Traveling Feast

I’ve always had vivid dreams full of shoot-outs, chases, and sinister characters.  Along the way, I taught myself to fly, and I can usually wake-up just before Frankenstein or one of his cronies takes my head off or hit the ground when I fall off the top of the Space Needle.  My first novel (still in progress) developed from a dream.

In junior high I even experimented with what foods eaten just before bed would produce the most vivid dreams.  Peanut butter and dill pickles on Standish Farms Honey Wheat was most effective.  Yet food itself typically was just a backdrop in the dreams.

Last night was an exception.  In a dream last night two students finishing up advanced degrees in architecture who were harrassing a friend of mine described to me a dish that had an experimental cuisine spin… something along the lines of what you might find on your plate at Greg Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago.

True to form, in the dream, the title of the dish was bizarre: they called the dish a “Baby Wedgy.”  But I woke up wondering if the dish itself might have some potential.  It featured a smooth puree of fresh green beans about the consistency of baby food served hot with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream on top.   Mulling it over this morning, I wondered about the possibilities of savory whipped creams added to dishes like vegetables with hints of herbs or spices incorporated to add complexity.

What do you think?  Is it a culinary nightmare (possibly the after effects of a visit to Psycho Donuts) or is it worth a try?  Or have you ever come across a savory whipped cream?  I’d also be curious if you can remember any vivid food dreams yourself?  If not, let me suggest peanut butter and pickles.

This might have been the first year we’ve ever stayed home and simply eaten as a family for Thanksgiving. Our usual holiday agenda involved extended family or a meal with close friends where the actual meal preparation is divided up.

This year we did the meal in-house and from scratch with a few key local ingredients such as a turkey from Gary and So of Rocky Ridge Ranch and wild rice from St Maries, Idaho. Here is the run-down and rating for the meal.

Herb Roasted Turkey.  We scored with a November 09 Saveur recipe and a Rocky Ridge Ranch 15 ¼ pound turkey that we brined overnight in an orange juice brown sugar brine and then roasted.  Brining consultant: John Sowers.  Turkey Rating: 5 stars

Butternut Squash, Kale, and Cheddar Bread Pudding. This was designed as the vegetarian main dish for Megan’s benefit and came from the Molly Wizenberg’s recipe in November 09 Bon Appetit.  Karen loved it.  Megan didn’t.  I might have used a bit less kale, but like the flavor profile.  Rating: three stars

Wild Rice Stuffing with Wild Mushrooms and Dried Pears. Megan also suggested we try a wild rice stuffing this year and the caramelized onions and mushrooms in this smelled wonderful in the pan.  The dried pears were an interesting addition, but the finally result wasn’t as stunning as I expected.  Puzzling.  The recipe came from Epicurious.com and I’ll have to chew on what might bump up the flavor while I eat leftovers.  Rating: three stars

Mashed Potatoes. We used some monster potatoes we received as part of our CSA deliveries from Rocky Ridge Ranch.  Overcooked slightly but workable with butter, cream, and salt.  Rating: three stars

Pan Gravy. Brilliant.  Crafted on the fly from email notes from mom using flour to thicken the seriously wonderful pan drippings.  Rating: 5 stars

Fresh Green Beans. Organic beans ala Huckleberry’s since Costco was cleaned out.  Blanched and than sauteed with a bit of butter and salt.   Rating: 4 stars

Cy’s Cranberries. The brandy gives these baby’s a great kick.  The recipe is Cynthia Brown’s and was passed along by her sister, Renee Dickenson.  Rating: 5 stars

Raw Cranberry Orange Relish. Unable to do just one cranberry side, this simple and stunning relish from Mary Beth Baker was a great use of the 2nd pound of berries.  Rating: 5 stars

Grandma Gould’s Butter Rolls. This was the second recipe from the Gould family along with Cy’s Cranberry’s and was possibly the biggest hit of the holiday.  Thanks Renee.  Rating: 5 stars

Homemade Lemonade. Mark Bittman’s How-T0-Cook-Everything recipe.  Rating: three stars (due to whimpy lemons)

Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream. The crust is Donna Brigg’s shortening crust that she taught me to make in high school and the filling came off the Libby can.  It has been a while since I’ve made a crust but it was a respectable effort, but I need your suggestions on a better filling recipe or else an entirely different direction to go for dessert.  Came within seconds of turning the whipped cream into butter.  Rating: 2.5 stars

Perfectionism is a debilitating condition that kept a new electric smoker unopened in the garage for over six months.  Yet for some inexplicable reason the fears of horrible barbecue failure parted this week.

