Food is Sexy:
Lots of people think mixing food and foreplay is sexy, and I'll agree that I see the appeal. Although I wouldn't suggest trying Crepes Suzette. *Fwoosh*
Thursday, August 19, 2010
How to Convince People that Crabs are Food
Gripe Gripe Gripe…
Irony is a complex and often misunderstood concept. There’s rhetorical or literary irony - like me saying “voting republican sure would help the economy” which fits Bender’s definition of “The use of words expressing something than their literal intention;“ and situational irony - say, having your expensive high class wine ruined by a common animal - you know, the proverbial black fly in your chardonnay (for all everyone complains about that song - Alanis is technically right)
I bring this up because there’s a certain level of situational irony in the whole New York City crabcake situation. There are very few places that I’ve found since I moved here that really make a decent Maryland crabcake - quite often they’re loaded with imitation crab meat, or needlessly gussied up to attract pretentious food snobs and allow them to use adjectives like “Abundant” or “Cromulent” or whatever the hell they’re talking about.
I say this is Ironic because one of the principle complaints I heard while attending culinary school in Baltimore was how underdeveloped the palate of the average Baltimorean is - if anything ever needed spicing up we’d just dump Old Bay all over it and call it a day. One of the more ’hardass’ chef instructors even went so far as to ban the spice in his kitchen. In all fairness, the reputation for a lack of refinement is well earned - The incoming freshmen that I had the pleasure of cooking for in my A la Carte class constantly ordering well done steaks and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing kind of sort of proves their point…
…but it is not an excuse for NYC - which purports to be America’s food capital - to be so lacking in a fundamental American regional cuisine. Sure, Maryland isn’t exactly well known for its cuisine, but what they do right they … well, do right (sorry, I’m bad at adjectives.) Come on, New Yorkers: If we can get everything from authentic Italian to Senegalese and Vietnamese food right, Someone should be able to take a 4 hour drive to Baltimore to get it right.
(Okay - that’s not entirely fair Samantha’s Southern Cuisine about a block from my apartment at Fulton & Grand Ave. in Brooklyn does a pretty mean crabcake for a decent price)
But regardless, I’m here to help anyway! (Because I can’t resist the opportunity to butt in where I’m clearly not invited)
So, anyway, here’s how you make a crabcake:
Ingredients:
8 oz. Crab Meat
Claw is decent if you’re on a budget; If you want to be flashier about it get some lump or jumbo lump
1 c. Panko Bread Crumbs
If you don’t want have Panko, use ¾ cup regular bread crumbs.
2 eggs
Old Bay
To taste
Salt & pepper
To taste
½ C. Mayonnaise
¼ of a small-medium lemon
½ tsp hot sauce
Procedure:
Squeeze the lemon juice into a mixing bowl.
Add the mayo, hot sauce, and old bay
Add the 2 eggs
Mix until smooth.
Fold in crab meat, bread crumbs.
Portion into 2 to 6 equal sized crab cakes. (2-4 oz. cakes)
Place on a greased baking sheet
Sprinkle with extra old bay if you’d like.
Bake in a 400 degree oven until done (7-10 minutes for the smaller, 10-15 for the larger)
Irony is a complex and often misunderstood concept. There’s rhetorical or literary irony - like me saying “voting republican sure would help the economy” which fits Bender’s definition of “The use of words expressing something than their literal intention;“ and situational irony - say, having your expensive high class wine ruined by a common animal - you know, the proverbial black fly in your chardonnay (for all everyone complains about that song - Alanis is technically right)
I bring this up because there’s a certain level of situational irony in the whole New York City crabcake situation. There are very few places that I’ve found since I moved here that really make a decent Maryland crabcake - quite often they’re loaded with imitation crab meat, or needlessly gussied up to attract pretentious food snobs and allow them to use adjectives like “Abundant” or “Cromulent” or whatever the hell they’re talking about.
