Come on Hot Pockets, the (Juvenile) Jokes Write Themselves.

**Immature and Vulgar Humor Alert Again (is this necessary, I don't imagine my loyal readership is on the prudish side, but one can't be too careful)**

One of the many post-modern food products that I have somewhat of an unhealthy obsession with are sliders. In fact, one of my few claims to fame involves a slider recipe. I find the slider fad endlessly amusing and usually will be suckered into ordering them when I see them on a menu, often with horrible results. I have had some very bad sliders at some very good restaurants. So when I spied these slider-esque "Side Shots" care of the Hot Pockets dynasty, you know what I had to do. Buy them. Eat Them. Make nut-sack jokes (for the last time I made nut sack jokes about some sliders click here).

But seriously, the jokes write themselves with these little guys.

Exhibit #1



Exhibit #2 Ahem, Ahem.



Come on guys, these little things look like Truck Nuts. I laughed myself silly.

As for the taste, it hardly warrants mentioning. Here is the inside.



These guys were filled with some weird sort of burger puree. It was lumpy, and had a strong pickle/mustard flavor which I found weird. I didn't see pickles listed in couple hundred ingredients included in this chemistry project of a food. But they were definitely worth the cheap laugh. You have to live for the small things.

Bros Tacos, Corner of Ontario and Morris

I was on the way to Capital Q today to pick up a pound of pork when I passed Bros Tacos which is located at 319 Ontario. I had heard a couple good things about the place, so I decided to give it a whirl.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the establishment was this awesome t-shirt being offered for sale.



I am totally going to buy one of these. I love the Albany skyline and classic NY plate.

Reading the menu I was glad to see that Bros has options other then Taco Bell-esque crispy tacos filled with vaguely spicy meat sludge. They are peddling more traditional offerings wrapped in a couple of soft corn tortillas. I decided to sample a couple Bros Carne "Specialty Tacos" which included carne asada, salsa roja, pico de gallo, and avocado-lime sauce. On the menu we also have fish, shrimp, chicken, bbq chicken, pork, veggie, and American tacos (ground beef and cheese). I had to get mine to go, so here they are in a takeout container.



I thought these were really very good. The tortillas were very good quality, soft and full of corn flavor. There was a generous helping of flavorful meat and the sauces were aggressively spicy. I would definitely execute another expedition to Bros as these were the best tacos that I have had around these parts lately. In addition to the tacos, I ordered the wife a chicken burrito. In size it was roughly as gargantuan as a Bombers Burrito , maybe a little smaller.



I will have to issue an edit as my wife is not home yet, so I haven't cracked the burrito open.

Aside from tacos and burritos the menu also includes quesadillas, nachos, burgers, salads, tostadas, and darn it all, tamales. You know that I am a tamale freak, but I didn't notice this on the menu until after I left. I will definitely try them out next time I go. As for prices, the two tacos and burrito cost me about 14 dollars, really not that bad. I thought the food was worth the price. Give Bros Tacos a go if you are in that neck of the woods. Definitely quality grub to be had.

Return of the Nog. It is Egg Nog Season at Stewart's Again. Try the Nog Shake.

When the chilly winds of fall start to blow around these parts it fills some with expectant joy for the changing of the leaves, or maybe Thanksgiving. Not I. For me fall heralds the beginning of Nog season. We have discussed the fact that I am an egg nog fanatic in the past(see here for my controversial Aged Egg Nog Recipe). If you were reading my humble blog around this time last year you would know that as much as I love homemade nog, Stewart's Shops product is a very close second (click for my Homage to Stewart's and their nog). Well folks, the signs are out for all to see at Stewart's, the nog is back.

I was driving down New Scotland road the other day in Slingerlands and noticed a hand painted sign on the door of the Stewart's over there proclaiming "Egg Nog Milkshake." Oh sweet Bessy, where do I sign up! I had to stop and give this a whirl.



Oh yeah, that is good stuff right there. Sickly sweet and noggy, just how I liked it. You can't go wrong with Stewart's nog blended together with some good ol' Philly Vanilla of the same pedigree. By the way friends, did you know that Philly Vanilla is the "#1 best in the world?"



Apparently, Stewart's Vanilla took the prize at some world dairy expo. out in Wisconsin. That entitles them to some serious bragging rights which I am sure they will not be shy about. They certainly won't let us forget how tasty their milk is.



Anyway, hooray for nog.

Found Grocery List

I have always found GroceryLists.org fascinating. It is a collection of found grocery lists this guy started. He says, and I agree, that grocery lists are a fascinating glimpse into the life of some unknown stranger. I never thought that I would find my own strange and fascinating grocery list until the other day when I found this gem in the bottom of my cart (at Price Chopper in Guilderland of course).

The list includes (transcribed as written, the spelling errors are the best part):

Pantene Pro-V Shampoo
Milk
Blonoga
Bread.
Card Flowers
Muctard

There are several things that I like about this list. The first thing that I like is the period after bread. I imagine that this was where the original list ended. The writer then had a sudden epiphany (remembered mom's birthday, anniversary, etc...) and scrawled "card flowers" as an afterthought. Then the reality of dry bologna sandwiches occurred to our author who added "muctard" as something of a finale. I admire a man who takes his bologna with mustard, mayonnaise is for the morally corrupt.

I wonder if our author stuck to this list, did he really only buy these things? Can man live on milk, bologna, bread, and mustard alone? Sigh...

By the by, I was discussing with my wife the fact that I have never eaten a bologna sandwich (kind of like how I had never eaten a Big Mac until recently). I have to eat one soon. Anyone know where to get some good bologna?

BK Cupcake Milkshake

So my wife graciously went out to get me a fountain diet Coke from Burger King up the road (I am a horrible diet Coke addict). Knowing my penchant for strange fast food items she came home with the above pictured "Cupcake Milkshake," she knows me well. I could not find the cupcake shake on the official BK website, so perhaps it is a test item or in limited release. I don't know.

As you can see in the picture it has a whipped cream like substance on the top. Presumably, this is to imitate the frosting of a cupcake. Actually, the stuff tastes very much like cheap frosting. I liken it to the stuff you find on top of ice cream cakes. As for the shake, it was your standard over sweetened, artificial "cake batter" -esque flavored junk. This seems to be a very popular fad flavor in cheap iced cream lately, I don't really like it. I was not wowed by the shake, it is not good enough to offset the probably atrocious caloric weight. Of more interest to me than the shake was the following.



**Note** As usual this fast food review is laden with gutter mouth and potty humor, adults only (why do my fast food reviews always degenerate into vulgarity?)**Note**

Instead of a straw you get a extra thick "BK Pipe" from "Have It Your Way Technologies." This led to me making about 200 low brow, vulgar innuendos of the sort that I am sure you can imagine (you know smoking pipe, etc...). I told my wife that her mom is known to be able to suck a cupcake through a BK pipe in an ode to the classic "golf ball through a garden hose" line.

Bread Friend.

This is my Bread Friend (Rye Bread Friend to be exact), I got him at Price Chopper. You see, I was going over to my friend K8's downtown abode for some pre-Thanksgiving turkey eating practice (they got a new roaster thingy). I did not want to arrive empty handed, so I grabbed some moving stew, a gallon of my home brew (weird beer), and picked up the above pictured bread creature on the way. There was some debate as to what he is supposed to be, some thought bread bear and some thought bread man. I think he looks a little like the Reddit Alien.



Maybe he is a Breaddit.

Mr. Dave's Spicy Mustard Pickle Relish

If you remember, a few weeks ago I whipped up some Sriracha Pickles. By the way, these turned out awesome. The cucumbers absorbed a lot of the spiciness of the Sriracha in just the way I had hoped they would.



I made a butt load of these pickles, probably more then I will realistically use in about a year, so I was looking for a way to make use of a jar. I am no fan of your standard, neon green, pickle relish that you see a lot of. I do like some of the fancier versions of mustard relish that I have had in the past. I decided to muddle around and try to come up with my own recipe.

I started by finely chopping an entire quart jar of the Sriracha pickles and throwing them in a pot. For some extra spice and flavor I added about a 1/2 cup of my home pickled Anaheim chiles, also finely chopped.



To the veg I added about a tablespoon of dried mustard, maybe a third of a cup of sugar, a little salt, about a cup of water, a 1/4 cup or so of flour, a splash of additional vinegar, and enough turmeric to give it the garish yellow color that I am looking for. I brought it all to a simmer until nice and thick.



Upon tasting, it did not have the mustard punch I wanted, so I squirted in about a quarter cup of good ol' French's Yellow. The resulting relish was exactly what I had imagined. An aggressively spicy, tart/bitter/sweet amalgam redolent of both pickles and mustard. Perfect for many applications, be it with some good and sharp cheddar, or on top of a tube steak. I had some little jars which were perfect for portioning into manageable quantities.



I spooned in the relish and processed as per usual in boiling water.



Very satisfied with this recipe, can't wait until the next time I get a hot dog jones so I can test drive the stuff.

My New Hero

This guy films himself eating all of those strange delicacies that you find in the "Canned Meats and Seafood" aisle existent in most grocery stores. Above is Mykylc eating a can of potted meat. He also does smoked oysters, pork liver pate, canned sausage, etc... All of these things are items that I have seen around and been curious about. Who supports the market for this stuff? Aside from some old timers in the Army, I have never seen any of my contemporaries eating smoked oysters or canned sausage. I personally have a jar of sausage, but not for consumption, more for companionship. I also am a fan of homemade potted meat but have not yet tried the canned stuff. I actually have a multi paragraph, ranting, diatribe on a can of meat that I bought at Walmart the other day on the back burner (I am sure you are all excited for that). Anyhow, check out some of this guys other videos. I also read that he takes challenges, I am sure we could think of something for him to eat.

Are You Ready For Mr. Dave to Waste Precious Minutes of Your Life Discussing Eggs?

I have been purchasing local eggs from various producers at the CooP for the past couple of weeks. I have been doing this as sort of a challenge to my palate, can I detect a difference in flavor between the various producers? and more importantly is there a significant difference between the flavor of these eggs and the factory farmed oeufs a la grocery store? I am, for the purpose of this discussion, ignoring the environmental/economical benefits of buying local and concentrating solely on flavor. The most recent purchase (pictured above) is from Mountain Winds Farm out of Byrne.

At 3.50$ for the dozen this is double, if not triple, the price of grocery store eggs. This is a price that I am more than willing to pay on philosophical grounds, as long as certain standards for poultry production are met (I won't get into that here). Ok, maybe I will get into that a little. On the whole "buying local" thing, if the chickens that shat out these eggs were farmed under deplorable conditions, fed on franken-corn and whatnot I could give a crap if they are local. I ain't buyin'. I have not researched Mountain Winds Farm, so I am uninformed. But again, for the purpose of this discussion, I am evaluating only on taste.

This is the dozen eggs. Brown and varying in tone.



Now, I am a poached egg fanatic. Give me two or three poached eggs and some limp white toast and I am a happy man. I guess that makes me seem like I am about 87, but we all have our favorites. Poaching also gives you a good feel for the quality of the egg, so this has been my control for comparison. I am kind of a free form egg poacher, I don't use any tricks or gimmicks. I just kind of plop eggs into a couple inches of simmering water.



They look a mess in the pot, but come out rather nice.



Puncturing the yolk of a properly poached egg with the point of a triangle of toasted wonder bread (I don't want to hear it bread snobs, poached eggs ache for wonder bread) is one of my undisputed favorite moments in life. You have to live for the little things.



Verdict: The yolks were a more vibrant yellow than the pale globes you see in many generic eggs and the whites were nice and firm. There was a definite fresh flavor to the Mountain Winds Farm eggs which was good. I will say that the yolks did not have that melted-butter-esque richness of some super high quality eggs that I have had in the past. But all in all, they were very solid eggs. Superior in every way to the 99 cent dozen that you would otherwise pick up at Walmarts. I would be interested in learning a little more about the farm, so if you are informed, let me know.

Champurrado: For When You Feel Like Cocoa, But Also Kind of Want to Eat Some Gruel

Mexican beverages have always fascinated me. I still get grumpy about the fact that you can't get a big ol' horchata anywhere around here (although I did manage to find some horchata mix the other day, I will let you know how it is). But as we will all soon be in the icy grips of that wench who is the Upstate New York winter, I was in the mood for a hot beverage. Ever heard of atole? Atoles are a family of corn meal based hot beverages, yup you heard me right, they are made with masa (base ingredient for tamales, which we have discussed at length). One particular atole is Champurrado, a hot cocoa of sorts. I bastardized this recipe to make my mug.

I started with some maza.



A half cup of the masa goes into a pot with 2 1/4 cup milk and 1 1/2 cup water to heat gently. I substituted about a half cup of demerrera sugar for the piloncillo.



For the chocolate I used a half of a bar of Dagoba Xocolatl, which has some nice chile spice.



I gave it a good steady whisking until the mixture thickened to about the consistency of heavy cream (very heavy cream). You don't really want to bring this to a boil, unless you really want to scrub the burnt masa off of your pot. A bare simmer at most.



A step you definitely don't want to skip is to strain the Champurrado. My masa brand has some larger pieces of corn and other odd bits that you don't necessarily want in a beverage. I just used my normal kitchen sieve.



There you have it. A thick, frothy, rich mug of Champurrado. This is a much more substantial beverage then a wimpy cup of Swiss Miss hot cocoa, you feel like you ate a big bowl of grits after drinking it. It is good and sweet with a pleasant corn flavor, a big serving of this will keep your internal belly furnace stoked and warm through any cold Autumn day. I could think of many variations on the basic maza/milk/water/sugar mixture as a base. Things like vanilla, cinnamon, booze would not be out of place. I was pleased with Champurrado, you should give it a go.

Stewart's Hates Taxes

Apparently, Stewart's hates the man! This little bit of activism was spotted by myself on the bathroom door at the Slingerland's Stewart's on New Scotland Road. It is in the official "Stewart's Font," so it looks like this is endorsed by corporate. I wonder what has inspired this, have people been whining to Stewart's about higher prices? Does anyone else find it so interesting that an unassuming, local, gas/coffee/grocery mart is taking some sort of pseudo-political stance? One more reason to be fascinated by Stewart's Shops.

