Hot Carb-on-Carb Action in the Buff

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It’s an unwritten rule of lunchtime that whatever food you’re eating should be somehow encased in a layer of bread or alternate form of carbohydrates. Yet despite the waning popularity of the Atkins diet, few establishments are bold enough to up the ante and serve lunch encased in two layers of said carbs. You wouldn’t wrap a quesadilla in a taco shell, throw a bagel sandwich on a sub roll, or stuff spaghetti inside a bread bowl. OK, well at least most of you wouldn’t do that last one.

Fortunately, Jamaicans (well, specifically the Jamaican Buff Patty lunch counter by my house in Brooklyn) observe no such standards of carbohydrate restraint. I was shocked/delighted to learn that their patties — which come with beef, veggies or jerk chicken inside — are not only surrounded by a crispy fried shell, but that shell is then wrapped inside a hefty hunk of coco bread. Insane? Genius? Both, I say. You get crispy carbs and doughy carbs in each and every bite. Now that’s what I call a lunch.

PS – this concoction costs a whopping $2.50 — cheapest lunch ever.

PPS – Yes, I went for a 5-mile run afterwards. No, I don’t think that burned off all the carbs I consumed.

Cheflebrity Smörgåsbord: Gordo Gets Animated

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The latest and greatest news about celebrity chefs, served up conveniently buffet style.

– There is going to be a Gordon Ramsay stop-motion animated series.  Why?  Because even Fox reality show producers aren’t over-the-top enough to insert cartoon sound effects when he starts hurling cookware.

Guy Fieri is marketing a line of knives called “Knuckle Sandwich.”  Take a moment and think about what they might look like.  Now go check them out.  Yep, even douchier than you imagined.

After the jump:  the year of the culinary blockbuster films continue, Tyra goes crazy(-ier) for truck food and Disney brings in the foodies.

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Miracle Berry Tripping: Live Blog

Good friend of the blog Sara is celebrating her birthday this evening, and she made the very wise decision to do so the miracle fruit way.

Long-time readers will remember I first starting blabbing about Miracle Fruit nearly two years ago: the gist is that these tiny African berries have the effect of numbing your tongue’s sensors so that everything sour tastes sweet. Sour cream becomes vanilla frosting, tequila tastes like candy, sour patch kids are just patch kids.

I wanted to try these things so badly that my older brother even bought me a miracle fruit tree for Christmas! Alas, it turns out Brooklyn winters are not quite the same as tropical African ones, and my miracle plant withered before bearing any fruit. But now we’re giving it another try. Sara has purchased 10 miracle berry tablets for her party, and we’re about to finally find out what all the fuss is about. Read on, if you dare.

PS – No, mom, they’re not drugs. I swear.

8:27 pm: The Feast

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Laura: It looks like someone got high and wanted all really healthy food.

Adam: You all are fucking gimmicky.

8:45pm: Sara breaks out the mBerries

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Looks kinda small. Hope we didn’t buy too much food.

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An Outstanding Dinner in the City…Er, Field

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A quiet Sunday in late August on a nondescript corner of Manhattan’s Alphabet City. The corner is walled by the branches of a decades-old willow tree and an array of urban flowers, and a sign sitting on the sidewalk reads “Farm Dinner.” A hundred-odd people have gathered for a dinner experience that has traversed the country and rests at this location for only two nights. The location is La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez Community Garden, the chef is  Josh Eden of Shorty’s 32 and the host is Jim Denevan, founder of Outstanding in the Field.

Denevan and his Outstanding in the Field team travel the country in a bright red bus offering a roving five-course dinner with a simple concept: source your ingredients locally (including the wine), find a chef who is celebrated regionally, then invite all of your closest friends. OK, so the last part I ad libbed. The elaborate event was more like a wedding where everyone was giddily excited but no one knew each other. Fortunately, no one was seated at the kiddies table. After a glass of wine or two, it wasn’t a problem — we were all old friends catching up over a great meal. I was fortunate enough to be seated across from the photographer of the OITF website and cookbook, who was a host of knowledge on the food, which made my experience ever more fascinating.

More on the OITF menu, and some drool-y food shots, after the jump.

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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

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– Our Alaskan mystery eater was a little easy to guess, but too great to pass up. Where are the moose burgers, Sarah? Good job guessing, Amelia! You win a copy of Trish Magwood’s cookbook. Send us your address!

