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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Fried Foods Galore

This is going to be somewhat of a stolen entry as I'm recounting things I saw on the Food Network's "Unwrapped". This particular episode was on fried foods. They mentioned some interesting things, and then I did some research of my own. I'm only including a few things which I found particularly noteworthy from the show.

SmashBurger


Smashburger is a burger joint started in 2007 in some mysterious location. They've expanded from their starting location to a number of cities. Recently one popped up a the uber- expensive mall near my house and I was intrigued by its bright colors and affordable menu. This is particularly of note because I cannot afford anything in that mall besides the books at Barnes and Nobles ( the only reason I ever go there). There's also a Cheesecake Factory there, but I digress.

Smashburger was featured on Unwrapped because they have an interesting collection of fried sides. Most interesting, I think, is fried pickles. Now, I've heard of fried pickles before and they admit they got the concept from out west, but these look more tasty. They're fried slices of dill pickle with a ranch dipping sauce. The cool thing about Smashburger is that their menu has little tweaks for each different state, so in Colorado you can have fried chili peppers and elsewhere you can get fried banana peppers. All locations include sweet potato fries, haystack onions and veggie frites, which are fried veggies sans batter. Each location also has burgers specifically designed by state. For example, The New Jersey burger has bacon, blue cheese,grilled onions, haystack onions, lettuce tomato and mayo. There's also a taylor ham burger and so forth.

Whiffie Pies

Another curious morsel was the fried pie, found on a street cart in Portland, Oregon. The pies are all made daily and have some really odd flavors like salmon with chipotle sauce. There are 3 savory pies and 3 sweet pies a day. I also don't really understand when the brother/sister duo that runs the cart sleeps since they prepare the pies during the day and fry and sell at night. I'm not a pie fanatic or anything, but the concept of freshly made pies that are deep fried is certainly intriguing. More intriguing is the fact that Portland has an enormous mass of street carts, which adds to the reasons that I think it would be awesome to visit.

I looked up Whiffie Pies to see what I could find and I encountered some other fantastic street food in Portland. The one that caught my eye right away was this:
Hey it's Grilled Cheesus' Return! It's just a cart that serves grilled cheese. OK, well special grilled cheese and then some pretty basic ones. They have a crusts cut off sandwich, Brie with tomatoes and peppers, and The Elvis ( PB and Banana. You can add bacon).

But more impressively or disgustingly we have the Cheesus Burger:

The Soon-to-be-Famous Burger Behemoth. We’ve done away with the bun and replaced it with two grilled cheese sandwiches. That’s right, two of them.
One on top, one on the bottom. Pickles and American cheese inside one, Grilled
Onion and Colby Jack in the other. Lettuce, Tomato, Ketchup, Mustard, and
1/3lb Burger in between. You won’t need to eat again for 2 days.
Comes with a bag of chips and a case of napkins. $8.00


Eww? I was surprised to discover that this is not unique to this cart. I found another cart called the Brunch Box which also serves a burger between grilled cheese sandwiches. Their menu comes with a picture!

Their menu also includes other horrors such as this: $9 - redonkadonk
"omg! burger" (Egg, ham, spam, bacon, American cheese) between two texas-toast grilled cheese sandwich "buns"

and my personal favorite: $2 - cheezasaurus rex : Dinosaur-shaped grilled cheese sandwich.
Who can resist anything that's dinosaur shaped? I used to have dino chicken nuggets and they were the best!


Portland also offers a bicycle delivery service that picks up your favorite local foods and carries them via bike to you. Sweet! So since I've already heard how awesome Portland is, this only adds to its reputation of awesomeness. This trip will happen some time. I just don't know when.

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Future of Road Raging Foodie

Well kids, the time is coming near when the foodie is moving out into the world and out of home after 8 months of being home from college. I'm not moving that far, but I am moving, which means I'll be back to more prolific cooking. I'm not sure if this means there will be more entries or less, but I suspect I will have to document my foodvenutures.

