Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Gyros (Guest Post from Fearless Grill)

Recipe Source: Alton Brown – Good Eats: My Big Fat Greek Sandwich, 2005. Available from The Food Network website at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/gyro-meat-with-tzatziki-sauce-recipe/index.html

This past Saturday a fellow foodie asked me whether I knew of a place in our area that does gyros the right way – cutting slices of meat from a rotisserie-cooked slab of seasoned meat – rather than using frozen meat slices. I couldn’t really think of a place, and this gave me inspiration to try making gyros this way at home.

For those who don’t know, a gyro (pronounced yee-ro) is a Greek sandwich, consisting of slices of lamb, fresh tomato and onion, and a yogurt-cucumber sauce called tzatziki, served on pita bread. I’ve made meat for gyros in the past by using slices off a leg of lamb, but I never tried making the flavored giant meatball that is used commercially. I turned to the Internet to find a recipe, and was reminded that Alton Brown had done a show on this topic a few years ago. I decided to try his recipe.

I used the recipe more or less as written, though I increased the spices somewhat, especially the garlic. However, I used the minced garlic from a jar, which has a milder flavor than fresh garlic. I also substituted dried oregano for the dried marjoram, as we didn’t have any marjoram on hand. Even with this increase in the listed spices, we still thought the meat was a bit bland. However, the consistency came out perfect, and it was still really tasty. Next time we try this, we’ll bump up the spices a bit more, and may add some additional herbs or spices to make the flavor of the meat more interesting.

Gyros (makes about 8 sandwiches. Approx. Cost Per Serving Not Available)

For the meat:

1 medium onion, finely chopped or shredded

2 pounds ground lamb

3 tablespoons finely minced garlic

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon dried ground rosemary

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For the sandwiches:

8-12 pita breads

Fresh tomatoes, diced

Yellow onion, sliced

Tzatziki sauce (note: We made our own, from the recipe posted here. You can also buy this premade at some stores).

Equipment Required

• Food processor
• Plastic wrap or aluminum foil
• Smoker or rotisserie on a gas grill

1) Chop the onion in a food processor for 10-15 seconds, and empty onto a clean kitchen towel. Fold up the sides and squeeze out the juice over the sink. Return the onion to the food processor.

2) Add the other ingredients to the food processor and run for approximately one minute, or until it becomes a fine paste. You may need to stop the processor and scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3) On a piece of plastic wrap or aluminum foil, form the meat into a loaf shape. Roll the meat tightly in the wrapping and squeeze to remove air pockets. Twist the ends tightly to ensure that it holds its shape. Store in the refrigerator for at least two hours, or as long as overnight, to allow the mixture to firm up, and for the flavors to blend.

4) When you are ready to cook, prepare your grill. Note that I made this on my Big Green Egg smoker, set up for indirect cooking at 350 degrees. I didn’t add any smoking wood for my 1^st try, though I probably will the next time to get some additional flavor. Mr. Brown’s recipe includes instructions for cooking on a rotisserie, as well as for baking in the oven like a meat loaf. If you want to try one of those methods, refer to his recipe. As I didn’t try them, I can’t comment on how well they would work.

5) Once your smoker is up to temperature, place the meat directly on the grill. Allow to cook until the internal temperature of the meat comes up to about 165 degrees. Remove from the heat, and tent under aluminum foil for 10-15 minutes. Slice into strips and serve on pita bread, along with the tomatoes, onion and Tzatziki sauce.

