On election night and food

So, tonight is primary election night in New York state. I work for a newspaper, so we're pretty busy tonight (not yet, though, because polls haven't closed — side note: you'd be surprised how many calls we get asking for results before the polls have closed, though that's not nearly as bad as all the people without computers who call up while we're on deadline asking who won this race and who the new superintendent of highways is going to be). Reporters in my office are writing a total of 16 stories for tomorrow's paper, just on the election.

So every election night we get food. Usually pizza.

We ordered six pies tonight - two cheese, two pepperoni, one sausage and one fried eggplant (that was my idea). We always ask for napkins and plates and usually don't get them. We didn't tonight. (Why should this night be different from all other nights? It's not Passover!)

There's nothing like a nice slice or two of really greasy pizza just before you have to sit down and plow through yards of copy and make sure you make it through the night. I feel it sitting like a gut bomb in my stomach now.

But while we were eating, we discussed the fact that pizza is pretty perfect. I mean, if you have one with meat on it, you've got your protein, your starch, your fiber, your dairy, your vegetables. Sure, it's fattening. Sure, it's greasy, but it's pizza and this is New York.

And what, my friends, could be more perfect than that?

RECIPE: Rickey’s Boneless Buffalo Chicken

Football season is now upon us, and you know what that means: cooking up dishes with great indigestive potential. Rickey isn’t as big a football enthusiast as he is a baseball fan, but when it comes to cooking, he’s ready to rise to the occasion. Do you enjoy buffalo wings but feel like all those pesky bones are taking up valuable space that could be replaced by yet more buffalo sauce and chicken meat? Well then this quick & easy recipe is for you. Whether you’re a rabid fan in need of sustenance to fuel a grueling Sunday spent on the couch, or merely a hausfrau who just barely tolerates your significant other’s alarming fixation with watching grown men in tight pants tackle each other, we think you’ll find something in this recipe that appeals to you. Here’s what you’ll need:

Chicken tubers (or boneless chicken breasts cut lengthwise into strips if tubers aren’t available)

Bread crumbs

Chopped Parsley

Flour

Several Beaten Eggs

Peanut Oil

Frank’s Red Hot Sauce

Butter

Blue Cheese Dressing (Rickey recommends Marzetti’s)

You’ll want to kick things off by heating your oven up to 200° (Fahrenheit, not Celsius you pan-euro jackass). In a large bowl of your choosing, combine the breadcrumbs and chopped parsley. Then place the flour, beaten eggs, and breadcrumb mixture in three separate shallow bowls. Presto, you’ve got yourself a little assembly line going on.

*Note: If you’re the type who likes things very hot, add cayenne pepper to the flour mixture. For the next part of the operation, we suggest a little musical accompaniment. Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” should work nicely. Go ahead and tap your feet a little—music goes hand in hand with cooking.

One by one, dip the chicken tenders in the flour. Then dip them in the eggs. Then dip them in the breadcrumbs. It’s a regular factory assembly line! (See why Rickey picked out that song?) When you’re all done, place breaded chicken tenders on a large plate to await their oily fate. Next, heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat, and fill the bottom of the pan with a ½ inch of peanut oil. Unless you want your precious tenders sticking to the pan, make damn sure there’s a ½ inch of peanut oil in the pan at all time. Using your trusty cooking thermometer (you do have one of these, yes?) heat the oil to 350°.

To prevent a horrific scalding incident, a splatter guard is kind of a must for this recipe. When you’re feeling brave enough, add a few chicken strips (5 to 6) to the hot oil, and cook them until they’re nicely browned on one side. This should take about three minutes. Use some tongs (not bare hands) to turn the strips, and allow them to finish cooking, two to three minutes more. Remove the chicken tenders from the pan, place 'em on a baking sheet, and season them with some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Repeat this process for all the strips.

Put the finished chicken tenders in the oven to ensure they stay warm and crisp. Don’t stack them on top of each other—they’ll lose their crunchiness. We’d explain why this happens, but that would require a sextant, a master’s degree in Norse mythology, and a small woodland critter. Frankly, Rickey doesn’t have that kind of time on his hands.

Now on to the hot sauce: the heart of the recipe. Combine a ratio of 2 cups hot sauce to 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan, and bring the wondrous concoction to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When you’re ready to serve, put the chicken tenders in a large bowl and pour the sauce over them. Toss 'em up to ensure proper coating, and serve them with that Marzetti's blue cheese Rickey Mentioned earlier. Enjoy. We think that you’ll find that the taste stacks up nicely to anything most buffalo wing joints create (except for The Candlelight Inn--those magnificent bastards are in a league of their own.

As far as beverage pairings go, you’ll want to drink something equally modest as this unassuming dish. Go with Sam Adams Light, it’s a stalwart friend that has never let Rickey down in the past. So maybe this wasn’t the most challenging or high brow recipe ever... But you’ll find that it pairs well with an entire Sunday spent watching football. Have no fear; Rickey’s working his way up to a soufflé recipe.

