JCC Tomo-spiced karkana ribenes - the foodies' thread

NY Strip looks great. Not so sure on the pesto though - i like my steak with Worcesteshire Sauce.

 

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Rosh Hashannah dinner

I made the brisket (1st cut brisket, with rosemary, thyme, tomato, onions, red wine, carrots, parsley). mavjade made the sweet potato / apple casserole with pecans (and butter). And egg challah. Plus The Chocolate Block (a South African red wine that's amazing)...

 

Homemade ice cream cookie sandwich



Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Used THIS recipe from All Recipes with a few changes:

I used 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar (packed), instead of all granulated sugar.

The recipe states to back for 8-10 minutes, a lot of comments stated at 10 minutes they got really hard. I baked for 8 minutes, let stand for 5 then moved to cooling rack. Even at 5 minutes before moving, they were pretty fragile. But 3 days later they are still very soft.


Vietnamese Coffee Ice cream:
AKA The easiest ice cream I've ever made.

Used the below recipe from the book "The Perfect Scoop" by David Lebovitz


1 1/2 cups (600 g) of sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups brewed espresso or very strongly brewed coffee (I used concentrated cold brew and only diluted about a 1/4 more than half of what it called for.)
1/2 cup half and half (I used heavy cream because that's what we had.)
Big pinch of finely ground coffee

Whisk together the condensed milk, espresso, half-and-half and ground coffee. Chill mixture thoroughly then freeze in ice cream maker.

1 can of sweetened condensed milk is about a 1/4 cup short of the above called for 1 1/2 cups, I only had one can because I thought it would be 1 can. So I just reduced the entire recipe by 1/4 cup, which I'd recommend if you don't have anything to do with almost a whole second can of sweetened condensed milk.
I also didn't completely chill the mixture before placing it in my ice cream maker (because I was lazy and didn't want to wait), which I think made the ice cream a little more melty than normal because it wasn't as cold when it went in. It took about 20 minutes in my Cuisinart Ice-21.



Then it's super easy: cookie, big scoop of ice cream, cookie on top. The cookie is a little crumbly and the ice cream melts pretty fast so I'd recommend eating over a bowl.

 

Dear God, that sounds amazing. I love coffee ice cream.




Lasagna – Martinelli’s Little Italy, Salina, KS

Okay, one last meal at Martinelli’s. It was lasagna, the way it needs to be done. The noodle layers were soft and the meat and sauce were flavorful. It wasn’t overcooked, the biggest trap facing anyone attempting to prepare lasagna. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was better than the chicken parm. Eh, just get the salad. 3 stars.

tl;dr – lasagna how it should be done, but with nothing to differentiate it. 3 stars.

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That looks like a frozen Stouffer's lasagna.

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Lab-Cooking-Through/dp/0393081087

Cannot recommend this book enough. It's been amazing so far.

 

The Real Cubano – Taste & See Global Cuisine, Wichita, KS

Already talked quite a bit about Taste & See in Wichita, which is kind of one of my favorite restaurants ever. I’ll definitely get back there some day. Anyway, this is my last dish from there for a while. It’s a take on one of the old standbys of cuisine, the Cuban sandwich. As with the Oceanic Mac & Cheese, let me just quote the menu in order to describe this one: “The most popular Latin sandwich around the globe; juicy slow roasted adobo pork, smoked ham, emmental cheese, cornichon pickles with dijonaise cream in crunchy Cuban style bread.”

And, you guys, this is just ******* mindblowing. I’m going to say this is the most well-balanced meal I’ve ever had, in terms of textures & flavors & even kind of temperatures. It’s like every bite has exactly the right bit of everything in the sandwich. I can’t even really explain it, but nothing overwhelms anything else. It’s like the bite kind of shifts in your mouth from flavor to flavor. You take a bite and the crunch of the bread slips into the chewy ham, just slightly colder than anything else in the sandwich, and then then the melted cheese takes over with its slightly hotter temperature than everything else and that gooey texture and then the pickle crunch and bitterness and the bite of the Dijon cream. I can’t . . . I just can’t even. It’s a downright masterpiece. I actually threw my entire schedule off in order to stay over and have another meal at the Taste & See just because I really NEEDED to have this sandwich a second time. It’s definitely the best sandwich I’ve ever had, if you exclude hamburgers; even including hamburgers, it still might be. This is just . . . again, when people say this whole food project sounds weird, here’s one I can point them too. Eating this sandwich improved my life. No joke. 4 stars.

tl;dr – delicious take on the Cuban sandwich is one of the most perfect sandwiches ever, a mix of perfectly balanced flavors, textures and temperatures. 4 stars.