Technorati Tags: Greek food,casual food,sandwich,gyro,lamb,grilled food,barbequed food,Big Green Egg

Recipe: Fortune Noodle Soup

Recipe Source: Yan, Martin.  Martin Yan's China.  Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2008 p. 98

Before there was Iron Chef, before there was really Emeril, before there was even a Food Network (at least as far as I was aware), there was Yan.  Yan Can Cook had something of a cult following in my high school.  (This should tell you how old I am, if it was pre-Iron Chef and pre-Emeril.)  I remember kids cutting class - on a regular basis, even - to go watch Yan.  I never did.  I lived on the other side of town, and so would have been hard-pressed to get back to school.  Heck, walking to my house (no busses for school skippers!) would have taken an hour at least.  So no Yan for me.  So even though high school was a pretty miserable experience (which I'm pretty sure is intentional), when I saw a Martin Yan cookbook at Costco, a wave of nostalgia for a show I never saw washed over me and it jumped into my cart.  I immediately felt the deprivation of not having had the opportunity to illicitly watch Yan all over again.  I think if I had watched, I probably would have made a lot of very different choices.  Then again, since I didn't really start cooking much until well past undergrad, maybe not.  Still, I guess it's kind of hard not to sit and wonder what might have been... 

Ah well.  On to the recipe.  I made some changes.  I probably made a lot of changes, many of which almost certainly render this dish not very Chinese at all, and I'm okay with that.  The recipe specified "ground meat;" I used ground lamb because I like lamb.  Where the recipe called for sesame oil, I used hot pepper sesame oil.  Where the recipe called for Rich Homemade Broth or canned chicken broth, I threw both out the window and used the last 4 cups of the duck stock I made from the duck with pomegranate sauce I made back in the spring (I needed to make room in the freezer for the new duck stock I made from Wednesday's entry!)  I used balsamic vinegar when given a choice between that and Chinese black vinegar, which was distinctly absent from my kitchen. 

The biggest change I made wasn't even intentional.  I went to the local Asian market looking for the requisite pickled mustard greens.  I found many items in jars that were labeled "pickled mustard greens."  I grabbed the sole jar that did not have "with peanut" attached to it.  I'm allergic to peanuts, and while I'll usually substitute cashews in recipes, it's hard to do that when buying pre-made ingredients.  Well, I got the jar home, examined the ingredient list, and discovered that I had not escaped so easily.  The unopened jar will make its way to a local food pantry (where they will likely be very perplexed).  In the meantime, I had to substitute something.  I racked my brain, then put it in the iron maiden when the rack didn't do the trick.  Eventually it came to me.  I had an open jar of grape leaves in my refrigerator.  They were preserved, if not actually pickled, and while they were not mustard greens they were in fact green.  In they went.  The result, while probably not very Chinese at all, was a very tasty soup that both of us really enjoyed. 

Fortune Noodle Meatball Soup (serves 4; approx. cost per serving not available)

2 oz dried wood ear mushrooms

3 oz dried Chinese noodles

1 lb ground meat

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons hot pepper sesame oil

2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/2 teaspoons white pepper

4 cups duck stock

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

6 or 7 preserved grape leaves, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 scallions, thinly sliced

3 sprigs cilantro, minced

1 tablespoon hot pepper sesame oil

Equipment:

• Large bowl
• Large pot
• Small pot

1. Re-hydrate the mushrooms by soaking them in a bowl of hot water for half an hour.  Drain and discard the water. 
2. In the small pot, prepare the noodles according to the package instructions.  Keep them warm when they are finished.
3. In the large bowl, mix the meat, cornstarch, hot pepper sesame oil, 2 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.  Make walnut-sized meatballs with your hands and arrange them on a plate.
4. Combine the broth and vinegar in the pot and bring to a boil over high heat. 
5. Add the meatballs and return to a boil. 
6. Reduce heat to medium and simmer about 8 minutes. 
7. Add the mushrooms and greens.  Simmer another 2 minutes. 
8. Add the noodles and cook until the noodles are heated through. 
9. Serve. 

Technorati Tags: Martin Yan,recipes,Chinese food,lamb,noodle soup,soup,duck stock

Breaking News: Iron Chef Is On

Everyone, it is 11:30 PM Eastern and you're never going to believe this, but IRON CHEF IS ON RIGHT NOW on the Fine Living Network.  I don't know if they're going to be showing it on a regular basis or if I'm just a very lucky woman right now.  The episode is the guinea fowl battle with the Wedgewood china.  I'm going to find a way of contacting the network and thanking them for showing the show. 

