Rants & Raves -

by Katt Kasper

Burns My Bacon: Burning My Bacon!

Los Angeles is a lonely, desolate place to live if you’re looking for great service and properly prepared food at a restaurant. Especially if you’re spending less than a hundred bucks a plate. Oh, it happens now and then. But it’s really become a sort of Culinary Lottery to actually get just what it was you ordered. The kitchen always looks busy, and the wait staff is usually friendly and attentive, but something happens once you answer their meal inquiries. I see them write it down, or repeat it back to me and nod reassuringly. But then they walk away and sometime later food is delivered by new strangers that then ask me what it was I ordered. “The over-cooked rib eye with the steamed, reheated limp green beans?” Oh gosh, that would be me. I’ve been sucking on the ice cubes of my empty drink for so long I almost forgot what I ordered myself. Could I get another drink, please? “I’ll get your waiter.” Yes, please do. I don’t know why I was thinking that you could get it considering that you didn’t know I ordered the steak even though I’m the only one sitting at this table.

And when my waiter finally does return, I know that they will stare down at my untouched plate, look at me, smile and say, “So how is everything? Cooked the way you like?” Why yes, my heat sensitive x-ray vision tells me that the center of both my entrée and side dish are at the optimum temperature. May I ask you to lean closer so that I might bitch slap you into oblivion?

What the F is happening? I used to enjoy going out to eat but now it’s become like starring in my own version of the Matrix. Do ANY of these out-of-work actors really want to be waiters? Here’s a little test that I did at the last 10 places that I’ve eaten: at the end of my meal I always order a cup of coffee and each time without fail, this has been the response; “Do you take cream and sugar?” To which I always answer (very firmly and with conviction), “No, just black please!” And out of the last ten times that this scenario has taken place, only ONE TIME have I received a cup of coffee without an accompanying creamer and assortment of sugars, sweeteners and pink bags of crystal chemicals. If you’re going to bring me these sidecars anyway, why are you asking me how I drink my coffee? And what other information haven’t you processed? My severe peanut allergy? My request to substitute the potato with more vegetables? Asking me if I’d like bread, and then bringing me a basket of it after I replied “no” doesn’t instill much confidence from my end.

And…what’s up with the bacon?

Burns My Bacon: Sous Vide

We’ve talked sous vide many times here on Endless Simmer. Now that the trend has died down a bit, KK asks, is it even worth it?

Sous vide. It’s a French term meaning, “I’ve got way too much time on my hands and I don’t own a microwave.” This is a cooking process in which you put food into a plastic bag, remove as much air as you can, and then sloooooow cook it in a water bath at around 55 degrees for 72 hours. That’s more than a couple of days. Why would you do this? If you were on your meds you wouldn’t. Can you imagine everything being cooked this way? You could get your dry cleaning back in less time. I mean, I could order food from New York and have it FedEx’d to me before my sous vide steak is half done.

When I was growing up, I thought that my mother invented fast food. The slowest thing that she cooked in our house was a TV dinner. That took 20 minutes. I was a teenager before I realized that the center of your Salisbury steak wasn’t supposed to be frozen. 72 hours to properly bathe my entrée? I’ve had goldfish that didn’t last that long in water. “Boil in the bag? Oh no, no, no. What’s the rush? Why don’t you sit back and relax while I sous vide us some pasta. Case of wine while we wait?”

The great Julia Child would have a hard time selling THIS French cooking method to American housewives. And really, as a restaurateur, how do you make any money at this? You certainly couldn’t advertise how fresh your food is. Even Michael Phelps wouldn’t last 72 hours in the water. Why would I want my food to? What’s the point? Flavor? After waiting 72 hours for a meal I would eat my shoes.

And in terms of technique, who couldn’t learn to master this? “Gee, I just couldn’t get the hang of sealing the bag. I don’t know how Keller does it!” Just imagine how long it would take to tape ‘Iron Chef Sous Vide.’ You could become a doctor in less time.

