $18.00. There were three small strips of chicken, I would classify the cut as “chicken strips”. There was a small woman’s palmful of green beans and three 1-ounce scoops of potatoes. There was about two ounces of sauce. This was not a meal. This was 40% of a meal. To say I felt robbed was an understatement. Four diners, three with an appetizer course, 4 mains, and 1 dessert split three ways – I declined the appetizers as none of them suited me and I didn’t find the dessert choices appealing enough to partake. The table bill came to $128.00, we were two couples, split that bill in half and with tax and a standard tip of 15% my outlay for dinner was $76.00. What did I get for that money? I got very little. Scott got slightly more, but had to bark the cook into cooking his duck breast as the standard fare is apparently rare duck, which might as well be raw chicken for a health aspect to it. It boggles the mind. So, when you are busy charging your customers outrageous prices for fussy cuisine which does not match value for price, tread carefully when complaining to said customers about how little business you get to walk in the doors because of the prices.
What should restauranteurs do? I heartily suggest ripping a page out of the Gordon Ramsay playbook: Keep your food local, fresh, simply cooked, for fair prices and you will be a success. Deviate from that plan even in one spot, like obnoxious pricing for example, and you will alienate your customers.
So here I sit. I’ve paid a restaurant bill of $76 dollars and I’m going to go to bed hungry. I will never go back to that restaurant again, once bitten twice shy. As I was discussing it with Scott, this is the cost of the lesson to decline such dining experiences in the future. I just don’t have the wherewithal to financially support such endeavors. I can only hope that some people who run restaurants read this and take these bits of advice to heart. Turn on the lights, shut the hell up, and stop charging an arm and a leg for what amounts to being a pittance.
Pu'erh Tea
Ever since we have been going to Chocolatea in Portage I’ve been drinking more and more tea. I’ve written about this in the past a few times and I’ve discovered a lot and learned even more. I couldn’t have done any of this without the wonderful people down at Chocolatea who take great pride in teaching the public about tea and guiding you along the route to really enjoying all the teas they have to offer.
I’ve enjoyed a good number of teas, from the classic Earl Grey which was the first black tea I ever tried and really liked to various green teas and Oolong teas. Each varietal brings something I never expected to my cup. The greens are very light and easy to drink and very healthy for you – but then again, they ALL are. The Oolong teas are interesting because they are full-leaf teas and there is a Chinese method called “gong-fu” which is brewing tea many times. Most teas can take up to three infusions before they peter out, but Oolong can take it and enjoys up to seven or eight infusions with hot water for progressively longer steeps. The flavors that are expressed in each steeping shift from instance to instance which makes Oolong a very interesting tea to explore. I’ve kind of Oolong’ed myself out of that tea after drinking it for a long while and so I decided to get back on the warpath and explore more types. There are some other tea-like plants that you can make “teas” out of, Rooibos and Yerba Mate. The first is nice, but it lacks any caffeine which is okay for a right-before-bed tea but doesn’t give me the kind of kick that I need during the day. Yerba Mate has a caffeine-like substance that gives you a lift without feeling jittery. All of this I learned at Chocolatea and online.
Amongst all these teas, I’ve found one type that really knocks my socks off. I really enjoy drinking it and can drink it all day long. This tea is called pu-erh tea and I put five grams of leaves into my infuser basket and boil water and set it for no more than three minutes. This tea creates a very dark brew that looks a LOT like coffee. The scent of the tea is very earthy and the taste, well that’s something special. Pu-erh tea tastes like vanilla and caramel and brown sugar. This particular tea is called “Caramel Pu-erh” so that’s where the caramel notes come from, obviously. This tea is what I love about really great coffee without the bitter astringency that I really don’t like about coffee. I regard it as the coffee-drinkers tea and I bet that if I brewed a cup of this and gave it to my coffee-obsessed family that they would be blown away as much as I was when I first tasted it. Since that first time I’ve bought 2 ounces of this tea which costs about $3.85 per ounce. That’s about 56 grams of tea, for about 33 to 44 cups of really awesome coffee-without-the-bitterness. It has all the rich flavor that you want from coffee, a nice small kick of caffeine per cup, not to mention a bunch of unproven-but-maybe health claims ranging from numerous phenols which are antioxidants and good for you, to appetite suppression (caffeine) and even increased fat breakdown (in rats, it suppresses a metabolic pathway that leads to the formation of fatty acids and triglycerides). WebMD even went so far to claim that Pu-erh tea can sometimes contain Lovastatin which some think is naturally created by one of the fermenting microbes as the Pu-erh is manufactured. This lovastatin is apparently one of the drugs in cholesterol drugs that suppresses LDL cholesterol and enhances HDL cholesterol, so once again you have a maybe-claim to lowering the bad cholesterol and enhancing the good. There were other maybe-maybenots that pointed to antimutagenic properties and perhaps even anticancer properties. Is it true? I don’t know. I don’t think there could be a study in humans where you could control to that fine a detail in the right way to know one way or another. So it’s nice to think that this tea might have these great properties and that it certainly won’t do you any harm. With a taste like this, in the end who the hell cares? If it’s not bad for you, and tastes this good, then any other benefits are just gimmes.
