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McNormal

The Food A**hole's Dilemma

When you write smug, self important blogs about other people who you perceive to be smug and self important, it usually doesn't make for good satire.

Pizza Styles Worldwide

Shakey's still exists but in a much different form than their 1970's heyday. The ones left in the U.S. are mostly in Southern California and I don't think their pizza is particularly good or distinctive anymore. But back in the days before delivery and by-the-slice, they pioneered the California "pizza parlor" genre, with ragtime music to entertain you while you waited for your pizza to be made to order. Our Shakey's had a vintage player piano. There was a competing chain called Straw Hat, and Round Table was also originally parlor format (with a camelot theme). The junk delivery chains killed the parlors. Sadly their main legacy today is Chuck E Cheese.

Any good cookbook suggestions to pick up this summer?

I second The New Portuguese Table, it's a good one.

Get the Serious Eats book if you don't already have it.

Culinary 'To Do' Lists

My main current project is my ginger beer. It's pretty good but it could be better. Filtration is an issue. I want it to be crystal clear in the bottle and it's not there yet.

My longer term project is dry cured charcuterie. I need a proper place to hang it where bugs won't get to it.

I'm preoccupied with fermentation in general. I make beer, sourdough rye bread, bagels, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha. They are all works in progress.

US-101 from Astoria, OR to San Francisco, CA recommendations

I see you are driving south, but just north of Astoria across the river is Willapa Bay which is an oyster paradise. The Chester Club in South Bend is a legendary oyster bar.

Eggshells in disposal question.

It has honestly never occurred to me to deliberately put food scraps of any kind down the sink drain for any reason. Do people really do that? It just seems like common sense to avoid it. In any case, if you have a garden or a yard you are wasting valuable soil material. I put all that stuff in the compost bin.

Keeping homebrew in SodaStream bottles: A good idea?

I prefer the 5 Liter aluminum minikegs that German beers come in. They have a built in tap on the bottom and an airlock on the top. If you're careful you can remove the airlock, rinse them out and refill them with homebrew, either from a cornelius keg (already carbonated) or when using bottling sugar the same way you would with glass bottles. I have taken them to concerts and other outdoor events with no problem. Once you tap them the beer will stay fresh and hold its carbonation for a day or two.

Pick a flavor and pull this...

The stuff in those machines is a long way from actual yogurt.

British foods to bring to US friends?

I could go for a jar of pickled eels.

Dinner for 2 with a bottle of wine may become illegal...

Apparently in a few years cars will drive themselves and we'll all be able to drink as much as we want, stumble to the car and say "Home Jamesh!" I'm not sure how this will work if you live two miles up a gravel road but then you're probably not the type to go out to dinner much.

Pork Blood Popsicles?

No nutria thank you. No kidneys of any adult animal.

Pho vs. Ramen-Which would you choose?

Both are great when made well, from scratch, however I would say that bad ramen is better than bad pho. Which is to say, it holds up better under poor conditions. A 20 cent brick of industrial instant ramen, in all it's appalling, flavor-packet-of-death glory, is one of the marvels of modern food production.

vienna, prague, and berlin SANS PORK

Berlin has tons of kebab shops that are usually halal. Sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what's in the kabab meat but they will also have chicken and falafel. All three of those cities will have street markets with Turkish or Bulgarian vendors selling really good flatbreads, feta cheese and olives. The delis will generally have a good selection of smoked fish products.

History of Creamed Chipped Beef (a.k.a. S.O.S.)?

The WWII military version used canned beef made by Hormel (who also popularized Spam at the time). There were field unit recipes that called for evaporated or powdered milk in the absence of fresh. I imagine the history of the dish goes much further back and was probably common in wagon trains and in the Civil War.

Reality Check: Pepperoni and Bacon Pizzaburger from Boston Pizza

How hard would it be for them to just bake a decent pizza and cut it into shapes that could be used for the bun? Then cook the patty to order on a broiler or griddle. They're not even trying.

Would you do it?

In Louisiana gas stations are where you go to get the best boudin. Also kool aid pickles. In rural Massachusetts, grinders.

Reality Check: Pepperoni and Bacon Pizzaburger from Boston Pizza

The meat is obviously precooked and appears to be stabilized with gelatin or something, like a meatloaf. Then factory sealed in the shell and frozen. So, basically a Hot Pocket. Not a burger.

I blame Canada.

Do You Frequently Get Take Out?

We're lucky to have great take-out dim sum in our neighborhood. It's very economical considering how pricey sit down dim sum service has become, and how impractical it would be to make all that stuff at home even if I knew how.

The next ingredient trend..any predictions?

17 year cicadas.