Culinary Patriotism

Adam, our eponym and absentee landlord, until very recently (2 days ago I think) has goodnaturedly called me a Red, a Commie, a bleeding heart liberal, and generally cast aspersions on my patriotism (always with love, but nonetheless...). He's recently changed his tune, and while I'm not sure what I did to deserve this turnaround, I offer the following as evidence that I'm a true blue American dammit -- I can bake an awesome apple pie. In the absence of inflated credit card debt, a stars-and-stripes foam finger, or a gas guzzling SUV, this is really the only evidence of my Americanness that I possess...

The great thing about pie is that you can take the ugliest apples ever (like these from my grandma's front lawn, which I absconded with in the dead of night...no, no, no...kidding, kidding, I don't steal from grandma...I asked permission first) and peel away the ugly til you have perfect apple purity.

And then you throw together a very ugly pie crust because, well, mine always are. But if you use the magic ingredient...the scary magic ingredient...you will have incredible pie. Real pie. American pie. The secret ingredient?

Lard.

Don't be like that. Lard crusts are the only way to go. It's how your grandmother (whom I'm sure you never stole from either) made her crusts. If that isn't a stamp of approval, I don't know what is.

So you take your now perfect apples and throw in a little sugar, a little flour, a little butter, a little cinnamon, and presto change-0 -- Instant Patriotism.






God Bless America!

Wherein Amy explains why she hasn't posted yet

OK. So I get this e-mail one day from Adam, asking if I want to take part in this new blog venture, all about food. Heck, I like food, so why not?

Of course, I do have a full-time job and I blog about television for it, plus I'm now a member of Blogs4Bauer (in part, also Adam's fault), and I also have two children under the age of four, so it's not like I have gobs of free time.

But, still, it sounds fun.

Then a week passes. Another week.

And another, and another.

Still nothing.

I check in from time to time, read Rickey's hilarious missive on random food left to kill people in the kitchen, even comment on it.

Still nothing.

I'm lame, OK? Just lame. I never have any interesting food anymore (trying to lose baby weight, after all, plus we never get to eat out hardly, because we have two smichicks and corralling them is like trying to herd cats).

But it occurs to me that perhaps that can be my niche: Boring food.

A colleague went to the Desert Moon Fresh Mexican Grille (you know it's fresh b/c there's an "e" at the end of Grill) today and I ordered a steak fajita burrito. It was on the low-carb/high fiber menu and came in a whole-wheat tortilla.

Of course, that means it was not really a fajita, burrito or, frankly, anything else you could actually find in the nation of Mexico. But it wasn't too bad. I pretended it wasn't Mexican food, and it tasted pretty good, in fact.

Unfortunately, it came with some corn tortilla chips, which I ended up eating, and that probably negated the entire idea of eating from the low-carb menu. I also had a can of Diet Coke.

By the way, did you know that Diet Coke has more caffeine than a regular Coke? true. Check out The Caffeine Database — 12 ounces of Coca-Cola Classic has 34.5 mg of caffeine; Diet Coke has 45 mg in the same serving.

And it's my second can of the day. Woo-hoo! Stop by about 5 p.m., when I'm on deadline, have a million people asking me a million questions and I've had two or three more cans. It's not a pretty sight.

And Fridays, wow. Fridays are really ugly. But that's another story for another day. Friday's Chinese food day, so you have that to look forward to. And don't worry, I don't eat at this place.

Rickey Reviews Odd Food Left in the Second Floor Staff Kitchen

Every now and then, someone at Rickey’s office will leave food in the staff kitchen with the intention of giving it away gratis. Generally, this food is either: bizarre, rotten, unhealthy, or all of the above. Rickey, being the curious individual that he is, will often take aforementioned food back to his office and examine it to see if it qualifies as a suitable mid-afternoon snack. Yesterday, a tiny plastic cup in the second floor staff kitchen caught Rickey’s eye. Colored red and labeled only “JELLY,” Rickey deemed this gelatinous oddity to be worth a closer look. Below are Rickey’s field notes on the matter.

Interesting: neither the product’s manufacturer nor distributor are listed on the jelly cup. Alarm bells are stating to jingle in Rickey’s mind.

The label does however clearly state: CONTAINS NO KONJAC. What exactly is this konjac they speak of? A Saturday morning cartoon supervillan? Is it good that Rickey is not ingesting any, or bad that he’s getting enough in his daily diet?

A Wiki search reveals that Asians use this konjac ingredient frequently in cooking. And the FDA issued a full-blown ban on it in 2002. Uh oh. Evidently there was a show on this on Oprah a while ago involving paramedics trying to save children that had choked on konjac. The paramedics would use an instrument that sort of vacuums the konjac out of the wind pipe. Sometimes however, the konjac sticks to the walls of the windpipe and so there is nothing paramedics can do to save a choking child once they ingest it. Klaxon sirens are now sounding in Rickey’s head.