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I ****ing love a good Cuban.

Currently agonizing over what to make for Thanksgiving dessert. I'm leaning toward my go-to vanilla cake, but browning the butter with sage prior to making the cake and pairing it with a pumpkin cream cheese frosting. But I also want to do something with cranberries because they are SO UNDERAPPRECIATED like a pear cranberry pie but then I have OTHER cake ideas. This is hard.

 

Sweet-Sour Cole Slaw – Brookville Hotel, Abilene, KS

The Brookville Hotel was founded in the 1870s in Brookville, Kansas, then a bustling city due to a proposed railroad line coming through the area. Alas, the railroad went through Junction City instead and Brookville kind of dried up. But the Brookville Hotel endured and round about a hundred years ago, it began to be famous for its fried chicken dinner. The Brookville has passed through a lot of hands and the original building saw renovation after renovation until finally it was decided, in 2000, that a new building was going to have be built. The Hotel relocated to Abilene, KS, right off the interstate highway, in order to be more convenient. The building is essentially a replica of the original building, which had long ago transitioned into a restaurant instead of a hotel.

So, there are several food items on my list, so I’ll talk about them as they’re listed on the menu. First up, the sweet-sour cole slaw. I’m not a cole slaw kind of guy really, but sweet-sour sounded promising. It was fine, as cole slaw goes. The secret of cole slaw is, of course, the dressing/sauce/whatever; different ingredients pop up from time to time, but this is a classic cole slaw with a dressing that lives up to the name. Not something I could waste a lot of energy on; too much else going on. 2 stars.

tl;dr – historic restaurant continues to be famous for a lot of things; its cole slaw does not necessarily deserve to be one. 2 stars.

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Cream-Style Corn – Brookville Hotel, Abilene, KS

I guess people just like their corn different. Lots of great ways to eat it; on the cob is a classic. But for my money, there’s nothing quite as awesome as a cream-style sweet corn. It’s essentially what it sounds like, a sweet corn that’s been creamed into a kind of mush, I guess, but with the occasional whole kernel to be found. This was good, not spectacular. 3 stars.

tl;dr – cream-style, sweet corn is my preferred way of ingesting corn and this is good, if not particularly outstanding in any way. 3 stars.

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I like cream corn, but they don't seem to have that style here in the UK. They have canned corn, but not creamed.

 

I love Kenji's work at Serious Eats. Glad you're enjoying the book. I don't own it since I don't eat the majority of what he makes, but I 100% respect him and read all of his posts regardless of whether I can eat that food or not. If he did a vegan version, I'd snap that up immediately.

Last night I made sauteed bok choy, kale and onions (caramelized onions are like my crack.) So good. Also stuffed a red pepper with avocado (the avocado stuffed pepper becoming a much loved go to for me.)

I'm getting into very simple preparations, not just because of time, but when I'm home I like to eat simple and taste each component.


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Surprisingly,I had a very solid plain slice of pizza (cheese, sauce, crust) at Macy's Pizza bar last week. Should have ordered two.

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I thought the Thanksgiving Leftover recipe idea infographic at this link was briliant:

http://www.6sqft.com/infographic-tu...eftovers-into-one-of-these-innovative-dishes/

 

One-Half Skillet of Fried Chicken – Brookville Hotel, Abilene, KS

Talked about the Brookville last time; their whole thing is family-style fried chicken dinners. In fact, it is literally the only meal they serve there. So, yeah, skillet-fried chicken. It’s hard for this to be bad, unless you’re getting it from some kind of fast food place. There wasn’t anything particularly outstanding about this dish. Fried chicken had crispy batter and flavorful meat. Not at all dry. Like I say, nothing really unique about it. It was good. 3 stars.

tl;dr – certainly nothing bad here, but just as certainly nothing unique either; good ol’ fashioned fried chicken, which is fine. 3 stars.

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Mashed Potatoes w/Cream Gravy – Brookville Hotel, Abilene, KS

I mean, it’s a fried chicken dinner, it’s gonna have mashed potatoes with cream gravy and they’re gonna be fine, eight times out of ten. The other two times, they’ll be great one time and bad one time. Well, this is one of the eight times. It’s the Brookville, it must be average. 2 stars.

tl;dr – average. 2 stars.

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Didn't get a side view of it, but there's the cake I made for Thanksgiving. I really worried that most of it wouldn't get eaten because we had SO MUCH food but everyone did work on it.

And I made spicy sausage and sweet potato enchiladas the other day that were delish. I still have most sweet pots to use up and I'm thinking I'll make some sort of soup with them and some collards and pancetta.

 

So, bringing some of those to a Nets game soon?