Oh yeah, and the owners of Stewart's just made a multi-million dollar donation to charity, FTW. Huzzah.

Giant Maple Bacon Pancake with Cinnamon Bacon

As I mentioned last post, I am moving in a couple weeks. Pursuant to this, I have been groggily stumbling through the moving process for the past couple of days. I have been somewhat pleased at the fact that several long forgotten/lost items have come to the surface during my rummaging. One thing found is a package of Maple Bacon Pancakes from BaconFreak.com that I won from a contest on Reddit.



I also had some cinnamon bacon from Altamont Orchards. By the way, if you haven't been to Altamont Orchards yet this fall, time is waning. Click the link and maybe my post will inspire you to make a trip.



I decided to sample the maple bacon pancake mix and the cinnamon bacon at the same time by making a giant pancake with integral bacon. This is not an original idea, I got the notion from some Dutch Pannekoeken recipes that I was looking at.

I started by frying the bacon until fairly crisp and then distributing it about the pan. There was a delicious smell of cinnamon while this bacon was cooking, almost like cinnamon rolls. I was excited.



While this was going I made the batter. Very simple, just add some water and mix. The maple bacon had odd little chunks and bits in it. I assumed that this was maybe dehydrated bacon, so my curiosity took hold and I gobbled one up. It was actually a little chunk of maple flavored stuff. As much as I love real maple syrup, I am very much not a fan of fake-ish maple flavored gunk like that which you would find in the center of cheap Valentine's day maple cream chocolates.



I was hoping that the power of the bacon in the batter would over come the somewhat icky maple flavor. I dumped the mix into the pan with the bacon to form one giant, dinner plate sized pancake.



I let the bottom brown and then finished the cooking process under a medium hot broiler in the oven. We are left with a giant pancake, beautifully patterned with thick bacon strips.



I poured on some 100% maple syrup and tucked in. Now just look at the picture, you would be expecting excellence from something entiled "Giant Maple Bacon Pancake with Cinnamon Bacon," wouldn't you? I know I was and I was left slightly disappointed. There were several issues that I had with both the pancake mix and the cinnamon bacon.

First, the bacon. Not a huge fan. I expected this to be very high quality, it looked thick and meaty and delicious. But alas, there was a lot of fake smoky flavor and it was so salty as to be almost inedible. Second, the pancake mix. If they nixed the maple chunks this would be better, I just couldn't get behind the aggressive, fake maple flavors. I have maple syrup myself, just give me the bacon.

Anyways, all of this is not to sour you on the idea of a giant, bacon pannekoek. This is a worthy concept, get some good quality bacon and use a simple batter mix and you are golden. I think maybe there was just a little too much going on in mine. However, it was an amusing experiment.

Moving Stew

I might as well break the news to anyone who is interested, the Mr. Dave clan is on the verge of a move. Yes, it is true, we shall be leaving Guilderland! Now don't get too worried, we are staying well within the confines of my beloved Albany County where my kith and kin have lived for generations. We are just moving a little south, actually, a little closer to downtown Albany (yet still in the icy embrace of the suburbs). Exciting, no?

As I contemplated the packing up process of my kitchen, I realized that I have (as I am sure many avid home cooks have) an excess of certain types of products, mostly canned. I don't think I can justify packing them up and moving them from one place to another by saying, "you never know when you are going to need those 5 cans of Goya garbanzo beans (although I am prone to nasty hummus joneses)." So, an idea was born- "Moving Stew." This will be the amalgam of many of the excess canned foods in my possession (mostly legumes and sauces), as well as excess frozen meat from my freezer.

I started with the meat group. I emptied my freezer of all non-essential portions of frozen meat, stuff that has been languishing there for a while. Also represented are some canned items.



Here we have some beef short ribs, ground chuck, ground pork shoulder, Italian sausage, a can of spam, as well as two cans of Armour Mac and Beef (I guess these count as meat group). I began by browning the lot in a giant pot (I didn't even bother to defrost, this is not a fussy stew). Revel in the pink beauty of the cubed spam.



Next we have the other canned products.



We have chickpeas, canned tomatoes, black beans, white beans, pinto beans, other unnamed beans, El Pato sauces, Heinz Vegetarian Beans, and who knows what else. For good measure I also threw in a half jar of Hemboldt's hot dog sauce. Probably am forgetting some stuff, but oh well. I kind of threw things in the pot as I found them like some sort of meth addled magician.



At this point the additions necessitated a pot change. I ended up having to use my giant 5 gallon brew kettle. Something tells me that the next couple batches of home brew are going to taste a little odd.



This all bubbled and stewed for many hours over low heat. At the end I was left with a rich, meaty, stew that was vaguely chili-esque. It was sweet, spicey, salty, and very meaty tasting, but not bad at all. All of the random ingredients came together and formed a very rich, but mellow flavored, amalgam. I had a bowl, and then threw the rest into containers and froze it. I am planning on having a moving party where I shall serve this to my lucky friends along with a bounty of the rices, daals, and pulses that I also have acquired in excess. It should be a good (and gassy) time, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many people will be scared (unjustifiably so) of the moving stew. Trust me, it really is pretty tasty!

ALDI Location in Schenectady

I don't know when this happened, but we got an ALDI location over in Schenectady. I happened upon it by accident the other day, it is at 1594 State Street (picture above is not the Schenectady location, I forgot to take a picture). If you remember, I have had an odd fascination with the concept of ALDI (see here for more on this, my first trip as well) for quite a while. Something about the German efficiency of the whole operation is admirable to me. I will have to say that the Orwellian, cheap food for the proletariat feel of the place kind of flies in the face of my food philosophy, but I can't help it. I find ALDI to be deliciously weird.

Sometimes they get random, German made products (look for "Special Purchase") at cut rate prices. I found this Deutsch Kuche (which I think is an ALDI proprietary brand) Marzipan Stolen for like 2.89$. I found it funny that it claimed on the package, "at least 10% luxury marzipan filling." I love the taste of luxury.



Also, we have White Castle frozen sliders for 3.29$! I think that is about half what you pay at other local grocery stores. Go buy some and think of a White Castle recipe like me and get published in a novelty cook book, ftw.



I found something else that gave me an idea. I found these boneless, shaped, "BBQ", pork rib thingys. A big ol' box for 2.69$.



Now look real close at that picture, what do those extruded meat delicacies remind you of? Anything? Anything? Well, they sure as shit remind me of the meaty center of the holy of holies of fast food sandwiches, the McRib. I don't care what any of you people have to say, I love McRibs. I am not a big fast food guy, I had never even had a Big Mac until recently, but I have always hungered for the saccharin sweetness of the saucy McRib. It is vaguely annoying that McDonald's only offers it sporadically, see here for the McRib locator. But anyways, I have those sweet Sriracha Pickles that I made some time ago (pickles are an essential ingredient in the McRib), so I thought it might be fun to try my had at recreating an authentic, Mr. Dave style, version of the McDonald's sandwich. Don't get excited, this is still in the planning stages. I think the main problem will be recreating the bread, I am thinking about steaming dough and then finishing it off in the oven to recreate that unique, wet, sponginess of fast food rolls. We shall see.

Anyhow, check out ALDI if you have a minute. It is an interesting experience, remember to bring cash.

What Made Me Smile Today. A Toy.

Today was a very sad day in Mr. Dave's world, I won't get into that here, so I thought I would share something that made me smile before the badness set in. I found the above pictured toy package at Target this morning. Apparently, Fisher Price has issued a kind of classic toys collection. They are offering Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Chatter Telephones, Bouncy Bees, and all other manner of classic, old timey toys. All in their classic packaging. Also, they have the above pictured "Hall of Fame Toy Package." This includes a tin of Crayola Crayons, Silly Putty, a Slinky, and a Duncan YoYo. Nostalgia literally punched me in the face when I saw this. If you gave me this circa 1989, I do believe I would have shit. I had to buy the package for myself, Giblet got the Chatty Telephone.



I do believe at this age she would attempt to eat Tinker Toys or she would have got those too.



This is stuff from a day when men where men and toys were toys. It was all I could do not to buy the deluxe Lincoln Log set for myself. If you have a wee 'un on your list for this years X-Mas season, consider these offerings. I know that the little ones in my family circle will be showered with this stuff.

Tabbouleh Song. I Share Yet Another Pseudo-Food Oriented Video With My Peoples.

This is from GoRemy, click and check out his other videos, they are all pretty good. He has another really funny one about hummus that manages to rhyme "wienie" with "tahini." Anyways, thought you all might enjoy a song about tabbouleh. I love tabbouleh. Go over to Phoenicians on Central Ave, they have good tabbouleh. Tabbouleh, tabbouleh, tabbouleh.

See here for some other weird videos, the "Extreme Rice" one has links to older video posts that I never tagged.

99 Cent Snack of the Day: Asian Market Pork Bun

In the wake of our present economic crisis, I have decided to do a series of posts (if I remember and don't get distracted) dedicated to locally available snacks that still cost under 1 dollar, if I can find them. I welcome any input from my loyal readership as to where I should search for such delicacies. Let me know if you can think of something I could try.

Me and the Wife were driving around today fairly aimlessly when we decided (as happens at least once every couple of weeks) to stop by the Asian Market on Central Ave, you know, the one by McNutt Ave. (chortle). My belly was grumbling a wee bit so I decided to indulge myself with a Steamed Pork Bun. I have been kind of beating the bao thing to death lately, I know, but they are my favorite morsel of the moment. So sorry.

The Asian Market buns are top notch, and only 99 cents! For a big, soft, steamy, pork filled pillow from heaven this is a steal. They have the perfect balance of dough to filling. There is at least 2 or 3 tablespoons of delicious, sweet/salty, red cooked pork in the middle of a ball of slightly sweet steamed dough.



You order them out of a steam case that stands right next to a goodly and righteous roasty meat case.



You can buy all of these crispy delights (duck, pork, ribs, etc...) by weight, also very reasonably priced. One more reason to love this market, sorry to beat a dead horse.

Hope to follow this up with some other sub-one-buck delights soon. Cheers.

A Pet Peeve, Veal Chops, Quick Tomato Sauce, Giblet's Costume

I apologize for the relative drought in posts, I have been ungodly busy as of late. That explains the somewhat frenetic nature of this post, I am trying to squeeze it in before Giblet starts attempting to murder the cats as is her want lately.

I got a hold on some nice looking veal loin chops (bone in, pictured above). This is not a cut you see too horrible much of outside of restaurants, so I took the opportunity and plunked down the 11 dollars for the 2 smallish chops. Now, here is were my pet peeve comes in regarding packaged meat (I bought these at a grocery store, as much as I would love to be the "only buys meat at a local butcher guy" my lack of time intervenes). My pet peeve is that the chops are already cut into chops. I know that this is in the name of convenience for the people, but I don't like paying extra for one swipe of a butcher's knife. This is aside from the fact that anytime you increase the surface area of meat, you increase the potential for bacterial growth. Plus, I would like to decide how thick or thin to make me chops, or if I want chops at all. Just give me the requisite poundage in a hunk and I will sort it out me self.

There is a new fad amongst some restaurant chefs as to how they cook large steaks and chops (see here for a good article), and I wanted to test it out. The veal I had was a little thin for this so I improvised! A little twine later and we have thickness.



You can read the article for details, but basically the cooking method I used involves cooking the meat on all of its sides for a relatively long time over relatively low heat. This is opposed to the more common method of pan searing and then finishing in the oven. Here is the veal during some edge cooking.



Finally, after all of the sides were browned (I added some good butter to assist browning), I browned some smallish tatties in the grease. Voila, we have a plate of browned starch, fat, and meat! Good, I'm like a bear and I am outside a lot, I need my coat of winter fat.



I do think that the slow, pan roasting idea produces good results. You get a uniform pinkness throughout, not the ring of grey with a pink center you often get with pan searing.



After devouring the meat I reserved the bones, lots of good flavor there, I always save bones. If I am going to pay good money for meat, I am going to extract every bit of flavor out of it that I can. My freezer is often a little scary from all of the various bits of carcass I keep there. The fresh veal bones, with quite a bit of meat still attached, got plopped into a simmering pot of home canned tomatoes (I should do a post on all of the canning that I have been up to, perhaps, perhaps) that I simply crushed up by squeezing with my hand. A little salt and pepper and that is pretty much it (I may have scraped all of the grease and brown bits out of the veal cooking pan into the pot as well). I let it reduce for about 30-45.



This will be a delicious sauce to simply dress some pasta. I am really a pasta sauce minimalist sometimes, especially with tomatoes that I know are good quality. You don't need to0 much more than the flavor from the meat.

Now, I will leave you with a picture of Giblet in one of her Halloween costumes (she was also a duck and the Incredible Hulk at various points throughout the day). This is her in her R2D2 costume. She is preparing to launch a handful of leaves at the Deathstar. The force is strong with this one.

Hot Dog Bao (Steamed Buns)

This is one of those times when two simultaneous kitchen projects somehow came together to form one glorious and tasty concoction. I was taste testing Helmbold's hot dog sauce for a comparison with the Hot Dog Charlie's chili sauce, and I was also whipping up some Baozi (steamed buns) as a way to utilize some left over red pork. Somewhere during the evening the idea for Hot Dog Bao came to me like a flash of lighting from the heavens! I often find inspiration in the glorious tube steak (does that sound bad?).

I will start out by sharing the original idea that I had, we shall get to the hot dog bao in a moment. As I said before, I had some left over red pork from Lam's Kitchen in Guilderland. They do a fairly good job of the pork, it is cheesy, sweet, with a garish artificial redness, but I like it anyways.



I whipped up some airy, bao dough according to this recipe. Make sure you let it have a really good rise, bao should be airy little pillows of dough.



I halved the dough, made it into a little dough snake, and hacked it up into equal, golf ball sized balls. I flattened these out by hand and filled with about a table spoon of pork. I had chopped the pork up fairly fine and mixed in a little hoisin sauce.



The bao went into my little steaming tray to rise for about an hour, this is them pre-rise.



I steamed the buns for about 30 minutes. They came out all shiny and soft, looking very like legit cha siu bao that I have bought pre-made at the Asian Markets. The dough was soft and there was just enough porky goodness in the center.