I absolutely love many classic French cooking techniques, and I’ll admit, I’m intimidated by some. Sous vide doesn’t make either list. I’m in no hurry to cook slower. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I won’t be dragging home any canisters of liquid nitrogen either. If I want the word ‘extreme’ used to describe anything about my meal it had better be the flavor and not the cooking method.

Extremely flavorful? Qui. Extremely slow? Absolument pas!

in Rants & Raves / Trends 4 comments

by snebbu

Burns my Bacon: Pita vs. Pocket Thin

I’m the last person to get upset over something small and menial. No, really… So when I saw someone at work with a bag of pitas that said “flatbread pocket thins” on it, of course I started an argument: “You know those are just pitas, right?” Discussion ensued yesterday for about 5 minutes or so about the difference between a pita and pocket bread. Then today, of course, it was brought up again and further, louder, arguments occured.

Why does this burn my bacon? Because some quacks in a marketing department decided to call PITAS flatbread so that people will believe there is a difference. What is a pita? Simple. Bread with a pocket in it. At least I thought it was. Until our friends at Arnold’s decided that they couldn’t trademark the word Pita and instead called a PITA an f’ing flatbread that happens to have a pocket in it. Oh wait—it is pita-“style” bread. Which makes it…? A DAMN pita!

Yes, yelling did occur during this second discussion. About a pita. Unfortunately, some are misled by the spin doctors at Arnold’s painting pitas as “artisan pocket breads.” Some sad consumers believe they are getting something that is not a pita because it tastes better. Maybe it does taste better—but maybe that’s because it’s just a better pita! Don’t let the man pick your bread. Do you. YOLO.

Now…what do you think? I was promised responses from the office. Don’t disappoint.

in Rants & Raves 11 comments

by Katt Kasper

The Few, The Proud, The Foodie

“Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term “foodie.” I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie.”
—Mark Kurlansky, ‘Choice Cuts’ (2002)

I’ve never been called a gourmet—but then I’ve never been mauled by a shark either. And while I’m sure that not all sharks are maulers (just as not all gourmets are pompous windbags), I’d rather swim with the sharks than hang with the gourmets, as sharks apparently aren’t as picky about what they eat. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Like my buddy the shark, once I get the scent, I poise for attack. Korean barbeque? I begin to circle… Fresh-baked cinnamon roles? I make a slow, exploratory pass; back slightly arched, nose beginning to flare… Sizzling beef patties and grilled onions flipping wildly in the open? I ATTACK!!! I want flavor and I want it now! And I don’t care if it falls off a food truck or is served pinky up in a high-class French bistro! Thousands of years of evolution have only heightened this eating machines’ insatiable lust for all things ‘great tasting’! I’m a gastric predator! I’m a hot-blooded carnivore! I am…a FOODIE!

There, I said it. Unlike our esteemed gourmet blowhards, I’m not looking for perfection. I just want to get fed and I want it to taste good. Texture, color and presentation don’t mean squat to me. You ever eat a great chicken fried steak smothered in sausage gravy? A chewy, gray plate of mortar served up by an overweight blue-haired woman in her sixties may not sound like a slice of heaven to you, but I’ve had this dish taste so good in the past that the ‘ambiance’ didn’t faze me. Truckers, prison parolees and yours truly were all sitting elbow to elbow with that same stupid euphoric grin on our faces, thinking how great life was and how we couldn’t wait to come back for another round.

There is a restaurant space that sits next to a burger joint in L.A. that has gone through about eight different trendy ‘eateries’ in the last five years. Each was adored by the so called ‘gourmet food critics’ and made a huge opening splash. You couldn’t get into these places for the first two months because of the business that the reviews caused. So what happened? Each of those over-hyped hoity toity gourmet gardens have flamed out and packed up, while the lowly burger joint next door remains, and has thrived for almost thirty years.

