Tag: foodporn (page 3 of 3)

Food Porn

March 23, 2011 / 52 Comments

Revisiting The Culinary Canon

Yesterday, I made the kind of hamburgers that, upon tasting them, made a happy wet spot in the front of my trousers. It was as if I had shaved flesh from the thigh of a chubby angel and gently seared it on my Weber grill. That told me, “Okay. Nailed it. You have your hamburger recipe. It’s time to move on.”

Couple weeks back, I said to you crazy kids, “food me.” (That is not meant to sound salacious, in a R-rated movie on FX or AMC where they replaced all instances of the word ‘fuck’ with ‘food,’ as in, ‘Yippie-Kay-Ay, Motherfooder way.) I said, with my family growing by one here in the next few months, it’s going to be important to have a bunch of recipes nailed down to my preferences rather than be some kind of home cook gourmet dilettante prancing around the kitchen with a bottle of liquid nitrogen and a mortician’s rubber apron. Though, to be clear, I look fucking hot in a rubber apron.

I said, “Hey, I need to figure out this family’s culinary canon.” Just as everyone has family recipes — “This is Grammaw’s Barbecue Tree Grub Salsa! With picante horse scrotum!” — I too want to start getting down the so-called ultimate versions of certain recipes for here in Der Wendighaus before the heir to Der Wendighaus shows up and pitches a spanner into the gears.

You folks leapt to the fore.

You threw a major mega-awesome heapful of recipes into the pot.

You can find those magnificent recipes here.

But no, I’m not done.

I still need more. More. MOAR.

(Hey, sorry. I’m needy. Deal with it.)

Here’s the deal, then. I’ve nailed down a bunch of recipes now that I’m pretty comfortable with. I’ve got burgers down. I’m good with mac and cheese, papaya salad, prime rib, chili, sloppy Joes. I can make eggs that’ll jump up off the plate and kick your teeth in. I’ve got a canon forming.

But, as noted, I need more.

I’m looking to nail down recipes for the following (in no particular order):

Meatloaf.
Fried chicken.
Beef stew.
Mashed potatoes.
Potato salad.
Spaghetti sauce.
Chicken and dumplings.
Chocolate chip cookies.
Chicken noodle soup.
Brownies.
Pierogies.
Korma (chicken, lamb, whatever).
Thai curry (red, yellow, green, whatever).

I’m not necessarily asking for recipes. Should you have a recipe for one or several of these that you care to share, suh-weet. Feel free to drop into comments, point me to a link, or even write it to me via email. But what I’m also looking for is just… any little tidbits of information you have about these dishes that you feel is critical. An ingredient, maybe — “I thicken my mashed potatoes with an eyedropper full of milk from a witch’s nipple.” A technique, perhaps. “I bake my brownies in a used jockstrap to give them that humid, swampy stink of a football player’s salty nether-quarters. Can you say Umami?”

See, you gotta understand, I’m not trying to make my mother’s recipes. I’m not trying to make your recipes. I’m trying to make my recipes. I grab from here, I steal from there, and I experiment until I get the recipe I want. Then, I laser-engrave it into my brain. With an actual laser. It hurts a lot. I think I damaged my cerebral cortex. Whenever the dishwasher kicks on, I pee myself and do a little dance. Damn lasers.

Oh! If you want that burger recipe, it’s taken mostly from the Weber grill app. It’s pretty easy:

Pound and a half of 80/20 ground beef. Mix in a li’l dollop of ketchup, mustard, Worchestershire sauce, Frank’s hot sauce. Mix in a dash of salt, pepper, oregano, chili powder, thyme. Form into patties. Divot with a spoon. Cook on the grill for four minutes per side, toward the very end, pile on top a little cairn of grated Gouda cheese, let melt with the grill closed. Made the juiciest, most flavorful burger I’ve ever made.

It is the bee’s tits, that burger.

Anyway.

If you add anything into the culinary canon of the Wendighaus cookbook, whether it’s a recipe, an ingredient, a tip, a trick, a marriage proposal, a hate-filled rant, or a doodle of a pair of boobies, I’ll take it and offer a quivering Jell-O mold of gratitude.

March 9, 2011 / 48 Comments

Food Me

It’s like this: I’m slowly developing what I consider to be “my” versions of certain recipes. These are recipes that, by and large, I’m happy with. Last couple of weeks I’ve nailed down recipes for chili and Sloppy Joes — these are not ultimate recipes in an objective sense, but they’re recipes that I’d make again following the same recipe I put forth.