 

Wrappin' up the Brookville, movin' on to the next target.




Relishes – Brookville Hotel, Abilene, KS

Um, relish, yeah. I’m not really big on relish. Whatever. This didn’t change my mind. 0 stars.

tl;dr – seriously?



Top Sirloin – Doc’s Steak House, Wichita, KS

Doc’s Steak House has been a Wichita institution since 1952; my journey’s took me to Wichita in October of last year and it seemed like fate; I arrived in Wichita a week prior to Doc’s closing its doors for good. The restaurant had, in recent years, started to lose money quite substantially and the efforts to find a new buyer hadn’t panned out. I arrived in town on a Saturday; the following Saturday was to be the final day the restaurant was open. This is always a risk on this food journey. One of the foundational sources for this project was the book 500 Things to Eat Before It’s Too Late. I’ve already bumped up against a couple of restaurants that had shut down; non-chain restaurants are closing down every day and America is losing a huge portion of its food heritage. If you support food as an art form or as an important cultural marker, then support your local small restaurants.

So, it seemed fate had smiled on me, given me the chance to check Doc’s off my list before the chance was lost forever. In retrospect, I’d say fate hadn’t so much smiled as decided to have a good laugh. The first item I tried was one of the biggest sellers, their basic Sirloin steak. And it was just dreadful. It was painfully tough and basically flavorless. It didn’t seem to have been spiced at all and, while I don’t expect steak to melt in the mouth, this steak was so tough that my jaw actually began to hurt from just how hard I was having to chew it. It was totally dry, not a hint of juice. It’s the worst steak I’ve ever had in my life. Well, anyone can have an off night. I went back to Doc’s later to try some other famous menu items; more about those later, but for now, as far as their Top Sirloin? I’d hate to try the bottom. 0 stars.

tl;dr – iconic, famous steak house features the worst steak I’ve ever tasted. 0 stars.

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^^^ Translation:

tl;dr -- Rogue and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Food Day.

(Oh, and I don't like relish either. Had it once when I visited my cousins in Philly, not going to try again.)

 

What are you guys fixing for Christmas this year? My mother-in-law is preparing a surprise for tonight, but tomorrow is my show and I'm roasting a whole stuffed piglet (okay, actually I'm just stuffing it, the neighbourhood bakery is doing the roasting ) And I will most definitely post a pic when I'm done.

PS: hudzu I'll be asking you for tips about what to do with the head.

 

We're Jewish so we're going out.

We're also bad Jews, so we're eating stone crabs in one of the older, more famous stone crab places in Florida.

 

Well I wish we were lucky enough to enjoy your roasted pig because that sounds delicious! Not sure what we'll be making. I'm going with my mom shortly to meet some old family friends downtown for drinks and snacks, and we'll probably go somewhere tonight with my dad and sister. And then dad talked about making his spaghetti for dinner tomorrow, which I really hope happens because it is soooo goooood.

And I'll, of course, be baking some cookies for everyone because I cannot escape baking.

 

We're going out for Chinese tomorrow after TFA.

My supervisor surprised us with a Christmas lunch earlier this week from Bill's Bar and Burger. I introduced the department to their Shrimp burger (which is several jumbo shrimp grilled in a circular mold and served with spicy coleslaw, pickles and avocados on a sesame seed bun.) We all order it. It's so damn good. Can't say the same thing about the french fries (which I order every time regardless), but, wow, that was a nice little surprise this past Tuesday.

Last night I brought home some raw vegan food for me and mom from the Juice Press chain. Their raw ravoli served on arugula is quite good (Thin slices of turnip stand in for the pasta, and the cashew - sunflower seed filling is good._ But the sun dried tomatoes and the spicy dipping sauce are what make it for me.

We also had their Strawberry superfood bowl, (really it's a pudding. Strawberries, coconut, dates sitting on a bed of almonds, cashews and probably more dates.) Of their dessert / breakfast "bowls" this is one is my favorite as it reminds me of their amazing Strawberry "shake" (which tastes like a full blown dairy filled shake.) I'll be honest it does not come anywhere the now shuttered Pure Food and Wine, but it's definitely more healthy, good to great tasting, filling and a lot cheaper than PFAW was (meaning I can get something there every day and stay in budget / eat healthier at work.)

 

Are you in New York? That's the only place I know Juice Press exists... I bought my dad a lot of things from there...

 

I'm doing roast turkey, sage & onion stuffing (packaged, not from scratch), gravy, and cranberry sauce with a glass of wine or two for lunch tomorrow. I'm on my own so it's only a small turkey but I still expect to have some leftovers.

 

Lasagna.