Foods I Hate

I like to keep things pretty positive around here, but our annual obsession with everyone's favorite Easter abomination brought some bad tastes to my mouth.

I have never been a picky eater. One doesn't get to be as big as I've been for most of my life by scoffing at a wide variety of foods. However, there are a few items that I simply cannot stand and do not eat unless faced with extraordinary circumstances. So here, in order, are the top 5 foods that make me cringe.

5. Ketchup - It's not so much the condiment itself, but the way it's used. My contemporaries have used ketchup to burn and destroy flavors on a variety of foods from eggs to potatoes and even rice (which is just plain gross). Want to make me angry? Take a bite of my cooking and utter the k-word.

Why must we, as a nation, obliterate flavors with this onslaught of tomatoes, sugar and vinegar? Why do we have to drown our sustenance in red goo? I say if food doesn't taste good enough to enjoy without this gastronomic earth scorcher, learn to cook better.

We only have ketchup in our household to (lightly) glaze meatloaf, which is completely different.

4. Eggplant - My family has been making this gooey vegetable since I was knee-high to a corn pole, and I still can't get that nasty bitter flavor out of my mouth. I try to love the cone-headed orbs, but every time I try them I just gag and give up. The Italians must feel the same way, because they've resorted to drowning their eggplants in cheese and red sauce.

The only notable exception is Japanese eggplant. It's sweetness and texture are perfect, not to mention it's ability to produce electronics and automobiles of exceptional quality.

3. Cotton Candy - If I wanted to eat fiberglass insulation, I'd go to Home Depot. Nuff said.

2. Marshmallows (including fluff and Peeps) - Here's an idea. Let's get pure all-natural corn syrup, aerate it and make it so it sticks to everything. Oh, and we'll engineer it so that eating even one makes you feel bloated and sick. I eat exactly 2 marshmallows a year - on s'mores - and that's only because I can't get the darn chunk of chocolate onto a stick. I have to use that sugar-based napalm to melt it to the cracker.

Oh, and the only thing Peeps are good for is blowing up in the microwave.

1. Funnel Cakes - And behold Satan opened his realm and produced a concession so vile, so disgusting, so terrifying that the Earth trembled and babies cried everywhere. The funnel cake is so nasty that it's not just bad - it's unholy.

I can just see the evil one conjuring up this monstrosity. First, find a dough recipe that will soak up about a cup of peanut oil during frying. Then cook it until it loses all flavor. Finally, blast it with 20 cups of powdered sugar (which promptly soaks up the excess oil turning into some mutant sugar-oil paste). Serve cold on a sagging paper plate with no napkins.

Funnel cakes are best eaten when it's about 90° outside with 90% relative humidity, which is average for carnivals and theme parks.

The only power strong enough to combat this menace is the almighty hot dog. But that's a different post...

Hawaiian Style Musubi, 2 Flavors

My first attempt at making sushi at home was a mixed bag. I decided to make California rolls and some kind of tofu-maki in my room in college. The California roll was passable, but the tofu roll tasted like wet dish sponge wrapped in rice and nori. The fault was mine as I had no experience with the tofu and simply cut it up and stuffed it into my rolls - sans draining, marinade or seasoning. The horror...

As I've mentioned recently, sushi quality fish is simply not available to us landlubbers in Atlanta (although I've heard you can get it frozen on the internet). In lieu of suitable maguro, teka and unagi, my approach has been to explore the world of sushi preparation without using actual fish. Enter in the whole realm of musubi.

Musubi, as I've learned, is a collaboration of the Japanese art of sushi and the strange Hawaiian obsession with Spam. I first sampled this delicacy not on my honeymoon, but in southern California on a trip to visit my buds. Traditionally it's prepared as a sort-of mega Spam nigiri, but I prefer the SoCal method better for both presentation and eatibility. The latter was especially important as this was one of the featured recipes in my Good Eats party spread.