I never used to operate this way: I generally made it up every time using some clumsy pastiche of recipes I already knew, and while that was certainly exciting, it left room for much variation. One day it was, “Gosh, this chicken is delicious!” Three weeks later it was, “This chicken mysteriously tastes like candle wax dripped on the perineum of a professional wrestler.”

With a child on the way, I’m going to have less time to, as it were, fuck around at meal-time.

It is therefore time to establish some kind of culinary canon here at Der Wendighaus.

Every house eventually develops one, I think. Or, at least, families do. You always hear, “Oh, you need to try my Grandmother’s gnocchi,” or, “My mother’s ham salad recipe will tear off your nipples and choke you with them it’s so goddamn good.” Hell, some people will get in fights about it. “My family’s spaghetti recipe is the best!” “No, mine is!” “Get your axe, for now we go to war.”

My Mom-Mom had a host of recipes that live in infamy: pierogies, bleenies, koshe. My mother had and has her own: apricot-glazed chicken, turkey tetrazini, slow-cooked coffee-marinated beef. Hell, my Dad made this elk-meat chili using itty-bitty Thai hot peppers that would melt your molars, but it was awesome.

Anyway, I think I’m orbiting around the point.

I’m opening this to the hive-mind:

What recipes are recipes you think everybody should know? Like, on a generic level, “Oh, everybody should know a meatloaf recipe.” Or lasagna, or fried chicken.

Second follow-up question — if you say, “Everybody should totally know a kick-ass pancake recipe,” then I further beseech you, what is your pancake recipe? Do you have one? (And by “pancake,” I really mean, “whatever recipe you consider crucial.” I’m not asking you specifically for a pancake recipe.)

What meals are canon at your house?

And, how do you make ’em?

Once more, I crowdsource to you because you people are smarter — and, let’s be honest, much prettier — than I am. Hop into the comments if you’re feeling kind, and jam your wisdom into my craw.

February 23, 2011 / 16 Comments

Human Google Makes Twitter Chili

In case you missed it, once upon a time I wrote an article titled, “In Twitter We Trust.” The article, found at The Escapist, basically posits the notion that our circle of trust — which comprises and completes that mystical thing we call “word-of-mouth” — is broadened greatly by use of social media. Further, it puts forth the idea that social media can, in a hive-mindy way, become what I call “Human Google.”

Ask the Twitter hive-mind a question, get an answer.

Try it. It’s good clean fun.

You can ask the hive-mind anything, really. How’s that new movie? How do I spackle a hole in drywall? Pants, or no pants? Why does my right nipple excrete a fluid that could be described as both “buttery” and “Satanic?” Ask a question, get an answer. A perfect system.

The great thing about Human Google is that it offers us something that search engines generally don’t — and maybe can’t: meaningful filter. Google doesn’t know me. It wants to. It thinks that some alchemical combination of data “cookies” defines me, but it doesn’t. What defines me is, in part, my relationships to others. So, when I say to Google, “Hey, Google, what are the essential ingredients for chili?” it returns to me 180,000+ results. And even on the first page, it has my question wrong in spaces — it thinks I’m talking about chili powder, or Thai chilis, or Rozonda Thomas from the defunct R&B girl group, TLC. (Okay, it didn’t really think I was talking about her until the fourth or fifth page.)

On the other hand, when I turn to Twitter and I say, “Hello, excellent humans of Twitter, please bequeath unto me the essential ingredients to chili,” I get a flood of great answers.

What did I learn?

Well, I learned that chili recipes are as individual as the people who make it. I mean, snowflakes don’t have shit on the uniqueness of chili. We’re not talking subtle regional variants. We’re talking straight up different animals. This goes well-beyond the Texas Versus Cincinnati cage match. This goes far past the muddy trenches of beans versus no beans. Ingredients given included, but were not limited to: ground beef, stew beef, steak, short rib, pork, bison, Italian sausage, chicken, chorizo, tomato sauce, tomato paste, pinto beans, kidney beans, chili beans, white beans, black beans, beer, Coca-Cola, Scotch, coffee, Jalapenos, Chipotles, Anaheims, Thai hots, bell peppers, sweet peppers, habaneros, Sriracha, Tabasco sauce, cinnamon, cumin, cilantro, onion, carrots, celery, giardiniera, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, cocoa, melted chocolate, butternut squash, peanut butter, molasses, human souls, and dictators.

I now believe that there may be no more diverse a dish than a bowl of goddamn chili.

