Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Greatest Thing Ever, Ever
Yeah, I know you're sitting there, checking this website 500 times a day for the next post on Puerto Rican food. Yeah, right, and Soylent Green ISN'T made from people....RIP, Heston. We hardley knew ye.
So, I was working on that one, but had to brush up on a program for a project with the work that pays me more than $0.15 per Google Ad click.
Anyway, I messed around with it and came up with another installment of future Internet Celebrity Emeritus, Rob Fitzgerald. Study those dance moves; they may be part of a short-lived wedding line dance someday (and why hasn't a "Macarena 2" manifested itself yet?!).
I figure this is my best chance for some comments. I'm a middle child. I need validation:
Friday, May 29, 2009
Distracted by unbridled awesomeness (sp?)
Was working on my Puerto Rico post (prepare yourself for the splendor of mofongo), but got sidetracked with something awesome.How awesome? If awesome were a sandwich, they'd have to invent something called "awesome sauce" for it, because no other condiments or combinations thereof could do it justice.
Okay, it's a homemade video. I'm just trying to figure out how to get the size down. Plus, I have to make enough room for the side of awesome sauce.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A desperate need for Puerto Rican food, part 1
Recently, I rode the coattails of my event-planning wife and got to slum around in the Caribbean; more notably, in Puerto Rico. Previously, this was all that I knew of PR:One viewing of the Puerto Rico episode of No Reservations, and I was hooked. I wanted to taste every delicious food around. And, while every cotton-headed ninnymuggins out there tells you to stay on the resort property when in the Caribbean (sorry for the strong language), how can you possibly experience a new place?! Sure, the Starbucks was clean and comfortable at my resort; sure, everyone spoke English and made me- Mister Gringo- feel "comfortable", but I really wanted to get out and "do as the locals do".
So, our plan was to head out from Fajardo and go to Guavate/Cayey, exactly where Bourdain stuffed his grateful maw with delicious roast pork, or lechon:
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Surprisingly, we made it there alive. I can't believe that we weren't carjacked, kidnapped, murdered, killed by druglords, or sold into slavery. C'mon! It was a regular drive through some beautiful country! Nothing sketchy. You'd think- reading some of these travel review sites- that every country outside of San Francisco is a cesspool of corruption and militant coups: sort of like the country that Schwarzenegger single-handedly destroyed in his most-artistic opus, Commando. Frankly, everyone we met was EXTREMELY friendly; some didn't speak English, but I tried to pull a little spanish out of my cabeza, and we always seemed to figure it out.
My skills from my modeling career coming back to me on cue.
Tucked away from the Highway a bit was Lechonera Los Pinos. We passed quite a few to get to this one, but it was worth the drive.
My friend- whose English was almost as nonexistent as my Spanish- hacking our lunch off the beautiful roast beast.
Case and point: there was a serious disconnect as I got spanish-speaking stage fright at Lechonera Los Pinos, but somehow, Heather and I ended up with this spread, all for under $15:
Incredible Lechon. Crispy skin and tender meat. Actually, when cooked without smoke (as we know in BBQ shacks), it's actually more like roast turkey. The big difference is the crispy skin. Oh, the crispy skin.
Some of the best rice & beans I've ever had. It's a shame it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to order them. Yeah, I know the words "arroz" and "frijoles", but they had like 5 different kinds of each.
Morcilla, a type of blood-sausage, gets its dark color from- yes- blood. I've always been told that it's something I have to try. I did, and man, it's pretty dang good. Stuffed with rice, garlic, and other great flavors. Seriously (and unlike the chicken feet in a previous post): don't knock it 'til you try it!
Too much good food to talk about...to be continued...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Back to my Brew-ts (like "roots"...c'mon, work with me here!)
Before I was a self-proclaimed oenophile (and hopefully soon an accredited one through the Society of Wine Educators!), or even the ace blogger* you know and love (*denotes sarcasm), I liked to brew beer.Yeah, a few years ago, I had an awesome* double-procedure of septoplasty/turbinate reduction and tonsillectomy. Obviously blessed to be an expert in wine tasting*, I'd been living life with a crowded mouthful of tonsils and a 90% blockage in my nose. Needless to say, the recovery period from having my head cleaned out like the cavity of a Thanksgiving turkey put me out of commission of a while. So, while sitting on the couch for 2 weeks, unable to work by decree of Human Resources and half-cocked on liquid codeine, I quickly realized that sujection to daytime TV was a worse fate than my painful circumstance. So, I sent one of my caretakers (thanks again to my Mom and my wife!) to fetch some books at the store; I wasn't prepared to recreate Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Once my rations arrived, I went right to reading this one:
Fascinating stuff. If you're into cooking, and especially food science, you should definitely try to brew beer. I've done a few batches, and How to Brew definitely is a good one to get you up to snuff.