– This week’s other guessing game, Quotable Brooklyn, had most of you convinced I made up the quote about bacon (too obvious) but those of you who guessed number 7 were correct: “You might not believe this, but I can remember a time when you had to bike halfway across Fort Greene to find a decent stick of organic butter.” This must have been a little tougher than the Sarah Palin guessing game, because even Edible Brooklyn editor Gabrielle wasn’t sure:

I’m the editor of Edible Brooklyn, the main person responsible for, as you say, “the place where the pomposity of food writing and the pretentiousness of living in Brooklyn collide” and I am laughing out loud! To be fair, 5 of your 9 quotes are from one interview, a musician’s stream-of-thought quips about what’s in her fridge. But the point is right on – you nailed us! Well done. PS The fake line is #7 right–or is it #9? I’ve already forgotten!

– Finally, JoeHoya and Alex offer up some currant cooking tips, but keep ’em coming – we’ve got a ton of these things!

Quotable Brooklyn

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I love living in Brooklyn. I also love writing about food. But as much as these two things are major parts of my life, you’ve got to admit people can get pretty over-the-top and ridiculous about both of them. Sometimes you just have to laugh at how seriously people can take food, and the same goes for Brooklyn. If you don’t remember how preposterous it all is, you’ll end up losing your job because you’ve spent too much time protesting outside City Hall against oppressive home beekeeping regulations or the lack of community herb gardens in Bed-Stuy. Of course, you probably didn’t have a job to begin with, because obviously you’re a freelancer/amateur gourmet food producer, like everyone.

Four times a year, we get a chance to laugh at the place where the pomposity of food writing and the pretentiousness of living in Brooklyn collide — Edible Brooklyn, a magazine dedicated to “celebrating the borough’s food culture, season by season.” I’ve picked out the ten most amazing/ridiculous quotes from the current issue of Edible Brooklyn and reproduced them below. Yes, people actually said/wrote all of these things, and they were all completely serious.

PS — Just to make it fun, I included one quote that I made up myself. Can you guess which one is too ridiculous to be real?

1. “The pair wanted to serve a draft beer with their sustainably sourced dogs, of course, but not just any ordinary laissez-faire lager. Like their all-beef, natural casing, custom-made franks, which are crafted in Rochester by an Austrian butcher—they wanted a quaff made with attention to every quirk.”

2. “We make our own sodas using housemade syrups and a seltzer system that has to be seen to be believed—the water gets filtered, then chilled three times, then carbonated—it comes out so fizzy it hurts to drink it.”

3. “There’s a huge fermentation craze going on, so I bought this delicious organic sauerkraut, which has yet to be opened. I bought it like three weeks ago. At some point I should probably eat that.”

4.  “Like everyone else in Park Slope, I’m addicted to kombucha.”

5. “His wife—whom he met in a tavern—suggested they open a comic-themed bar serving affordable drinks.”

6. “You can’t get the smell into the camera, that’s a shame. Did you get pictures of the lemons? I have a big Meyer lemon agenda.”

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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

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– Is anyone else very glad to have all these hangover remedy suggestions on this not-so-beautiful Friday? Obviously I’m with everyone on the bacon and eggs, but we also got a couple ideas I never heard of.

offthemeathook:

They did a study awhile back on the effectiveness of chocolate milk vs. gatorade and the choc milk won out. It’s good. I think it’s because it coats your stomach and has sugar in it. It may work or it may be a placebo, who cares, I think it works!

erica:

kombucha… and fried eggs with kimchee. for some reason the combo of fried eggs and kimchee is perfect and delicious when hung over. fizzy spicy cabbage… i dunno, it works….and miso! I keep a tub at the office for just such occasions… ’cause i’m not going to fry an egg at work.

Breda:

A Bleat sandwich Aussie style- Avocados are in every single sandwich here you ES-ers will love to hear! So Bacon Lettuce (rocket – i know you guys call it something else I can’t remember the name) Egg Avocado Sandwich on toasted Sourdough with cilantro mayo served up with homemade lemonade! I actually don’t even need to be hungover to have this :)

And of course ES-ers chimed in on the very important issue of how to feed hummus to babies (anyone else think we’d never cover that one?)

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