Cashew Butter Pie

Original Recipe Source: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_75315,00.html

 

It was very late one night.  This was during my previous incarnation as an accountant, and things were not going well at work.  My husband was away on business, I was alone and I simply could not sleep.  I turned on the television and began flipping channels.  I landed, as I almost always do, on the Food Network.  The show was Good Eats and as near as I could tell Alton Brown was sitting around and chatting with George Washington Carver.  Now, I hadn't heard anything about Mr. Carver since I was in grade school, but I was pretty sure that the gentleman had passed away something like a hundred years ago.  Further research just now has informed me that he actually only passed away 65 years ago.  (Said research was actually pretty fascinating, and has caused one phase of my dinner to overcook slightly.  I think it will be recoverable, though, so no harm.)  Anyway, whether he passed away 100 years ago or 65 years ago, he died before Alton Brown was born, so why was he on my television?  I checked my evening medications and to the best of my ability to make out all that tiny print, allergy meds are not known to cause hallucinations of deceased inventors. 

 

After a few moments it occurred to me that this was an actor (hey, I said it was late at night!), but I kept watching anyway.  The episode was entirely about peanuts.  I cannot eat peanuts.  I would die, and then who would walk the dog?  Still, one dish in particular called my name.  It was the Peanut Butter Pie.  Of course, I couldn't make a peanut butter pie.  I could, however, substitute something else.  Something tasty.  I was early into my Almond Phase.  I decided to make it with almond butter.  Of course, I couldn't find anything labeled "wafer cookies" in the store, so I substituted something I found at Trader Joe's that was called Cat Cookies or something like that.  They were chocolate, and not much else, and I liked them.  (They are not made from cats.  The cookies are vaguely cat shaped.  Put down the phone, there's no need to call the animal rescue people.)  I made two pies: one for Thanksgiving dessert, which I froze.  The other I brought in to work to test out on my guinea pigs - er, co-workers.  It was a fabulous, wonderful hit.  I loved it.  The pie went over like gangbusters at Thanksgiving, too, and again at Christmas when I brought it to our family Christmas Eve celebration. 

 

Since I've been trying to become a better baker, I decided that I would make this pie again for Fearless Kitchen.  I decided, however, that this time I was going to do it the way it was intended to be done, or at least a lot closer to the intent than I had been doing it.  I found proper chocolate wafer cookies.  I also decided to use cashew butter instead of almond butter.  There are two reasons for this.  One is that when I make savory dishes that call for peanuts, I always substitute cashews.  They're similar enough in texture and response to cooking, at least as far as I'm concerned, that they work.  Why not use cashews for a sweet dish too?  The second reason is that I had one jar of almond butter and one jar of cashew butter, I found another blogger recipe (I'll be baking it later, don't you worry!) that called for peanut butter, and I thought that the almond butter would go better with the sour cherry preserves for that dish.  So cashew butter it was. 

 

The verdict?  Well, first of all the wafer cookies were a disappointment.  I don't know if it's just the brand of wafer cookies I bought, or if Mr. Brown meant something else, but they didn't work well at all.  They dissolved when the melted butter was added to the food processor.  I did the best I could to get the liquid goo to coat the pie plate, but it just wasn't happening.  The cashews didn't work badly.  I still think I prefer the almond butter, but the cashew butter had a good flavor and worked just as well with the chocolate ganache on top.  At the end of the day, I love this pie, and I will make it again (and again, and again.)  However, I'll do it with the more solid cookies, and probably with the almond butter. 

 

Technorati Tags: Good Eats,cashews,chocolate,peanut substitutes

Getting Over My Fear....