I started by marinating sliced Spam Lite (of course) overnight in teriyaki sauce. Shortly before rolling, I browned the slices in a non-stick skillet.

For a base, I used Good Eats' (of course) awesome sushi rice recipe, using only half of the salt specified. Spam is plenty salty enough to carry the dish. A single batch provided enough for 4-5 logs of musubi.

As far as tools are concerned, I employed a box sushi mold I picked up in an Asian store. Similar models can be found for about $7 on E-Bay. This is simply a plastic box with two plates for the top and bottom to compress the contents. I didn't use bottom and instead built my musubi directly on nori.

The musubi itself is simply two layers of rice with some spam in between. My mold was the perfect width for 2 slices of spam. You remembered to keep a bowl of water handy to keep your hands hydrated so that the rice wouldn't stick to your fingers, right?

Use the top plate to firmly compress the contents, then carefully remove the mold. Behold, naked musubi!

To finish, wrap the nori tightly around the brick being careful not to deform the shape. Wet the nori, and press to adhere. Slice into 6 sections immediately before serving and top with a dab of sweet and sour sauce and a few scallions.

I also prepared an alternate version based on a similar dish I'd seen on our honeymoon in Kauai. Instead of Spam, a layer of salami sat atop the rice with a healthy dose of sesame seeds for seasoning. I followed suit using the good stuff from my deli, and garnished by dipping the sliced sections in roasted sesame seeds.

Ok, so I hope I haven't upset the sushi masters too terribly. As for my guests, they snapped up the little morsels faster than I could slice them, even when I told them it was Spam. I really liked the box-style assembly method. It was super-easy and produced beautiful and tasty morsels.

The recipe for spam musubi makes approximately 30 pieces from 5 rolls. Each piece is about 1 point.

Update 5/8/06 - The last photo was entered in this month's Does My Blog Look Good in This photography contest!

5 Hour Smoked Chicken Chili

I wonder if Rachael Ray ever gets tired of making 30-min Paella Burgers and just goes nuts for hours in the kitchen. I know that slow cooking times don't sell in today's food television world. I can just see it now:

"I'm Rachael Ray, and I make 300 minute meals. Now that means, in the time it takes you to watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I'll have made a delicious and healthy meal from start to finish. (Insert exaggerated arc of her finger)"

Well I know that I easily tire of "fast" food. I feel like it's been quite a while since I've spent a ridiculous amount of time making a meal that's consumed in 20 minutes. So that's why I spent 5 hours last Sunday making a bowl of chili. Actually, smoked chicken chili.

Now before you think I'm some kind of masochist, there's probably only an hour or so of active cooking time involved, but that's not the point. I've still got to babysit my smoker and the eventual bubbling dutch oven of the red stuff.

The process is simple. Step 1: smoke the chicken. Step 2: turn the smoked chicken into chili. Step 3: eat while still lava-hot.

Sure you could rush it a bit by buying some smoked chicken (without sauce) from a local BBQ joint. Just don't sell your soul for a bottle of liquid smoke. It's not the same and never will be; you can't fake the effects of time. Liquid smoke will never duplicate the strong aroma of burnt hardwood. It will always taste more like industrial runoff than slow-cooked hickory goodness.

As far as the chili is concerned, I started with my basic chili recipe and stripped away seasoning. After hours of flavor development in the smoker I wasn't about to crash the party with a ton of strong flavors. No, this is a mild chili meant to display the no-too-subtle smokiness of homemade BBQ. I tend to "oversmoke" my chickens just a bit. If I'm going through the trouble of making smoked meat, darnit I want it to taste smokey. Just a side note - I used diced tomatoes with garlic and onion and Italian flavored tomato paste. They don't add a lot of flavor beyond their plain varieties, but they do add depth to the recipe. It's also what I had in the cupboard.

This is easily the best chili I've ever made. It may never make it to prime time, but it will surely be in syndication around here for years.