Spent brew grain cooking and nutrition

I usually reserve a small amount of the spent grain for use in bread baking. It can provide a nice texture to a multigrain bread, but you can't use too much or the bread won't rise. I've also added a small amount to oatmeal, and a meatloaf once (which was quite good). A little goes a long way. We just end composting the vast majority of our grain.

Best Burrito, San Francisco

For a classic Mission burrito I would say La Cumbre. Or La Taqueria if you don't want the rice.

Papalote makes yuppie burritos, which is a different category. AKA 'wrap'. Intended to appeal to the Sunset Magazine crowd I suppose.

Outside the Mission, La Corneta in Glen Park. Or L'Avenida in the Inner Sunset.

Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

If you want to stir fry them, try the "velveting" technique.

Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

Cordon Bleu

SE needs a mascot.

That's a chicken? I always thought it was a tied up haggis.

Win Two VIP Tickets to Cochon 555 in San Francisco

Schinken

In Praise of the Pyrex 9X13

I like expensive heavy steel roasters and nice ceramic gratin dishes as much as anyone, but I've come to realize my most versatile and most used piece of ovenware is my good old Pyrex 9X13 pan. Dollar for dollar it's about the best thing in my kitchen. I don't have to worry if it gets a couple scratches or some baked-on oil around the rim, I'm not going to baby it. If I take it to a potluck and it gets broken or lost, who cares? They're cheap, I'll get another one. I also like how the width fits a standard roll of foil or plastic wrap.

It's great for lasagna, enchiladas, gratins, any kind of roast vegetables, chicken, ribs, and all kinds of baked goods. I can brine a brisket or cure a salmon in one. What else am I missing?

Mrs Beeton's toast sandwich

I saw this on the BBC website and I'm trying to figure out if it's for real or if they are putting me on:

"For a toast sandwich, take a very thin slice of bread and toast it. Once cold place it between two slices of bread, also sliced very thinly. Butter optional. Salt and pepper to taste."

Apparently this recipe is taken from the Book of Household Management, published in 1861 by the food writer Isabella Beeton. The Royal Society of Chemistry is promoting it as "the UK's cheapest meal."

I Actually Like The Ads on Serious Eats Now

In the past I've made unkind comments about some of the ads that run on Serious Eats, mostly having to do with obtrusive use of Flash and other scripted media. It got to the point where it was significantly slowing down my browser and I had to resort to ad-blocking software, which made my life easier but also caused me concern because I want SE and the other websites I visit frequently to be successful and profitable.

Anyway, I've noticed recently that certain ads are starting to appear again, in a good way. These are tasteful, static jpeg ads without any of the annoying flashiness or rollover pop-up stuff. They are even topically relevant, for example an ad for pasta that appears on a Talk thread about macaroni salad. Best of all, they are not blocked by my no-script software, because there is no script to block.

So I just wanted to say thanks to whoever is responsible for this development (possibly involving a company called AdChoices though I'm not sure about that). And if there's anyone out there from Illy, Safeway, Post or other advertisers who may be reading this, please be aware that I can see your ads and I'm going to make it a point to click through them and do whatever I can to support your products.

Why are onions so expensive?

I've never seen prices so high for regular, yellow storage onions before. $2 to $3 a pound. Usually they are less than a dollar. It may not seem like such a big deal, but I go through a lot of onions. These expensive ones are not very good quality either. I realize we are at the end of last Fall's dry onion crop and the new ones aren't in yet, but what's going on? Is there some sort of shortage we haven't been told about?

I can't buy bottled water anymore. Just can't.

We took a walk down to the ocean this weekend where, following a series of rather strong storm fronts, we found the entire beach to be littered with millions (more like billions?) of bits of plastic. Extraordinary. Most people have heard or read about the North Pacific Gyre and all the plastic debris in the ocean, but to see this in person was shocking. All the other people on the beach were walking around in a similar daze.

I am not an eco-warrior and I don't mean to sound preachy or depressing, especially on a generally upbeat food blog, but I can't get it out of my mind. The worst is the plastic bottle caps which will never decompose. The worst of the worst is the caps that you have to tear off just to get to the caps. Sigh. :(

Time for some cooking, I need to cheer myself up.

America's Test Kitchen frustrates me

I admire their website and magazines, and I watch their TV shows frequently. However, sometimes they do things that make no sense to me at all. On today's episode they were roasting a chicken in a dutch oven. The first thing Julia did was to take out the giblet bag and throw it directly into the trash. Then she grabbed the fat lobe from the cavity and threw it away in disgust, exclaiming "there's no flavor here." Okay, so maybe those parts had no use in their recipe, but to treat them as trash is irresponsible, in my opinion.

I could list other examples, such as, I think they generally use way too many disposable kitchen supplies like aluminum foil.

Does anyone else find their kitchen practices aggravating?

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