I've got a confession to make: I've always been very leery of something.  I've always been very leery about "live food."  This means, among other things not often found on American menus, most shellfish.  It's easy enough to get frozen scallops, and they're generally good if a little pricey.  You can get shelled scallops, too.  There's shrimp (which I think technically count), which I've rarely seen for sale in an alive-and-kicking state.  Then there's clams.  It's possible to get frozen clams, out of the shell and quite deceased, but I haven't been pleased with the quality I've found.  It always has this sandy quality, possibly from shell fragments, that just plain doesn't appeal to me.  It's possible to get canned oysters and canned mussels, but again, there's just something lacking there.  I order clams and mussels and oysters in restaurants, but I just haven't been able to make myself do it here at home until now. 

 

I've been trying to psych myself up to take the plunge and buy my own shellfish for a while, and this past weekend I finally made it happen.  I picked up four oysters at my local Whole Foods: Duxbury oysters, from Cape Cod, and therefore quite local.  They looked kind of like rocks.  I went ahead and bought them and I brought them home.  It took a bit of doing for us to figure out how to get them open, but eventually my loving husband managed.  I served them with a little bit of a sauce from Emeril Lagasse that I found on the Food Network site: you can find the recipe here.  I only changed the type of wine: instead of a red, I used some Spier Wineries 2006 Discover Steen, which I had in my refrigerator and wanted to get out.  We drank the rest with dinner. 

 

So far, it seems like there weren't any ill effects.  They were delicious.  I thought at first that the sauce was too salty when I tasted the oyster liquor, but ultimately it worked out fine although you could cut out the added salt if you wanted to.  It's an experiment that we will definitely repeat! 

 

Technorati Tags: Oysters,Emeril Lagasse

Is this a promise or a threat?

My husband came home early from a business trip yesterday, which was a very pleasant surprise to me although he didn't get in until midnight.  Between weird weather and the scores of canceled flights due to inspection difficulties, I wasn't going to complain about midnight.  Not me!  Anyway, it had been a long week, so we celebrated by eating (mediocre) pizza from a chain and flipping channels.  We eventually landed on an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, which I occasionally enjoy because I get to watch him lose.  Last night's episode involved pie.  There was a scene in which Flay is attempting to learn how to make a good pie crust.  He turns to his instructor and says something along the lines of "You know chefs are pretty bad at baking."  (I'm paraphrasing here.)  Anyway, my loving spouse turned to me and patted me on the arm in a commiserating manner.  "See, honey?" he said to me.  "It's not just you!" 

 

Okay, I know I'm a pretty lousy baker, and I've always cheerfully admitted to being a lousy baker.  In fact, I've been so open about being a lousy baker that such a comment is more of a slap in the face than it would have been if I were ignorant about my pastry-preparation abilities.  I'm sure that there are a number of reasons for my lack of talent in this area.  Some of it is just my personality.  Baking requires patience and I have none.  None whatsoever.  For anything.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Nada.  Some of it may be genetic.  My mother, who is a wonderful human being, a beautiful person and a decent cook no matter how you look at it, found even cake mix from a box challenging.  (Sorry, Mom.  Your pizza is still tops, though.)  I don't remember seeing her mother baking once during the twenty-one years we got to spend together.  Baking requires precision, which is difficult under the best of circumstances, never mind while trying to play the "let's-trip-Mommy" game with a Golden Retriever puppy or keep the cat out of the milk.  I've learned to do a decent cookie on occasion, but pies and cakes and cupcakes and frosting and muffins and quick breads really seem beyond my grasp. 

 

So there's only one response possible to such a comment: to become a better baker.  The only way I can think of to do this is practice.  Some people may see this as just "inspiration," like that girl on the swim team with me who tried to insult me into swimming faster when I was in the eighth grade.  (Not that I carry a grudge or anything, but I hope she's fatter than I am now with a job she hates.)  Others may see this as revenge, since not only is this likely to be messy but there are only two of us, so he's going to have to try all of my miserable attempts at choux paste.  Anyone who knows me will see this as dangerous.  There are, after all, only two of us, and while I'm going to insist that he try each and every misshapen lump of cake-like substance I turn out, I really do not need the additional calories of a thousand sweet "treats" lying around. 