Amongst all of these teas that I’m trying, thinking about my past and what I used to think about tea does make me feel a little chagrined. Tea was awful because it was of crappy quality in a really crappy delivery mechanism. It was designed to fail. A nice cup, such as a Bodum insulated borosilicate glass cup makes enjoying tea very convenient, an infusion basket for holding the leaves, and most importantly really great loose-leaf teas are a must. Considering how cheap the per-ounce price is from Chocolatea and how you can infuse most teas at least three times if not more, your bang-for-the-buck is huge. Plus you don’t need a coffee machine, expensive baskets, filters, or the silly beans or grinds that are all going to die in your pantry of age-related death because coffee, unlike tea, just can’t last in the long-haul.
As I explore more I’ll blog about what I discover at Chocolatea. If you haven’t visited them, you really should. Even if you only drink coffee and think tea is awful, go there and tell them and ask them to impress you. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!
Beer and Skittles
There is a new shop in town called Beer and Skittles. We spied it as we were driving around town foraging for our weekly supplies a few weeks ago. They are located at 1912 Whites Road in Kalamazoo. The first time we spied the shop it was a drive-by and people were laughing how odd it seemed to have skittle-flavored beer, as we had made the fundamental mistake of confusing Skittles the board game with Skittles the candy. As it turns out, it’s actually an idiomatic expression in british english, “beer and skittles” which is supposed to be a catch-all phrase for going out and doing something.
The first time we stopped at Beer and Skittles they weren’t open yet, so we peered through the windows and the owner came out to talk to us. They were in the home stretch of opening and I was giddy with the notion that they turned a First National Bank of Detroit into an epicurean food and wine shop. What a reversal of banality for that building! We laughed and talked and wished them well and then a week or so later they were open, except for not having a liquor license to sell the beer, which is part of their name. Apparently Michigan has laws on the books that come from an earlier time when alcohol sales were strictly controlled. This state still has some blue laws on the books and from my understanding, Michigan runs a zero-sum-game with it’s liquor licenses. For one shop to get a liquor license another shop has to surrender theirs. There is only a fixed number of liquor sales allowed in this state and that sort of law has more to do with the troglodytes in Lansing than anything else. To keep a shop like Beer and Skittles wanting for a liquor license is just harming the local economy. It’s stupid.
As for the shop itself, in the beginning we noticed that they set up a sparse store. There is nothing wrong with that, but when you factor in the handicap of not having that liquor license it is a little worrisome. The products are all local, unique, or niche and play directly into the theme that Beer and Skittles publishes on their website. We found some notable treasures in this store that we really enjoy. They have deals with local food-preparers to distribute prepared pasties, pot pies, as well as bread, hummus, dips, mixes, spices, and a constellation of other products that appear to be an assortment of local food fare.
We tried pasties for the first time by buying two there and cooking them at home. We weren’t sure what to expect as we’ve never had pasties before. At first we were taken aback by how dry they were, but then we realized after talking with locals that what we experienced is what pasties are and that it’s not a flaw, it’s part of the design of the things. Scott wasn’t as awed by the pasties as I was, I would definitely buy another one since they are only $5 and one should be enough for a hearty lunch or dinner.
The meat pies are exceptionally good. Scott surprised me by swinging by Beer and Skittles on his way home from work as it’s somewhat on the way back home from Barnes & Noble in Portage. One pie is more than enough for a dinner for two and the price of $14 is excellent for what you get. The products at Beer and Skittles have very little carbon built up on them, as much of the food is from Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, or somewhere else in Michigan. There are some notable exceptions, but they are few, like Demerara sugar, which comes from very far away and has a lot of carbon attached to it.