I had a bunch of dough left when I ran out of pork, and this is when divine inspiration struck. I saw the pile of Helmbold's little dogs that I had cooked and the hot dog sauce bubbling away on the stove and immediately decided that this would make a superlative steamed bun filling.

I used about an inch of dog and a teaspoon of chili for the center of each bun.



These steamed for about 30 minutes as well, they came out looking like unassuming steamed buns. No hint to the hot dog center could be discerned from the outside. I thought that this one looked especially good.



And here it is ripped open to display the wursty center. Maybe this pic is a little NSFW? or maybe I just have a dirty mind.



Anyway, the hot dog bao were really good. A lot of hot dog carts steam their buns anyways, so this is not a huge departure from normality. As I am planning to have a hot-dog-stravaganza imminently, I froze most of these to share with friends at a later date. My full review of the Helmbold's hot dog sauce will be coming in the next couple days. I trust that everyone will have a pleasant weekend.

Mr. Dave Is Published! Recipe Included in the "This is Why You're Fat" Book!

If you haven't already, go check out This is Why You're Fat. It is a great collection of humorous and fat laden concoctions that people on the internets have come up with. Some time ago I was contacted by the the authors of the site regarding a book that they were planning. They asked if they might include my recipe for White Castle Casserole. Being a benevolent blogmeister, I agreed without hesitation. Well, my pre-ordered copy arrived today and I was happy to see a full page spread!



Anyhow, not to self indulgently endorse a product but this is quite the amusing little coffee table book. The only thing I was upset about is that I forgot to let them know that I stopped paying for the ridiculousfoodsociety.com domain, and that is how they credited me. I guess anyone who is interested will figure out a way to get to the blogspot/new addresses.

I leave you with the sound of me patting myself on the back.

Hotdogs. Man vs. Bear... For Your Monday Viewing Pleasure (Can You Tell I Was Too Lazy to Post Anything Worthwhile This Weekend?)

This is an oldy, but maybe some of you all haven't seen it. The indomitable Kobayashi goes toe to toe with a brown bear in a hot dog eating contest, FTW. I have yet another hot dog post coming shortly, so I guess this popped into my mind as sort of a preamble to that. So forgive me for wasting a couple minutes of your life. By the way, for a little non sequitur humor, I think I should challenge a local black bear to a tea drinking contest. My readers would come to cheer, no?

Aged Egg Nog. Now is the Time to Start Making Yours for the Christmas Season.

**EDIT NUMERO DOS**

Absolutely nobody try this. It is probably poisonous. If you make this you might die. Let me alone enjoy the frothy goodness. That is my legal disclaimer. Anyone who made this prior to this warning, burn the lot ceremoniously in your front yard. I do believe the Taliban is using aged nog to further their agenda in the east. Aged nog is an instrument of Satan, used to bath sinners in the whorey netherworld. Again, this eggnog will kill you and most of your family. Live in fear. Ahhhhhhhh.... That is me in my death knell from drinking the stuff. Please help, gurgle gurgle....

**EDIT NUMERO DOS***

**EDIT**

Read this, Old But Not Lethal: Why raw eggs in aged eggnog are safe.. Should answer the safety questions. But like I said, do this at your own risk ye worryworts. To freak out the squares even more, do you know that eggs, in their shells, at room temperature, last for about 3 weeks? How the hell do you think humans survived for the thousands of years in the P.R.E. (pre-refrigerator era)?

**EDIT**

I am a nog fanatic. I love eggnog in all of its incarnations, in fact, one of my main reasons for loving Stewart's is that they have eggnog all of the year round. Did you know that the secret to really good, homemade, spiced (i.e. with tons of booze) eggnog is age? That is right, I know it sounds kind of weird to age a liquid that is composed in part by raw eggs, but it is true. The relatively high alcohol content of the frothy brew keeps bacterial growth in check. However, you still want to use fresh ingredients and be fairly sterile when you are throwing this together.

While I was gathering the nog ingredients, something occurred to me. This really must have been a special beverage back in old timey times. It represents a significant investment to purchase all of the necessary ingredients for good eggnog. This was a concoction perfect for impressing friends and family during the holidays and I guess it was a good way of showing your guests how much you cared about them. I wanted to use the freshest, local dairy products that I could find, so I stopped by Gade Farm for the milk. They have fresh, whole milk in glass bottles! You pay a deposit on the bottles and then you can return them when you buy new milk. The milk is from Meadowbrook Farms and Dairy out of Clarksville, NY. I will be using 1/2 gallon for my recipe.



I got some pretty brown eggs from the Coop on Central Ave. I forget which farm they were from. You need a dozen yolks (seperated) for the nog.



I forgot to pickup cream at both Gade Farm and the Coop, so I had to run over to Price Chopper to grab the requisite cup of heavy cream.



Now on to the good stuff, the booze. You are going to want to be pretty aggressive with the alcohol as this is what is going to keep your product safe. I used one bottle (liter) of Old Granddaddy Bourbon, a cup of dark rum, and a cup of Courvoisier Cognac.



This is going to make for a very boozy nog, if you have light drinkers around you might want to go half and half with virgin nog when serving this. I happen to enjoy the heady flavors of the rum and bourbon in copious amounts.

So to reiterate the ingredients we have: 1/2 gallon milk, 1 cup heavy cream, 12 egg yolks, 2 cups sugar, 1 liter bourbon, 1 cup Cognac, and 1 cup dark rum. Combine all in a suitable, sterile glass gallon jug. I use the same ones that I use for bottling beer. Mix thoroughly and store in your fridge.



I find that at least a month's ageing is best, I plan on not breaking this particular nog out until about a week before X-mas. You can make it now and drink it next Christmas if you want, as long as it doesn't start to smell funky or turn green you should be good. It is going to take a lot of will power for me not to crack it open and consume the gallon in sneaky nips between now and the holiday season, but I am going to try.

Not to Belabour a Point... But Now They Gots Pork Bellies at P-Chops!

I know that my very last post was about an interesting meat that I found at Price Chopper (Goat Meat), and maybe I am getting boring here, but I had to share this as well. I happened to be strolling through P-Choppers today to get a last minute item for the concoction I am whipping up for a subsequent post. I immediately spotted something strange and wonderful amongst the pork in the meat case, pork bellies! Pork Bellies are a subject to which I have devoted more than a little time in my life (click here for some posts on this). Usually you have to go to either the Asian Market or the Butcher to get decent bellies, finding them in a run of the mill, suburban grocery store is rare. It seems that P-Chops is branching out in terms of their meat selection, which is good no?

Goat Meat... At P-Chops!

What did I find at P-Chops tonight (see here for my ongoing Price Chopper obsession, it is becoming a problem) you ask? Goat meat! Now I know you can get goat meat at the local Asian Markets (sort of sketchy looking), but this was especially nice looking stuff. Only 2.79$ a pound for "Australian Frozen Goat Meat." Not a bad price for the meaty, vibrantly colored, sections of goat leg. As I bought the stuff frozen, I do not feel rushed to cook it. I am awaiting a good recipe to fall into my lap, but I am thinking goat curry. We shall see.

Eating Over the Sink. Ahhhh...Parenthood.

What is your favorite quick meal to be consumed whilst standing and hunched over your kitchen sink with a little howling human in the next room? We should discuss. This is my story.

Today I am home minding the 9 month old, whirlwind, wild woman that is my lovely young issue, Lady Giblet. I am pretty sure that she woke up bent on destruction (of cats, lamps, etc...), so I did not have the opportunity to cook and eat a leisurely luncheon. Luckily, it just so happened that I had on hand the makings of the handheld, beef, cheese, and bread delivery system that we call the hamburger sandwich.

Remember that Australian beef tenderloin that I was squawking about a couple weeks ago? Well, I forgot to photograph what I did with the actual tenderloin (roasted it and made a bacon/mustard/maple glaze, delivered it to a sick friend). But I hear it was good. As for the trimmings (side meat/chain meat) I ground it all up with my trusty meat grinder and formed it into smallish burger patties, about the size of ones you would get in a standard fast food burger. I separated these with some foil and froze them for future consumption. I cooked up a few last night, the wife was not very hungry so there were leftovers. I grabbed a couple of these, warmed them in the microwave, smeared on some goat cheese, placed on some toasted whole wheat bread, finished with some Tiger Sauce and devoured the impromptu double cheeseburger in about 30 seconds. Ugly, but really very good. That Australian beef was a steal, I would buy it again in a heartbeat.

Sriracha Pickles

I guess it is a little late in the season for me to get in the pickling/canning mode, but better late than never. I randomly had the idea to make Sriracha Pickles. You see, I recently purchased a mandoline and have been itching to use it.



My mandoline came with a crinkle cut blade perfect for making pickle chips. I always enjoy those expensive, gimmicky, spicy pickles that have been popping up lately and it seemed to me that I could recreate these at home for a pittance. I decided upon Sriracha as my main source of flavor.



I am almost ashamed to be writing about Sriracha. It has become such a clichéd fad among Top Chef contestants and "foodies" (I shudder at typing that word, I hate it so), that I almost don't want to hear any more about the red stuff. But it really is a work horse condiment and will bring both garlic and heat to my pickle party.

I started by rinsing a few pounds of smallish cucumbers and subsequently chopped them up into lovely, crinkly rounds with the mandoline (a great addition to my kitchen arsenal).



I boiled up a brine of 6 cups water, 2 cups white vinegar, and 1/3 cup pickling salt. 2 sterilized 1 quart ball jars got loosely packed with the pickle chips. I added about 1/4 cup of Sriracha to each jar and then poured the hot brine over the cucumbers. I sealed the jars and processed them in boiling water for 15 minutes.



I figure the pickles should be tart and spicy enough in a few weeks. I have high hopes for these guys, I think they will be the perfect pulled pork sandwich toppers. Maybe not though, sometimes my experiments turn out a little funky. We shall see.

RFS: A Retrospective. 10 Most Trafficked Posts (Sort Of)

Don't know why, but I was waxing a little nostalgic about my humble blogger beginnings. Thought maybe new readers would like a look to the past. I started the Ridiculous Food Society blog as kind of a gag, just a way to pass the time. Early on, I embraced the Bacon meme and pretty much became a one trick pony (as you can see by the following list). After that I morphed into a site that attempts to celebrate the food and culture of our own little corner of the world. These are the top ten most trafficked posts in no particular order. I randomized it because I didn't want everyone to click only the first couple, I am annoying that way. By the way, I think there are much better posts in my archives if you feel like searching. This is not necessarily my own top ten, so I also took the liberty of sneaking one or two of my favorites in there.

1. Canned Haggis, Tatties, and Neeps

2. Candied Bacon Brioche Sticky Buns with Pecan and Pistachio

3. Prison Cuisine: "Spread" and Frito Tamale

4. The Ultimate Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwich

5. Homage to Stewart's

6. Homemade Bacon Butter

7. White Castle and Bacon Breakfast Break

8. Bacon Rice Krispies Treats

9. The Capital Region Hot Dog Micro-Region

10. Red Feather Canned Butter and Cheese Review

Kosher-Chops. Kosher Section at the Sort of New Price Choppers on Central.

I don't know how this escaped my notice, but the Price Chopper over in the plaza with Big Lots on Central Ave. (just west of 155 near K-Mart) has morphed itself into a shiny, new, "Market Center." I learned about this via some comments on the Fussy Little Blog's post about knishes. Mr. Fussy has been doing a series of posts about Jewish/Kosher Deli foods in preparation for tonight's lecture on the subject over at UAlbany (Go Danes, that is my alma matter). Apparently, this particular P-Chops has a very large Kosher section to include a butcher. If you have read my blog you know that I have a strange love of Price Chopper and all of its weirdness (click to read many of the articles I have devoted to the subject). Needless to say I had to check it out.

Walking in, I noticed that this P-chops was much more stylish and polished then my usual Guilderland location. Just look at the gleaming produce section.



Check out the Prussian order of these greens, almost too orderly.



There is even a little "cafe" type area where you can eat or drink coffee.



This Chopper offers a lot of pre-made sandwiches, hot soups, salads, and things like that so I guess this is nice. It is almost like the Golubs (owners of the chain) are trying to steal some of Wegmans' thunder. Actually, that is what this "Market Center" reminded me of, a Wegmans.

Moving on to the Kosher section, my reason for being there.



There is a tolerably large selection of Kosher/Israeli dry goods as Price Chopper is not shy to let you know.



There is a nice selection of grocery type products, but I was not hugely impressed. Nothing really exotic or exciting, mostly stuff that I have seen around. The true star of the Kosher market was the freezer section. There we find a plethora of goodies. The first thing that drew my was, sitting right next to each other, both schmaltz and chicken livers (click for Mr. Fussy's discussion of chopped livers).



Next, there were a bunch of knishes. Here are the frozen ones.



There were also some fresh ones in a cold case, they looked a little sad. I did not get one, I will buy the Knish Knosh ones from Eats when I need a knish fix. There was also some noodle kugle and a couple other things.



I purchased some of the frozen, fried, square ones. I remember eating these as a kid, but I can't really remember where my parents would get them. I mostly remember absolutely covering them in brown mustard, I have always loved mustard.

I also got some premade falafel balls.



As well as some frozen vegetarian kibbeh, discounted from 8.99 to 2.99! I love a good deal and I love me some kibbeh.



There was a small selection of kosher meats as well as cold cuts. I forgot to take a picture, sorry. All in all, a pretty good selection of kosher goods. Check it out if you are into that sort of thing.

I was pretty impressed with this new Price Chopper as a whole. There was a much bigger selection of almost everything than what is found at my usual Guilderland spot. Simple things like the fact that they sell the Hembold's 4 inchers all of the time make it an excellent shopping experience.



I think that when I need to do a major shop, I might just travel the extra couple miles to the Market Center. Although, I will have to say that that part of Colonie makes me sad somehow. It is just so ugly and drab, especially in the winter when the snow gets all dirty. It makes me depressed for some reason that I don't really understand. A ride up Central Ave. in fall or winter gives Mr. Dave the blues.

An Exception to the Rule. Mr. Subb is Serving a Mongrel Neba.