I say this is Ironic because one of the principle complaints I heard while attending culinary school in Baltimore was how underdeveloped the palate of the average Baltimorean is - if anything ever needed spicing up we’d just dump Old Bay all over it and call it a day. One of the more ’hardass’ chef instructors even went so far as to ban the spice in his kitchen. In all fairness, the reputation for a lack of refinement is well earned - The incoming freshmen that I had the pleasure of cooking for in my A la Carte class constantly ordering well done steaks and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing kind of sort of proves their point…
…but it is not an excuse for NYC - which purports to be America’s food capital - to be so lacking in a fundamental American regional cuisine. Sure, Maryland isn’t exactly well known for its cuisine, but what they do right they … well, do right (sorry, I’m bad at adjectives.) Come on, New Yorkers: If we can get everything from authentic Italian to Senegalese and Vietnamese food right, Someone should be able to take a 4 hour drive to Baltimore to get it right.
(Okay - that’s not entirely fair Samantha’s Southern Cuisine about a block from my apartment at Fulton & Grand Ave. in Brooklyn does a pretty mean crabcake for a decent price)
But regardless, I’m here to help anyway! (Because I can’t resist the opportunity to butt in where I’m clearly not invited)
So, anyway, here’s how you make a crabcake:
Ingredients:
8 oz. Crab Meat
Claw is decent if you’re on a budget; If you want to be flashier about it get some lump or jumbo lump
1 c. Panko Bread Crumbs
If you don’t want have Panko, use ¾ cup regular bread crumbs.
2 eggs
Old Bay
To taste
Salt & pepper
To taste
½ C. Mayonnaise
¼ of a small-medium lemon
½ tsp hot sauce
Procedure:
Squeeze the lemon juice into a mixing bowl.
Add the mayo, hot sauce, and old bay
Add the 2 eggs
Mix until smooth.
Fold in crab meat, bread crumbs.
Portion into 2 to 6 equal sized crab cakes. (2-4 oz. cakes)
Place on a greased baking sheet
Sprinkle with extra old bay if you’d like.
Bake in a 400 degree oven until done (7-10 minutes for the smaller, 10-15 for the larger)
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
A Wild Foccacia Appeared!
This is the first entry on my new blog.
I’m Bored.
I went to college… twice. I got a degree in professional cooking - couldn’t make more than $7 an hour. Went back to college thinking “I’ll get a real degree and a decent paying job” - got a degree in Political Science and Electronic Media. Turns out not all that many people are interested in hiring someone who spent their college career watching obscure Czech films and arguing the pros and cons of Marxist philosophy. I’ve applied to over 100 vacancies - only occasionally receiving a cursory rejection letter and “wish for better luck in the future” from time to time. Ah well, “In this economy,” as they say. I suppose I’ve become resigned to the fact that I’m going to spend the foreseeable future playing house boy for my partner. Doesn’t mean I can’t have fun with it, right?
So that’s what I’ve been doing! Taking the chance to explore NYC for the best and most affordable ingredients - and finding the best recipes by scouring the web, chatting with friends, reading classic cook books, and building upon my own experiences. I still wish they’d bother to put something on the television at the Laundromat that appealed to more than middle-aged housewives, but I might as well try to make the best of a bad situation, right?
I was always pretty mediocre in my baking classes way back when, so step one of this whole process is to learn how to make bread that doesn’t, you know, taste like old yeast and failure. Step 1: Foccacia.
It’s the simplest bread recipe, and one of the ones I’m most familiar with.
The Ingredients:
Measure out your ingredients beforehand... to make sure you have enough
6.5 fl oz water
2 Cups Flour, Sifted
¼ Teaspoon Salt
1 Package Active Dry Yeast
1/3 cup flour
Use this flour to dust work surfaces
The Method:
Making bread is a complicated, messy, and frustrating affair. Or not. Mostly not. The trick to most bread making is the straight dough method. Basically -
1) Mix the yeast with the water, dump your dry ingredients in, and mix until the dough stretches and snaps (not tears) apart when you pull it.
You can do this in an electric mixer with a dough hook, or by hand. By hand usually gives you a better idea of when the dough is ready, but by electric mixer is a bit quicker and cleaner.
2) Rising - then it’s a simple matter of cover the dough with a damp cloth, letting it rise to twice its original size (approximately 30 minutes),
3) Kneading - Gently press the dough to adjust the gas level - expelling any extra and redistributing (*gasp* Socialism!) the rest to assure the dough rises properly.
4) Portion the dough however you want to,
5) Cover it with the cloth for an other ten minutes,
6) Shape (here’s the point where - if you want to - you can make fancy little knots or what have you)
7) Proof (cover again with the damp cloth, allow to rise for 10-15 more minutes)
8) Finish (brush with olive oil or egg wash, top with salt and or herbs.)
8) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
Notes:
Foccacia is a simple flat bread that can be used for a whole host of applications - garnished with olive oil and sea salt it can make a simple bread to go with an appetizer, it can be rolled out and used for pizza, made into rolls for burgers, or be a part of a larger presentation. Try brushing it with rendered bacon fat, or a flavored oil (chili, olive, truffle, what have you) once you’ve done that top it with some freshly chopped herbs from the local farmers market before baking it. Cheese is pretty good with it to. Try that. The most important thing is that you try it - over and over again if you have to - until you get it to where you want it.
I’m Bored.
I went to college… twice. I got a degree in professional cooking - couldn’t make more than $7 an hour. Went back to college thinking “I’ll get a real degree and a decent paying job” - got a degree in Political Science and Electronic Media. Turns out not all that many people are interested in hiring someone who spent their college career watching obscure Czech films and arguing the pros and cons of Marxist philosophy. I’ve applied to over 100 vacancies - only occasionally receiving a cursory rejection letter and “wish for better luck in the future” from time to time. Ah well, “In this economy,” as they say. I suppose I’ve become resigned to the fact that I’m going to spend the foreseeable future playing house boy for my partner. Doesn’t mean I can’t have fun with it, right?
So that’s what I’ve been doing! Taking the chance to explore NYC for the best and most affordable ingredients - and finding the best recipes by scouring the web, chatting with friends, reading classic cook books, and building upon my own experiences. I still wish they’d bother to put something on the television at the Laundromat that appealed to more than middle-aged housewives, but I might as well try to make the best of a bad situation, right?
I was always pretty mediocre in my baking classes way back when, so step one of this whole process is to learn how to make bread that doesn’t, you know, taste like old yeast and failure. Step 1: Foccacia.
It’s the simplest bread recipe, and one of the ones I’m most familiar with.
The Ingredients:
Measure out your ingredients beforehand... to make sure you have enough
6.5 fl oz water
2 Cups Flour, Sifted
¼ Teaspoon Salt
1 Package Active Dry Yeast
1/3 cup flour
Use this flour to dust work surfaces
The Method:
Making bread is a complicated, messy, and frustrating affair. Or not. Mostly not. The trick to most bread making is the straight dough method. Basically -
1) Mix the yeast with the water, dump your dry ingredients in, and mix until the dough stretches and snaps (not tears) apart when you pull it.
You can do this in an electric mixer with a dough hook, or by hand. By hand usually gives you a better idea of when the dough is ready, but by electric mixer is a bit quicker and cleaner.
2) Rising - then it’s a simple matter of cover the dough with a damp cloth, letting it rise to twice its original size (approximately 30 minutes),
3) Kneading - Gently press the dough to adjust the gas level - expelling any extra and redistributing (*gasp* Socialism!) the rest to assure the dough rises properly.
4) Portion the dough however you want to,
5) Cover it with the cloth for an other ten minutes,
6) Shape (here’s the point where - if you want to - you can make fancy little knots or what have you)
7) Proof (cover again with the damp cloth, allow to rise for 10-15 more minutes)
8) Finish (brush with olive oil or egg wash, top with salt and or herbs.)
8) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
Notes:
Foccacia is a simple flat bread that can be used for a whole host of applications - garnished with olive oil and sea salt it can make a simple bread to go with an appetizer, it can be rolled out and used for pizza, made into rolls for burgers, or be a part of a larger presentation. Try brushing it with rendered bacon fat, or a flavored oil (chili, olive, truffle, what have you) once you’ve done that top it with some freshly chopped herbs from the local farmers market before baking it. Cheese is pretty good with it to. Try that. The most important thing is that you try it - over and over again if you have to - until you get it to where you want it.
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