The real draw for me is Beer and Skittles has a deal with a greek pastry maker in Grand Rapids and they sell little wedges of Baklava for $1.95 a piece. I’ve had Baklava from other places around town and while many locations sell okay Baklava, what they have for sale at Beer and Skittles is over-the-top-amazingly-good. I have plans to save up, and if Beer and Skittles is willing, buy an entire platter in one go. Whoever makes their Baklava makes little triangular wedges of sweet heaven.
One thing that I feel I have to remark upon is the hours for Beer and Skittles. The owners are pushing the envelope here, and going far above and beyond every other shop in town by being open until 10pm every night. This state is blue as hell and there are only a few places that are open after 8 or 9pm and Beer and Skittles is one of these places. I worry that their hours may reduce their chances for success but it’s what they have posted. Their dedication on running that business is notable and I think more people should go and give them a shot. Look in their cold cases, pick something out and try it. If you see the platter of Baklava, you have to buy at least one piece. You will not be sorry.
I hope that they get their liquor license soon and complete their namesake. It’s these sorts of shops that open up and play the risk that need attention from the buying public. It’s these shops we have to support. Excellent quality, fair prices, outrageous hours. What is not to love? Even if they don’t have their license yet I visit frequently and often times find something to buy there.
Run Around The Block
A few days ago I went out to lunch with Scott at a local restaurant and while we were waiting for our food to be ready I found myself looking at the other diners surrounding me. Adjacent to us were these two morbidly obese women, they looked like mother and daughter. It wasn’t just “fat” but rolling down between their legs and the chairs weren’t even able to support the extra wibbly flab that drooped over the side.
Generally these people do not interest me, beyond a twinge of pity for their unpleasantly short lives and the ruin they made of themselves. I unfortunately also caught an eyeful of what they were eating. Eating is a pleasant verb, what they were doing wasn’t that, it was more like shoveling. Burger, double-order of Fries, and a giant big-gulp cup of frozen custard. They were chowing down, not even slowing down enough to catch their breath as they matter-loaded. Witnessing this display of gluttony was incredibly disgusting and offensive to me.
What really bothers me is that the restaurant we went to HAS MANY HEALTHY CHOICES. These two women just weren’t interested in making any of them.
And this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way about people like that. When we go to the local market and I spot one they almost always appear to me in the same way. Massively morbidly obese, more than just fat, but fat-under-pressure. They are in the little electric cart scooters slowly moving through the store. The poor scooters, unaccustomed to being under such duress make this agonized wimpy sqwuck-squick sound as they struggle to move the human elephant about the store. Then I see what they’ve loaded in their cart – and almost always it’s the same. A dozen frozen pizzas, and the edge of the cart is lined with six-packs of soda, all arranged so the six-packs are riding the edge of the cart. Then sometimes there are tubs of sour cream and butter. Not a single vegetable in sight.
I can’t feel anything but disgusted pity for these people. They just waddle through their sad lives and in a lot of ways it upsets me. It doesn’t have to be that way. They don’t have to always sit down everywhere they go so the fat rolls can just droop over the edges of their chair.
But there is nothing that I am going to do. There is no point, plus it would just lead to me getting in trouble if I tried to wake them up by rifling through their carts asking them why they bought such awful “food”.
And then I start to think about the markets and restaurants. It’s not their responsibility to ensure that people eat well, but they certainly don’t give a damn when someone who clearly does not need a big-gulp frozen custard waddles up to the register and orders one. A similar tack could be made for the market, so much “food” there that really shouldn’t be there at all!
People amaze me. They shovel in all this bullshit, all these product-lies and it does taste good, it tastes like food, but IT IS NOT FOOD. Food is mostly vegetation, fruits, nuts, proteins, and only a scant touch of fats and oils! How many people can trace their unhappiness in life to the fact that they haven’t had a proper meal in decades!
I don’t want to hear about the woe from congestive heart failure, from all the cancers that are eating us alive, at least not from people who could have chosen to live better lives! Everyone knows that certain things are bad for you and that you should avoid them! I just can’t be sympathetic to people who are for the most part on a very slow track to suicide. Eating yourself to death, slowly.