I'm hopefully moving to Long Island rather soon since I'm accepting a position with Americorps out in Mineola. Luckily I have a very good friend who lives just one town over so if finding a place in the next 2 weeks fails, I shall be able to live with her family for a while! Hooray! At any rate, cooking adventures will likely abound, which should be fun because I haven't cooked as much at home. But we've got some time until the move so it will be cleaning and packing time before the grand cooking adventures begin. Until then, who knows what tasty morsels will appear here.

Oh, and if anyone has an apartment for rent.... let me know!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Cookie Time!

Well, it's the day before departure to the PA and I made ALL the cookies this afternoon. Everything went very well actually. I changed things up a little and decided to make the tea cookies, the chocolate chip and chocolate pecan macaroons.
I must say, they are all remarkably tasty, and while I suppose none of them can be said to be really good for you, they are at least lower in fat than other cookies ( well not the chocolate chips. You don't mess with a classic.)

There is zero butter in the tea cookies, but they are rolled in powdered sugar. There's also zero butter and zero egg yolk in the macaroons. The macaroons are a cross between meringues and macaroons and they are very rich. I used crushed walnuts instead of pecans for both my cookies. I have mixed feelings about coconut, but sometimes I do like it and I think in this case it works. To quote Zombieland, " I hate coconut. Not the taste, the consistency."

I'm pretty proud of the outcome. I think everything tastes good and only a few things got a bit burned on the bottom.






Saturday, December 18, 2010

Bumper Sticker Feature

I've been meaning to post this for quite a while, but I've been saving it for the right time. Now seems to be that time for whatever reason. I'd like to do some periodic updates on bumper stickers as I see them. Here are two which I thought were worth mentioning.

"My other ride is a porn star"

"JESUS DIED TO SAVE YOU SO he wouldn't have to live without you"


Seriously? I'll be honest, I just never would have imagined that the first one would exist. I actually had to stare at it for a moment and think about it, because its I was confused. Nice word play I guess?? Actually it wasn't even a bumper sticker, it was license plate frame.

The second one, just doesn't make sense. The first half of it was written in large print with the second part almost in unreadble print below it. It wasn't until we stopped at a light I was able to see the whole thing. I figured it would be something pro-Jesus, but I was really hoping it would be something snarky. Instead its just kind of pointlessly nonsensical. Sounds like Jesus is acting in Romeo and Juliet. My friend explained the logic of this to me as Jesus died to redeem man's sins so now man can live in eternal heaven with Jesus. Ok, I guess that makes sense, but its way too complicated.

Jerseyites don't tend to be sticker crazy, but New Englanders do. I'll leave you with my favorite documented car, seen in Massachusetts. This is only a small section, but the car was covered in stickers.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Christmas Cookies

Well the days roll on and apparently its almost Christmas, or so the calendar tells me, and the stack of unwrapped presents in my closet. I realize that soon I'll have to start thinking about the traditional Christmas cookies. The chocolate chips are non-negotiable, but I may end up baking very close to Christmas. We shall see. The other cookies, part of a tradition started by my aunt, are usually sugar cookies and tea cookies. I've pretty much given up on the sugar cookies, because unlike my aunt, I don't own a cookie press, and since there are only really five people who will be eating said cookies, really maybe four or even three, we don't need as many as we used to when the family lived closer together. But, cookies are important of course, and I've been carrying the torch for a number of years with the chocolate chip cookies and my personal favorite, the tea cookies.

This year, perhaps some experimentation is in order. Mom showed me some cookies which won Eating Well magazine's healthy holiday cookie prize. Once again I use the term healthy with some caution, however I believe most of them are lower in fat. I have to say I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed by most of them but there's one that looks like a tea cookie, made without butter that sounds like it could be a winner. I'm not sure that it counts as anywhere near healthy, but if its a little less unhealthy at least that's something.