So, I stopped at the drive-thru at the Burger King on Western Ave. in Guilderland for a large, fountain, diet Coke. I openly admit to being completely addicted to the fizzy, chemical brew which is probably wreaking havoc on my poor kidneys and prostate. But even Mr. Dave must have a few vices. Anyways, the above image flashed across the little intercom/TV contraption. It proudly proclaimed, "Everything tastes better with bacon and cheese." I would generally agree with this statement in most cases (albeit not necessarily with Burger Kings particular brand of cheese and bacon), but there are certain exceptions.

Stay with me here, I am getting to the point directly. An adolescent voice piped up from the intercom stating that the register was broken and I would have to come inside to order. Fie I say, if I am going to get my lazy kiester out of my Toyota, I am going to go ahead and patronize the Mr. Subb in the plaza 100 feet away from the BK.

We have already discussed my love for the Neba, I even wondered if it should be named the quintessential Capital Region food. For new readers I shall summarize. The Neba is a hot roast beef and jus sandwich originally served by Mike's Neba locations in the Albany, NY area. It had a fierce local following, but disappeared for many years, only to be resurrected by Mr. Subb. Mr. Subb is the legacy restaurant to Mike's Neba, sharing the same (but not original) owner of Mike's Neba. Confuse anyone?

Anyhow, walking into the Mr. Subb, I noticed this new section of the menu board.



It is offering Neba melts, Nebas with bacon/cheddar, ham and cheese Nebas?!? What is this abomination? For shame, for shame! The glory of the Neba lies with its simplicity, the lovely combination of jus, beef, and roll. Perhaps a little horseradish/horseradish sauce for kick, but that is it. As if to punctuate my point about the glory of bare beef and bread, an older gentlemen came in and ordered a "Hot Beef." There is no Hot Beef on the menu, this is the old language, but the guy at the counter new what he was talking about. The Hot Beef is a kissing cousin to the Neba. It is simply warmed roast beef on a sub roll. Nothing else. The Mr. Subb kid knowingly asked, "No cheese or anything, right?" The wizened gentlemen answered with an emphatic, "Bah, noooo."

You see, I think that modern food offerings have gone a little crazy with condiments/additions/etc... Especially in the sandwich/sub category. It is almost as if people are becoming hardwired to expect something on top of whatever they are eating. Places like Subway which base their business model on piling 15 odd items on to any given sandwich are to blame for this. It is my opinion that Subway does this to cover up the horrid, processed taste of their meats and cheeses with all of the extras. Myself, as much as I love cheese and bacon, I will take the simple Neba without the greasy duo. Intending to buy only the soda, I had to indulge myself in beefy bliss.



So, you are wrong Mr. Burger King telecom/TV apparatus. Not everything tastes better with bacon and cheese. If you are going to get a Neba, resist the urge for all of the additions and savor the original. Just a little sage advice from Mr. Dave.

Bunny With Bacon and Chestnut

Mr. Dave tired. Not much time for words, please forgive abbreviated nature of post.

Got bunny. Chopped bunny up.



Mmmm... Bacons. Altamont Orchards Bacons.



Bacons goes in pan. Gives delicious grease. Whole wheat flour, salt, pepper on bunny pieces. In pan till brown.



Chestnut puree. Random pantry item FTW.



1 cup chestnut puree, 2 cup chicken stock, 3/4 cup wine (white, you choose), into pan. Simmer.



Sauce reduces, meat becomes tender (30-45 minutes). Ugly. Delicious.



Chestnut, bacon, rabbit... Tastes like fall.

More Things In Life Should Have a Butter Button (Popcorn Vending Machine)

Seen at Colonie Center. A bonafide, air popped, popcorn machine. Only a dollar. Serve yourself. Don't know why, but this made me feel warm and happy inside. It seemed to transcend the cold, plastic, capitalism of the mall with its promise of a simple and cheap treat for the family. I can only imagine my wee 'un's (8 month old Giblet's) fascination and delight at the whirring, popping, and delicious smells emanating from the machine when she is a little older. To top it all off, a butter button.



Somehow I think that butter buttons might be the answer to most of society's problems. With the promise of warm, melted butter at the press of a button maybe we can cure our nation's ills.

Mettigel. A Hedgehog Made of Raw Minced Pork.

So, I was looking around on the internets to see if it is feasible to make bresaola at home. I came upon the bresaola wiki and did a little click-meandering ending up stumbling across Mett. Mett is a German dish comprised of cold, raw, minced pork and various seasonings. I guess they spread it on bread, which actually sounds pretty good to me. Apparently, during the 70's making a Mettigel (mett hedgehog) was a popular way of serving this. I found the idea of a raw mince pork hedgehog too good not to share. By the way, Germans take their meat very seriously. I read on the wiki that Mett production is governed by the Hackfleischverordnung (minced meat directive) which is probably the greatest word of all time.

Liverless Cajun Boudin Blanc (Still Boudin in Spirit None the Less)

Have you ever had Cajun style boudin? It is a spicy rice/pork/liver sausage (and I do love sausage, click and scroll through for past musings) of sorts that has a maniacal following down around Cajun country. Think of the devotion lavished on the cheese steak in Philidelphia, or pizza in New York, that is the kind of thing that boudin has going on (see Boudin Link, it is a comprehensive resource). The topic of boudin came up somehow the other day, and being impulsive, I decided to try my hand at some home production. Now, I always have some odd bits and ends of meat in my freezer, so I decided to make do with whatever I had on hand. This meant using some nice short ribs instead of the traditional pork and pork liver. I don't know if a real Cajun would even call what I made boudin, but I used most of the same traditional techniques.

I started by putting a couple pounds of the short ribs, a medium onion, 3 or 4 garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and plenty of red pepper to boil for around an hour.



After such time it will look like this.



The short ribs gave off an especially rich looking broth, which is good as you are going to want to use this liquid to make the rice component. So strain out the meat and vegetable solids and use the liquid to make an amount of rice about equal in volume to that of the meat. Throw the meat and veg through your grinder with the coarse plate on. You will be left with a rather unappetizing mess of grayish meat paste.



As I said before, you are going to want to mix the meat with a roughly equal amount of rice. Let it all cool and then prepare to stuff into some hog casings. Here is my setup, I get butterflies lookin' at a good sausage makin' rig ready for action.



I stuffed it into the casing making hot dog sized links. Even though this is already a cooked product most recipes call for steaming. I put the links into the handy dandy steamer pot that I got at the Asian Supermarket, and let them go for about 20 minutes.



If you are going to make these, remember to prick the casings on each link. I missed one and it kind of exploded. No matter, I used the filling of that one to make a couple pan fried boudin balls. Most people do not eat the casing when consuming boudin, most either slice the casing and eat with a fork or cut it into manageable bits to squeeze into the mouth. Like this.



My preferred way to eat boudin is to squeeze it onto some saltine crackers and eat with a liberal amount of hot sauce. Very delicious. I was thoroughly pleased with how my homemade boudin came out and I look forward to making the more traditional version sometime soon (here is a more typical recipe). It is a fairly simple preparation as far as sausage goes and I love the textural component of the rice in there. It kind of makes me wish that this was the type of stuff served at our local gas stations and Quick-e marts as it is in Cajun country. But alas, I guess we are blessed with the omnipresent egg n' cheese instead.

Strange Brew Update. Pseudo-Gruit

Recall my earlier post- Strange Brew. Due to my sort of schizophrenic nature, I decided to perpetrate a mid-brew edit to this experiment. Having already concocted a sort of bare bones, throw some shit in a vessel, add yeast, and let ferment deal, I decided to meddle. Meddling rarely works out for the better, but we shall see. After a little research into gruit (what brewers used to do, pre-hops) I thought maybe I could salvage the already fermenting mess and turn it into something worthwhile.

I ordered up a few traditional gruit ingredients.



These are myrica gale, mugwort, heather tips, nutmeg, and cinnamon. All very traditional brewing ingredients, some mildly narcotic, and some mildly hallucinogenic. However, all very legal. What I did was make some very traditional wort, adding all of the herbs at various stages of the boil (if you are interested in exactitudes, email me), and then added about a pint of honey. After straining out the original brew-mess, I combined everything together, cooled, and re-pitched in some ale yeast. So this will all result in a sort of double fermented, lightly hopped, pseudo-gruit-esque concoction. The fact that I left all of the barley husks in for so long will have resulted in a fairly bitter, tannin rich flavor that I hope will be counteracted by the sweet, X-mas type spicing of the cinnamon and nutmeg. I still plan on bottle conditioning with some additional wort. I think the stuff will benefit from a couple months ageing in the bottle (I plan on bottling next sunday), so hopefully I will have made a fitting brew to be drunk by the flagon for a Saturnalia celebration.

Here she is bubbling away naughtily.

Balls. 4.69$ a Pound.

Seen at the Asian Supermarket on Central. Balls. Click picture. That is all.

Pork Chop Sandwiches (Semi-Regular Random Video Post)

Do these infrequent, quasi-food oriented, random video posts bother anyone? See Extreme Rice, Salty Ham, Hey Alan, Sausagegate, and 80's Wheat Bread for more. Anyways, this one is a fake GI Joe PSA that I found very funny for god knows what reason. There is strong language, so kiddies don't watch. I trust everyone is having a pleasant evening, and goodnight.

Whole Australian Beef Tenderloins at P-Chops! 5.99 a Pound!

Just wanted to make sure any arch meatsmen out there were informed that P-chops is currently selling (as of right now, 17:00, 9/30/09) whole Australian beef tenderloins (PSMOs) for 5.99 a pound! Sizes range between 4 and 7 pounds. This is a great deal and I could not discern a scam of any sort going on. The expiration dates aren't close and I don't think the meat has been adulterated in any way. I will let you know about the quality of the one I purchased.

Pictures of the Glorious Pig Have Come to Light

If you remember, some weeks back I presided over a pig roast (see here). As I stated in that post, I got a little soused and forgot to take pictures of the end product. It turns out a friend managed to snap a couple, just thought that I would share.



Mmmmm..... Pig carcass. Sweet pig carcass.

Altamont Orchards. First Cider Donut of the Season.

There's nuthin' like the onset of the fall season to make a tried and true Upstate New York boy (Appleknocker) like myself wax poetic about his home region. Fall, and everything that comes along with it around here, makes me love where I am from. The leaves changing, the solemn grayness of the cold weather, the celebration of Autumn foods and traditions all get me excited come late September. I already have a couple heady winter brews fermenting away in my newly chilly kitchen and I can't wait to start indulging myself with heavy fall cooking. Another way I like to herald the coming of the fall season is to go over to Altamont Orchards to gobble up some of their fresh, warm cider donuts. This rainy Sunday I did just that.

We decided that actual apple picking might be a bridge too far today as it rained all night. We did not want young Giblet's first apple picking experience to be soggy and miserable. Arriving at Altamont Orchards we found that there was a haunted house going on. We didn't go in, but we did get a photo of Giblet next to the fierce demon who haunts barrels of cider apples.



We browsed the apples first.



Macs, Cortlands, Macouns, Red Delicious, Fuji, whatever your apple craving heart desires by the bushel, 1/2 bushel, etc... They also have a nice selection of pumpkins, root vegetables, peppers, and a few other orchard fruits. Mrs. Dave got a small bag of Paula Reds and we picked up some cooking apples for my mom.

Altamont Orchards has a country store-esque space that peddles all sorts of local, folksy products. Think jams, pickles, relishes, stuff like that. A lot of it is pretty pricey, but you can still find some deals. I was excited to see a cold case filled with bacon! I think my hand was shaking a little with excitement, so excuse the poor picture.



I picked up a small pack of cinnamon bacon and a somewhat larger package of applewood smoked seasoning bacon chunks. I was very excited for the cinnamon bacon, that sounds like an excellent flavor combination to me.



There is a large bakery section as well with all sorts of homemade pies, danishes, cookies, etc..





The real stars of the bakery at Altamont Orchards are the Cider Donuts. They make them fresh, all day, in an open kitchen you can peek into. A half dozen is 3.99, and to me that is a bargain. They come warm and kissed with just enough unctuous grease. They are small, but not over small, maybe four bites worth. Light, fluffy, pillows of cinnamon/sugar goodness. I ate 2 and a half. Get them early in the season because come October people will be queueing out the doors waiting for donuts.



My wife also likes the apple fritters, you have to be lucky to get these fresh and warm, but I have seen it.



There is also a small snack bar in the back peddling hot chocolate, soup, and stuff like that. Today they had chili. I saw someone walk by with a serving and had to get a bowl to split with the wife.



The chili was served with a sprinkling of orange cheese and fresh, diced, white onion and some saltines on the side. It was thin and mildly spicy, possibly canned, but maybe not. I don't care, sitting with the wee 'un and the wife at one of the little tables amongst the orchard's homey surroundings made it taste very good. We even gave Giblet a small taste of the spicy stuff, she was gleeful. More evidence to me that she is a future fearless wild woman.

Anyways, if you are from the area take a trip out there and buy some apples. Give them to your mom or something, she will appreciate it and you really don't get over to see your mum enough, now do you? I will let you know if the bacon is any good.

Пельмeни

I bought some пельмени (pelmeni)at Dnipro Market the other day. Pelmeni are the original frozen convenience food. They are very popular in Siberia where they were, in the past, frozen outdoors. They are basically dumpling/ravioli like, but very tasty in a simple and hearty kind of way. In Russia, frozen pelmeni are notorious as a sort of Bachelor Chow for single men, being very easy to prepare. I purchased some pork filled ones that looked pretty good. I will be cooking these two ways, boiled and boiled then fried.

They go into a rolling boil for about 8 minutes after they float to the surface.



That is pretty much it, buttered and then topped with a little smetana they were delicious. The ingredients listed for the filling are very simple. Pork, onion, salt, and dill are it. No preservatives or other weirdness in there so they had a fresh, homemade taste.



If you don't know, smetana is some serious stuff. It is usually described as Russian sour cream, but it is kind of a different animal than the stuff you may be used to. It is super thick, about the consistency of soft serve icecream.



I also fried up some boiled pelmeni in the lovely grease of the Polish bacon I got at Dnipro (are you tired of me raving about this stuff yet?



