Why Ketchup is evil and 5 things that scare me about the food industrial complex

Ketchup, oh Catsup, how I hate thee, let me count the ways....
- you are the most pervasive condiment of the American palette, and you're the quintessential example of the what's wrong with the American diet
- you bastardize my favorite fruit, the tomato, into a sludge people slather on greasy fast food
- people put you on all manner of food soon to be ruined; really if you put ketchup on eggs, you must be eating really bad eggs to start with
- you make the awful, palatable

Why the rant? Well I've grown increasingly suspicious of what's in our food and have been researching a number of pervasive ingredients. It seems the food industry is getting better in some areas thanks in part to the California food movement of years past which gave way to the increasing availability of organic ingredients. But let us not confuse the small artisanal organic suppliers with the industry heavyweights. Organic and All Natural labeling is just starting to have to mean something under FDA guidelines, and in the forefront there are a plethora of processed foods. Now ketchup may not have been the first or most egregious example of processed food, but it's a shining example of the “Burger and Fries” Americana I am gradually opening my eyes to now. The brilliant documentary Super Size Me showed in gross detail what fast food, soda pop, and the need for instant gratification will get us healthwise. Ketchup is univerally associated with BOTH the burger and the fries, so thus this post asking you to think about what Ketchup really represents.

Five things that scare me about the food industrial complex:

1.Our meat supply – check this out, or this lawsuit against the USDA, and see if you still want to eat that burger; I believe ground meat is the most likely to be contaminated in mass quantities due to cross contamination; after watching these videos, I vowed to only serve my children freshly ground meat (95% we grind ourselves, 5% from very reliable small businesses). Sure I like a good burger, heck I can usually taste if they used sirloin, chuck, round, or “other”. But the “other” scares me enough that from now on I'm applying that rule to myself anything I cook. What's next? How about cloning.

2.Our milk supply – Europe has completely banned the use of Bovine Growth Hormone, yet it is a major factor in the production of milk in the United States. Look here on how it is marketed to farmers. In the documentary The Corporation, allegation were made by two reporters that a story on the use of BGH by Monsanto was quashed by Fox News due to Monsanto's advertising relationship; the reporters claim to have been also eventually fired over being unwilling to change the findings of the story. BGH can cause serious infections in the dairy cattle, and it is believed that these infections, and potentially other hormonal effects, can be present in the milk produced.

3.Corn – Cattle are fed corn to increase the marbling of fat in the meat; it is believed that heavy use of corn in cattle feed can compromise the steers immune system, necessitating additional need for antibiotics. I'm not qualified to discern what effect there may be from ingesting lots of meat that has been treated this way, but there is evidence to suggest principally grass fed beef has a completely different nutritional profile of the fat it contains. Corn oil was recently cited in an FDA report as having health benefits, and in the same citation, it was stated that there was no scientific evidence to support this. It's used to produce high fructose corn syrup which is in an alarming number of foods, and has been linked to type-2 diabetes and may also be carcinogenic.

4.Soy – There is a lot of attention as to the benefits of eating soy, heart health among them. There has also been a report on the scientists who authored a key report for the government on the benefits of soy, saying that a lot of information and warnings they had produced on potentially negative consequences of soy were quashed from their original report. Notably, they believe that the high levels of female plant hormones in soy can be very damaging to men, possibly resulting in a higher incidence of cancer. Soy is in so many things it's mind boggling. On a recent trip to the grocery store, my wife asked me to pickup mayonnaise. After looking at the label of every major manufacture and all the store brand / generics, I was stunned to learn that soybean oil was the the FIRST ingredient in every one of these. Even the Olive Oil Mayonnaise listed soybean oil alongside olive oil as the FIRST ingredient. The only mayonnaise to not have any soybean oil was one claiming no cholesterol content, which instead used canola oil and xanthan gum for binding (both ingredients pass mustard with me). I think we really need to take a closer look at the dangers of soy. The FDA has recently been petitioned to reexamine it's conclusions on heart benefits.

5.Carrageenan, MSG, Palmitate, and other mystery ingredients – Carrageenan is a seaweed that can be used to emulisfy and thicken. In its basic form it would seem fine for consumption. However, when exposed to high heat, it becomes carcinogenic. Many processed foods go through high heat cooking processes, and many also go through pasteurization. Pasteurization typically involves the use of heat, and ultra pasteurization uses very high heat. Makes me think that at least some of the carageenan out there is not so good to eat, and it is increasingly used in processed foods, including those claiming to be organic and all natural. MSG, despite causing allergic reaction-like symptoms, is still prevalent in many foods without a warning and FDA labeling is again in question. Palmitate is actually vitamin A, though it has been linked to toxicity and osteoporosis, and is a danger to the fetus during pregnancy. When you go buy vitamins, look on the back and see if the vitamin A is coming from palmitate or from beta carotene. I was shocked how hard it was to find a children's vitamin that did not contain palmitate. After searching the shelves of two different conventional grocers, and three different “organic” grocers, three hours later I was able to identify only two brands of children's vitamins that were free of palmitate.

I guess the theme of this post is to wake people up. Don't trust the big public companies stocking the shelves at the grocery store to do the right thing, seldom will the right thing be the cheapest, most profitable, or easiest thing to sell. I'm not anti corporation at all, but I do think the bottom-line thinking can lead to sacrifices in quality, shortcuts, and some criminal greed that's obfuscated by the corporate entity and possibly political agendas in government. If nobody dies tomorrow, it's probably ok must be the thinking. There are some of the big guys who are in it for the long-haul, and make tough decisions to change. But sometimes it takes science time to catch up with the accidents and willful disregard present in the food industry. So drive past the drive-thru tonight, go buy some fresh ingredients, and take 30 minutes to cook damn it.

Grilled Pork Chops with Sage (Classic)

So a personal classic of mine that's extremely easy and rich in flavor is pork chops rubbed with olive oil and sage, grilled over high heat. That's it, simple to the max.

Tortilla Soup, Sans Tortilla

Here's a quick healthy version.

4 cups chicken stock (not broth)
2 cans roasted muir glen tomatoes
1 cup chopped cilantro
Dash of mexican oregano
5 limes
4 anaheim chiles
1 white onion
2 cloves garlic
1 avocado
Salt and Black Pepper to taste


Dice the onion and chiles, sweat for 10 minutes with a little olive oil. Add the stock and tomatoes and simmer for 20 minutes. Add half the cilantro, oregano, and garlic (minced) and simmer another 15 minutes.



Add the juice of 4 limes and garnish with the remaining cilantro and limes (quartered). For a less healthy option, add some monterery jack or sour cream and shredded fried tortilla, but in the spring / summer I leave this stuff out.

Spicy Ribeyes w/ Chimayo / Ancho / Lime marinade, Cotija Stuffed Poblano Peppers, Grilled potatoes with refired black beans, & Fresh Banana Chips

So waited to the last minute to shop and went for some flavors from south of the border on my feet at Sunflower this afternoon. The grill is getting a workout, and I'm now convinced that our 4 year old used Weber (new to us) is way better than any other grill I've used, and that the Thermos charcoal grill is the worst grill I've owned. The Weber is made to last, while the Thermos was something I got on clearance at Target and hated the thing from the start as it took 3 hours to put together the 150 parts that came with it. The Thermos has been falling apart from the get-go. Thermos I believe is made by Charbroil, so I guess I'll also avoid that brand of grill in the future. My wife asked me if we should give it away to someone now that we have a grill we really like, and I replied “no way, I don't want anybody to hate us”. So if you're looking for a new grill, I'd recommend Weber all the way; the grates are fantastic, it's solid, and if you have the opportunity, a direct gas line is sooo convenient. It gets up to 550F without a problem, and high heat is key for even cooking of great steaks. Ruth's Chris, my standby favorite steakhouse, uses ovens that get up to 800F. Until I can afford an infrared broiler in a Viking oven that gets up to 1000F, I'll be very content with my Weber.

For the steak, I marinated the steak in lime juice, chimayo red chili powder, ancho powder, and sea salt for an hour. At the same time I heated a couple cups of canola oil to 325F in a porcelian lined dutch oven and fried some banana slices that had been cut on a bias. After flipping a couple times and frying to golden brown (about 6 minutes total time), the banana chips got a sprinkling of salt and dried on a mesh rack inside a cookie sheet. The stuffing for the poblanos consisted of cotija cheese, grilled red peppers, grilled texas sweet onions, mexican oregano, and minced garlic. This was my first time working with cotija, it had the texture of feta but a much rounder flavor; I find that most feta, save the premium goat's milk varieties, is a single note overly salty cheese. The cotija was salty like feta, but the flavor just worked for me; it felt more like fresh ricotta in the mouth.



In prepping the pablanos, I made a lengthwise partial slit in one side and destemmed / seeded them. The red pepper and onions were grilled for about 30 minutes, and then I skinned the pepper and trimed off most of the scorched parts from the onions. Both were diced and mixed with a cup of the cotija, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a little of the oregano. The pablanos were then stuffed and grilled for 20 minutes. The steak was served with some refried black beans, half a grilled whole yukon gold potato, a little more cotija and sour cream. The idea with the potato was to break it up with the beans and eat it grilled crispy skin and all. The potato and bean side was a neutral counterpoint to the spicy meat, the bananas were still sweet but had a crispy and savory exterior. The pepper turned out pretty well, the flavors were good though I think we needed a little acid, maybe I'll add a little grilled pineapple next time. My wife, the feta lover, didn't like the cheese as much saying that feta is creamier to her. I'm not a big feta fan, and she is, so that might tell you something about your preference for cotija.

 

Coconut Lime Vichyssoise

Summer is almost here in Denver, and a weekend in the 80s had us craving something cool. Most years we have a scant chance to enjoy spring between winter and summer as the snow usually yields to sunshine and dry weather without notice. This year's weather brought a lot more rain than we're used to here. While that's a total blessing, it felt more like Ohio than Colorado for a bit. But now everything is so green and I'm mowing the lawn, so that tells me summer is almost upon us.

Chilled soup is something seasonal that came to mind. For this experiment, I tried to slightly reimagine vichyssoise with the flavors of coconut and lime. I also thought about trying to reduce the starch and fat content while achieving the same texture and feel in the mouth. Vichyssoise is a classic French chilled soup with potatoes, leeks, cream, and chives. It's an inspiring dish, so inspiring that it's the first real food memory Anthony Bourdain had as a kid (he tells the story in his great book Kitchen Confidential). So going into this I was very uncertain about the outcome and thinking I'd be writing about a disaster today. Instead, I'll be telling you about my surprising success with using natural fruit pectin as a thickener, and how I integrated a savory coconut flavor component without using coconut milk. Bottom line, this soup has no cream and very few carbs. Here is the ingredients list:

4 green bell peppers
3 jalepenos
2-3 cups dried shredded unsweetened coconut
2 quarts chicken broth
4 limes
2 yukon gold potatoes
2 giant leeks (or 4 medium)
4 cloves garlic

By applying a little molecular gastronomy technique from a post I read on using the pectin in the skin of a tomato as a thickener, I was hoping to get the same effect that the cream and potato starch usually create in vichyssoise. This is where the green peppers come in; I chose regular bell peppers because they have a fairly neutral flavor when cooked for long periods of time. So my plan was to slowly simmer the soup to mellow the green pepper flavor and extract all of the pectin. I think the same thickening effect could be achieved by just very aggressively blending the peppers, but this approach alone would have changed the flavor profile of the soup.

I started out with a medium chop on the leeks and a small dice (1/4”) on the bell peppers. I added the skin of 3 jalepenos, finely diced, for a little background flavor with the lime and coconut. It should be noted that with both the bell peppers and jalapenos that the white veins on the inside of the skins were carefully removed. I sweated the mixture with a little olive oil for about 15 minutes, then added the chicken broth. I brought this to almost a boil and added the potatoes, coarsely diced, and then reduced to a bare simmer. At this point I added the garlic, finely minced, and placed 1 ½ cups of the coconut into a spice ball and submersed the ball. I let this simmer covered for 1 hour, added a little salt at this point, removed the spice ball and refilled it with coconut. The point of this was to get the essence of coconut to be pulled slowly from the dried coconut. The soup simmered covered for another hour, then I removed the ball, shut off the heat, and added the juice of 4 freshly squeezed limes. I let it cool for about 30 minutes and then blended briefly. The soup was then chilled for 1 hour with 2 plastic freezer packs submerged in it to assist with the cooling process.



While I think I can improve upon the flavor slightly, this was a very successful experiment as the texture was nearly identical to vichyssoise. The lime and coconut was yummy, and the coconut made the whole house smell great. My wife smelled it from the street as she came home from running errands. I think that point was key, the coconut flavor was moderate, but the smell was fabulous. I think next time I might use coconut water, something you can find in some Asian markets, and reduce it incorporating it at the end with the lime juice for a little more flavor, but I'd do this in addition to the steeping of the dry coconut. The leek flavor from the vichyssoise is an ensemble player here, and it melded well with the lime and coconut. I'm a believer in the power of fruit pectin after this, and humbly submit that this might be a fun and viable variation on the classic vichyssoise.

 

Sirloin roasts in puff pastry w/ duxelles, goat cheese and jalepeno; onion confit, parsnips poached in olive oil, & roast fennel w/ tangelo supremes

For Mothers Day my wife asked for something spicy with clean flavors that wasn't too rich. So started out with a whole mess of fresh ingredients.



I found some organic center cut sirloin steaks (more like little roasts), and decided to go earthy with a spicy note. Since sirloin tends to be a very beefy but somewhat dry cut of meat, I thought goat cheese might give the dish a little fat without being rich, along with cooking in the style of beef wellington, en croute. In the pictures you'll have to forgive my relative inexperience with puffed pastry here, obviously I'm not a baker.

The theme of this post is on a few simple classic techniques and flavor combinations. In preparing duxelles, texture is achieved through thoughtful knife work and fairly precise cooking. The goal is to achieve an evenly flavored and cooked mix of mushrooms, shallots, and garlic that will accent the beef with a soft consistency without being mushy. The mis en place here should result in finely chopped mushrooms, minced shallots, and finely mined garlic. I use a couple knives for preparing each ingredient. For the mushrooms, I use a 6” utility knife (shun) to thinly slice the mushrooms on the first pass, then a chef's knife to finely chop stacked slices on the second pass.

For the shallots, I use a paring knife to peel the skin, and the utility knife to very thinly slice and mince.

For the garlic I use the chefs knife for fracturing the outer skin, peel by hand and destem, the utility knife for creating paper thin slices, and the chef's knife to repeatedly pulverize on subsequent passes.

I've mentioned it before, but my utility knife I find invaluable for jobs like this. It's razor sharp and extremely precise, possibly due to the fact that it's a japanese style knife and the handle is form fitting to my right hand. With the mise en place complete, mixed the ingredients and place in a saute pan with a little butter and a dash of salt.

Start over low heat until the butter is melted, then raise to medium heat and begin stirring. A copper pan helps with precise temperature control here as we're trying to cook the mixture just to the point that it starts to stick (about 5 minutes). I'd avoid doing duxelles over high heat as you can burn the shallots or overcook your mushrooms quite easily in this manner. Once the water is mostly sweated out of the shallots you will cook for about another 30 seconds before it starts to stick.

Remove from heat and let cool.

To prepare the fennel, remove the stems and reserve. Chop 1/4” off of the root end to make a flat surface for the fennel to sit upright in a glass baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and salt the top of the bulb. Roast at 400F for 30-40 minutes. Roasting will really bring out the natural sweetness of the fennel and soften the anise quality a little. The dressing for the fennel salad is a simple vinaigrette of key lime juice, honey, and olive oil. Squeeze six key limes through a mesh strainer to catch any pulp and seeds. Mix the juice with 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons honey, and whisk in 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (Italian style olive oil is best here as we are working on a classic Italian flavor combination with the fennel and citrus). When the fennel is done, chop into a medium dice and coat with the vinaigrette, then serve with supremes of tangelo. Cutting supremes is another classic technique, wherein you use a sharp paring knife to delicately remove the flesh of a citrus fruit without any of the skin or seeds. To prepare a supreme, cut off the top and sides of the fruit to remove the outer skin without losing much of the meat of the fruit. Then, for each supreme you will make cut almost parallel to the skin of each wedge, such that you get little triangles, but converge your two cuts to avoid the seeded center of the fruit. The tangelo, fennel, and vinaigrette flavors were magically harmonious, a slight variation on the classic Italian combination of fennel and orange.

The last classic technique for this dish involved preparing a confit of onion. I used just one massive Texas Sweet onion for enough confit to feed 4-6 adults. Peel and halve the onion, removing the head and root ends, then slice thinly. Sweat the slices in a small amount of butter and olive oil for 15 minutes uncovered over medium heat. You don't want the onions to brown, will change the final product detrimentally. Once you've almost finished sweating the onions, add a little salt, cover and reduce the heat to low. Keep an eye on it as again you don't want to scorch the onions, just slightly caramelize them. Uncover, raise the heat to medium and add a cup of very good quality orange juice (fresh squeezed or tropicana pure premium are best). While stirring, reduce the orange juice, and allow the onions to suck up the juice's flavor. Once mostly reduced, add a tablespoon of non-artisinal (cheap) balsamic vinegar; go for decent quality, but definitely not that bottle you brought back from Modena.

Stir and reduce until the liquid is more of a coating on the onions. Remove from heat and serve warm.

The parsnips poached in olive oil was a little experiment. Slice rounds of no more than 1/16” thickness from peeled parsnips.

Lay these out in an oven proof dish, an cover in olive oil. Add a few sprigs of the fennel pollen from the reserved fennel stems, and a teaspoon of green peppercorns.

Poach in the oven for 20-30 minutes at 275F-300F. Gently strain with a slotted spoon, and serve with a few granules of grey sea salt. The parsnip should almost melt in your mouth, so when eating, hold the parsnips and the little granules of fluer de sel in your mouth for a moment before chewing, let them roll over your tongue. The flavor will go from muted sweetness with hint of liquorice and austerity from the peppercorns, to increased sweetness, and then a mineral note finish.

To prepare the sirloin roasts, sear the outside (all sides) in a little olive oil over medium heat, but don't cook through.

Remove from heat and slightly salt the tops. Unfold a sheet of puffed pastry and place a few spoonfuls of the duxelles in the middle. Place the roast on the duxelles, top with a thin slice of goat cheese, and 5-6 thin (1/16”) jalepeno slices. Pull over 2 opposite corners and then pull up the other corners and pinch the seams together to form a little purse. Bake on a sheet pan at 400F for 15-20 minutes, until the edges begin to brown.



The star of the evening was the fennel in my wife's opinion. I found the onion confit to be wonderful, while both of us really enjoyed the duxelles. The parsnip experiment was pretty good and interesting, though next time I'd probably cook them more slowly at a lower heat, and infuse more flavor from some other aromatics.

 

Brannigan's Irish House Restaurant and Pub in Castle Rock

Had lunch with the family and friends this week at Brannigan's in Castle Rock. The quintessential test for me is what can they do with potatoes, so I had the half sandwich and potato leek soup special. Great soup, probably the best I've had in Colorado, not to be missed. My soup was accompanied by a nice hot ham & cheese 1/2 sandwich. The staff we're great and happy to deal with the heard of kids. The inside is remarkable, everything decorating the walls comes from Ireland and the upstairs bar is just cool as it sits way up a long staircase and looks down on the restaurant below. The bar was also brought in from Ireland, as I suspect the chandelier as well. Check it out if you're out in Castle Rock, I'll definitely be back to have me a pint.

Round 3 at Jing Restaurant in Denver

Great food this trip, the lamb was excellent, and the peking duck is now officially my fav ... crispy skin was perfect, if you haven't had it or generally think you dislike duck or even Chinese food, you must try this before you make up your mind. The syrah from Napa on the purple reserve wine list was great, probably a 91-92 pt wine. If you haven't been there, try it for the hipster bar or try it for the food, but please support good restaurants in the south suburbs so more will follow, and Go Get Some Jing!