"Remember, a great meal is never more than 300 minutes away."

I don't normally offer a drink selection with my meals, but this time I have to give a strong recommendation to pair your timeless (pun intended) chili with an excellent bottle of Wolaver's Certified Organic Ale. I bagged a couple of bottles in an awesome liquor store in Paia, Hawaii and I've been enjoying them ever since. I've had 3 varieties (pale ale, wheat, and India pale ale), and they are all excellent. The IPA was one of the best examples of the variety I've ever had. I may have to fly back to Maui to get more.

Step 1: Smoke Chicken

1. Soak 2 large handfuls of hickory chips in water for at least an hour.
   
2. Butterfly 2 whole chickens and liberally season under the skin with your favorite spice rub. I like "Wild Willy's Number One-derful Rub" from the excellent BBQ bible Smoke and Spice.
   
3. Smoke at 225° - 250° until the internal temperature is 180° (about 3 hours in my smoker).
4. Pull breasts and chop coarsely. Feed the dark meat to your skinny friends, or sneak little nibbles at night when the wife is asleep.
   

Step 2: Make "5 Hour Smoked Chicken Chili"

4 Smoked Chicken Breasts, deboned, skinned and chopped
2 large Sweet Onions, diced
3 large cloves Garlic, diced
3 cans Dark Red Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed
2 cans Diced Tomatoes
1 small can Tomato Paste
2 1/2 cups Water
3 tablespoons Chili Powder
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer at low heat, stirring occasionally, until the chili thickens or you can't take waiting anymore. Given you've waited hours for the recipe, 30 more minutes won't kill you.

Makes 10-12 cups. Approx. 4 points per cup. This is a Core Plan dish.

Behind the Scenes at Good Eats - Some Perspective

I was excited to see that my experience on Good Eats had been covered on Slashfood.com, an excellent gathering place for food news, blogs and other tidbits of the foodie web content. Unfortunately, while reading their paraphrasing of my post I realized that my portrayal of Good Eats may not be taken in it's proper context.

Now that the show has aired, and I've had a chance to see how my role panned out, I have better perspective as to how the tip of the iceberg that I was a part of plays into the entire process of creating my favorite show. I think it's important to further elaborate and explain a comment that I made on my previous post.

Specifically, I want to address my comment regarding the "low budget" nature of the show. Let me make it clear this was never meant to question the quality of the show, or the skills of those who work on it. I make three follow-up points. First, this show isn't Lost. It's a highly rated television show on the Food Network. That being said, I do know that it is the most expensive show produced for the network, at least according to what I've read.

Second, my experience represents one extra's view of what's going on. The crew at Good Eats didn't invite me to cover their show, and I just wrote about what I saw. If there are any inaccuracies, then you have to remember that my post is an opinion piece written by someone with very little experience in writing and newsmaking, and even less in professional television broadcasting. If there's been anything of a high school level around here, it's my journalism.

Third, and most importantly, we were shooting on location, and not in the Good Eats studio. This makes a huge difference with respect to equipment, lighting and other production issues. The crew was working with limited time, light and other resources. This scene was a setup for the show, and not the main focus for the episode. Keep that in mind.

Bloggers get a bad rap about spewing content (often advertised as fact) on the internet without checking for accuracy or for bias. My posts are editorials and anecdotes from a die-hard fan and food blogger. I think it's important to clarify exactly where I'm coming from so that future readers understand what they're getting.

I think I owe all of you, and the fabulous folks at Good Eats, nothing less.

Good Eats = Great Party

What's a guy to do when he and his wife appear on the Food Network? Why throw a viewing party, that's what!

I tend to go way overboard when people come over to eat at our house. I just get really excited about cooking for parties, as it allows me to use more interesting methods and ingredients that aren't practical for two people. It also allows me to make a table-full of less-lite foods without eating the whole spread. Heck, if I can't get thin I can at least make my friends fat.