They cooked until lightly browned and crisp.



Both cooking methods produced a delicious result. I am a big fan of meat centered/dough wrapped foods (asian dumplings, ravioli, pirogi, varyniki, etc...). I love that nearly every culture has its own version and that it usually represents the epitome of homey comfort food. I recommend trying these out if you stop by Dnipro.

Mr. Dave Got A Donation! Purchased Meat. In Cans.

I put the PayPal "Bacon Fund" donation thing on the sidebar of this blog as kind of a goof. Maybe passing fancies of some benevolent and magnificently wealthy bacon lover dropping a couple million in there briefly danced across my mind, but mostly I just thought having a "Bacon Fund" donation box was funny. To my great surprise I just received a PayPal email saying that someone had deposited 25 bucks! It was a most gracious woman named Gretchen out of southern, AZ. This was very generous.

I was thinking of what do with this money, I wouldn't feel right spending it on myself (it is a donation). So I decided to spend it on something of mutual interest to myself and Gretchen. She mentioned in her message that she is a pseudo-survivalist like myself, and enjoyed my Canned Butter and Cheese post (also see Backpacker's Pantry Chana Masala, Vegetarian MRE, and Powdered Peanut Butter, and Heater Meal). I had my eye on the Pleasant Hill Grain canned meat line. The 5 meat (beef chunks, ground beef, pork chunks, chicken, and turkey) sampler pack happened to be almost exactly 25 bucks (sans shipping) so I ordered it. When it comes I shall give it a review and see if it is fit to take to my fortified anti-zombie lair in the hills and the post shall be dedicated to my benefactor (Gretchen).

Thanks again Gretchen, you rule!

Giblet on Gerber Graduates Lil' Crunchies (Mild Cheddar)

There is one member of the Mr. Dave household who does not often get to partake in any of my culinary machinations due to a somewhat underdeveloped gastrointestinal tract. She is my lovely wee 'un, young Giblet (most beauteous of all young humans). She has hardily endorsed a certain product with loud munching and smiles, so I thought I would share for any of my babied readers. I have noticed a fickle streak in my daughter at the very tender age of 8 months, there are certain jars of baby mush that she will turn her darling button nose up at. She prefers Beechnut (to me a sure sign of a budding locavore)in the jars, I think she is old fashioned. However, she will suffer certain items from the massive Gerber Co., one of them being "Lil' Crunchies."



These are, in effect, baby cheese doodles (I know because I ate a bunch of them and got thoroughly chastised by Mrs. Dave). My young Giblet could be right in the middle of a thunderous hissy-fit, but throw some of these bad boys in front of her and she smiles and is pleased as punch. She will sit happily crunching away until you stop her. I feel a little guilty giving them to her, but she loves them so. I am hoping that her unadulterated love of these things is evidence of a budding appreciation for cheeses, and not a budding appreciation for junk food.

Her comments are as follows- "Bah, mmmmm, mamamamamamaa, ahhhhhhhhh, phbbhbhbhbhtttt!"

WWGFD?

Not a food post here, more of a nerd post, but still local. I snapped the above picture on Washington Ave, right before you turn onto Fuller Road. If you don't know to what this bumper sticker refers, and don't think it is pretty much awesome, read about Gordon Freeman and the Half-Life Series. Then go buy the Orange Box and I will see you in a month. I found out that you can buy the bumper sticker over on Valve's site at this link ("Dog is my copilot," too!).

Here is some bacon that I cooked last night to bring us back on topic, be sure you read this morning's other post on Morbiflette.



G-man thinks that you have limitlesssss potential.

Morbiflette

I happened to come into possession of a couple high quality ingredients (cheese and bacon. Surprised? No...me neither) that were aching to be combined in some sort of simple and complementary way. After some research I found Morbiflette (apparently a cousin of Tartiflette). Morbiflette is a potato/cheese/bacon dish which sounded perfect for larding my belly against the impending cold weather.

I have posted about Eats in Stuyvesant plaza before, so you know that I often stop by there to satisfy my stinky cheese desires. The other day I stopped in and bought a beautiful wedge of Morbier cheese. Morbier is an interesting French cheese which was traditionally made with the night's milking topped off by the next morning's with the layers separated by ash.



This cheese is fairly stinky on the stinky cheese scale. I left it in my wife's car for about 15 minutes during a quick errand on the way home. When I returned I definitely checked the baby's diaper before realizing it was the delicious odor of the fromage.

I had also stopped by the Dnipro Market in Cohoes (as you know from this post), so I had some absolutely lovely bacon too.



This is a quick home style dish of the sort that I love, under five ingredients and no fancy technique. Just roughly chop the bacon and throw in a pan until it gives up a little of its grease. Through in an onion, likewise roughly chopped, and fry until golden brown.



Next step is to throw in the potatoes. These should be skinned, boiled until tender but not falling apart, and cut into rounds. Add to the pan and cook further until everything is a good, crisp mess.



Top with thick slices of the Morbier.



Run under a broiler until the cheese melts, Morbier melts very nicely.



And there you have it. A hearty dish for the fall weather. Although this may look like something of a side dish to our twisted American psyches, the Morbiflette is actually substantial enough for a main dish. Wash it down with good beer and open your belt. Then go climb a snowy Alpine peak or something. Needless to say I enjoyed this dish very much.

New Juicy Burger in Guilderland. Mmmm... Burger Juice.

So I stopped by the new Juicy Burger in Guilderland (155 a little north of 20 in that plaza with the Kem cleaners) during their Grand Opening the other night. Thought maybe you might like to hear my thoughts. This was my first Juicy Burger experience, I have not been to the Balston Spa location.

Walking in, the decor is a little more posh than your standard burger joint, very modern and spare with big screen tellies around the space. You order at the counter (friendly young lass when I was there) and then have a sit down at a table until they bring you your food. You can eat in and be presented with actual dinnerware or take your prize to go.

I ordered 2 burgers, their classic cheeseburger for the very classic Mrs. Dave and a bleu cheese burger for myself, medium rare of course (menu link here). In addition, I got a couple beverages and two orders of their Yukon gold French fries. The fries come in 1/2 lbs orders served in paper bags. I like the paper bag thing, it brings back memories of when my dad would take me to Jack's Diner on central and get me a greasy bag of krinkle cut diner fries to go. The whole meal is pictured above. Lets talk about the price here, 24 and change for the lot. A little steep in my book and I'm no pauper. Compared to other pseudo-fast food burger joints (Five Guys I'm looking at you) this is very expensive.

Burger verdict: Well, we have a case of truth in advertising here. This was possibly the juiciest burger I have ever had. The thing was very literally dripping with juice. I tried to capture it in the below photo.



Maybe you can see the juices that have dripped onto the burger wrapper. I don't know how they do this, possibly some sort of science or chemistry afoot. Perhaps it is simply their cooking methods, I have heard they have some super broiler thing that seals in the moistness. Maybe they use the old couple o' ice cubes in the center of the patty trick, I don't know. The real standout of the burger sandwich is the bun. It is dense and moist without being too dense and it holds up well against the torrent of meat juice released by every bite of burger. One thing I will say, mine was a touch bit salty, but this may have been the bleu cheese.

Fry Verdict: I hate to say it folks, my socks were not knocked off. Don't get me wrong, these were good fries, but I am still on about the 24 dollar thing. Not 24 dollars worth of good. I guess using the Five Guys comparison is not out of place as they are probably the most comparable establishment in the area, and Five Guys fries win. No contest. I will have to try the sweet potato fries and onion rings at Juicy Burgers as the fries were not tasty enough to justify the carbohydrate bomb they represent.

Juicy Burgers is literally right up the road from me so I hazard that I will be making return trips when I get that rare hankering for a burger. Do they offer my Platonic ideal of a hamburger sandwich? No, but they are really very decent and I am hard to please. However if you are closer to Five Guys, go to Five Guys. Better product for less money. Sorry Juicy Burgers, I wanted to love you. Unfortunately, you are only my late night burger booty call.

Dnipro Market, Cohoes

I read about the Dnipro Market in Cohoes, NY on the wonderful All Over Albany Blog (check out AoA if you are local, it is top notch). One out of my various strange talents is that I speak a pretty good Russian. I am always looking to test out my skills, so I thought it might be fun to check it out and see if I couldn't translate some of the food labels.

Dnipro specializes in both Russian and Polish goods, groceries and meats. The market is immaculately clean in a nice, well lit space. It is not over large, but there is still a decent selection. There was a Russian speaking couple in the market when I arrived who were seriously stocking up, they must have bought a little of everything in the store. I took this as a good sign in regards to the quality/authenticity of the products, it seemed like these people had traveled a ways to get to Dnipro. I tried to eavesdrop to see if they could lead me towards anything good and I ended up buying some kabonosy because of them.

The first thing in the store that will draw your attention is the large meat case running the length of the store. It was filled with exotic meaty delights of all descriptions, they even had salo.



Here is the other half.



I didn't catch a shot of the fish case as Slavic seafood is not something I know a heck of a lot about. But if that is your thing, it was chock full of all sorts of smoked fishes and other odd bits and ends.

Can you guess what immediately drew my eye? Check out this bacon, to me it was beautiful.



It was a Polish brand and had the label of "hunter bacon." A pound was about 6.00$ which I thought very reasonable. It was a massive amount of bacon. I also bought a couple kabanosi (kind of like very long, smokey hotdogs), pelmeni, lutinica, sour cream (сметана), and some rye bread.



In addition I had to pick this up.



This was "Army Brand Chopped Pork Pattie Loaf" in a fetching camo can from a Polish manufacturer.

I look forward to trying all of this stuff, I have already consumed some of the bacon. Let me tell you folks, that is some serious bacon. Good enough to warrant its own post when I get to it. The bread was also outstanding. All in all, I was very impressed with the place and will definitely take another trip out. It is a nice change of pace if anything. I recommend checking it out if you are in Cohoes.

Pulled Pork Cha Siu Bao Sandwich of Porky Doom

Lest you think I am being original here, I totally was inspired by a posting on This Is Why You're Fat for this one. By the way, thisiswhyyourefat.com is coming out with a book shortly and early indications are that my recipe for the White Castle Breakfast Bake might be in there, I will let you know. Anyway, the idea of using a Cha Siu Bao as a bun for a tasty sandwich was absolute genius to my sensibilities and I had to give it a go. I started with some beautiful, hamburger roll sized, steamed buns that I picked up at the Asian Supermarket.



The following picture illustrates that these buns were already filled with porky goodness before I got at them with my own machinations.



Inside of the sliced pork bun I first put some leftover Dinosaur BBQ pulled pork that I had on hand. To top this off I decided to roast up some slices of pork belly.



I baked the belly off at 375 deg. in the oven until it was good and crisp. When it was slightly cooled I slathered it with some ready made Cha Siu sauce.



The crisp slices of belly went on top of the pulled pork on top of the steamed pork bun.



Oh boy, tucking into one of these bad boys was like biting into little puffy pieces of heaven. The contrast of fluffy steamed bun, crispy pork belly , and meaty pulled pork pork with all of the sweet/tangy flavors of the various sauces was delicious. The experience was like eating a pretty plausible faux burger. The bao are kind of like hamburger buns, the cha siu belly is like bacon, and the pulled pork acts as the de facto meaty center. I thoroughly enjoyed this experiment, in fact, I have some mini steamed buns in the freezer and I think a tiny version of this would make a divine appetizer. I am going to try it out on friends at the very next gathering I attend.

Dinosaur BBQ Packaged Pulled Pork

In less you live under a rock, you probably know that Troy is getting a Dinosaur BBQ location (see here for the news article). I have been to the Syracuse location, which by the way is always mobbed, and have enjoyed their stuff (I still like our own Capital Q way better though). I saw the above package of pulled pork at the Price Chopper in Guilderland. It seems that the folks at Dinosaur may be trying to create a buzz before they open up shop in the Capital Region. I was a little off put by the 7.99$ price tag, but as always, my curiosity overcame my tightwadded tendencies.

Opening up the package I was pleased to see large chunks of recognizeable pork with a, what I would deem reasonable, amount of sauce. This is opposed to other prepared pulled pork brands that I have sampled wherein there are anemic shreds of pork swimming in a sickly sweet "bbq" sauce.



I followed the directions which recommend microwaving as the best heating option. Out came the pork, all steamy and fragrant smelling. I immediately went at it with a fork and was pretty impressed. For a packaged product, it came fairly close to what you get at the actual restaurant. It did not have an overly fake, preservative taste. As I said before, there were nice large chunks of pork that were tender but did not taste like they had been stewing in sauce for a week. In fact, it seemed that the pork was cooked first and the sauce squirted on top of the meat before packaging, which is good. I chose to make a couple sandwiches on some whole wheat kaiser rolls.



I was whining earlier about the price, but you can make about 4 good sized sandwiches out of the package. I guess this is not that exorbitant of a price per sandwich and they were really pretty good. Not as a good as a fresh Okie Pig from Capital Q, but not bad at all. I guess if you never have had Dinosaur BBQ, this is a decent way to get an idea of their product. I will probably never go to the Troy location when it opens, because I guarantee that it will be so freakin' crowded all of the time that my agoraphobic tendencies will not let me tolerate getting jostled in a lobby for an hour before getting seated.

Zongzi

**Edit**
To any of my Chinese language speaking readers, perhaps I am somewhat uninformed here. Is Zongzi simply another pronunciation/romanicization of Joong? Or are Zongzi a slightly different, regional variation of Joong? I guess the absence of mung bean might be the important difference. Let me know, I love knowledge.
**Edit**

As you know from reading me blog, I am a big tamale fan (see here for Mississippi Delta Corn Roll Tamles and here for more tamale oriented randomness). I was intrigued by something that the intrepid Albany Jane of the venerable Albany Eats blog wrote about. She did a post about Joong, which are a leaf wrapped Chinese analogue to tamales. I have been keeping an eye out for a ready made version of joong (I am entirely too lazy for the arduous joong making process) at the new Asian Supermarket on Central Ave (if you are not tired of blog posts on this subject, see my review). I spied some Joong in the freezer section and purchased them, but I will try these out in a future post. This is because as I was preparing to leave I found a similar product in the refrigerator section that sparked my curiosity. I got the above pictured Zongzi. These are a Taiwanese variation on pretty much the same theme. The package promised a savory pork filling which started me salivating.

