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by Katt Kasper

I Shot a Vegetarian

Hey, c’mon. It was ONE vegetarian. It’s not like I clubbed a baby seal or anything. Geesh. And HE started it. And anyway, what’s a non-meat eating, hemp-wearing, bearded, nature dork doing participating in paintball anyway? And why would he challenge a proud carnivore? What was he thinking? And believe me; I took no pleasure in it. Really. No, REALLY……Ha! Who am I kidding? I dug the hell out of it!

So here’s what happened…some buddies asked me if I wanted to do a little paintball combat and I reluctantly agreed because these three numbskulls have a history of consuming way too much alcohol, and then wind up getting me seriously injured during the process. My previous participation with them has resulted in broken ribs, a snapped ACL, and waking up completely naked duct-taped to a tree. Why would I want to risk that again?… ‘cause those were the best times of my life! And what’s the sense of having medical insurance if you don’t take advantage of it once in a while?

We show up at this massive outdoor paintball park (late as usual), and we’re told that we can’t get out onto the field for a while because it’s so crowded. We figured that this might happen, so on the way we stopped off and got a sack full of burgers to eat while we wait. Plus we replaced our drinks with bourbon prior to coming in so we didn’t mind partaking in a little lunch before engaging in warfare. We go sit down in a crowd of guys waiting to get in and just as I take the first big bite of my burger I hear someone behind me say, “That’s disgusting!” I turn around and I’m staring at a skinny version of Zach Galifianakis who is looking back at me and sadly shaking his head. I give him a nod, squint my eyes and use my best Deniro; “You talkin’ to me?”

by ML

Beer Runs: The 2013 Challenge

For some reason, I convinced snebbu and a few of our other, beer-loving friends to sign up for the Stoudt’s Distance Classic 12k on Halloween weekend. Stoudt’s happens to be one of our favorite breweries for a few reasons: highlights include its central PA location, plenty of older, beer-loving folks, and a free shuttle at most events from the brewery to all area hotels, which are usually around $50 a night. No college girls or heels here. We frequent their microfest and figured, why not do the 12k, especially if there’s a free pint glass and a beer at the end?

I should have known this was a bad idea by the words “Distance Classic” in the title, but I kind of thought it was a joke. Unfortunately it was not. This 7.45-miler was a tad harder than expected; considering the race was, in my opinion, 80% uphill, including one hill that was 1.3 miles long, and 3/4 of the way my legs almost gave out just WALKING up. Also, the water stops didn’t have beer. Thankfully, we made atomic orange shirts to identify us as members of a fake organization, the FYAEA (Federation of Young Alumni Exploring America), which aided in search and rescue efforts.

Although I completed the race, was handed a loaf of bread at the finish line, and was given TWO free beers for coming in last (awesome), I felt defeated. But had there not been beer at the end, I would have given up at mile 2 and hitchhiked home. So, I’ve come up with a challenge for myself, snebbu, our friends, and whoever else wants to join (YOU?): use beer to motivate yourself to run in 2013. Run as many 5-10ks as possible in 2013, all of which are either a) at a brewery b) sponsored by some sort of liquor or c) involve free beer at the end. Not only will we a) be in shape b) be motivated and c) get a lot of free booze, I’m sure that many of these runs will raise money to benefit a cause other than my sobriety.

in Drinks / Personal 6 comments

by Katt Kasper

Stuffed Shell Weekend

When the temperature drops there are a lot of people who enjoy preparing and eating soups, stews and chilis. Me, I go straight for the Italian dishes! Pasta in a good meat sauce topped with cheese is my cold weather comfort food. So when the weekend arrives I like to prepare meals that will provide me with multiple nights’ worth of dinner options, like my stuffed shells in a vodka cream sauce.

This will make enough extra sauce that you can either freeze it or use it later in the week over rigatoni or spaghetti. And these shells are so filling that you’d better invite some friends over to help you eat this; otherwise you’re going to have it as leftovers for a good week!