 

This brings me to the problem of what to do with all that stuff.  Some friends recently asked me to watch their cats while they're out of town.  Since I now have a key to their very nearby and convenient home, perhaps I'll just become the Dessert Fairy, leaving pies and cakes on their counters and hoping that they come home before the food takes on a life of its own.  I'll never have to know if they decide it's too foul for words and put it out with the trash.  I could send some to the airport when Spouse goes on business trips, for the TSA agents.  That may be illegal, but I guess you don't know until you try and besides, he'd be the one giving it to them, not me.  I could revisit my Dessert Fairy concept and leave it on my neighbors' doorsteps, hoping that no one has a food allergy.  I could hand it out when I take the dog to the park.  (Anyone with any further suggestions as what to do with the fruits of my labors - please leave a comment and let me know.) 

 

What does this little marital fracas in the Fearless household have to do with you?  Expect to see more recipes for sweets posted here in the coming weeks and months, until I abandon this project in despair.  You can also expect to see more recipes with analysis that says something like this: "I did not like this."  "Do not try this at home."  "Who knew that couveture could explode?"  In the meantime, I mean to practice hard to make myself a better baker.  I'm just not sure if that's a promise or a threat. 

Technorati Tags: Throwdown,Bobby Flay,baking,pastry,sweets,challenge

Recipe: Grilled Scallop-Stuffed Onions

Recipe Source: Morimoto, Masaharu.  Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking.  DK Publishing, London, 2007 p. 118

I knew that I wanted to make something from the Morimoto cookbook, but I wasn't sure what.  I opened the book randomly to this page.  When I noticed that it called for sake, I realized that I might be able to enter it into Sugar Plum's St. Patrick's Day Pub Crawl Event.  Not only that, but it allowed me to surprise my loving husband with one of his favorite foods in the whole wide world: scallops.  Scallops tend to be a little on the pricey side, but when presented in this way they pack a lot of punch into a very little space.  I'm listing it as Japanese, because the name of the book is "The New Art of Japanese Cooking," it involves sake and it's a recipe by Masaharu Morimoto.  Except for the use of sake, for which we would probably substitute white wine, this could easily be an Italian recipe. 

As always, I made a few changes to the original recipe.  These changes were the result of expedience and my own screw-ups.  Screw-ups?  I meant innovations!  I used pancetta in place of prosciutto, because the deli line at the Whole Foods was long and full of pushy people and that would have resulted in prison time.  And I still wouldn't have gotten the prosciutto!  So I substituted pancetta.  I wound up using a disposable aluminum baking pan, since my baking pans of the appropriate size were all out of commission.  This meant that I had to pour the onion jus into a separate pan to reduce it.  Finally, I pan-seared the scallops indoors and then wrapped them in the pancetta.  The following is the recipe as I prepared it, with apologies to Mr. Morimoto.  (It looks like a lot of steps, but really, it's very simple once you step back.)

Grilled Scallop-Stuffed Onion (serves 4, approx. $4.11/serving)

4 large sweet onions

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for searing the scallops

Kosher salt

1/2 cup sake

4 very large, extremely fresh sea scallops

8 thin slices of pancetta

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, quartered

Equipment:

• Aluminum baking pan
• Aluminum foil
• Grill
• Small saucepan
• Medium Saucepan
• Smallish ice cream scoop