I followed the instructions on the package and boiled these two bad boys for 15 minutes.



When they were done I risked scaled fingers to unwrap the tasty smelling rice pyramids from their bamboo leaf shrouds.



Upon unwrapping, I was confronted by a delicious aroma and the site of some sticky rice speckled with peanuts. I could see hints of red-cooked pork peaking through the rice. I chopped one open to show you the porky center.



What you have there are generous hunks of succulent and fatty pork. It is either belly or very fatty shoulder. The unctuousness of the pork has flavored the surrounding rice in a manner which pleases Mr. Dave greatly (and warrants him referring to his esteemed self in the third person). I really enjoyed the zongzi. They were filling in a bland, but savory, manner that is both warming and belly pleasing. I think that these would make an excellent hangover breakfast. Needless to say, I am into the whole Asian, leaf wrapped, rice thing and eagerly await sampling the joong at a later date.

Strange Brew. Mr. Dave Experiments With Primitive Beer Making Methods

**Edit**
I got some feedback on this already from the home brewing Gestapo of the interwebs at large. I in no way intended to actually recreate authentic ancient brewing techniques with this little experiment. I was simply curious at what would happen if I took the ingredients I had on hand and threw them together in a less fussy than usual manner. The references to older brewing methods were simply a humorous device. Maybe next time I will go harvest my own spelt, grind it with ritual rocks, boil it in a cauldron over aged wood, and dance around it chanting. But this time, cut me some slack. I swear home brewers are worse then computer nerds, comic book collectors, and Star Trek fans put together for uptightness related to their chosen vocation.
**Edit**

I have brewed my own beer several times in the past. A few times it has been successful and a few other times, well, lets just say that I haven't technically poisoned anyone yet. I brew from grain, I don't use extracts. To me using extracts is equivalent to buying those tubes of pre-made cookie dough. You might as well just buy the cookies. I brew according to the usual modern methods and recipes, you know, mashing involving enzymatic rests and the whole nine. Then there is your hops schedule, chilling the wort, sparging, etc., etc., ad nauseum. All in all, it is a fairly intimidating process.

The other day it occurred to me that it can't have always been this complicated. The fermentation process that results in beer is pretty simple. Water with the addition of sugar (in the form of malted grain) will ferment when left exposed to the atmosphere with its wild yeasts. This will eventually result in ale in its simplest incarnation. Our woolly ancestors probably followed very simple recipes, they pretty much boiled up some gruel and then waited for the Gods to do their thing. After a while they were left with a beverage that altered consciousness in a pleasant way and made it much easier to get into the village wench's bodice. Praise be to Thor (or whoever is the beer god of old).

Pursuant to all of this I decided to attempt an experiment where I would forgo all of the complicated business of home brewing and use my instincts and knowledge of fermentation alone to guide me. I started with about 3 pounds of light, lager malt (barley) and 3 pounds of darker, crystal malt.



Now, I know early ale makers would not have used hops, but I have actually tried unhopped beer and I really just don't like it. I guess ol' timey brew masters would have foraged around in their environs for whatever bitter roots or leaves they could find to cut the sweetness of their product. I am going to go ahead and use 2 ounces of cascade hops. I threw it in a wee muslin sack to fashion a sort of hops teabags.



Now, I had to resist my urges to be more technical with all of this. I slapped my thermometers in the drawer and simply dumped all of the malted barley and the hops teabag into my giant pot. I poured in about 3 gallons of spring water and put it over low/medium heat. I imagined myself in a loincloth tending a cauldron perched over burning coals in the forest somewhere.



The giant pot slowly warmed and came to a boil. I let the murky brew boil for about an hour. The total heating process took about 2 and a half hours. When it was done I simply added another gallon or two of spring water, covered tightly, and let sit until it came to a little over room temperature. This actually took about 6 or 7 hours, it is surprising how much heat that much liquid can hold for so long. When it was cool enough I poured the whole mess, grain and all (minus the hops bag), into my awesome 5 gallon glass carboy that I picked up at a garage sale a while ago.



I didn't quite have the stones to leave the whole mess by an open window to try to encourage the growth of wild yeasts, so I settled on some normal ale type brewing yeast. I simply pitched it in and swished the carboy around for a little aeration. After that, I stuck a holed stopper in the top and covered with muslin. I didn't want to use an airlock, too much technology there. Into a cool corner of the kitchen goes the brew to ferment for a while. Needless to say I will update with what comes of all of this. Luckily, it is fairly easy to make bad tasting beer, but pretty hard to make dangerous beer. I don't think anyone will die, worst case I have a lot of sour and murky crap on my hands.

Spied at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza. Motherpie?

I was browsing the local cookbooks at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza earlier when I came across this. It is "Applehood and Motherpie. Handpicked Recipes from Upstate New York." Care of the Junior League of Rochester. I came a hare's breath away from buying this for obvious reasons, but I didn't feel like shelling out 20 bucks and the recipes were kind of run of the mill, not really regional in nature. But I did leave the store snickering about the term "Motherpie." What exactly is in a Motherpie? Do I really want to know? It sounds dirty and my childish mind delights in these sorts of things.

Backpacker Pantry Chana Masala: Good Enough to Stockpile for the Impending Zombie Apocalypse?

As many of you know I have a penchant for stockpiling "survival" type foods due to some admixture of practicality and paranoia. You also know that I like to share my opinions on some of these for the aid of like minded individuals (I am going to need friends when I take to the hills). You can look at the following posts for some other reviews of shelf stable products: Red Feather Canned Butter and Cheese, Vegetarian MRE, Heater Meal, and Powdered Peanut Butter.

I was at EMS in Stuyvesant plaza today when I spied the Backpackers Pantry line of products. These are of the dehydrated/re-constituitable variety of foods. They are fairly lightweight, but very expensive. I would never consider these for serious survival situations, they are more for your weekend camper types. You only get 740 calories for 6 dollars in this one. But I am an Indian food freak and I thought that some spicy Chana Masala might be a welcome supplement to the drabber flavors of most other foods I might have on hand. You know, for a special occasion (i.e. a lull in anti-Zombie warfare).

The directions for this one are simple, add 2 1/4 cups of boiling water and reseal the bag. After waiting 13 minutes it is done. This is what the contents of the bag looked like prior to the addition of water.



It kind of just looked white rice with a few chick peas to me. I added the water and waited. Here is the results in a bowl.



I was a little surprised at the end product. I expected some sort of sauce-y deal, but this chana masala was bone dry. The rice and chickpeas were completely tender which was good. I have had some of these types of dehydrated foods that end up a little crunchy sometimes. The flavor was a little weird, it was vaguely "Indian" but not spicy at all. Definitely need to break out the ol' bottle of Tabasco for this stuff. There was preponderance of what I like to call "pie spice" flavor. An over abundance of cinnamon, nutmeg, or clove I think. Definitely would not buy this one again and it does not get my seal of approval. I would be very disappointed if after a hard day's work Zombie slaying this was served up to me by the Misses.

Local Prepared Products: Pede Bros. Ricotta Cavatelli With Dominick's Pasta Sauce

It was a little cold the other night and me and the wife needed to fill our bellies with something starchy. Mrs. Dave was hankering for pasta which seemed like a good idea to me because I didn't really feel like cooking anything elaborate. We swung by the Guilderland Hannafords for a change of pace (we are normally a P-chopper family). There we found a sauce that I hadn't seen before.



This is "Dominicks All Natural Extra Special Pasta Sauce With Wine" which is quite the mouthful. Apparently, it is made in Slingerlands at the Stonewall Plaza on the corner of 85 and 85A. That is right up the road from us so I had to give it a try. I think the jar was about 3.75$ which isn't that pricey for jarred sauce these days. What a racket, there is probably about a quarters worth of product in that jar. I am not usually a buyer of jarred sauce, but sometimes we must all bow to convenience.

For the pasta component I chose some frozen Pede Bros Ricotta Cavatelli. The Pede Bros. company operates out of Schenectady and offer a range of Italian foods that can be found at local grocers.



I set the pasta to boiling in some salty water and poured the sauce into a pan to heat up. I always like to finish cooking pasta in the sauce. The Dominick's sugo smelled bright and fresh and there were visible bits of herb and garlic floating about. It was a nice thin consistency which I like, sometimes jarred sauce is unpleasantly gloopy.



We ate this simply with just a little grated cheese.



No complaints here, we thoroughly enjoyed both components of the dish. The cavatelli had a pleasant tooth to them and the sauce was surprisingly fresh tasting without a lot of the faults common to prepared sauces (i.e. too much sugar/salt, or the addition of numerous weird ingredients resulting in muddy flavored gloop). I would happily buy this combination again and it always feels good to eat things that someone made up the road from you.

Tremble at the Power of the Giblet

I asked the Giblet what she thought of the Redskins this morning. She issued forth a mighty roar and then screamed, "Go Big Blue!!! Aaaaargh!!!" Anyhow, the Mr. Dave family is pretty excited for football this weekend.

Flat Iron Steak Roll With Cheese and Chiles

I haven't shared a recipe for a while having been so busy lately. I have generally been eating horrendous crap while standing up in the kitchen for the past couple of weeks and am probably going to get the gout. So when I whipped up a fairly decent meal for myself tonight I thought I would slap it up on the ol' blog.

I started with some flat iron steak. Flat iron steak is kind of fad-y right now so you can find it at most grocery stores and butchers. This one was a little on the thin side, barely an inch.



The meat gets carefully butterflied.



I seasoned well, rubbed with some good olive oil, sprinkled on a couple cloves of chopped garlic and spread a couple tablespoons of the Aji Amarillo paste (click for first recipe I made with it) I picked up last week. I really love the bright orange color of the stuff.



This was left out to come up to room temperature and kind of marinate for a little while. I had a few Anaheim chiles which I thought would be good with the meat.



I roasted them until completely tender then seeded and skinned. When I roast peppers, I always throw them in a quick marinade of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a splash of vinegar. Even if it is only for a few minutes, this helps prevent that kind of flat taste some chiles tend to have when roasted.



I spread some crushed cracker crumbs and Manchego cheese on top of the steak.



This got topped with the peppers.



I rolled the thing tightly and secured with several skewers. The roll went into a pan with plenty of olive oil over high heat for about three minutes on each side.



I finished the cooking process in a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes. This resulted in beautiful rare/medium rare meat which is how I like it. I am a cut off its horns, wipe its ass, and walk it through a warm room kind of guy when it comes to beef. A few minutes more in the oven would be fine if you are squeamish.



I am usually not too big of a fan of meat rolls, braciole, or roulades, but this one was actually very good. Nice and spicy with a lot of good pepper flavor. I kind of think it needed a sauce of some sort, maybe even just a simple chile rojo. Flat iron steak seems to lend itself to this preparation as well, it stayed very tender.

Nun Cake, Sweet Tasty Nun Cake.

I was over in Delmar on Labor Day for a cookout with some Delmartian friends of ours. I had planned on swinging by Rolf's Pork Store for some assorted tube steaks, but wouldn't you know? They were closed. I kind of forgot it was a holiday. Not wanting to arrive all empty handed and meatless, I decided to stop in at the Delmar Marketplace. I have been there a couple of times and they usually have some good stuff.

Upon arriving I immediately noticed the above pictured sign. "Nuns of New Skete Cheesecake?" Having never heard of the Nuns of New Skete (or the Nun's of Old Skete for that matter) surely it was imperative that I sample their cake. A little research led me to the fact that the Nuns of New Skete are located up by Cambridge, NY and run quite the little cheesecake pushing operation there. I purchased a pack of 2 slices.



The cheesecake got a little smooshed by a foursey of Guinness. 5.98$ for 2 small slices seemed a little pricey, but what do I know? I generally avoid desserts so I am not to0 versed in cake prices. We decided to have the cheesecake as an hours d'oeuvre as I was extremely curious about the nun cake. Biting into it I definitely made my ick face and my wife laughed at me. Let me preface this all by saying that I am not a big cheesecake fan in the first place, but this stuff was too much for me. My friend's comment was that it was like biting into a sweet, rindless, wedge of brie. It had a dense, very soft cheese-esque texture. You kind of wanted to spread it on crackers. The Nuns of New Skete cheesecake is probably made according to some hallowed old recipe, and to die hard cheesecake fans it is probably a revelation. I kind of wanted my 6 bucks back, but I welcomed the experience to try something new.

By the way, the Delmar Marketplace has a butcher and offers a range of prepared foods that are pretty tasty in a homey sort of way (a little pricey, but Delmar is moneyed). Up until recently they carried Oscar's Smoke House products which are awesome (see here for a Scientific Bacon Butty I made using their bacon). Tragically, Oscar's suffered a devastating fire and their operations have temporarily ceased. I wish them the best.

While I was there I also picked up some wee Swedish Meatballs with a subscript that read, "by Inga!!!!!!!!!!" I feel that maybe I should have heard of Inga. Anyhow, she makes tasty looking meatballs.



They also carry a bunch of simple, prepared foods. I was hungover on another trip to the Delmar Marketplace and in need of starch, cheese, grease and meat. I bought a couple stuffed potatoes and some stuffed bread. They served their purpose well, but ordinarily would have been a little heavy for my tastes.



Anyways, stop in if you are in that neck of the woods. The place definitely has some "quaintness" factor and they carry some interesting stuff. If you are an Utz chip fan they carry the brand (even the crab flavored ones).

**Edit**

I just noticed that this is the 200th post that I have written. The archive has a few less due to a couple deletions for various reasons, but hooray for me anyhow. I am magnificently prolific.

Heater Meals: Chicken Pasta Italiano

As you know, I have served in the military and have always been fascinated by shelf stable military cuisine (see here for an MRE review). I don't know why, but I get delighted opening up an MRE bag and seeing all of the little packages and containers of stuff.