Katt’s Stuffed Shells in Vodka Cream Sauce

in Cheese / Personal / Recipe 0 comments

by BS

A Response to Pete Wells, From Guy Fieri

Earlier this week, New York Times food critic Pete Wells, apparently too lazy to call a town car to take him to another hip SoHo gastropub, instead wandered two blocks from his office over to TV star Guy Fieri’s “Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar” in Times Square. Mr. Wells, shocked to find the obvious tourist trap serving anything less than Per Se-quality fare, churned out the scathing restaurant review that everyone and their mother has since shared with you on Facebook.

Because Wells’ now-infamous zero-star “review” is written entirely in questions, we decided to give Guy Fieri a chance to respond. Note: We don’t actually know Guy Fieri, but we’re pretty sure this is what he’d say if he got the chance.

GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations? Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex?
P-Wells, seriously…what’s harshing your vibe? Why so many questions? When did you become an angry food blogger? I thought you wrote for a newspaper. What happened, homeslice? Did your editor threaten to send you back to the obit desk if you don’t double your page views, pronto? This is all way harsh, bro.

When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?
Yes. You’re right, that sounds like it must have been a really tough moment for you. You have a rough life, don’t you, Pete? Well, now you know what real pain is like. A burger description with too many words. Try reading a restaurant review that’s 12 paragraphs longer than it needs to be.

Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table? Were the “bourbon butter crunch chips” missing from your Almond Joy cocktail, too? Was your deep-fried “boulder” of ice cream the size of a standard scoop?
So…first my restaurant’s menu isn’t fancy enough for you, and now you’re complaining that your serving of DEEP-FRIED ICE CREAM is too SMALL?? What did you want, a gallon of it? It’s fried ice cream! Petey, I admit I wasn’t shooting for a Michelin star, but the one thing I can say with certainty is that if you did not get enough food at this restaurant, you have a serious problem. Most of our appetizers have more calories then a four-person family is supposed to consume in a week. Chiiiiiiiilllllll.

What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense? Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?
My bad, bro. You must have forgot to look at the back of the menu. That’s where our ten-course foie gras tasting options are.

Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?
You ate the whole menu?!? Wow, someone has some extra time on their hands. Not even my mom did that. Is everything OK at home?

When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered?
Really, Pete, it’s the New York Times. Is this personal query really relevant to the masses? Perhaps you should have…I don’t know—reminded your server? No, no, never mind—you’re right. An angry online complaint is much more effective than asking in person for your personal problem to be fixed. Have you tried Yelp yet, Mr. Wells? You’d love it.

Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?
Here’s a tip for the next time you go recreational slumming, Wellsie. You order a blue drink at a place like this for one reason, maybe two: it’s probably going to be giant, and it’s definitely going to get you (and your date) hella wasted. It certainly doesn’t matter two shits what it tastes like. People know this. In fact, you are the first customer to ever inquire as to what our giant blue “margarita” might taste like. I’m sorry it didn’t have the subtle cloying notes of a 1985 malbec. We’ll work on it.

At your five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants in California, if servers arrive with main courses and find that the appetizers haven’t been cleared yet, do they try to find space for the new plates next to the dirty ones? Or does that just happen in Times Square, where people are used to crowding?
Oh the horrors! I’m guessing this is also your first time eating at a restaurant where there was no silent waiter on hand whose sole job is to discreetly sweep the crumbs off your tablecloth in between the cheese plate and the sorbet course?

in Celebs / Personal / Restaurants / TV 4 comments

by Katt Kasper

I Do It For the Love

After spending countless hours here in the ES test kitchen, doing what I love (which is preparing and reviewing different recipes and cooking techniques), I’ve just made a shocking realization: I’m an amateur chef! I’m no longer just a dedicated Full-Time Foodie, but an honest-to-goodness, not-paid-for-his-hard-work-and-yes-I-made-that-from-scratch-but-no-I-didn’t-go-to-culinary-school—CHEF!

Traditionally, a chef is defined as a highly-skilled professional who cooks for a living, and who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation. Except for that ‘highly-skilled professional who cooks for a living’ part – THATS ME! I AM proficient in all aspects of food preparation—just like I’m proficient at all aspects of alcohol drinking! Proficient means ‘able,’ ‘competent’ or ‘skilled’ and I got some skillz, yo! Not only could I be considered an amateur chef, but also (get out your French dictionaries), an amateur sous-chef, a chef de cuisine, a chef de partie, a saucier and a grillardin! That’s right bitches, the French give me mad props!