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. 
2. Place the onions - skins still on - in the baking pan and rub with the olive oil.
3. Cover the pan tightly with the aluminum foil.
4. Roast approximately 1 hour 45 minutes.  The onions will be tender but still hold their shape.
5. Remove the baking pan from the heat and allow the onions to cool until you can touch them.  Do NOT discard the juices in the bottom of the pan!
6. Season the scallops with kosher salt. 
7. Add a little olive oil to the medium saucepan and warm over very high heat. 
8. Sear the scallops on both sides until the surface just starts to brown, no more than 30 seconds per side. 
9. Remove from heat and allow to cool until touchable.
10. Slice the top third off each onion and reserve. 
11. Using the ice cream scoop, remove enough of the center of each onion to fit one scallop.
12. Wrap each scallop completely in the pancetta.  You will most likely have to use two pieces of pancetta. 
13. Put one scallop into each onion cavity.
14. Add 1/2 tablespoon butter to each onion.
15. Replace the top 1/3 onion on each onion.
16. Grill over medium-high heat for 8 minutes.
17. While grilling, pour the juices from the roasting pan into the small saucepan.  Be sure to scrape out any brown crunchy bits!
18. Heat the juices over high heat and add the sake.
19. Bring to a boil and boil for at least 3 minutes.
20. When the onions are done on the grill, remove the tops.
21. Drizzle with the jus you made from the sake and pan juices.
22. Replace the tops.
23. Serve.

Technorati Tags: recipe,onion,scallop,pancetta,sake,Morimoto,Japanese food,Iron Chef

Restaurant Week Boston!

A couple of years ago, my husband and I were introduced to the concept of Restaurant Week.  This is a time period, not necessarily corresponding to seven consecutive days, in which some of the Boston area's nicer restaurants offer prix fixe lunches and dinners.  Back then, we found out about it because some restaurant-loving friends wanted to go.  So we loaded up the SUV with ourselves and two other couples and made our way to Olives, a restaurant in Charlestown owned by Todd English.  It was someplace we would never have tried otherwise, and we had a pretty darn good experience despite the labyrinthine streets around the restaurant.  The event is run by the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, and in case you're curious Olives is participating again this year. 

I don't know about you, but I see this as an opportunity.  When I dine out, it's usually a casual, spur-of-the-moment kind of affair, as my recent reviews of places like the Border Cafe probably indicate.  Very often I and/or my companions are on a budget (money or time) which limits our choices as well.  A lot of these places are not only outside of my usual comfort zone, they're out of the way for me.  Living south of Boston, getting into the city can be more of a hassle than it's worth, especially for an untried restaurant with a high price tag.  I've decided that this year I'm going to make more of an effort to enjoy Restaurant Week.  I don't know if other cities offer a Restaurant Week of their own, but if yours does it could be well worth looking into.

There are over 150 restaurants participating in this event, but not every restaurant participates fully.  Some participate only for lunch, more participate only for dinner (and probably don't have a lunch service.)  Some participate every day except Sunday.  As part of the event, lunch is $20.08 and dinner is $33.08 per person.  The menu is generally limited as compared to the restaurant's normal menu, but please don't let that turn you off.  After all, the incentive for participating in the event is to attract new customers; they're going to want to make those limited offerings good!  Participating restaurants can be found in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, Dorchester, Downtown, Fenway/Kenmore, Newbury Street, North End, Roslindale, South End, Theater District, Waterfront and West Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston, as well as in Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton and Somerville.  There are options a little farther out as well that may be a little more convenient for some people, depending on where they live. 

For more information, to include names of participating restaurants, go to www.BostonUSA.com/RestaurantWeek. 

Technorati Tags: Boston area restaurants,special restaurant deal,Restaurant Week

Whatever happened to Iron Chef?

Whatever happened to Iron Chef?  Years ago, there was a show on Food Network. It featured Japanese chefs engaged in culinary contests with other chefs, mostly also Japanese. There was an amazingly flamboyant host, the Chairman, whose appetite and costumes seemed to know no bounds. There was the floor reporter, Ohta. There were the announcers, Hattori and Fukui. They usually had a guest announcer by their side generally an actor or other Japanese celebrity. Every week - nay, every night, when Food Network was running it on weeknights - I would tune in and wait with bated breath as they announced the Secret Ingredient.