I drug the box out onto the back porch, unpacked and assembled the smoker, seasoned it, and threw in two pork roasts.  I don’t quite know what happened, but they were stunning even without any experience.  Now I’m obsessed.  I have checked out or special ordered nearly every book on the subject in the public library system.  One of my early favorites (full disclosure: I have yet to try a single recipe), is Paul Kirk’s book on Championship Barbecue Sauces.

The reason I am intrigued is he builds his book not around rote recipes but around step-by-step explanations of how to create your own personal sauces, marinades, dry rubs, wet rubs, and the like.  He explains ingredients, suggests proportions, offers tips, and describes techniques rather than just expecting you to duplicate his concoctions.  Of course he offers plenty of by-the-book options, but the build-it-yourself approach sounds like so much more fun.

This said, I’d love for any or all of you with smoking and barbecue experience to weigh in with your favorite books, techniques, tips, or…. why not… recipes.

Fried rice might sound a bit odd for breakfast, but this morning I was playing around with ways to use up some leftover shredded cabbage and start the day with some protein.  The result was simple and curiously satisfying as an unusual breakfast dish.  It ended up getting bonus points for also using up some quinoa and rice in the refrigerator.

QUINOA?! You may not stock quinoa in your kitchen currently, but if you don’t, that is the place to start.  Pronouced ‘KEEN-WAH,’ it is a leafy herb that grown in the Andes that produces an abundance of seeds. Part of the reason quinoa is remarkable is that it can be grown on rocky and hard packed soils where nothing else will grow, and the nutritional profile is impressive.  It is low in sugar and starch and high in fiber and unsaturated fats. It contains many essential vitamins and minerals as well as fifty percent more protein than wheat, rice and barley and this protein is high quality with a critical balance of the amino acids that are needed by the human body. Quinoa has bragging rights in the vegetable world for containing the amino acid lysine which normally found in meat, fish and eggs. It also provides phosphorous, calcium, iron, vitamin E and several of the B vitamins.

Here endeth the nutritional lesson and beginneth the recipe. Amen.

CRANKED PROTEIN BREAKFAST FRIED RICE

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter or sesame oil

1-2 cups thinly shredded cabbage

dash of salt

1 ½ cups leftover quinoa and rice mixture (see note below)

several dashes of soy sauce to taste

2 eggs, beaten

Directions

Melt butter in non-stick skillet and add cabbage and dash of salt. Cook for 1-2 minutes.
Stir in quinoa and rice and season with soy sauce to taste.
Add in the beaten eggs and cook, stirring constantly until the eggs are cooked to your liking.

2-3 servings

Note
In an effort to cut back on carbohydrates and bump up proteins, we have been cooking up a mixture of half rice, half quinoa for a side at dinner using the same proportions and cooking times we would for straight rice. This breakfast fried rice is a delicious way to use up leftovers as well as get both vegetables and protein from both the eggs and quinoa at start of the day.

I originally just made this by ‘feel’ so the specific measurements above are kitchen ‘guesstimates’ once it turned out well.  Let me know what you think.

The twist is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in place of several squares of a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar.

In our weekly CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) cooler from Rocky Ridge Ranch this week was a bundle of rhubarb.  I’ve also got some of my own happily taking over the backyard.  And rather than just make what I’ve made in the past, I’d be interested in any brilliant rhubarb recipes you might have locked up in your family recipe vault.  Despite the title above, I’m not actually desperate, but I am quite interested.

I have two great rhubarb recipes, both from my mother.  One is a moist rhubarb cake made with buttermilk that I find completely addictive.

The second is a rhubarb sauce that transforms ice cream and just about anything else you ladle it over.  Yet I am sure there are other possibilities out there, and you may have one of the best.  Let me know what rhubarb becomes in your kitchen.

For those of you who don’t know, Fry’s Electronics is a Bay Area phenomenon that took the idea of an electronics store with a few snack food items and turned it into a retail technology juggernaut that retains just enough geek to be credible to everyone else.

Each trip we make to the Bay Area to visit family includes a pilgrimage to Fry’s on Hamilton in Campbell.  This particular Fry’s store was designed on the outside to look vaguely like an Egyptian pyramid and decorated inside to resemble King Tut’s tomb.

My standard operating procedure on each pilgrimage includes at least some time in the PC role playing games section debating whether to buy a new game guaranteed to turn me into an obsessed computer addict for several weeks.  This trip I opted not to spend 29.95 and check out of the family for the first half of July.

