Recent food world discoveries the ES crew is loving and hating
Plate It: Creamed Honey
We love honey. We hate how it sticks all over everything. Creamed honey is pure honey that is crystallized so that it changes texture; you get a smooth, creamy product that spreads like butter and doesn’t drip-drip-drip all over everything like that pedestrian un-creamed honey. Brilliant. (Available at http://www.shopbot.co.nz/)
Hate It: Push Pop Cakes
The latest mom blogger craze picks up where cake pops left off. Come on, foodie moms — please stop sacrificing practicality for cuteness. That is not how you eat a cake. Push it up and things start to fall apart once you take your first bite. (Photo: kristin_a)
Plate It: Travel-Size Brie
Finally. We no longer have to fly with just Laughing Cow. Quality doesn’t compare to regular brie, but it’s sure better than no brie. (Available from Ile de France)
Hate It: Rachael vs. Guy Celebrity Cook-Off
Recently, someone criticized an old post of mine, calling my gado gado recipe “as authentic as General Tsao chicken.” Ouch. Except that I made no claims about authenticity, and when I made it again this week, it was delicious. Someday, perhaps I will comb the web for the bestest recipe there is before embarking on a three-hour dinner-making odyssey. I’ll make tortillas from scratch before collecting freshly laid eggs from my personal chickens for breakfast. Given my current life situation, I estimate this to be a possibility in the year 2032. Until then, the Moosewood Cookbook will do just fine.
So, all this is to say that if authenticity is what you seek STOP READING THIS POST RIGHT NOW. You will be only left bitter and disappointed.
Moving on. Growing up, we did not eat casseroles. My mom was raised in a family of six children with one income, so canned mushroom soup was a pantry staple. Tuna noodle casserole, chicken a la king, chicken pot pie, the iterations of the creamy baked dishes were endless. As a result, my mom was rendered unable to eat another casserole once she began her own household. And as a result of that, I never got into the whole casserole scene. Without a cream sauce and puff pastry crust, though, what was I to do with my leftovers?
Half a block of tofu, some dried out rice and whitish looking baby carrots can stare me down from the fridge, and I can confidently stare right back thanks to one secret weapon: fried rice. At least once a week, usually on the day that a tenuous nap situation has left my nerves ragged, I fire up the cast iron skillet (that’s right, I don’t even use a wok —culinary sacrilege, I know) and get to work emptying out the fridge in search of dinner.
Here’s what usually transpires:
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Let me start by saying, I’m a foodie. And as translated by some, I’ve been accused of being a food snob. My rebuttal is always, “We all have our snobbery.” If food is my worst snobbery I will take it with a glass of wine in one hand a Twinkie in the other.
So how the hell does snobbery play into this post? I’ll tell you. I made this last weekend and called them Caramel & Toffee Shortbread Bars. I was quickly corrected by a room full of 5-16 year olds and adults that these were nothing more than a homemade Twix copycat. And they also accused me of putting a “snobby” foodie title on a simple dessert.
Luckily, it doesn’t pain me to say — they are right. I’m for sure going to be calling these homemade Twix bars going forward —such an easier sell.
I think we can all agree: meat on the bone tastes better. Or it’s more fun to eat, anyway. I know a lot of people who won’t eat meat off the bone because it reminds them it’s an animal (…what?) but I’m not one of them.
I was in Jamaica earlier this month and I noticed something. Every time I ordered meat (jerk chicken, curried goat, or chicken in brown sauce for breakfast — pictured above), I spent most of my meal picking small bones from it. I mean, bones in whole fish are sometimes inevitable (they’re just so small and hard to see), but I really don’t want to be eating bone fragments, especially when they can be sharp.
In Jamaica, it seems that to make the meat a more manageable size…they don’t take it off the bone, or even cut the bone at a place where it’d make sense (like the joint). The meat, bone and all, is just chopped up into bite size pieces. But who the hell cares if it’s bite-size if there are bone shards and shit in my food? Instead of eating meat off one, large, smooth and normally shaped bone, I’m sitting there with these little bite-size pieces of meat, and even smaller bones everywhere in them. And since there’s no rhyme or reason to the cutting, it’s impossible to predict where the bone/fat/ligament will be on each piece.
It was a scavenger hunt I never signed up to play, and after I got halfway through each bone hunt, I just gave up and ate what else was on my plate. I wasted so much food. And even if I DID spend the time picking through the bones, I just couldn’t get all the meat off that I would normally, given the sharp bone edges and fragments that were present.
Am I missing something? Is there a method to this madness? Is this a way to get people to eat less meat?
I love the local Philly donut shop, Federal Donuts. I really do.
On another note, if you follow the @EndlessSimmer twitter, you know last week I was at the Krispy Kreme factory (details to come, stay tuned!) During our product development session, I made this creation:
Vanilla glaze (only because I wasn’t offered marshmallow), graham cracker crumbs, chocolate drizzle.
(Pic: Krispy Kreme)
And then five days later, Federal Donuts unveiled this on their facebook page:
