Recipe forensics… revisited

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers

A while back, we talked about recipe forensics …. the notion of figuring out the ingredients of a dish by getting inside the head of the person who makes it. Let’s say that person is an ethnic or home cook who has no professional training but just does what tastes right. What ingredients would they have available? What is likely to taste good to them? What methods might have been handed down from previous generations, or the guy who sold them the barbecue shack?

Recipe forensics can help you decode complex tastes, break them down into their individual parts, and start recreating them in your own kitchen. Recipe forensics can also serve as a bullshit alarm when an existing recipe has ingredients that may have been added with ulterior motives. For example, any time I see a recipe that calls for a specific brand of product I will look for cheaper generic options pretty much as a knee jerk contrarian reaction. (A few recipes get a free pass, like the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the Hershey’s package.)

But what really pisses me offgets my goat is recipes with ingredients that are put in there simply to impress or to appear “authentic”. The Saveur Korean fried chicken recipe I started with the other day in making my rendition is a perfect example, which is why recipe forensics is on my mind right now. First of all, it called for rice vinegar when white vinegar is a much better and cheaper alternative. Rice vinegar may be what they would use in Korea where it’s ubiquitous, but in the U.S. it is far more expensive and any flavor distinctions would be lost in this very robust, unsubtle dish. Second, it called for honey when all we need is sweetness… this is when we reach for the bag of Clear Value sugar from Wal-Mart.

I visualize the Korean ladies in the back of the First Korean Market on Geary Blvd, and I just can’t see them struggling with big jars of gloppy honey when they’re trying to get the daily trays out to their eager customers. Nor can I see them driving up their food cost with more expensive ingredients than they need. This one was an easy call, and the results were better (yes, I did try their original recipe, then modified it to my preference). Recipe forensics at work.

 

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House brand taste test… Ketchup!

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Ketchup Comparison Heinz vs PC

Which ketchup will reign supreme?

I have a soft spot for store or “house” brands. I’m convinced that they are not made in actual houses, but in the same factories used to produce the national brands*. The difference comes when it’s time to slap on the label and by choosing house labels I can save a buck or two and apply it to buying products whose brands do make a difference… Heinz Ketchup, for example.

Which brings me to today’s taste test. We were out of ketchup and I was sorely tempted by a sale at the local Price Chopper with their house brand at exactly half the price of Heinz. It even looked to be in the same upside-down bottle. Could it be the same stuff? Even if not, for half price how bad can it be?

As a marketer I knew I had to have a control, so I bought a bottle of Price Chopper and a bottle of Heinz and compared them side by side. The bottles on closer inspection aren’t identical after all… some slight differences in the waistline as you can see in the photo. But now for the taste. My 9 year old assistant (the true ketchup aficionado) and I went back and forth several times and it appeared to be a dead heat… the two brands identical in taste, color and texture.

But then when we resorted to a larger size taste, one brand clearly pulled ahead. It had a pleasant peppery note that the other lacked. The brown paper labels were peeled back to reveal the brands and it was…. Price Chopper, the winnah!

* Maybe it’s sometimes as simple as that, but usually not. The same assembly lines may be used, but with variances as specified by the customer. For house brands, one of the variations is typically quality control. I once toured a giant vitamin factory and learned that while house and national brands are made side by side, the brands insist on more frequent testing and fewer incidents of defects like broken pills.

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Recipe: Korean Fried Chicken

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Korean Fried Chicken

Korean Fried Chicken!

Sweet, sour, spicy, greasy: so good and so so good for you (not). This was my contribution to the neighborhood Super Bowl party. Makes 6-8 appetizer portions using one of the 2.5 pound Tyson bags I found at my supermarket; double the recipe if you expect hungry guests.

Ingredients:
2 ½ lbs chicken wings
7-8 cloves garlic, peeled (about ¼ c total)
¼ c fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
¼ c soy sauce (low-sodium if using brine, otherwise regular)
¼ c Gochujang (Korean chile paste)
¼ c white vinegar
3 T sugar
1 ½ T Asian sesame oil (NOT sesame oil from a health food store)
For batter:
1 ½ c flour
2 T cornstarch
1 ½ c water
Canola, peanut or vegetable oil for deep-frying.
Optional brine:
Water to cover chicken mixed with ½ c Kosher salt and 2 T sugar per gallon

Method: If brining chicken, dump the pieces from the package right into the brine and let them brine for 3 hours to overnight. Drain and pat dry. (I don’t see any reason not to brine chicken because it makes it more juicy and you’re going to wash it anyway, right?)

Heat oil in deep fat fryer to 350 degrees. Make a batter by whisking cornstarch with a little water till dissolved, then adding the rest of the water, then whisking in flour till all lumps are gone.

Dip a few chicken pieces at a time in batter to coat thoroughly, let the excess drip off, transfer them one at a time to the hot oil and make sure they are not sticking or touching each other. METHOD ONE: fry 7 minutes or until chicken pieces are just beginning to color; remove and drain. After all pieces have had their initial fry, return to the 350 degree oil and fry again 8 minutes until pieces are a deep golden brown, drain. METHOD TWO: deep fry chicken pieces

Twice Fried Chicken NYC style

Twice Fried Chicken NYC style (before adding the sauce)

one time only, for 10 minutes or until a deep golden brown, drain.

Meanwhile, pulverize the garlic and ginger in a mini-chop. Add other ingredients and blend thoroughly. Pour over cooked, thoroughly drained chicken and allow to soak in to your preference before serving, 10-30 minutes or longer.

NOTE: This is modified from a widely distributed recipe that appeared in Saveur magazine among other places and wasn’t sweet-and-sour enough for my taste. Method One will produce a very crispy chicken with the sauce as a coating, apparently as presented in a number of NYC chicken places. Method Two is what I am more familiar with from Korean school kids’ events in San Francisco where the chicken is served at room temperature and the sauce has been allowed to soak into the coating.

 

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Saratoga Chowderfest 2012

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Serving up Buffalo Wing Chowder at Dango's

Serving up Buffalo Wing Chowder at Dango’s

Possibly because of the nice weather, Saratoga Chowderfest was slammed this year. (Event date was February 4, 2012.) There was a mile-long backup on the highway coming into town, no legal parking spaces anywhere near downtown (creating a ticket-writing field day for the local constabulary), and block-long lines for the $1 sample cups. Many venues sold out early, and they ran out of the t-shirts which were the reward for completing a ballot by sampling five cups and voting for your favorite.

Crowds at Saratoga Chowderfest 2012

Crowds at Saratoga Chowderfest 2012

Nonetheless, I managed to finish a good complement of tasting. I like this event because anybody can come up with a chowder recipe and customize it to fit the theme of their establishment. It’s also smart PR because chowder tasting patrons may be more likely to come back for a full meal.

Parting Glass, an Irish bar, had a chunk of lobster candied in Jamison’s and a crouton made with Bailey’s atop their chowder. Dango, a sports bar, had a “Buffalo” theme with red pepper in their chowder and a buffalo wing “spoon”. (My vote for best among those I tried.) Plum Dandy, a gelato place, had dessert chowder consisting of cake batter yogurt and mochi clams. Hattie’s, a southern fried chicken place, was distributing mardi gras beads along with its bourbon chicken chowder. And on.

Buffalo Chicken Chowder

Buffalo Chicken Chowder

It’s easy to produce a crowd favorite (though a bit expensive) by using a high pecentage of cream. The cream also serves to coat the stomach lining and provide endurance to many adventurers who chose to have a beer of glass or wine along with each taste. (With waits of 15 minutes and sometimes much longer, that’s a good amount of time to have a beer.)

Plum Dandy Dessert Chowder

Plum Dandy Dessert Chowder

I’ve been on a Thai food kick recently but was not tempted by any of the 3 Thai-ish restaurants in town because all seem to be serving sample sizes of their standard soups. Too bad, a cup of Thai mussel chowder made with coconut milk would have really hit the spot.

 

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Recipe: Nam Pla Prik Manao Kratiem (Thai Crack Sauce)

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Nam Pla Manao kratiem (thai sauce)

I made this Thai Crack Sauce with all green chiles; green and red combo would have looked more interesting.

This recipe makes the incredibly addictive Thai sauce that is in many restaurants but kept away from farangs (westerners). Typically it is on the waiters’ stand or in the kitchen and you have to ask for it. This is a starter recipe that needs to be adjusted to your personal taste. Makes 3/4 cup Thai Crack Sauce.

Ingredients:
1/4 c fresh chiles (jalapeno or serrano; if you should be so lucky as to have Thai birds eye chiles use them, but but reduce the quantity or they will kill you)
6 T lime juice
2 T fish sauce
1/4 c garlic cloves
pinch sugar (optional)

Method: Throw everything into a mini-food processsor and pulverize it, or chop the solid ingredients fine then mash with a mortar and pestle. Taste and adjust ingredients to your taste. I usually skip the sugar but some say it concentrates the flavors. Traditionally served with seafood dishes but I find it tastes great on almost any Thai food or actually on most anything savory. Sauce is at its flavor peak after sitting an hour or so and should not be kept more than a day; after that the lime juice pickles everything and it becomes strange.

Note: I have not been able to find an “official” recipe for this one the web and have self-titled it with the thai words for fish sauce (nam pla), chile (prik), lime juice (manao) and garlic (kratiem).

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Turkey Joints from Nora’s of Rome, NY

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
TurkeyJoints

Turkey Joints showing their “marrow”

I have a soft spot for unusual foods that are only available in a single, out-of-the-way location, and Nora’s Turkey Joints sure fit the bill. I heard about them from colleagues on the upstate boards of Yelp when somebody wanted recommendations for “uniquely New York” items to take to a themed New Year’s dinner.

Turkey Joints! Roger K suggested and immediately I was on their website to find out more. Here is a candy that looks like … a turkey joint. Some ambiguous part of the bird, some out-of-the-way element of the carcass, except they are actually a soft and sweet center inside a hard candy stick. I knew I had to have a turkey joint and I was immediately scheming ways to get myself to Nora’s Candy, the source and virtually sole outlet for Turkey Joints in Rome NY.

Nora's Candy ShopRome is itself pretty obscure… a small city that was left off the interstate plans and today hunkers down about 15 miles north of I-90, the New York Thruway. You have to take a diagonal exit way before Rome to get there which makes it a REALLY long detour even if as I did you have some business or personal reason to be tooling across NY in winter.

I took the detour, watched my avatar crawl up my GPS, got to downtown Rome, and was STILL miles away from Nora’s which is in a residential area. More driving, wondering if my navigation is flawed, then finally I find Nora’s and it is a low one-story building nestled among modest houses. We enter. Inside it is a simple, undistinguished candy store. They sell gummies, and fudge, and “turtles” type things with chocolate poured over nuts. That’s about it except for the Turkey Joints. Nora is not groveling for your business. Take it or leave it, especially since she’s only open from 10 to 4.

Turkey Joints on DisplayI asked about the Turkey Joints and the counter person pulled a jar from underneath a counter. They are on display but on a shelf behind the counter, removed from the main candy. Can I sample? No. Can I take a look at the kitchen where they are made? “They don’t allow anybody back there.” My guess is they must have had a bad experience with a bunch of frat guys from nearby Syracuse University cavorting with the product. Or maybe they really do have turkeys back there… no, can’t be.

Turkey Joints jar (top view)So I buy my product, which comes in a jar and costs $14.95 for about 10 ounces of Turkey Joints plus some green tissue paper. They now sell several flavors in addition to the “original”; can I mix and match? No, I cannot. I pay for my jar as well as a single cashew chew for a broader perspective (nothing interesting to report about it, except the poor value: $1 for a couple of dabs of chocolate poured over a nut) and slink into the parking lot to bite into the Turkey Joints.

The outside is a thin layer of hard candy with a streaked, satin-ribbon appearance. Inside is a “marrow” (Nora’s term) consisting of Brazil nuts in a complex chocolate-y base. The candies are in stick form, with a handmade and rough appearance, and some have the Brazil nut chunks poking out through the exterior as irregular knobs which give verisimilitude to the “turkey joint” concept.

The nougat is rich and tasty and the topping provides a satisfying crunch as well as serving as a staging mechanism for the candy. This is the M&Ms paradigm… very thin outer crust that protects something soft and velvety inside. And with Turkey Joints you get a much more complex, homespun shell which also contributes to the entertaining visual appearance of the “joints”.

Did I enjoy my Turkey Joints and share them only reluctantly with my family. Absolutely. Would I make a future detour to Rome, NY to get another jar? Not likely.

And how you know about Turkey Joints. If you want to try them and pay a rather steep shipping fee you can order on the website. [LINK UPDATED AND FIXED!] They are only sold in the cooler months, however, because they don’t travel well in the heat. We’re talking about turkey parts, after all.

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A day at the Fancy Food Show

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Rivers Edge Chevre

Chevre from Rivers Edge dairy in Oregon at Fancy Food show

When I was young and hungry some years ago, I heard my clients talking about this incredible thing called the Fancy Food Show. Purveyors of gourmet goods would put forth their latest offerings and you could stroll down aisle after aisle and eat all you wanted. And, miracle of miracles, because I wrote about food products I could get a trade pass.

It’s actually torture, folks. Eating a giant marinated artichoke on the stem followed by a truffle (chocolate) then a truffle (fungus, in butter or cheese) then a shot of tequila at 10 in the morning is deeply disorienting. And then you do it again and again and get seriously fucked up.

So, now I try to pace myself a bit. I look at what the trends are, what’s missing, something with news value and I try to find at least one really unusual item that I like so much I will buy it myself. Here’s this year’s list from the San Francisco show:

This year’s trend: cheese. I realize cheese isn’t new, duh, but the distribution system has gotten so universal and efficient that you can now offer nutty cave-aged gruyere, grand wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and piles of stinky gorgonzola at your corner store in Podunk, Anywhere. As a result, far more cheese on display by volume and by distributor than ever before.

What’s missing? Artisanal single-source coffee. The day before I had been at the Good Food winners at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and I tasted one cup after another of carefully brewed coffee from single-source beans grown in an environmentally sensitive manner by workers who are paid well for their jobs. Politically correct yes, but also the stuff tastes great, and if you are a serious coffee maker you will soon find yourself happily paying double for an intense, rich cup that blows your mind. Yet coffee in any form was rare, and single-source nonexistent. I predict a big artisanal coffee invasion in 2013.

Hydros water bottle

Hydros founder Winston Ibrahim with his water bottle

Best food story that’s not just about food: Hydros. It’s a Britta filter crossed with a water bottle, for those on the go who don’t trust their local taps. (Not needed in San Francisco which has some of the purest and most delicious tap water in the world.) Every time you buy one, it buys clean water for someone in a third world country for a year. I spent time with the founder, Winston Ibrahim, who is passionate about food as an avenue for solving problems and is investigating other opportunities with baby food, hallal foods and tea.

Best product I am buying myself: River’s Edge chevre from central Oregon. This small dairy specializes in goat cheese and I had two unusual riffs which are shown above: the Sunset Bay has a layer of smoked Hungarian paprika in the middle and the Up in Smoke is soaked in bourbon, wrapped in a maple leaf, then smoked. Both seriously good and different. They have wide distribution through several wholesalers (see cheese, above) so tell your local gourmet shop to order some.

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The buffet of buffets

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Buffet of Buffets promo sign

Welcome to the Buffet of Buffets!

I love me a good buffet. It allows me to do two of my favorite things: stuff my pie hole, and get the better of an amiable and willing adversary. In poker, they say that if you cannot recognize the sucker at the table then that sucker is you. In the buffet business, it is the management. They expect you to order expensive drinks and fill up on mashed potatoes and desserts. You, on the other hand, are going to dive straight into the cold station, load your plate with appealing salads and pickly things, then swing for the fences with a lean protein.

I mastered my buffet skills as a college student on a budget in Claremont, California, at Griswold’s Indian Hill Old Danish Smorgasbord. They didn’t open till 5 pm, so I’d starve myself all day and then gorge on pickled herring and cole slaw. I was good till the middle of the next day, easily. More recently I have specialized in sushi places. You do not want to know how many slices of saba (cured mackerel) I can eat.

This past week I have been in Las Vegas, covering CES for my day job. Vegas has always been a Mecca for buffet heads, but in recent years buffet going has been elevated to a fine art. Prices are often over $30 for dinner, requiring some truly inventive choices to game the management and eat past the cost of the ingredients. And lines are reported to be up to 3 hours at peak times.

To counteract the prices, the buffet hound now has a choice called the Buffet of Buffets. For $44.95 you are allowed to attend five six buffets in 24 hours! Yelp is loaded with strategies for how to do this. A best practice is to plan for a late dinner one night, an early one the next so you get two of the most expensive meal. (Your receipt is typically stamped when you enter the buffet, then you can stay till bedtime if you like.) An early and a late breakfast and a 2 pm lunch and you are all setstill have to find a way to eat one more meal, keeping in mind your stay in Las Vegas will consist of nothing but eating and stand in line.

For the truly dedicated, there is also a deal where the Harrah’s chain offers you TWO FREE Buffet of Buffet passes, to be used on two subsequent days, when you stay for two nights at selected properties. Prices start at $49 per night at the Imperial Palace, a perfectly decent if older hotel right in the middle of the strip. So you will be able to eat yourself into oblivion and you don’t even have to rent a car. Just be sure to buy an extra seat for your return flight, because that you will need.

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Sour slaw: my obsession continues

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Burnt My Fingers

So I’m back in Dallas with the opportunity to compare my sour slaw recipe to the original at Highland Park Cafeteria. I’m ready to call it a draw. My concoction is as close as I’m likely to get considering the variability of different prep cooks and individual heads of cabbage.

Sour Slaw Test Bed

Sour slaw test options, lined up for tasting.

But I still had half a cabbage and a little HPC slaw available for comparison. So I prepared a four-way back test as follows:
#1–2/3 water and 1/3 vinegar, vs. 50/50 in the base recipe.
#2–2/3 vinegar and 1/3 water, vs. 50/50 in the base recipe.
#3–50/50 water/vinegar with no brown sugar.
#4–50/50 water/vinegar with double brown sugar.

#1 and #3 were clear non-starters which was good to confirm. You need a good amount of vinegar, and you need a touch of sugar. My tasters pronounced #2 pretty good and #4 “delicious”, maybe better than the HPC. At this point our tasting supply of the HPC was almost exhausted so we just dumped #2 and #4 together. Extrapolating to the volume of the original recipe, this would be 1 1/6 c cider vinegar, 5/6 c water, and 1 1/2 T brown sugar. It tasted just great AND very close to the few shreds of HPC slaw in their liquor that remained.

I’m not changing the base recipe because it’s so close to the original, but I think I just might bring this amped-up version next time my fellow southern expat Deb Jones invites me to a potluck….

UPDATE March 2012: I’ve recently tried two more back-tests because I did not like it that my slaw ended up a little dingy vs. the snowy white in my feature photo. I tried a much shorter cure… just enough for the cabbage to start throwing off liquid, maybe 20 minutes. And I tried substituting white vinegar for cider vinegar. Neither one of these produced acceptable slaw. The short-cure slaw didn’t have the flavor complexity I wanted. And the white vinegar is just wrong. The most likely cause of the dinginess, I realized afterward, is that I’m close to the bottom of a very soupy gallon of organic cider vinegar. Back to the Heinz next time.

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Helpful bread

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Burnt My Fingers

My friend was in a battle with a pit bull. I could say “he was attacked by a pit bull” but it’s more complicated than that. What is undeniable is that the pit bull attacked his family dog on their front porch and that my friend did his very best to defend it.

A dog could not be closer to a family than this one to my friend and his wife and daughter. They called it their “test son” because they raised him from a puppy together to see if they were ready to have a child. So, in every sense, my friend felt like his family was under attack when he saw what was going on.

Early morning, in his underwear, he tackled the pit bull, wrestled him from his front porch, and tried unsuccessfully to pry his family pet from the bloody jaws of the pit bull. A neighbor arrived to help, also unsuccessful. The police arrived and the pit bull was subdued. My friend raced with his dog to a local emergency vet but it was hopeless. The family pet was dead; my friend ended up with bruises and dog bites.

Now, a very tough guy from the streets of New York is subject to uncontrollable crying jags. Maybe it is mourning for his lost family member. Maybe it is thinking how easy it would have been for the bull to turn its rage on him and leave his wife and daughter without a husband and father. I think it is both.

Tartine Country French Bread

Tartine Country French bread (I gave away the loaves with the nice crust)

We had dinner and heard his story and he said it was helpful to talk it through. Now I have to go out of town for nearly two weeks. I am worried about my friend so I baked him this bread. It’s the Country Bread from Tartine Breads. The recipe is very simple but the technique is magical, and the only way to read it all is to buy the book. (Martha Stewart’s website has the recipe but it’s an abbreviated version; don’t settle for less than the real thing.)

This book, actually this recipe specifically, has really changed my perspective on bread. It makes a much wetter dough and you stretch-and-fold it rather than kneading, pulling a huge wad of dough out of the bowl, slapping it around a bit, and allowing it to collapse back into the bowl under its own weight. It’s really sensual and I find myself sneaking away from work to make this bread, in the same way I once snuck away to surf the internet. I also find myself inventing excuses to bake this bread (I made another loaf for a friend laid up after foot surgery) because I like it so much.

The bread gets better each day after it’s baked for 4 or 5 days so, in addition to giving someone the gift of bread, you’re giving them something to look forward to.

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