Simple Food is often Great Food

I've been chastised by my wife in the past for taking on too much and making things too complex. Today I was similarly teased on this topic by my good friend (and hopefully soon to be gastronomic guesswork co-contributor). "Know thyself" they say, and I guess I know I like to learn and be challenged, and in some way I'm sure this blog is an expression of those desires in the realm of cooking, eating, and occasionally inventing good food. With some of the posts I find myself wanting to just share a technique that I've picked up that might seem very mundane to a culinary student or food professional, but I just think it's cool when you get it right, or when you get it wrong but learn something in the process. Other posts have covered everyday sort of family meals which is part of me being a husband and father that's trying to make good food for his family, and hopefully raise kids on something a little more exotic than Amy's Mac & Cheese. Don't get me wrong, the Amy's boxes are good in a pinch, but I generally distrust anything processed with labels that require a chemistry degree to fully understand and fresh food is the standard at our house; plus, I'm hoping to give my kids a gift of a somewhat experienced palette. I don't want food snob kids, but I want them to enjoy celebrating meals with family and friends, to think growing a garden is cool, to have enough of an opinion about good food to avoid drive-thrus, and to appreciate the skill that goes into making cheese, for example.

Still other posts dive into pure experimentation with flavors, techniques, and food science. It's kind of a weird mix when it comes down to it, and some recipes I've attempted are probably a little too complex for the average home chef. But I cook simply too, and admire chefs than can make something seemingly simple that beguiles the wealth of knowledge and experience that went into the composition of the dish (like that meal Flying Fish). I really appreciate when two or three simple ingredients can magically meld (like sunchokes and parmesan reggiano), or when you take one great element and apply good technique to get the most out of it (like a filet that you've hand trimmed, wrapped in bacon, grilled it at a scorching 500+ degrees for a few minutes, then finished it by gently rolling it until a perfectly even medium doneness is achieved from top to bottom). On this last point, we had a simple meal of filet mignon and onion rings this weekend. While this might sound fancy, it was really cheap as Sunflower Market had tenderloin roasts on sale for $9.99 a pound (Whole Foods sells theirs for $27.99 a pound). I bought a roast for $14, 5 slices of bulk smoked bacon for $2, and a bag of organic onion rings for $3. The beauty of this meal was the technique with the filet. No seasoning apart from a sprinkle of salt; no sauces, no clever accoutrements, just steaks and onion rings.

What was still fun and blog worthy about this experience though was trimming the roast into filets and the grilling technique. I'm still figuring out how to use my filet / boning knife, but I know at this point that it's the best tool for a job like this. When trimming a tenderloin roast, you need to get rid of silverskin. With boing knife in hand I started by making a slit under the silverskin in the middle of the roast and gently used the dull end of the knife to gently pull up and back to start pulling it off. This works to a point, but the danger is tearing the filet and losing some of that precious meat for your filets. So I invert the filet with knife in place on a silicon cutting board and used the flexibility in the knife to slightly curve the cutting edge around the contour of the roast but under the silverskin. With a little patience, this really reduced lost meat and effectively rid me of the silverskin. Next I trimmed the edges of loose fat and connective tissue, and finally cut the filets. The width you are shooting for is about the length of your fist from knuckle to knuckle (this works great if you're 5'9" like me, might want to shoot for 2.5"-3" thickness otherwise), while maintaining a 3"+ diameter. You'll probably get 3 whole filets like this from a head roast, and then be left with a couple longer thinner pieces. These you will want to butterfly, which just mean you're going to create a filet that looks like the others by cutting almost through the middle of one of these long pieces and then folding it over away from the cut. Now just wrap it in bacon and secure with a toothpick. Why? Well filets are actually very lean despite their tenderness (the tenderness comes from the very limited use this muscle gets). The bacon will act as a buffer to hold in juices on the sides and indirect some of the heat to control cooking. Filets are definitely well served by dry high heat, so I cranked up the new (gently used) gas converted grill to high and got it up to 500F. The filets went on for 4 minutes a side, and then I opened the top and rolled each filet on its sides (bacon in contact with the grill), to achieve even cooking throughout the thick filets. Throughout the process I repeatedly tap under my bottom lip to remind myself of the medium doness texture, and then test each filet. As soon as one is right, it comes off the grill. I've found that subtle variations in the dimensions in a steak can create some surprises with doneness, so I never trust that just because one steak is medium that the others are as well; test every steak with your fingers, there's no substitute for this technique as touch is the best indicator across any thickness of steak. Also, don't try to completely crisp the bacon, it's just part of the cooking technique, if you get a cracklin edge here and there consider yourself lucky to have a little nuncheon, but if you go for more you'll demolish your steak in the process. For the onion rings, read the package and cook accordingly.