A professional is a person who is paid to undertake a specialized set of tasks and to complete them for a fee. And y’know, not to brag or anything, but I have worked as a professional cook. You heard me—I was PAID for my mad skillz, and I was still in high school! I’ve held jobs as a professional fry cook (McDonalds), a professional grill cook (Burger King) as well as a professional pizza cook (Shakey’s) and a professional culinary chauffer (Domino’s), and I got the tax returns to prove it. I may not be getting paid to cook now but I attribute that more to my arrest record than my experience.

in Personal / Rants & Raves 2 comments

by Katt Kasper

Don’t Mess With the Classics!

I’m not Italian but I love Italian food. It’s satisfying, hearty and soothing…and it’s relatively simple to make. Some dishes are so simple in fact, that what separates a fantastic dish from a great dish is the quality of the ingredients more so than the cooking techniques. Take the classic Italian dish spaghetti carbonara; it’s spaghetti, pancetta (or guanciale), pecorino romano cheese, pepper and eggs. That’s it! The only real variation is whether or not you going to add garlic (which I always do). The best version of this dish is the one made with fresh pasta instead of boxed, and guanciale instead of pancetta. Guanciale is a cured pork cheek which carries a ton of great-tasting fat and, if it’s available to you, is a better choice than pancetta—although not by much. When I have a great piece of guanciale I don’t use any olive oil. I’ll do a slow, low-heat sauté of the meat, which will render its delicious fat without requiring the aid of the oil. Now that’s classic!

But if you look up this recipe on many of the food and cooking websites, you’ll get some whacky variations that totally destroy this dish. And most of them come from American cooks that try to ‘improve’ this classic by making it ‘healthier.’ Substituting wheat pasta, egg whites and ground turkey sausage may make it lower in fat content, but where do you think the taste comes from? And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average life expectancy for us health-conscious Americans is 78.2 years. For native Italians? 81.7 years! Those wine-swilling, chain-smoking Italians would never THINK to use turkey sausage in this dish so why should you? You ever hear Mario Batali talk about his cholesterol level? Get real! If eating this classic is shaving a few years off my life, so be it! Just stop calling your turkey-and-wheat-pasta versions carbonara, ‘cause they’re NOT!

Katt’s Classic Spaghetti Carbonara

in Bacon / Cheese / Eggs / Personal / Recipe 0 comments

by Miss K

In Which I Succumb to Taco Tuesday

When I first moved to DC, I had the pleasure of living with not one but two lovely women who came from families with eight children. As a member of a modest two-child family, I was endlessly fascinated by their stories of growing up. One story that entered our household lore and has stuck with me going on six years later is the tale of the day that Rachel, who was near the end of her large family train, called her house on a Tuesday and talked to her mom. It came out that her mom, dad and brother, the only ones remaining at home, were having fish for dinner. Indignantly, Rachel exclaimed, “But Mom, it’s Taco Tuesday!” To which her mom replied something like, “You think that we still eat tacos every week now that it’s just the three of us?” It seems that Taco Tuesday was more a product of pragmatism than a reflection of her mother’s love of Tex-Mex cuisine.

For me, the food growing up was considerably less regimented. Sure, there were some favorite family dishes, but the level of predictability was considerably less pronounced. My mother would plan the week’s menu over the weekend, and each of us would have a say. New dishes were welcomed, particularly if the person suggesting it was also willing to cook it. After I flew the coop, I met a man whose tastes are as varied as mine, and together we embarked on many culinary adventures (think homemade gyros, doro wat, and pesto pizza). It seemed that Taco Tuesday, at least for me, was not to be.

But…I now find myself the parent of two kids two and under, one of whom eats every three hours around the clock, and the other who is disinclined to entertain himself for hours while I practice Advanced Menu Planning and Execution. That’s right. I have embraced not only Taco Tuesday, but Pasta Monday as well. But, I promise you this, ESers: There will never be a Turkey Surprise Thursday. I hope.

Oh yes, a recipe…so, when I am feeling particular adventurous and my mini-sous chef is willing, Taco Tuesday can become Enchilada Tuesday. It’s not too much more work, but looks considerably more impressive.

Easy Tuesday Enchiladas

in Cheese / Personal / Recipe 1 comments