The other interesting cookie is called a dark chocolate Florentine, and looks lovely and crispy, so that might be added to the list. I like crispy cookies; the soft ones really just don't do it for me usually, unless they are warm and fresh out of the oven.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Let them eat cake! Experiment part 1




As I'm sitting down to write this entry, it occurs to me that both of my grandfathers are tied to baking in some way. My dad's father works at a bakery, and my mom's father, when he was alive, was an avid baker, at least while I knew him. This entry marks part one in the great cake experiment, in which I attempt to recreate one of my grandfather's traditional cakes.

Now, this is difficult for several reasons.
1. I think he invented the recipe himself, or modified it from something that existed
2. I have no idea if this cake has a name, all I know is that it has a yeast dough. (My mom seems to think its some sort of bapka, but nothing I could find online seemed remotely like what I remember).
3. I obviously can't ask him for help and there's no one else who knows either.

So, all I have to go on is yeast dough, the fact that it had cinnamon, raisins and walnuts inside and what I remember it tasting like. It was a very particular kind of cake, probably not what springs to mind when you think of cake. If anything it was sort of in the coffee cake category, but I think the yeast dough made it unique. My grandpa and I used to joke that it was like a book, because you could open the layers almost like pages. In that sense it was somewhat like a jellyroll, but it was flatter than a roll and a little dry.

Since yeast dough is all that I had to go on, I figured I'd start there and try a recipe. I looked through a bunch and looked at the pictures, none of which looked right. The one I found on Baking for the Cure seemed at least to have somewhat of the right look to it, so I decided to give it a shot and modify the filling as I saw fit. The instructions on shaping it weren't too specific, so I had the idea that I would try and spread it out over a sheetpan and then fold it over in layers.

This didn't really go as planned because the dough was extremely sticky. The whole thing was a bit of a mess actually. Maybe the yeast didn't activate properly because the dough didn't seem to rise as much as it was supposed to at all. My mom suggested that it might be too cold, but even placing it closer to the oven didn't seem to help. I also was short one egg. I don't know how this affected the dough as a whole, but I tried to compensate by adding more liquid. The whole thing was springy and sticky, even though I tried to flour it down.



The recipe calls for cutting the dough into four equal parts so I tried a little something different with the shaping of each part. I couldn't get the flat shape I wanted so at first I did more of a roll and then I was able to flatten a few out a bit more. I flattened the dough as much as I could then buttered and sprinkled on a mix of sugar and cinnamon and then raisins. Two of the loaves got nuts as well.One tiny little ball of dough I turned into a tiny bite sized cake bite.



They did not come out flat at all, but they did end up being delicious. As promised by the recipe, they also made the house smell amazing! The yeasty taste was there to some extent but it was not at all like my grandpa's cake. My mom suggested that there was too much fat in the cake, and that my grandpa likely wouldn't have used butter, so I may need to find a substitute. My cakes also came out so pale, except the bottoms which burnt. I remember his cakes being a dark brown, and having almost a flaky dryness to them. My cake came out almost as a cross between bread and cake.

I'm going to have to do more research into this project and I will keep updating as I experiment. If this cake sounds familiar to anyone then I'd be glad to hear your ideas on how to make it.




Friday, December 10, 2010

"Natural" Pepsi trial, "Healthy" chips, cops and donuts and one sinful cupcake


Being in the land of post-graduation, non- self supporting joblessness, I've been looking for lots of ways to get some spare cash. One way I've found is through research groups who pay you for your opinion. I've actually been part of this group, Fieldwork East, for a long time but I either wasn't available for the dates they had or didn't qualify for some reason. This week I did manage to qualify for a survey about soft drinks. Perfect. Food+ Money= happy.