Whoa, a lot of typing for a piece of meat and some onion rings. So hopefully you weren't bored with the simplicity, but I can attest that in this and a plethora of other instances, simple is great.

 

Tres Chic Hockey Food

I've been a little lax in posting lately, but going to catch up in the next week or so ... here's the eats that I made for some friends who came over to watch my Red Wings mutilate their poor Avalanche.

Guac and Blue Chips
Good guac is easy, great guac is more elusive. Everyone has their own style, but I think the main trick to mine is using enough lime juice to slightly cook the avocado, a little beer for creaminess (counter-intuitive I know), a little smoky chipotle tabasco for flavor, and most importantly salt. Many guacs I've had don't have any salt. Now while I love a fresh avocado on it's own, it's just not guac to me anymore if their isn't a little salt to enhance the flavor; in no way am I saying guac should be salty, but you can tell the avocado tastes more avocado-ey when there's a little salt in there. Another trick I've found with guac is making it 30-60 minutes before your guests arrive to let the lime juice do it's magic. Here again, you want enough lime juice and apply it to the avocado as soon as you've cut the buggers as this keeps 'em green. Lastly, I've found that even people who don't like garlic actually do like a little garlic in their guac. My guac base involves fresh minced white onions, garlic, lime juice, and a dash of kosher salt. Getting proficient with cutting avocados also helps guarantee good results, but if you're not too handy with a chef's knife and an avocado, just drizzle in a little lime juice periodically. As to the beer, well I think that came up when some friends and I were "celebrating" something and made guac, and found that a little pilsner or mexican beer really made the texture creamy. For the mixing, in the tradition of the Alton Brown multitasker I just use a potato masher.

Mini Steak Sandwiches Big on Flavor
So the goal here was to make the beef a little exotic but very beefy with a marinade using a 3 pronged chain of complementary flavors: Coffee, and Cocoa, which on their own don't overlap in their flavor volatiles, but have a common friend in garlic. For the steak, I used hangar steaks and marinated these in 1/3 cup fine ground mexican fair trade coffee, 1/4 cup non-alkalized cocoa, and 6 cloves of garlic minced, along with a 1/4 cup water to make this a wet rub. After 90 minutes marinating at room temperature, I gently brushed and slightly washed off the rub, into a hot pan for 8 minutes to a rare doneness. For the bun I used little challah rolls and covered each side of the bun with different spreads, along with a little red leaf lettuce. On one side I used a thin layering of sweet cream butter mixed with a 1/10 proportion of organic soy sauce. On the other, I used a mixture of Crème fraîche, wasabi (the cheap kind), and freshly squeezed key limes. The steak was really good on it's own, but was fabulous hockey eats with the spreads. These were really small, so I had bites with the spread on their own as well, really there are three good ways to go here.



 

Reservation to El Bulli Available Now

So earlier this week I stumbled upon an auction on ebay where you can get a reservation for two to El Bulli which is reputedly the best restaurant in the world 3 years running, and home to arguably the most innovative chef on the planet, Ferran Adria. There is still time for you to bid, the auction is for a New Orleans based charity. Here is the ebay auction link. I put a bid in just in the hopes of then improving my future posture for potentially getting a reservation next year, although swinging the trip to Barcelona Spain on short notice would have been a stretch if I won the auction. At last look I was outbid and the reservation could be had for ~$230, an absolute steal if you are going to be in the vicinity of Spain as reservations are almost as hotly contested as super bowl tickets... generally, you have a 1 in 400 chance of getting a reservation in a given year, really. Happy bidding!