Anyway, this is what I put in my chili yesterday: ground round, ground pork, two sweet bell peppers, one yellow onion, two Jalapeno peppers, one can each of kidney beans, pinto beans, white beans, a small can of tomato paste, a medium can of diced tomatoes, a large can of tomato puree, one cup of dark black coffee, a 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, two TBs of Worcestershire sauce, two TBs of brown sugar, two bay leaves, a bunch of diced garlic (cooked with the meat), sweet smoky paprika, cumin, chili powder, cocoa chili powder, cayenne, ground pepper, a squirt of Sriracha. Simmer for six hours. At the end of it, top of fresh grated Havarti cheese (all I had on hand, but worked really well) and fresh lime juice.

Let me tell you — and this came from Justin Achilli and others, this suggestion — the lime juice is the fucking kicker, the corker, the game winner. I mean, it totally elevated the flavor profile of this chili. I will never again make chili without that final spurt of lime juice at the finish line.

Great stuff. And crowdsourced in part by the power of Human Google. Computers don’t need to give us the answers. Computers can instead facilitate us giving one another the answers.

That, and really weird porn.

January 8, 2011 / 17 Comments

Macaroni + Cheese + Sausage = You Building Temples To Me And My Glory

Here’s the deal. I give you this recipe, you gotta give me something in return. We’re not talking like, a handshake and a high-five here. This is too good. Your gratitude must be measured in sexual favors and hymns sung to my nascent godhood. I want blowjobs from celestial figures. I want a pegasus made of chocolate and gold. I want a leprechaun I can saddle up and ride across all the world’s rainbows.

You want this recipe, you gotta pony up. This is quid pro quo, Clarice.

You will literally have to dance for your dinner on this one. You will also have to kill for your dinner. Upon the completion of you reading this recipe, you will receive a list of all those who have ever slighted me.

What I’m trying to say is, damn did I make a kick-ass macaroni and cheese the other night.

Here’s the sitch.

I thought, “Mmm, macaroni and cheese.” I have a recipe I use, and lo, it is good. But then I thought, “What would make this recipe double-awesome? What would make this recipe do keg-stands on my taste-buds? Sausage.” And then I was like, “Ha ha, it’s going to be a real sausage party in this kitchen!” And then I was like, “Hey, I should really zip up my pants and get my manhood out of the lunchmeat drawer.” And then I was like, “Ha ha, lunchmeat. That’s what I’ll call my penis from now on! Lunchmeat!”

Then I high-fived a ghost.

Moving on.

I went to the local butcher (Saylor’s, Hellertown) and bought their psycho-delicious Provolone and broccoli rabe sausage. You may buy whatever sausage tickles the reptilian pleasure centers of your brain.

With this mac-n-chee recipe, you have to do a bunch of things at once. I hope you played a lot of video games as a kid and are subsequently good at multitasking.

We’re going to start with the sausage.

Brown it on both sides in a hot pan. Five minutes or so on each. I used just under a pound of the stuff.

Then, normally, you would finish the sausage by pouring in a half-cup or so of water into the skillet, and then let the water cook the sausage. Except, I had a different idea.

In the fridge lurked about 1/4 cup each of chicken broth and veggie broth that I had to use up. I thought, “Hey, those are liquidy. I use those, maybe the Flavor Gods will shine down upon this pan with their favor.” So, instead of using water, I poured the remainder of the broth in with the sausage.

I let that start to cook down for about 20 minutes or so, turning the sausage every five minutes.

About halfway through (10 minute mark, in case your math skills are that of a mule-kicked billy goat), I put just a splash of water — maybe 1/4 cup. Probably not even that.

Meanwhile, time to cook your pasta. Despite this being called macaroni and cheese, you don’t actually need to use macaroni. Don’t be pinned down by such Draconian thought. Express yourself with some fusili or some bow-tie pasta. Someone tells you that you have to use macaroni, call them a “food racist” and then stab them in the kidneys with a carrot peeler.

While the water is boiling, might I recommend you grate some cheese?

The cheese combination you choose is up to you, but I like a good mild white cheese paired with a strong, assertive “kick to your reproductive widgets” cheese.

In this case, I used 8 oz of colby longhorn, and 8 oz. of Beemster, which is really just a brand of kick-ass Gouda. You could also go with Prima Donna, which is fuuu-huuu-huuuu-cking phenomenal. You can tell how good it is by all the extra syllables I had to jam into the word “fucking.”

Anyway, grate that stuff up, set it aside.

By now, pasta should be boiling. Boil it. Boil it like you’re boiling the flesh off a severed head.

Mmm. Human head cheese. But that’s not in this recipe, so shut up, you pesky cannibal.