In my experience, the above Heater Meal is used by the military in situations where MREs aren't necessary (they are actually fairly expensive), but it still isn't feasible to dole out fresh food. The heater meals seem to be replacing "Jimmy Deans" for these situations. By the way, if any military guys out there can explain why Jimmy Deans are called Jimmy Deans let me know, as they don't contain sausage of any kind. If you are not familiar, the Jimmy Dean was a shrink wrapped meal that contained a drink, a bun, cookies, some sort of dessert, and a can of either bbq beef, Vienna sausages, or chicken salad. No heating element was included and I always found them to be nasty. The bbq beef tasted like cigarette butts.

Opening up the heater meal we find an abundance of crap.



We have some bread sticks with chocolate peanut butter spread, apple sauce, snickerdoodle cookies, a can of iced tea, raisins, the main meal, the heating unit and a cunning little bag of water (to activate the heater). All in all, 1290 calories worth of processed delights to fill your rumbling belly.

Included in the cutlery package is "Papa's Perfect Salt Free Seasoning," which made me laugh for some unknown reason.



Here is the main meal, Chicken Pasta Italiano. I heated it with the heater as per the instructions. Pretty much same SOP as for an MRE. The heater worked well and brought the meal up to a decent temp.



I was not much of a fan of this one. To me it was as if you took Campbell's Minnestrone soup and strained out all of the chunky bits. There were beans, pasta, and other unidentifiable scraps of vegetable matter along with a few grey pieces of chicken. Unbearably bland as well, really needed the included seasoning packets. I would take almost any MRE over this bad boy any time. But I guess as a way to get some calories into your system with out too much fuss, the heater meals serve their purpose.

Papa a la Huancaina (Spicy Cheesy Potatoes)

I figure any post that starts off with a bowl of cheese sauce is going to be good, right? I came across an ingredient that was new to me the other day. It is jarred, pureed, aji amarillo. A very common ingredient in Peruvian cuisine.



It is a wonderfully colorful and flavorful chile paste. The aji amarillo has a mellow, slow spiciness and lots of pepper flavor. Not as aggressively spicy as some Asian chile pepper pastes you might have had.



A common Peruvian dish that utilizes the stuff is Papa a la Huancaina. Basically a cold, cheesy, potato salad of sorts. I decided to make a variation on this theme, loosely adhering to the traditional recipe. I made some alterations to suit my own tastes.

I started with some Queso Oaxaca, as opposed to the traditional Queso Blanco. I figured this would make a gooier type of cheese sauce.



8 ounces of this cheese goes into a blender along with a couple tablespoons of the aji amarillo paste, 4 saltine crackers, a can of condensed milk, a quarter cup of vegetable oil, a garlic clove, salt, and pepper.



Blend for a while and it ends up as a chunky substance that looks a little like egg salad.



I was going to a simple cookout at a friend's house, so I roasted some potato rounds in the oven to heat up on the grill. This is another departure from the traditional recipe which uses cold, boiled potatoes. I guess I envisioned a sort of crispy, cheese fries-esque type of deal. Here is some of the spread cooking up on the grill. The little Le Creuset contains a second attempt at the brat tub. I added some pepperoncini and garlic this time, it was pretty good.



I warmed the cheese sauce in a pan on the grill and then dumped in the crispy potaoes. The sauce was pretty good, a little on the overly rich side, but successful none the less. I think I would omit the crackers next time and possibly thin it out a little. The sauce was a little too thick this time, almost pasty. I really liked the flavors of the spicy pepper paste with the garlic and cheese. You could dump the stuff on almost anything and it would probably be good. Anyhow, just thought I would share this with you. The Aji Amarillo paste seems to be a versatile addition to the pantry.

Mmmm....Crispy Pig. Misadventures in Pig Roasting

As if yesterdays picture was not gory enough, I bring you this Lord of the Flies homage (digitally altered to protect my identity). A lot of people have been getting upset over my documentation of the pig slaughter. To me it seems that if you are going to eat meat, you should be intimately acquainted with where it comes from. An old and oft spoken idea, but a valid one.

If you read the above linked post you will know that I prepared and roasted a 57 pound pig on Saturday. I was planning on roasting a 30 pound suckling-esque pig, but ended up with the 57 pounder. To make the pork fit the roasting setup that I constructed, I cut off the limbs and the head.



For flavor and juiciness I brined the pig pieces over night in 5 gallons of water, 2 cups salt, 1 1/2 cups sugar, a few dried chiles, peppercorns, and about a heads worth of garlic. This all sat in a garbage bag lined rubber made tub overnight with a few bags of ice. Here is me fishing pieces out to begin cooking the next day.



I had constructed two rack things out of some rebar and fencing material. As I said before, I was planning on much less pork. I had to play a little meat tetris to get it all to fit.



Here is the roasting setup in action. I dug a hole about a foot deep, around 24 by 36 inches. I started by letting about 20 pounds of charcoal burn for around 30 minutes. Using various bricks and cinder blocks I perched the pig about 3 feet above the coals. The meat got covered with some aluminum foil.



I simply basted with a mixture of vegetable oil, vinegar, sugar, and salt. I didn't really want to cover up the pork flavor with a whole lot of fancy spices or sauces. I let the sow cook, skin side up, for about 2 1/2 hours and then flipped and cooked for another couple hours.

While this was going I enjoyed some lovely ol' oat soda out of this wonderful chalice.



I let the charcoal burn a little hot so I got some charring which kind of sucked, but there was still a fair amount of nicely brown and crisped skin to munch on. The meat was actually very tender and moist, especially the shoulders.



Regrettably, I did not get any pictures of the prepared meat or people eating it. I was so absorbed with getting the pig cut up and ready to go that I really kind of forgot. People seemed to enjoy the roasted swine, so I was pretty happy. The only major faux pas was the somewhat charred skin. I feel like this was a good first go at pig roastin'. Now I am armed with the skills to do a much better job next time. I am hoping that Pig Roast, Part Deux involves a little more roastin' and a little less of the slaughterin'.

Misadventures in Pig Slaughter

So, my friend is having a house warming pig roast tomorrow night. Needless to say, a denizen of the meaty arts like myself could not but step up and do pig duty. As it is not an over huge gathering, I decided a pig of about 30 pounds would be sufficient. This size is not quite a tiny suckling jobber, but also not hogzilla. Pursuant to this, I built a roasting rig (more on this later in the weekend) that would accommodate the modestly sized pig I was expecting. However, does anything in this life ever actually go according to plan? Of course not.

When the gentlemen farmer from whom we ordered the pig arrived, it was with not a 30 pounder but nigh a 60 pound sow! Some sort of mix up I guess. That is still not the hugest pig around but way bigger than what I had planned, and too big for the roasting apparati that I had constructed. As much as I hated to do it, I had to slaughter the hog down into component parts to make it manageable for cooking. At a pig roast one wants to a see a whole pig being roasted, there is a certain psychological impact of seeing a whole creature all crispy brown and delicious. Having to cut it up like this lessens the fun a little, but oh well.

Anyhow, above is an action shot of me cuttin' off a ham. Surely more to follow on this.

Watervliet Wonder Bakery Thriftshop. Wonderous Breaderous.

I love this picture. The Wonder brand sign against the backdrop of a cemetery, it is somehow fitting. As if the sign is lording over its victims. Multitudes of people, arteries clogged with Twinkie filling, are shaking their bony fists from their graves at the sign's primary colored cheeriness. I can hear their ghostly muttering.

This particular Watervliet Wonder Bakery Thriftshop is located on the Troy Schenectady Road. Me and the wife were tooling around when we passed the establishment and we had to make a stop and sightsee.



I spied Captain Cupcake and Twinkie the Kid through the plate glass.



The store is frankly, surreal.



It is colors, oh so many colors. I can taste them.



In Soviet Watervliet, Wonder Bread eats you! I don't really know what to say about this place. Me and the wife and child wandered around this wonderland of artificial flavors, corn syrup, and processed wheat with bemused horror. I almost felt the need to pick up me wee 'un and hold her close. I have spoken about my survivalist tendencies before, but for some reason, that tickle at the base of my spine which urges me to grab the guns, ammunition, and knowledge of old timey methods of food preservation and head for the hills kicked in in this place. The wrongness of what we have done to ourselves by industrializing food production made the blood throb in my temples. Images of wavering fields of genetically modified corn and wheat under clear blue skies shot through my head. Miserable herds of zombie cows in Texas danced across my brain.

I don't often wax political or waste much effort on food activism, but one thing kept occurring to me. The stuff peddled at this location is seriously, shockingly cheap. If my nose was against the grindstone and I had hungry children to feed, would I be able to resist shopping here? If I was not brought up in a pseudo-foody household with hundreds of cookbooks would I even have the knowledge or inclination not to accept Wonder/Hostess products as normal? Fresh meat and produce is expensive, and preparation is time consuming and requires knowledge and equipment. I am not bringing up any new concepts here, but it is not often that the high fallutin' food philosophy that my economic status allows me to maintain is shaken to its core. So much for a nice Sunday drive through the river towns, I was left thoroughly depressed after leaving this joint.

Banquet Frozen Tamale

Banquet meals kind of remind me of childhood. We always had a few of these bad boys stashed in the coffin freezer in the basement of my parent's house. They have cost around a buck each for pretty much as long as I can remember. Go look at Dave's Cupboard, as I recall, he does some good reviews on the various Banquet meal offerings. I saw this new entry the other day at the market and one of its components intrigued me. Pictured above is the "Mexican Style Enchilada and Tamale Beef Combo." I am a tamale fanatic (see here for more on this), so I wanted to give Banquet's a whirl. Here is the meal cooked up in the microwave.



Probably the ugliest meal I have sat down to in a while, but it smelled kind of good. I immediately scarfed the tamale. It was very small, only about the length of my pinky, and seemingly of the corn roll variety. Pretty similar to some canned versions that I have sampled. But I will say, the meal taken as a whole, for costing only a dollar, is really not that bad. That is what is funny about Banquet meals. People make fun of them, but a dollars worth of packaged frozen food is a bargain if it is of even marginal edibility. Banquet usually delivers a kind of mediocre goodness.

While we are on the subject, this past Saturday I had an exponentially better tamale experience at the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market . At Magdalena's Kitchen (I think this is what it was called) in the little row of food tents right as you walk in I got the below pictured chicken tamale.



This was so good that after I consumed one I immediately circled back for a second. The masa was rich and tender (plenty of good ol' lard I think) and there was plenty of juicy chicken in the center. This was served with some thin guacamole (the way I like it) and some sour cream. They had out some salsas, both green and red, as well as some pickled jalapenos. This was the highlight of the day at the market for me. If you see this place this weekend, buy one.

As a final note, writing the above made me think of something. What is the urge in America to make things "chunky." I have lived down near the Mexican border and authentic salsas and guacamoles down there tend to be a lot thinner and smoother than the American stuff. I appreciate salsa cruda, it is great in tacos, but I like a thinner salsa roja for chips. A lot of American style "salsa" seems to be some sort of bastard child of salsa cruda and salsa roja. Also, nothing skeves me more than nasty, chunky, stinky guacamole you see in a lot of restaurants (the kind usually served with an ice cream scoop). I like it to be a homogeneous and creamy mixture, don't know why, that is just me. Opinions?

Sunday, Now With More Culture

Instead of the usual wonders of the culinary sort, today I bring you Cinema! and Literature! You must watch the video above. Wait for the sharks, trust me.

Next we have what I am hoping is going to be the finest work of fiction in centuries.



Billed on Amazon as- "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!" Supposedly involves ninja armies fightin' zombies. Needless to say I have high hopes for this one. I will let you know.

Down By the River I Shot My Sausage

In the grand tradition of people on the internet carting random inanimate objects around (garden gnomes, can of black beans, etc...) and photographing them, I have decided to do the same with my jar of sausage. Apparently, the jar escaped my custody and was photographed by K8 down carousing in Center Square last night. Wily sausages.

This morning I decided to take sausage jar for a nice walk along the mighty Hudson in Troy, NY before shopping around at the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market. Sausage jar seemed to have a good time, but I think he was a little hungover.

The Brat Tub. Mr. Dave at His Wurst.

So, I have been seeing recipes for Brat Tubs, or Brat Hot Tubs, for quite a while. Basically, it seems that these recipes started as a way to kind of keep the Bratwursts in a "holding tank" of poaching liquid on the grill. When someone was ready for a brat you would fish one out and finish it off over the charcoal. At its simplest the Brat Tub recipe calls for beer and onions, that is pretty much it. The beer and onions are discarded after use which seems to me to be kind of a waste of some flavorful liquid. I came across a recipe that involved reducing the beer with some other additions into a gloopy onion based condiment.

I started with six superbly high quality bratwursts from Rolf's Pork Store on Lexington in Albany (please click link to read about how I adore this porky oasis in the ghetto).



Here is further Wurst porn.



These guys are going to get poached in some beer. In the champagne of beers.



That is right folks, Miller High Life. The good stuff. Two should do. I am starting this recipe off on my stove top, not on the grill, as I was going to be bringing it over to a friends house and did not want to be messing about too much there.

My tip for poaching fresh wurst is to put them into the liquid when it is cold and slowly bring them up to temperature, never boiling. The barest possible simmer is best, more of a bath than a boil. If you were to throw them straight into a rolling boil you would have a mess of burst skins. About 20 minutes should do in 190 degree water, you want the brats to be around 150-160 internally.



When the brats are done take them out and reserve. Throw 3-4 onions cut into rings into the beers. Also, throw in a wad of butter, 1/2 cup of your favorite ketchup, 1/4 cup mustard of choice, and as much of your favorite hot sauce as you like. I used about a tablespoon of my favorite, the indomitable Tiger Sauce. This is a sweet/hot sauce with a tamarind flavor to it.



Reduce everything for about 30-40 minutes. It should be thick and gloopy and be kind of gross looking. Don't worry, it tastes awesome.



As always, I got distracted at the actual barbecue and forgot to take any pictures of the grilling process. You pretty much just want to grill the poached bratwursts until good and brown and then dunk them back in the simmering sauce for a while. Serve each brat on a crusty roll with plenty of the onions and sauce. I also grilled up a few Anaheim peppers for a little extra spice and flavor. I did manage to get a shot of a half eaten end product.