But I did find something I couldn’t resist buying.

This would be Fry’s brand of bottled water.  Apparently gamers and geeks are not all slugging down Mountain Dew any more and Fry’s is angling to capture the H2O crowd standing in line waiting  to pay for their 109 inch LCD and Hyper-Pentium Liquid-Cooled Tower.

Now I rarely buy water in bottles both because I am happy with free water, and I hate the environmental impact of carting water in bottles all around our country (not to mentioned from exotic islands in the Pacific), but I broke my principle for one bottle from Fry’s.  While I have yet to figure out what the monkey has to do with technology, I think these bottles just may end up as a collector’s item.

Food Service Typos #3 and #4

I almost hate to post these for fear that the next printing of Ginger’s menu will remove them, and a great typo can be such a source of delight.  I should also add that there is no correlation at Ginger between the food and the occasional menu hiccups.  All the food to date has been excellent, but even the best food rarely makes me chuckle.  Certain typos do.

“Ceviche” isn’t the easiest word to spell, and an internet search suggests that “cevice” has almost become an alternate spelling.   But those dang collective singulars like “shrimp” will kill you.  Then there is the “slice baby vegetable” and the random exclamation points included throughout! the menu with no! discernible pattern.

“Chom Mein” sounds like it could be a soft noodle dish designed for anyone who forgot to bring their dentures.

Yet rather than face the accusation that all I documented photographically at Ginger were typos, let me also include a shot of a stellar roll: the Black Jack ($12).  Inside is spicy tuna and crab.  On top is  it albacore and (as you might observe) quite a bit of creativity that included shaved radish, slivered scallions, and sesame seeds.  The light vinaigrette on the plate added another unexpected and welcome note to the dish.

New England Trip #5

On a side street in New Haven, Connecticut, Frank Pepe opened his Pizzeria Napoletana in 1925 to serve up classic “tomato pies.”  And with a coal-fired, brick oven that hit 2200 degrees, he started turning out pizzas quickly famous for their thin blistered crispy-chewy crusts.

Today Frank Pepe’s feels something like a stripped-down food shrine with utilitarian booths identified by number and the faded pictures hung on the walls above.

We ended up in booth 19 after making the pilgrimage to Frank Pepe’s in New Haven for one reason only: the clam pizza.  Frank’s clam pizza is widely rumored to be the best on the planet.

Of course it is not unusual for restaurants to claim they have the very best of something, but more often than not these claims go unsubstantiated.  Frank Pepe’s clam pie is in a different category.  A few pizza fundamentalists might argue that you can find a better clam pie somewhere else, but even they have to admit it is Frank’s Pizzeria Napoletana that set the standard and remains the pie to beat.

I love clams.  I love pizza.  And Frank’s progeny and staff aren’t stingy.  Even the smallest pizza on the menu is substantial and thick with clams.  We ordered ours without mozzarella at the advice of our brisk and business-like waitress.  She didn’t beat around the bush when asked if a quintessential pie came with cheese or without.  “Without,” she said definitively and didn’t bother to explain.

Thirteen minutes later… without cheese… but with the promised thin crispy-chewy blistered crust our pie arrived at the table.

I confess to disappointment.  My West Coast pizza sensibilities and taste buds are decidedly New World and apparently assume a pizza isn’t a pizza without tomato sauce and melted cheese.  Faced with possibly the country’s best clam pizza, I found myself ogling the massive sausage pizza at Table 18 across the aisle.  It sported the same brilliant crust but was slathered with sauce and topped with a thick sheen of melted mozzarella.

Bottom line?  I’ll return to Frank Pepe’s next time I’m in New Haven.  I bet I’ll even order another classic clam pie on the premise that it might well grow on me.  But I’ll also order one of Frank’s original tomato pies and get the version – authentic or not – that includes cheese.

New England Trip #4

Allow me to make fun of myself as well as others.  One detail of the impressive lunch at The Hermitage that I failed to mention earlier was the very first bite I took.

Michael and Amanda’s enthusiastic description of the food at The Hermitage had me poised to dive in the moment something edible reached our table, and dive in I did.  My first glance at the first small plate to arrive suggested it was a soft cheese drizzled in extra virgin olive oil and a balsamic reduction.  “Ah!” I thought. “An amuse-bouche right out of the gate.  Fresh Vermont cheese.  Brilliant.”  And without pause, I cut off a generous (but not greedy) portion and popped it in my mouth.

The look on Amanda’s face warned me a second before my taste buds.