While the pasta is boiling and your sausage is almost done cooking (cook to 160 degrees internal, which is the temperature necessary to kill off, I dunno, syphilis and Space AIDS or whatever), it is time to attend to your cheese sauce. You were thinking, “But I just attended to the cheese!” and I’m like, “Whose recipe is this?” And then you complain and whine some more, and I am forced to spray you with bear mace.

Here’s what you do with the cheese sauce.

First, a roux. You know what a roux is, right? Goddamn you try my patience. Were you born this way, or did your parents feed you drain cleaner or something? Dang. Roux = flour + fat in equal proportion. Adds thickener, adds flavor. Just like elk semen. Except, the guy who sold me my elk semen, well, he was arrested. Not coincidentally, he was arrested for chasing down elk and molesting them.

Anyway, roux: 3 TBsp melted butter (clarified helps but is not necessary), 3TBsp flour. Cook it over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, until it turns golden, or “blond.”

Add into that: 2 cups of milk.

And 4 oz. of cream cheese.

Whisk like you’re trying to conjure a tropical cyclone.

Now, here is the piece de resistance. I don’t actually know what that means. “Piece of resistance?” What the fuck is that? Let’s revise, because, y’know, psshhh, the French.

“Now, here is the piece de awesomesauce.”

Much better.

Anyway, remember that sausage you were cooking? Remember that broth? By now, that should’ve reduced down to about a 1/4 cup of meaty brothy saucey, erm, sauciness. Here, then, is where happy accidents can sometimes help change a meal: I was going to dump that stuff. Just dump it right out. But I thought, “Well, let’s see what it tastes like.” Took the back of a spoon, pressed it into the reduction, then tasted it.

I immediately shellacked my pants with joy. Liquid joy.

I thought, “Hell with it,” and I dumped that into the cheese sauce.

This is the best mistake I ever made. Except for that time when I went to my ex-wife’s Christmas party and saved her and her co-workers from a handful of German “terrorists.”

Put cheese sauce on low, cook till thick(er).

Now: cut up the sausage into little “sausage coins.”

Ding! Pasta’s done. Good, because all this talk of elk semen and German terrorism has made me hungry!

Real quick: getcher oven going at 350.

Get a casserole dish. (Did you know that on the FX airing of Pineapple Express, they exchanged the word “asshole” with “casserole?” That’s kind of awesome.) What size? 9 x 13.

Pour the pasta in there.

Pour the sausage coins in there.

Pour the thickened cheese sauce over it.

Dump in all that grated cheese.

Stir gently (lest you fling goopy pasta overboard).

Then, top with one sleeve of pulverized butter crackers. I don’t use Ritz because I am now a High Fructose Corn Syrup Nazi. I go with the Pepperidge Farms ones that look like butterflies. Added bonus, it makes me feel like a powerful monster, crushing poor little butterflies between my godlike palms.

Into the oven goes the dish (uncovered) for 20 minutes.

Take it out.

Eat it.

Roll your eyes in pleasure.

Then go and build a temple to my glory. Tear out your eyes with a melon-baller. Fill the sockets with cheese sauce. Become my oracle. Prophesy the doom of all who oppose me. Sing prayers to my neverending divinity with your moist, tongueless mouth. The End.

January 2, 2011 / 35 Comments

Welcome To The Bourbon School Of Bourbon

Last night, cracked open the ol’ bottle of [correction: Laphroaig, need more coffee] 18-year Scotch, had a couple fingers of the stuff with a friend, drank down that warm smoky gold — I think I could taste the Druids they sacrificed in the bog.

Mmm. Sacrificial booze.

I wouldn’t say I’m particularly well-versed in the hard stuff, but I’ve got my choices. For gin, I love me some Bluecoat. For vodka, it’s Tito’s or it’s a punch to the mouth. Scotch I drink and enjoy more widely: right now, have bottles of Lagavulin, Balvenie Doublewood, and Johnny Walker in the Lazy Susan. (Yes, I keep all our booze in a Lazy Susan. Or, perhaps, a Lazy Boozan? Shut up.)

But one drinky-drink I’m not well-versed in is bourbon.

Few times I’ve had it in the past I found it to be a lot harsher than Scotch — instead of smooth and warm we’re talking razors boiled in distilled water — but that tells me I’m just not drinking the right stuff.

So, bourbon nerds, come together.

School a brother on your lovely drink.

What should I be drinking?

What should I be avoiding?

What don’t I know about the stuff?

Bourbon: It’s What’s For Dinner.