I've never done one of these things before so I wasn't sure entirely what to expect except $60 at the end of an hour and a half. About 40 people, most of them looking fairly young, were lined up at tables in a mirrored room and given 5 soda samples to try over the course of the hour. The samples all have numbers and not everyone tries the samples at the same time. This particular study was to research Pepsi Natural, a cola drink made from natural ingredients. We were asked to rate the samples on sweetness, carbonation, how natural we thought it tasted, if it met our expectations of a natural beverage, if it was fun to drink ( I still don't really understand that question), how refreshing it was, if it tasted like regular or diet etc. It was an interesting exercise because they definitely all tasted different, but each time I moved on to a new sample it was hard to say exactly how it differed from the last one. They all started to taste the same really. I'm assuming that at least one of the samples was regular or diet Pepsi but I'm not sure. At first I would have one idea of how "natural" it tasted but then after drinking more I wasn't sure any more. The only one which was very different was the last sample I tried, which was obscenely carbonated and much darker in color than all the others. Depending on how we answered we would either be invited to stay for Part two, or sent home with our money. Sadly, I was sent home with my money, but I'm not complaining.

After filling my stomach with carbonation and completing some work I had to do, I found myself some lunch nearby at a sushi place/ deli. It was a pretty neat little place with a lot of natural foods. I wanted a little something to go with my tuna and avocado roll and amongst the interesting selection of chips and Pirate's Booty, I found Popchips. These chips claim to be healthier than normal chips, and they are neither baked nor fried. Some combination of heat and pressure allows these potatoes to 'pop'. I tried the barbeque variety and I was very pleased. They have a slightly similar texture to a rice cake, but much more pleasant. I'd say they are a pretty good compromise for chips. They certainly have more personality than a rice cake or even a baked chip and 1 oz has 4 grams of fat. Maybe I have to taste the plain ones to see if they really are a winner but for now they have my vote. Check them out here : http://www.popchips.com/

All my food healthiness abruptly came to a halt later in the night when I indulged in a ridiculously chocolate cupcakes at Starbucks in Barnes and Nobles. Ok, maybe the healthiness cut out somewhere around the eggnog latte I had after the sushi, but shhh. The cupcake was actually way too rich to finish. This sort of cupcake involves team work. The chocolate blackout cupcake lived up to its name, and indeed it would likely cause a diabetic to blackout. Rich chocolate cupcake plus REALLY rich frosting = a win. I don't think this is made by Starbucks because there was some other company listed in the display case, but I forget what the name was so I'll have to go back and find out! They also had desserts by the Cheesecake Factory, but this wasn't one of them. Either way, I was content to sit with my crazy cupcake and a newly discovered fantastic book, The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm. If there ever was a book written for me, this is it.

One final thought for the day, I realized while driving down the hellish route 4.There was a car behind me which was either a cop or a fireman, I think fire. He was drinking coffee and eating a donut so I thought, perhaps, I'm looking at the wrong career path. I've neglected the one which combines the two topics of this blog, food and driving. Maybe I need to look into public service since cops and donuts go together like, well, like cops and donuts. Seriously, what is it about cops and donuts?

Monday, December 6, 2010

Cupcakes!

Lately I feel like I've written a lot of posts about sweet things, and not a lot of posts about real food, however, I like sweet things, so I'm going to continue for now. Eventually I will get to real food.

I was just looking over a blog which I haven't looked at in quite some time that is all about cupcakes and I must say I'm insanely jealous of all their beautiful creations, particularly this incredible steampunk hat cupcake. Look how Perfect!

Look at their other stuff as well which comes from various locations and shops.... eggnog cupcakes, pumpkin,peppermint, broccoli? I also recently started thinking about making Christmas cupcakes with a little "tree" of icing on top. Like these.

My infatuation with these delightful little treats reminded me that in NYC last week I saw a truck selling cupcakes. I wasn't really in the mood to explore it but I wrote down the name- www.cupcakestop.com. The cupcakes aren't pretty. They look pretty commercial and I suppose they are, but the idea of a truck selling cupcakes still seems pretty fantastic. Maybe some cupcakes are in order.... anyone have a birthday soon? The problem is I'm messy and inaccurate, which is why I could never really be a pastry chef. My food will never look that pretty!