People seemed to enjoy this concoction, I think I could jazz it up a little bit next time and end up with something a little more refined. The onions needed a little something, I think an acid of some type would have been good in there. A little vinegar or some pickled jalapenos might have been the way to go. But I really like the whole concept of the Brat Tub, it is kind of fun. Plus, those Rolf's Bratwursts are so good I like any excuse to go get a few.

Mr. Dave Is No Longer a Big Mac Virgin

It occurred to me the other day that I have never in my life eaten a McDonald's Big Mac. I just found it sort of strange that something as iconic as the Big Mac has escaped my ravenous jaws. I guess as a child (unfortuneatly, this is when the lion's share of my fast food consumption occurred) I had problems with pickles, lettuce, and anything even vaguely resembling mayonnaise. These finicky child's phobias kept me on a pretty standard regimen of McNuggets. So yesterday I called up goodwife Mrs. Dave and said, "Honey, grab me up a Big Mac on your way home." Saying this made me feel a little dirty. A short while later my prize arrived.



I ain't gonna' lie. It looked kind of good. I was surprised at the height of the thing and a tart aroma of pickles and beef assaulted my nostrils. Upon picking up the Mac, I was surprised at how weightless it felt. The visual size seemed to imply a weightier burger. I took an absolutely giant bite, chewed, and ruminated. The first thing that struck me was how salty it was. I am afraid to look at the nutritional information on the Big Mac, but I am sure there is some ungodly amount of sodium in the thing. The other dominate flavor I tasted was the pickles, which is good, I like pickles. I only got a hint of the Thousand Island dressing-esque flavor of the Big Mac sauce. The beef was almost a non factor in my estimation. It was kind of like eating a giant, bready, pickle, cheese and lettuce sandwich.

For all the fuss our American culture makes about the storied Big Mac, I had expected some sort of near religious experience (not really, I kind of figured it would suck). But really, I would take a standard MacDonald's cheeseburger over the Mac. I find their classic cheeseburger to be well balanced, with a perfect meat to bun to pickles to onions to ketchup to mustard (included in my neck of the woods) ratio. It is kind of like meat candy, a treat to be savored on occasion. I am happy that now I don't have to be curious anymore and am fairly confident that I won't suffer from any future Big Mac attacks.

First Time Aldi Visit (West Carthage, NY...I Think)

Ever been to an Aldi Market? Well I hadn't until the other day. I was traveling along Route 26 up around West Carthage when I spied a location. I have heard about Aldis before and was always a bit curious. The story on Aldi is that it is a German chain that goes to almost an extreme to keep prices low. There is minimal advertising, no decoration in the stores, no shelves in the store, pretty much only one kind of everything, you pay for your bags, etc... You even have to use a quarter to release a shopping cart (you get it back when you return it).



The inside of the store is pretty spare.



Here is another view.



All of the cost cutting measures allows Aldi to offer very, very cheap prices for a lot of stuff. Don't expect much variety or anything "gourmet" so to speak, but for the basics, you can't beat their prices with a stick. Not that I would ever eat these, but here are 24 hot dogs for a little over 3 bucks.



I was hoping to find some weird German products at Aldi, but it was all standard American fare. A little disappointing, but at least I am not curious anymore. They did have a towering display of ready made bacon.



The only thing I bought were these surreal looking appetizers called "crispy noodle shrimp."



I am thinking of cooking these as an offering to the FSM (bless his noodely appendages).

Beef Pizzies? (New Info) Ohhhh, Beef Pizzles!

OK, so I went over to the new Asian Market over on Central and McNutt this morning to mosey around a little. In the meat case I spied these mysterious items named "Beef Pizzies." I like to play imaginary scenarios for how things happened inside my tiny mind. This is what I came up with for how these got named.

The Asian Market's butcher, who does not have a complete grasp of the English language, is printing out the labels for the days meat selection. Not knowing the English word for this particularly unmentionable part of the bovine anatomy, he inquires (in delicate as possible terms) of his 8 year old daughter (who has been raised in the US of A) as to what the proper terminology is. Blushing, the young lass mutters "pizzies, Daddy," conjuring up the current playground parlance of her elementary school. Onto the label it goes and into the meat case.

It is entirely possible that "pizzies" are not the naughty bits that I am supposing them to be, it could be some other odd bit or end of beef. But it certainly appears that some unhappy bulls out there are missing their "special purposes."

**EDIT**

New information has been received thanks to most excellent commentators. The word is Pizzles. They really are wieners.

Jar O' Sausages

I know what you are thinking, two posts from Mr. Dave? in one day? This is too good to be true! I have been out on the road for a couple weeks making the world safe for democracy so I have somewhat of a backlog of posts. The above picture is of a treasure that I brought home from my travels. That right there is a big ol' jar of "8 Real German Sausages" care of the Meica sausage making company. I saw this priced at 7.95$ at the commissary and could not resist purchasing it.

I don't think the picture does justice to the size of the sausages. Lest you get the impression that these are mere cocktail sausages for snacking, the jar is probably about 10 inches tall! The sausages are probably close to an inch in diameter. Their "Net Drained Weight" is 25.4 OZ. That is a lot of meat right there. Here is a back view.



The directions for serving state with Prussian brevity, "To eat cold, drain and serve." I don't think I have the stones to bite into one of these things cold. I think I am going to grill them up tomorrow and eat them hot dog style.

Here is a bottom view that I find vaguely obscene.



Don't know why I am getting such a kick out of giant sausages in a jar. It just strikes me as neat for some reason. My mom says I loved those little sausages for infants when I was wee, so maybe I have repressed jar-sausage joy. By the way, I keep walking by the baby sausage in the grocery store and telling young Giblet (Mr. Dave's 6 month old daughter, exemplifier of beautiousness) that soon, very soon, she will be able to gobble them at will. Mrs. Dave threatens to beat me around the head and neck if I give them to her. Alas, this is an argument for another day.

Bacon Butty. Now with Science.

So, I came across this article the other day- "Scientists Find the Formula for the Perfect Bacon Butty." If you don't know, a Bacon Butty is simply the UK equivalent of a bacon sandwich, but made with back or shoulder style bacon (as opposed to our own streaky, belly bacon. See here for more about this issue). Apparently, the formula is as follows, N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta. Don't know what all that crap means, but I decided to follow the directions in the article.

As this was was written in the UK, I started with some British style shoulder bacon care of Oscar's Adirondack Smokehouse (of Warrensburg).



This stuff looked pretty good, much better fat marbling than the British style back bacon I tried last time.



Into a preheated 475 degree (240 Celsius) oven went the bacon for 7 minutes as per the instructions.



Fairly delicious looking end result, but I still think British bacon looks like slices of ham. I guess I am still under the oily spell of crispy strips of American belly or side bacon. Must be something in my upbringing, I sort of look askance at this stuff as if to say, "where do you get off calling yourself bacon, Mr. Ham?"

The bacon goes onto a couple slices of 1-2 cm thick bread. I find that factory produced, grocery store bread goes best in this application (and I'm kind of a bread snob).



The article says to finish with "your favorite sauce." In the UK this would probably be HP Sauce. I did not have any on hand, so I went with the curry ketchup I got over at Rolf's Pork Store in Albany. This condiment is delicious, sweet with a hint of curry. I absolutely love it.



All in all the sandwich was pretty good. I don't know though, as much as I try, I can't really get into the whole British bacon thing. As much as I want to love anything called bacon, I ache for the crispiness of cheesy, grocery store, factory made bacon if I am going to have it in a sarnie. I have come up with my own scientific formula for bacon sandwiches-

OMBFUC + WB = Win

wherein

OMBFUC = Oscar Meyer Bacon Fried Until Crisp
and
WB = Wonder bread

Mr. Dave Weighs in on the Capital Q Issue

So, I have been reading the varying opinions on our own Capital Q (329 Ontario, Albany) that have been flying around the intertubes lately (see Monsieur Fussy's positive take here, and the Times Union's Celina Ottaway's not so positive take here). Firstly, I am only newly under the sway of Capital Q's smokey charms. I first sampled their porky wares at the Troy Pigout, and I just had a delicious lunch there this rainy afternoon. Secondly, I agree with Mr. Fussy that Capital Q is top notch and most of what Ms. Ottaway had to say is pedantic gobshite.

On the issue of food, the sandwiches are delicious (see here for menu link). The Okie Pig (pulled pork and house made pickles) is probably the best locally available barbecue sandwich. This is the one item that Capital Q hangs its hat on, and it is good. Really good. The Okie Beef and Burnt Ends sandwich, also full of win. Delicious. The ribs are good too, here is the half rack of "Wet" ribs I got this afternoon.



A close up of the rib if your interested. As always, I apologize for the quality of the photos. I am sticking to my "only using iPhone camera" guns.



Were the ribs the best ribs I have ever had? Probably not, they were slightly salty. But hey, we all have problems. The sauce had a delicious, tomato richness that I absolutely loved. The meat was good, and the portion was reasonably priced. This is my problem with Ms. Ottaway's review. She makes a big stink about there being both "really good" and "really bad" food at Capital Q, blah, blah, blah... How about I come to dinner at your house and see if I like every single dish that you cook. That is what I like about Capital Q, it all tastes like it was actually made by the hands of humans. If you want across the board, slick, mediocre "goodness" go to Boston Market and shove some meatloaf in your maw. I like Capital Q, warts and all. Also, the sublimely delicious Okie Pig pulled pork sandwich makes me forgive anything else that they do at the establishment. I think it is that good.

On the issue of service, Ms. Ottaway calls the counter staff "obnoxious." I am sorry to pontificate, but this is one of my pet peeves. Where in the universal social contract does it say that we all have to be nice to each other all of the time? To me it is a peculiarity of the American psyche that many expect zombie-like cheeriness from all food service personnel regardless of situation. I, for one, am a moody bastard. If I ever open a restaurant, and you come in on a day when I am moody, prepare for me to be mean to you. If you don't like it leave and never come back. As long as I walk out of Capital Q with a sack full of pork, I could care less if they were a little brusque. By the way, the young gent working the counter this afternoon was a picture of friendly customer service. So I think that Ms. Ottaway may need to drink a cup of "get over yourself" with her cornflakes in the morning. Or go to McDonald's for a McSmile and a McHave-a-nice-day.

On the issue of authenticity, Ms. Ottaway drops the whole "I lived there, so..." card. I have lived in both Oklahoma, as well as the Carolinas, back during my ramblin' days, and let me tell you, there are some shit barbecue joints down there authentic or not. There are also some very good barbecue joints, but this whole argument is a fallacy. Who cares if something is absolutely true to its roots as long as it is good. I have seen bigger departures between 2 Oklahoma bbq joints on the same street than between either of them and Capital Q.

So, any question where my opinion lies? Needless to say, not a big fan of Celina Ottaway's review.

On to more praises for Capital Q. As you may know, I spent my childhood on the mean streets of downtown Albany. The neighborhood around Capital Q is as familiar to me as my newborn daughter's face. I saw this on the wall and had a nostalgia fit and almost started balling.



Yes, Capital Q is located on hallowed ground. The former location of Emil Meister's Market. You guys know that weird mural across the street? It is firmly ingrained in my childhood psyche. My dad used to take us to Meister's all of the time. Up the road you got the Paladium, and then the Hibernians. That was my neighborhood, it has changed, and it makes me sad. But I think Capital Q is a welcome addition, it has local character and fits right in. Did I mention that the Okie Pig sandwich with those homemade pickles is pretty good?

Chocolate Covered Twinkie from Emack & Bolio's

I went over to the Guilderland Emack & Bolio's location (see here for more) to get Mrs. Dave a lemonade. I spied the above chocolate covered Twinkie and couldn't resist purchasing it. I am not a dessert/sweets kind of guy (more of a savory, fatty/greasy type), so it did not look particularly appetizing to me. But I thought I would give it a whirl anyways. Here she is out of the package.



Chomp.



Meh. Don't get me wrong, it was okay. Way too sweet for my taste, I should have gotten the dark chocolate as opposed to the milk (why am I complaining about the sweetness of something called "chocolate covered Twinkie" as if that should be unexpected? Sorry, interior monologue). I think, had the chocolate coating been a little thinner, this might have been successful. To my sensibilities the chocolate/Twinkie ratio was a little high, but that is just me.

Sausagegate (Pretty old, but I stumbled upon it today)

A black mark on the storied history of the Sausage Race. The Italian sausage is cruelly assaulted in what became known as the "Randall Simon Incident" or "Sausagegate."

The Much Lauded New Asian Super Market On Central

After hearing much buzz about the place (and a couple enthusiastic emails from my loyal readership), I had to make a trip to the brand new Asian Super Market located at 1245 Central Ave. It is on the corner of Central and McNutt (heheh, I have been laughing at McNutt Ave. since childhood). I am an Asian Market fanatic so I was very excited (see here for a trip to the Market on Central and Colvin). I drove over with Mrs. Dave to see if the place lived up to all of the hype.

Upon walking in I was struck by the fact that it looked like a very polished operation, it did not have the sense of ordered chaos that you find in other area Asian Markets. This place was brightly lit and sparkly clean.



I headed right over to the meat case as this is usually my main point of interest. My photo only captured a portion, but there was an impressive selection. Both Normal everyday cuts that you would find at your standard (American style) market, as well as Asian specialties. Everything was attractively displayed, apparently fresh, and might I add, reasonably priced. Here is the pork end of the case-



You know that Mr. Dave loves pork belly. Over in the shrink wrapped meats section there was a hearty abundance of the stuff, huzzah! A nice sized fresh duck will run you about 9.00$ here (they even have wild duck).



There is also a very nice produce selection, almost a quarter of the store with pretty much everything you can think of. Over by the fish counter you can find these poor little green guys. Fresh, living, jumping, big ass frogs! I named the one on top Herman the German (he had a Prussian way about him), I wanted to take him home but Mrs. Dave would not have had it. There were eels and turtles too.



We walked up and down the aisles, not really doing a full on shop, but grabbing things that looked especially tasty or interesting. My wife spotted this incident of Engrish which we found amusing.



I was stopped dead in my tracks by the below display. By the packaging you might think that it was some form of Chinese medicine, or maybe gift wrapped confections of some sort. But no, no. That be jerky homes.