This party also coincided with a building frustration that I've only been able to blog about convenience food in the last few months. So I said "to heck with it," took a half day off work and pulled out the gourmet skills!

Actually, my theme was a sort of "Gourmet Hawaiian Junk Food." This is a little less specific than it sounds. Basically, I'd wanted to harness the Asian flavors I've been experimenting with as of late while exploring the world of flavors from our recent trip to Maui (that's a different post). As you can see, we created quite a spread.

This picture almost didn't happen. It seems that "but I want to blog about it" isn't a good enough excuse to keep 20 people from eating. Clockwise from the bottom, we have shrimp and mango summer rolls, Hawaiian musubi, a selection of brownies (regular and low-fat) and chocolate-covered mac-nuts, veggies, fruit and Hawaiian BBQ chicken mini-sandwiches compliments of my little brown egg. My favorite was the musubi (that's a different post), but the crowd preferred the summer rolls.

I know it's not exactly Hawaiian or junk food, but I also didn't want to make too many heavy appetizers and I thought this would be a perfect compliment to the other two meaty dishes. Light, refreshing and flavorful, it tasted as good as it looked.

I snagged the recipe from Epicurious, with a few changes. First, I cheated and used fresh cooked shrimp instead of boiling my own, substituting smaller shrimp (40-60/lb.) because that's what the seafood counter had. I also omitted the mint leaves because I don't have the luxury of an herb garden, and I didn't want to give my first born to the market for a handful of leaves.

Finally, I skipped the dipping sauce and instead concocted a mixture of soy, fish, and chili sauce with a little brown sugar to add some sweetness. I didn't measure, I just started out with copious amounts of the soy and tasted my way from there. Go easy on the fish sauce. A little goes a long way and, as one guest accurately noted, it "smells like fresh cat ass."

All in all, it was an easy, if time consuming, recipe to prepare. The good news is that the entire recipe, as prepared without sauce, is a meager 18 points (I made 12 small rolls instead of 8 large ones). That's a LOT of food, and would make an excellent dinner for 4. It was a little hard to find rice paper wrappers, but a quick trip to the local Japanese grocer solved that problem. You have a Japanese grocer near you, don't you?

The party was a success, and Jenny and I basked in our 30 seconds of fame. Everything turned out terrific, which is an occasion to celebrate as I usually don't meet my personal standards. It's tremendously satisfying when things turn out exactly as intended. Not bad for a Wednesday night!

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Brown...

Update 4/10 - I've written a few follow-up comments that provide further perspective to points in this post.

Alternate title - "An amateur food blogger gets to be on his favorite TV show ever."

There are some dreams that are so impossible, so ridiculous, that you never really think they'll actually come true. I may never actually fly into space, but last October I had the opportunity to check one of my "yeah right" dreams off my list.

Astute readers of this blog will no doubt know of my affection for Good Eats. Long story short, it's the best program on television since the A-team.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a friend of mine asking if I'd like to be an extra on an upcoming episode. I don't know how long I was out for, but when I came to I found out that GE was shooting in the area and was looking for extras. The show was supposed to be about scallops, and I was to go to the shoot at 1:30.

I was understandably nervous when I ditched work and met Jenny on the way to the site. I really had no information on what to expect, so my game plan was to look like I knew what I was doing and sort of blend into the crowd. I was waiting outside when Jenny nudged me and pointed to the window. There, through the looking glass, was AB finishing the chalkboard work for our scallop anatomy lesson. That was my first "what the heck am I doing here" (WTHAIDH) moment of the day. It certainly wasn't the last.

I'm not one for fame. Personally, I think I'm famous enough having the 203,775th most popular blog in the universe. What I was really hoping to see was what goes on when the camera rolls, and what goes into making an episode. I was expecting to see some kind of super-big budgeted affair with dozens of assistants and people yelling "time is money" and "quiet on the set!" In actuality, it was more of a high-school play affair, except with a way better AV crew. Everyone was having a good time, pitching in to help make a prop here or fix something there. Heck, I even chipped in and helped bandage one of the characters (watch the show). Now I'm glad I spent all those hours practicing first aid in the Scouts.