What should people do? There is one clear and easy strategy that works for me and would work for anyone else really. It works for anyone near a supermarket or a megamarket. Only buy things that are on the rind. Every store is designed in pretty much the same way, with the foods you really should eat on the exterior walls, and everything that is bad for you or is bound to kill you in the middle aisles. Spend most of your time in produce, to start! Learn to cook! Cook REAL FOOD from REAL INGREDIENTS.
And for the love of God, stop using the handicapped motorcarts if you aren’t handicapped! Being obnoxiously fat is not a handicap. It’s a suicide attempt.
People bother me. So much. Gah.
Healthy Chicken Parm
Today was an exercise in trying to convert a time-honored recipe into a healthy alternative. The dish was Chicken Parm. We all figured that the pasta and sauce was pretty much a fixed requirement so we worked on what could be done with the chicken itself.
Instead of frying the cutlets in breaking and egg, we all pretty much agreed that we should bake the chicken with spices and then when it’s done, give it a little cheese covering. While at the market I found 2% Italian blend shredded cheese which helped cut back on the fat and the calories.
On the whole I thought it came out very well. I would on reflection have cooked the chicken longer or hotter than I did. It was done, but not done where I wanted it. It was good to eat, but just a smidgen rubbery for my tastes.
As a side I rolled up some Pillsbury Croissant Rolls and dressed them in a butter and garlic salt wash before baking. They came out crispy and with just a hint of garlic. The only real leftovers we had were about 3 cups of pasta, but those are easy to put up as leftovers for someone’s lunch tomorrow.
Today we also visited Cody Kresta winery in Mattawan, MI. Every time we go we come away with wine. They have a real passion for wine making and it comes through their bottles. I love their 2010 Chardonnay, it’s got a wonderful note on the palate that I just love. They are only 20 minutes away and so it’s not any real chore to go visit them. The lady who manages the tasting studio there is incredibly pleasant and she sells her wine very well.
Dan Dan Noodles
Last night I prepared a recipe that I found from Alton Brown on Good Eats. The recipe is called “Dan Dan Noodles” and is a snap to put together. Here’s a copy of the recipe for those who would like to make it as well:
Dan Dan Noodles
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2011
Prep Time:30 min
Cook Time:1 min
Level: Easy
Serves: 4 servings
Ingredients
* 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
* 4 cloves garlic, minced
* 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
* 2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
* 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
* 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
* 1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
* 1 tablespoon chili oil
* 1/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth
* 8 ounces ramen noodles
* 1/2 cup roasted peanuts, chopped
* 3 scallions, finely chopped
Directions
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Place the peanut butter, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, black vinegar, and chili oil into the bowl of a mini-food processor. Process until the mixture is well combined and forms a paste, 1 to 2 minutes. With the processor running, gradually add the chicken broth and process until the sauce is creamy and well combined, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a large mixing bowl, cover, and set aside while you prepare the rest of the dish.
Place 4 quarts water into a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the noodles and cook until al-dente, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Drain thoroughly in a colander. Add the noodles to the bowl with the sauce and toss to combine. Serve topped with the peanuts and scallions.
Copyright 2011 Television Food Network G.P., All Rights Reserved
Printed from FoodNetwork.com on Sun May 08 2011© 2011 Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights ReservedWe did however make some substitutions which proved to work just as well as the original ingredient list. Instead of Chinese Black Vinegar we substituted that out for Teriyaki Sauce because the two share a similar nose if not taste. I suspect they are very similar so I’m not going to really fret over the replacement. It’s much easier to find Teriyaki than it is Chinese Black Vinegar, especially when you are visiting somewhere else and you don’t want to leave a “this ingredient is just for this one recipe” behind. We also dropped the scalions because the market we went to didn’t have any, so we swapped them out for shallots. Raw shallot has a much stronger taste than raw scalions do and I found it’s boldness to be a very welcome enhancement to the recipe.
One thing that is nice about this recipe is it’s modularity. There are originally two modules to this recipe, the sauce and the noodles. When you want to add a protein it’s just another module that you add to it. In our case, we added shrimp to the meal and that was a delightful addition. The sauce part of the recipe can be modified to work to over any other kind of dish you’d like to make. The Dan Dan Sauce is very good over poached Chicken, over gently steamed broccoli, or even sticky white rice.
If you try this recipe, please let me know how it goes for you. It’s one of our favorites.