Anyway, the youthful exuberance of my beer-curious buddy Booty has inspired me to get back into it. Who knows, soon you may be able to create memorable hangovers with one of our soon-to-be famous signature brews.
Anyway, the youthful exuberance of my beer-curious buddy Booty has inspired me to get back into it. Who knows, soon you may be able to create memorable hangovers with one of our soon-to-be famous signature brews.
With summertime pretty much in full swing where I live, we decided to start out with a hefeweizen, or wheat beer. It was supposed to be an adapted version of a blood orange hefeweizen, but most of the blood oranges I bought ended up being regular oranges, it was to look more like the color of road rash...thus:
The ingredients for homebrew (clockwise, from top left): Liquid Malt Extract, Oranges, Malted Barley, Hops (pellets)
Basically, the first step: steeping the grains in 150-160 degree water to extract the "goodness". These are scientific terms, of course.
Not a step for most beers, but here we're making a syrup with the "blood" oranges. Stupid grocery store.
Adding the yeast is the final step before fermentation. Different strains produce way different beers...same goes for wine and athlete's foot.
Booty, looking incredibly excited* about getting ready to bottle the beer a week later.
Bottling the "Scraped Knee" up. How will it taste? Only time will tell!!!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Rollin' the bones and shuckin' the stones
"Welcome to our craps table. Yes? Hi, Ed from Kansas City. It's a pleasure to meet you! Play all you want, but don't you dare touch the dice."Yes, our friendly and firm greeting/mantra to all those who slunk up to our golden-goose of a craps table at Paris. We were all looking for that roll that would catapult us into financial freedom; surely on a gravy train to endless seafood sammiches and Royal Crown Cola...or at least a free Coors Light here and there.
But Booty and I were on the way: pockets lined with green and black chips; bellies sloshing and brains swimming with liquid nerve. We couldn't lose. From 2 AM to 8 AM, it was the hottest craps table I've ever experienced...courtesy of the concept of the "DS", or "designated shooter" (not a paragon of originality, but what our strung-out noodles could muster at the time). Ever seen an entire craps table pass the dice to the last person who shot? A thing of beauty; a utopian society of degenerate gamblers, all putting ego aside for the common good. When a "DS" decided to leave, auditions would be held for the next one. Hit two points, maybe a 7-way "yo", and you're it. But there was no pressure. For but a moment in time, the dice...just...cooperated. They were part of the team, and we were freakin' loving it!
Ah, Vegas. The latest trip was yet another one for the history books. The highlight- no doubt- this 6 hour craps roll that was truncated only by physiological necessity for sleep and breakfast. As you can see, the aftermath was gruesome:
Being lulled to sleep by oatmeal and mimosas outside Paris
However, as with any trip to Las Vegas (at least my trips, anyway), there was more to the story than the hot gaming (formerly "gambling"..."gaming" sounds much less degenerate). For me, this is certainly one of the best food towns in the States. Sure, not a great food town in the sense of street food or long-tenured regional classics. There's just not enough history for all that. Remember: Vegas looked like a setting out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome before 1905. But with the city's popularity virtually unmatched as a resort destination, and with the somewhat-disturbing rise of the celebrity chef, everyone wants to get his food to Nevada, where it will no doubt collide with the thundering herds of Croc-clad touristas, exposing them to the 5-star experiences that they would normally have to schlep the globe to find (pretty sure this sentence is a run-on...sorry to all my English teachers from years past). Anyway, all this great food is in one place. And no doubt, the crowd's come with the money to pay for the experience.
While dropping $500 on a meal is almost certainly going to guarantee you a meal sure to disarm your embarrassing food boner, I find that getting good food on the cheap is the real cat's pajamas. And, since there's really no "local" specialty to try, I felt perfectly fine tucking into a hell of a meal at Joe's Prime Steak, Seafood, and Stone Crab.
Joe's located in the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace, has another location in Chicago, and is no-doubt a spin-off of the legendary Joe's Stone Crab in South Beach, Miami. Stone crabs are native to those waters around Miami, and the population has been maintained by regulations only allowing one claw to be removed from the crabs at harvest, which they will regenerate while having the other one to survive. Sure, it sounds a little harsh, but not as harsh as killing the little guys. Besides, once you've tasted these delicious morsels, you'd probably be complaining that they only take one claw. Man, you're sick sometimes.Bottom line: $21.95 lunch special was 7 claws, coleslaw, hash browns, and bread. Paired it up with a nice New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (I think it was Kim Crawford), which I feel is always a good match with flavorful shellfish. Killer. And to top things off, I waddled out of there, feeling more full off shellfish than my last visit to Orlando's Boston Lobster Feast- with much less shame for humanity- and proceed to finish the night with the amazing craps roll that surely hooked you into reading this boring anecdote about crab claws.
Gotcha.
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