It's hysterical to see how free-flowing and off the cuff a lot of the humor is. Alton and the crew seem to write the details of the show as they go along. He had a script, but once he got a look at the 9 or so extras the scene just sort of unfolded from there. He made up "backstories" for all of us on the spot.

As the afternoon progressed, I got to know several of the lovely people on the crew. Everyone I talked to had been on the show since the pilot, and it was very clear that everyone loves what they do. I'm sure they're really nice to the extras since we clearly don't know what we're doing. We were more like 2nd graders on a field trip to the zoo than trained thespians.

I had an interesting chat with the cameraman about the show's new look (they changed formats from TV to HDTV this season). I asked if they had also filmed the first episode ("Steak Your Claim") in HDTV since the cinematography looked similar, but Alton replied that was done on film. I'll have you note that I remembered the title on the spot and no doubt impressed everyone around with my encyclopedic knowledge of the show. Or maybe not.

AB seems like one of those guys who knows exactly how everything should look and feel on the show, sort of like a Food Networked Brad Bird (you need to watch the special features on The Incredibles to see what I mean). It was obvious that he knew precisely how he wanted lines delivered or how the props should be placed. To their credit, the crew seemed on board every step of the way. They also make terrific actors (or vice versa?) as several of them pitched in on the scene. I imagine the group gets to laugh on the job quite a bit...

As if this wasn't amazing enough, Jenny and I both got lines in the show. I was just sitting there quietly trying not to freak out and act like the psycho superfan while Alton was doling out parts. Suddenly, without warning, he pointed to me and said,"Say, 'There ain't no barracuda round here!'" WTHAIDH indeed. I mustered my best Georgia militant redneck and belted my lines out with bravado and strength! Apparently, it was good enough for him and the bit part was mine! Jenny mustered an excellent and emotional "Don't worry, we'll get you a new one..." (watch the show) and got her own share of the spotlight.

I was doing pretty well, remaining calm, until time came to shoot my close-up. Suddenly I found myself staring into a 40 lb. HDTV camera with a microphone over my head and Alton Brown coaching me and giving me lines. It was then that the WTHAIDH panic hit it's peak. Actually it was more of a "WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING HERE! I'M NOT AN ACTOR, I'M AN ENGINEER!...MOMMY!!"

You have to understand that the closest I have ever come to anything artsy was the summer in college I dropped a required engineering class (taught by an unintelligible old guy) to take a psych class led by a gorgeous 28 year old instructor. Sorry Dad, I'll pay you back for those extra credit-hours.

Alton reminded us more than once that this was just a food show on cable TV, but that's just not true. This is Good Eats! I didn't want to be responsible for ruining my favorite show. I don't think he understood that the fate of the universe banked on my performance! I know I was feeling it.

So I botched my close up. AB was a good sport and tried to not let me know that I sucked, but I know deep down in my heart that I was more Razzie than Oscar. Jenny, on the other hand, nailed her lines and close-ups. That's my little drama queen!

As of right now, I don't know how much we're going to be on the show, which airs tonight at 10PM, and again several times over the next week. Whether or not we end up on the cutting room floor, it was worth it to spend a day as part of the cast and crew of Good Eats.

Now, if anyone's asking, my most obscure GE dream is to appear as a "fed" on an episode. I've even got my own black suit and sunglasses...

P.S. - I wanted to apologize to AB for stealing the leading picture for this post. He was working, and I pulled out my camera and snapped one. It was rude, and I truly feel sorry for it. Alton - next time I see you, I'd like to give you a beer or some cheese. Your pick.

Update 4/6 - Awesome, both of our close-ups made it in the show. We're in the scene after the opening "Good Eats" jingle!