Who started the food truck craze? Gourmets? I’ll tell you who did; it was you and me and all the other misshapen taste tweakers who weren’t following the self important ‘Critics-of-the-Common’, but were tweeting, texting and dragging their fellow ‘FOODIES’ (say it loud and say it proud!) to experience this new gastric phenomenon and to judge it first-hand. Yes Virginia, sometimes you do have to swallow, and until you do how will you know whether or not it was worth it? By reading someone else’s elevated opinion? I don’t want to build an ‘acquired taste’ for a food, a mate or a pet. I either like it or I don’t, and I don’t care what the name of the chef is or where he or she learned the tricks of their trade! They worked four years at the French Laundry? I don’t care if it was ‘THE’ French Laundry or ‘A’ French laundry. I’ll be back if it rocked my world and it doesn’t matter if you worked under Mr. Keller or Mr. Clean.

So what’s your preference—a four star review or passionate, excited texts from several close friends about the next great place that you just ‘have’ to experience? I don’t know about you, but I don’t eat food based off of the opinion of someone who gets in for free and then gets paid to tell you what they think, all while believing that their taste palette is superior to your own because they are ‘gourmets’.

“Whenever I was called a foodie, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I used the term “blow me.” I am still not sure that a foodie is a good thing to be, but like I give a shit.”
Katt Kasper, ‘Foodie, First Class’ (2013)

in Personal / Politics / Rants & Raves 3 comments

by Miss K

Burns My Bacon: Waste-of-Space Recipes

Maybe I’m just grumpy these days, but I seem to find annoying food-related practices everywhere I look. Today I bring you: ridiculously inappropriate label recipes.

When it comes to cooking, I’ll take my ideas wherever I can find them: cookbooks (I own many too many), blogs, allrecipes.com, and on and on. And sometimes, on the food packaging itself. This seems highly logical at times. For example, if I have a bag of cornmeal and I want to make polenta, the first place I look is on the side of the bag. And–aha!–there it is. I’ll try it, and if it works, great, and if not, my next stop will probably be The Joy of Cooking, followed by the vast plain of the Internet. Sometimes, a recipe can be useful even if it does not directly utilize the enclosed ingredient, like a good dip recipe on the back of a bag of chips.

Let me tell you what has never happened to me, though. I have a can of olives in the pantry. I am trying to decide what to make for dinner. I pick up the olive can and notice, “Hey, look, a recipe for island chicken and rice! And all I need is…every ingredient on the list.” Because olives aren’t even included until the very last line, as a garnish. Seriously, I understand that you, label designer, had some space to fill, but really, that’s the best you could do? I think that an olive-themed word puzzle, a la the cereal box, would have been preferable to this lameness. But maybe it’s just me.

in Rants & Raves 1 comments

by ML

Burns My Bacon: Religion in My Food

Sure, if I’m going to The Bread of Life restaurant in middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, I might expect all of the menu items to be named after Biblical characters (the food is still strikingly good). If I go to Chick-fil-A I know I’m supporting a Christian company (Sorry, I really like those chicken nuggets)

But I don’t like religious propaganda when I’m not asking for it. I don’t want to open my eggs I bought at the grocery store to find scripture. Maybe it’s my fault for buying 89-cent a dozen eggs. But doesn’t the scripture quoted on my factory-farmed eggs come from the same book that tells us to treat our animals well? What is the point? Do they really think, as I make scrambled eggs, hungover as hell on a Saturday morning, that I will see this message and suddenly be enlightened? How many people say they found god inside of their egg carton?

in Eggs / Personal / Politics / Rants & Raves 10 comments

by Emily

Foodie Art We Can Support: Delicious City Prints

By this point, it seems like there is a Kickstarter for everything. This means we can decide to help fund great ideas and important causes, but it also means people can beg for money to fund a lot of dumb crap. Anyway, luckily this Kickstarter-based idea falls into the former category:

Welcome to my new favorite culinary art, Delicious City Prints by Philly-based artist Roni Lagin. Thanks to gaining attention on the internet, his Kickstarter for this project has already been successfully funded, meaning soon these prints will be available to order. (But hey, if you have extra money to throw around, feel free to send some his way and support a cool artist. Plus, you get the prints!) Add this to your fall/winter redecorating wish list, these prints are the perfect thing to hang in your kitchen!

in Rants & Raves 1 comments