Food Travel - - Page 32

by BS

Panamaniac

Hola! As I’m sure all you loyal ES-ers noticed, I was totally MIA last week. Thanks to all you contributors for picking up the slack while I was off chillaxing in the Caribbean. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how mad I am to be in front of a computer and not on the beach right now. I’m also sure no one feels the slightest bit bad for me. If it’s any consolation, a large section of my forehead is peeling off as I type (it’s not easy being this white!)

OK, enough about non-edible topics. Let’s talk food. A bunch of people had told me that Central American food outside of Mexico can be disappointingly bland. This was not remotely the case in Panama. Sometimes it was really simple, like plain black beans over plain white rice with a simple slab of beef or chicken, but it was always tasty and there was almost always some spicy chili sauce on the table to add. On with the show:

Carimañolas are a Panamanian specialty. Boiled yuca, stuffed with ground beef and deep fried. Effing delicious. It’s like a fried mashed potato bite with a juicy meatball inside. Proving once again that anything can be improved by deep-frying it.

Far and away our favorite thing. We kept going back to this tiny little counter place to pick up more of these “tortillas.” They’re little deep-fried balls of cornmeal, kinda like hushpuppies but even greasier and more filling. I thought it was weird that they were called tortillas but I guess when you think about it that just means “little cake” so it works. By the end of the week we were totally regulars with the lady who sold these.

Mas fotos despues del jumpo…

by tvff

Particle Board and Seasoned Ground Meat

Recently, I was telling a friend that I write for a food blog and they asked if I had any ambition to be a food critic. I’ve been asked this on a couple of occasions, and my typical answer is that I don’t harbor such aspirations because I don’t have any culinary training or possess a particularly exceptional knowledge of food.

I’ve been thinking about the conversation and I think I discovered the real reason I don’t feel qualified to be a food critic. It’s not that I’m not professionally trained and it’s not that I don’t possess an encyclopedic knowledge of food. Despite these factors, I think I have a pretty good palate and I like to believe I know a thing or two about a reasonably wide variety of cuisines. Rather, it’s the fact that I don’t have a sufficiently robust dining history to be able to knowledgeably and consistently spot an outstanding example of a traditional dish.

How did I come to this epiphany? There were two triggers, one mundane and one out of the ordinary. The first was reading a review of a local restaurant. The second was a result of my quest to turn a couple of torchier floor lamps into speaker stands.

in Food Travel / Personal / Red Meat 9 comments

by BS

Look Who’s Slawing Now

Winter sucks. Thankfully, we got a brief reprieve from it in New York this weekend, with a bizarre, wonderful 60-degree Sunday. Of course, when this happens, most people I know immediately think — time to cook outside! So my friend Dave took the opportunity to smoke up some pork shoulder on the grill, and I was assigned coleslaw.

I’d never done it before so I went super-basic, avoiding anything fancy (just cabbage, carrots, mayo [not too freaking much!], vinegar, salt, pepper, and some fresh dill I happened to have). So I didn’t take a photo or anything because it was just your basic coleslaw, although everyone did seem to like it. In fact, when our pal Miss Brockhouse returned for a slice of apple pie, she lamented that there was no coleslaw left to eat with her pie! Running with this, I started thinking (and saying out loud), that you really could put coleslaw on anything. Of course, I was met with a chorus of ‘you must be wasted,’ but now even in the sober AM I still feel the same way. Why is coleslaw limited to an uneventful side or a sandwich topping for BBQ and BBQ alone?

BUT then I was reminded of this map that a friend recently forwarded:

in Food Travel / Pig 5 comments

by gansie

Ripened Ovary of a Flower

Editors Note: Comment superstar, Maids, was recently in Colombia. Being a vegetarian and lactose intolerant was somewhat troubling for this traveling foodie. Here’s her story.

So I’m exaggerATING: Colombia isn’t all bad for me food wise. And in fact, I should say again that it is a country with a rich and impressive culinary tradition.

A lot of meaty soups and fishy plates and drunken pigs and all sorts of buttery fried doughy arepa madness… But in a country where the “platos tipicos” include Exhibit: A, B and C, I’m really just missing my kitchen.

I should however let you in on the details about a very special Colombian fruit that is the perfect kinda starchy roasted nutty tasting snack for a hungry lactard veggie gringuita. (By the way, something to know, Colombia sports a 25% lactard population, and thus lactose-free milk is available at a lot of posh little cafes and at all the Juan Valdez coffee spots, the local equivalent of the Starbucks chain coffee place. I mean there is something to be said for having the lactose free milk latte available… Never been a huge fan of soy milk in coffee drinks. Ahem, Starbucks, take note please!)

But I digress.

in Food Travel 18 comments

by BS

Why Do I Always Fall for the Weird Ones?

I have a problem. I literally cannot go to a grocery store that has a decent produce section without picking up some out-there fruit or vegetable, from delicious monsters to ridiculous mini-kiwis. I’m perfectly happy with regular old oranges and zucchinis, but when I see something weird, I think “I just have to get that so I can blog about it,” whether it looks good or not. So enter cranberry beans.

I picked up these weirdos at the Brooklyn Fairway even though I had no idea what the eff they were. A cranberry plant cross-bred with green beans or something like that I assumed. Actually it turns out cranberry beans, or borlotti, actually aren’t like either. They’re just cranberry-colored, not cranberry-flavored, and they’re more like a lima bean or cannellini than a green bean. So good thing I actually did a little research, because I was all ready to just steam and sautee these things up like green beans, but according to the Internets, that would not work.

Instead, you have to shell them and cook the beans, not the whole pod. Take a look inside:

in Food Travel / Personal / Recipe / Veggie 5 comments

by BS

And You Thought We Were Weird…

We are up for some pretty bizarre eats here at Endless Simmer, but the amazing thing about this world is that no matter how weird you think you are, you can always find someone weirder.

With that in mind, check out WebUrbanist’s amazing list of the 15 strangest themed restaurants in the world.

I’m intrigued about the pitch-black restaurant in China and the robot-staffed eatery in Germany, but could probably skip the human body-themed meal they’ve got going on in Japan. Now if you put a fried egg on top…

Photo: Weird Asia News

in Food Travel 3 comments

by BS

Remember This Lady? She Was Funny

One more post-election goodie for you all. Back in September, we asked you what the real Sarah Palin cooks, and you overwhelmingly voted for moose burgers. Well now that she doesn’t have much else to do, Sarah is spilling the goods–it’s moose chili! Cooked in a crock pot at that. Now if I could just get her to share some tips on how she uses up those leftover moose bones.

in Food Travel / Politics 7 comments