It wasn’t cheese at all, but butter.  Good butter, sure.  Drizzled in olive oil and a balsamic reduction, yes.  But straight butter.

No need to chew.  Just swallow, gulp water, and deal with the embarrassed flush on my cheeks.

Currently this amuse-bouche faux pas makes my Top Ten Stupid Restaurant Critic Dining Decisions.  If the very secrective oversight board that licenses restaurant critics worldwide hears about it, I am sure I will be put on critic probation for at least six months.

In a commercial break from the feeding frenzy in New England, I believe a new reoccurring topic on Traveling Feast is in order: food service typos.  I’ll post two recent entries below from Spokane, but I suspect you may be able to share a few of your own.  Please send in your favorites, and if you happened to snap a picture of the creative spelling attempt, I’d be delighted to get a copy.

Typo #1 – Chan’s Dragon Inn

I walked by this sign almost daily for 10 years before noticing something was amiss, and even now I’m curious if it was an actual blooper or a deliberate attempt to get the word to fit on the sign.

Typo #2 – Ginger Asian Bistro

Could A12 be the item on the menu used to clean out the walk-in after a slow weekend?  As a bonus, the dish also seems to include a cooking technique not common in the West.

I take great delight in typos in any restaurant setting since I’ve made my share of my own.  Many of my favorites, though, come from Asian restaurants. Not that this is unexpected; I’m sure I would completely butcher any menu I tried to translate into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai.

Be sure to pass along any favorites you’ve discovered.

When is the last time you had to face down a burger as tall as a shake?

Fifty-seven years ago Lovie Yancy started serving late-night burgers to musicians out of her Los Angeles home.  The demand for these burgers outgrew her kitchen and so she bought the vacant lot next door and put up a hamburger stand and dubbed it “Fatburger.”

Last week Fatburger arrived in the Inland Northwest thanks to the Kalispel Tribe and the Northern Quest Casino and Resort. Fatburger bills itself as “the last great hamburger stand” and boasts a huge cult following across the country and  locations in Hong Kong, Macao, and Dubai.

Step up to the counter and order, and you’ll hear the staff member waiting on you call out each item aloud and the rest of the crew yell back the order in unison. Ask for onion rings and the call out and response will be “Homemade!” since they slice and batter Fatburger rings daily on the premises. The shakes are also the real deal with hand-dipped hard ice cream and milk topped with whipped cream.

Yet the ultimate reason to drive to Airway Heights is for a Fatburger itself. Possibly the most customizable burger in the nation, it is made with real pride by the crew and built around fresh lean beef, seven standard ingredients (mustard, relish, onions, tomato, lettuce, and mayo), and four premium add-ons (cheese, bacon, chili, and… yes… and egg).

Order it the way you like it and pick your size. The medium is the standard burger with a 1/3 pound of beef for $4.25. But the obscene wonder on the menu is the monstrous XXXL with its giant bun and four ½ pound patties for $9.50. It almost needs to be classified as the eighth wonder of the world and must be seen to be believed. Eat a whole one, and the crew will take your picture and post it on the wall.

Yet even if you have no interest in an XXXL protein coma, take a risk at Fatburger and order yours with the egg. As strange as it sounds, it works.  I’m not a big hamburger relish fan so I leave off the relish, and next time I plan to order my Fatburger with grilled onions.  Note that ketchup is not an option at the counter.  While you an add it yourself at the table, Lovie thought ketchup was too strong a flavor and hid the taste of her great beef.  For my money, if anything is going to overpower the tastebuds it would be the mustard, but they have yet to consult me on this.  A second note: Fatburger does have its own secret recipes for its mayo and mustard.

Most fast food outlets have target service times for people in the drive-through lane.  McDonald’s, rumor has it, aims to have your food in your hand one minute and thirty seconds after your order is placed.  Fatburger goes the other direction.  They don’t start cooking your burger until the person at the counter yells over their shoulder “Medium!”  or “Double X!”  So expect to wait a bit: 6-8 minutes is the Fatburger target time.

But if you can live with slightly-less-than fast food, you will be in for a truly memorable meal from a hamburger stand that has retained a unique feel even in franchise form.  A strange, added bonus for Spokane burger fans: since the Fatburger is in the casino and keeps casino hours, it is open 24 hours a day every weekend.  Lovie Yancy would be proud.

That would be mayo and mustard up the nose.

Fatburger @ Northern Quest Casino
100 N Hayford Rd
Spokane, WA 99224
(509) 242-7000