I knew all of the Iron Chefs and I came to love them. Morimoto filled me with patriotic pride. I looked up to Michiba - albeit at a distance. My heart sang every time I saw Chen's garish yellow uniform. I actually wanted my sister to marry him until I learned he was already married. It took me a little longer to warm up to Sakai, only recently having learned to appreciate French food, but after I saw the episode where he returns to his hometown I came to love him almost as much as Chen. I never saw much of Ishinabe or Nakamura, but what I saw I liked. I actually felt a little bad for Nakamura - it can't be easy to follow in footsteps like Michiba's. I even eventually forgave Kobe for only cooking Northern Italian style and putting milk in all his food, looking forward to the day when he got a riser of his own.

But Iron Chef, while entertaining and occasionally bizarre, wasn't just entertainment. For me, it was educational. I learned so much, about so many different ingredients! I learned about different fish, different vegetables. I learned about regional ingredients and about dashi. The chances of my ever making something direct from the show are nill, but I have worked lessons learned directly from Iron Chef into my everyday food preparation and presentation. Indeed, Iron Chef taught me to push beyond my own mental boundaries where food was concerned. Okay, squid ice cream might never be okay with me, but natto doesn't turn my stomach.

I, like so many other devoted Iron Chef fans, tuned in almost every night until suddenly, with no warning that I ever saw, it was gone. My heart was broken. The time slot usually occupied by Kitchen Stadium now belonged to Alton Brown and Good Eats, and I'll admit that he's become my unwitting food guru. Still, I never find myself in either grocery store or kitchen asking, "What would AB do?" the way I used to with Michiba and Chen.

Food Network has also given us Iron Chef America as a sort of attempt at replacement. I have watched a few episodes, but it really isn't the same. It's not that I have a grudge against most of the American Iron Chefs (possibly excepting Mr. Flay after that New York cutting board incident), but I don't love them. Even the joy of watching Morimoto seems somewhat muted. The drama is gone. The mystery is gone. The pageantry is gone. The silliness - yes, the silliness - is gone. My parents don't groan and shake their heads in confusion if Iron Chef America is on; they just turn it off.

We've tried a few times to find a way of acquiring Iron Chef episodes in English, to no avail. If you know of a (legal) way to get them, please let me know. And Food Network, if you're reading this, please bring the real Iron Chef back, even at two or three in the morning. I'll stay up.

Popcorn Trauma

I was watching my unwitting food guru last night. It was the Popcorn Episode. I know I've seen it before, but somehow I've missed this every time Food Network has re-run the episode. The dish? Popcorn for breakfast. Now, I've been a college student, and I do recall eating plenty of inappropriate things for breakfast - pizza, old chicken wings, wine. And nothing was ever so wonderful, as a child, as waking up in my grandmother's house and sneaking some of the leftover popcorn from the previous night. (This is probably why she always kept a little bit back. She knew me well!) But my guru, he did something with popcorn that I've never seen done and that I never want to see done again. He poured milk over it, added sugar and ate it with a spoon.

Now according to the episode, popcorn used to be considered a breakfast cereal, which is what prompted this little glimpse of culinary Hell. And it isn't particularly Fearless of me to sit here and skeeve at the idea, either. I've eaten quite a few foods that most people would find more repulsive than soggy popcorn. After all, milk is just dairy, and butter is dairy, so it's not inconceivable, right? Adding sugar shouldn't be the end of the world. After all, what else is the caramel in caramel corn? It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I've eaten worse.

I think that what's getting me isn't the timing, or the ingredients, but the texture. The idea of soggy popcorn is repugnant, whether the sogginess be caused by milk, water, or beer. Popcorn is CRUNCHY. It makes a wonderful, satisfying sound when consumed. It does not go "splat" when dropped on the floor for the dog. It does not ooze out of a (shudder) spoon.

Perhaps AB is more Fearless than I. Perhaps I should head into the kitchen, grab a pot, cook myself up some popcorn and dump milk all over it. I wonder how it goes with soy milk? I doubt it would make it that far, though. It's just too good crunchy!