But hey, at least the folks manufacturing this product wised up and removed the konjac from their product. So everything’s hunky-dory, right? Not quite. The ingredients in this highly suspect snack only heighten Rickey’s concerns. The contents are:

1) R.O. Pure Water (sholy shit, just how bad does water need to be to require reverse osmosis?)
2) Fructose (mmm, healthy!)
3) Sugar (what, the fructose wasn’t enough?)
4) Coconut (well hey, at least that’s a natural ingredient)
5) Seaweed Extract (ewwwww, what the fuck?)
6) Acidulants (hooray for additives!)
7) Natural Lychee Flavor (sorry, but there’s nothing natural about a fruit that comes from the soapberry family)

Feeling just barely brave enough to sample this seemingly lethal children’s snack, Rickey peels off the plastic top and gingerly licks it. Hm, tastes kind of like mop water. Sickly sweet, and there’s something else in there too… …a slight after-taste of what Rickey imagines horse semen must taste like. Awesome.

Now convinced that the experience cannot possibly get any worse, Rickey pinches the bottom of the cup, and tilts his head back to force the gelatinous mop water into his mouth. Oh god. If Beelzebub were to mandate that the damned take jello shots in the fiery abyss, we imagine this is kind of what they’d taste like. An entire afternoon of work productivity has been lost and Rickey must now unleash hell in the first floor men’s bathroom.

Rickey’s not entirely sure precisely which Asian country this awful food hails from (to prevent a full-scale nuclear strike, the label wisely doesn’t identify that information). But once Rickey finds out, he’ll definitely be writing a few letters to his congressman. And a big shout out to the sadistic bastard in his office who tried to poison Rickey today. It’ll take more than that to keep Rickey down.

REVIEW: The Oyster Bar

On a Tuesday night jaunt into NYC, Rickey decided to stop off for a bite to eat at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. Be warned: those who are squeamish about eating raw shellfish should avert their eyes at this point. Indeed, it takes a special kind of person to enjoy the sensation of oyster brine trickling down your chin (or man-beard in Rickey’s case). Now Rickey knows very little about the various classifications of raw oysters, but armed with a vocabulary consisting primarily of words such as “awesome” and “scrumtulescent” we think we’ll get the job done just fine.

The Oyster bar features sit down tables, but half the fun of eating there is sitting at the bar and watching the shellfish get shucked right in front of you. So Rickey sidled up to the bar and ordered himself a financially unsound amount of raw shellfish as well as a pint of the local lager. Now, some people might try and tell you that white wine, not beer is a better accompaniment to raw oysters. These people are jackasses, pay them no mind. Rickey sampled a bunch of oysters bearing titles like “Blue Point,” “Wellfleet,” and other names we can’t recall at the moment, and found the Wellfleets to be far and away the best. They’re briny, meaty and sweet—everything that Rickey had hoped for (they’d goddamn well better be at $2.85 a piece). A quick Wiki search on these wondrous mollusks informed Rickey that the salt marshes of Wellfleet, Cape Cod are the perfect environment for raising oysters due to the fact that they are fed by springs. Okey-dokey then. Rickey finished slurping his oysters and took a peek at the entrees.

The main course selections really aren’t the Oyster Bar’s forte, but Rickey figured he’d sample a few things anyway. Ignoring the fact that he wasn’t dining in New England, Rickey thought he’d give the Ipswich fried clams a shot. Predictably, these were not the luscious, plump-bellied beauties you might remember from your Nantucket Red clad yachting expeditions to the Vineyard. Rickey paused while eating these sad little diner fried clams to shed a tear for his suddenly all too distant childhood. The fried oysters on the other hand, were a goddamned revelation, because well, this is the Oyster Bar after all. Crispy, large and juicy, these magnificent fried bastards wiped the preceding travesty from Rickey’s mind. Rickey finished up his meal by feasting upon a dish of oysters rockefeller, which were also exceptional. Reeling from a severe overdose of fried seafood, and badly in need of an antacid, Rickey paused briefly to admire his surroundings.

The decor of the Oyster Bar perfectly matches the rest of Grand Central Station’s majesty. The lighting and mood at the Oyster bar are warm and cozy, yet simultaneously grandiose. For the record, it’s a damn shame no one creates buildings like Grand Central Station anymore. Examining the colorful cloth napkins, Rickey could swear that they were identical to the ones his family used when he was a child—a suspicion that was later corroborated by his mother, who admitted to pilfering the Oyster Bar’s napkins on a regular basis. Lovely.

In summation, for all you seafood perverts out there, Rickey strongly recommends a pit stop at the Oyster Bar while passing through Grand Central. While quite pricey, it’s a worthwhile (albeit waspy) experience for those in search of the freshest shellfish available on the market.

SCORE: Out of a possible five ribs:
4.5

Wild Boar Redux

Hello Eaters! I’m back from a long weekend with the family in Vermont, ready with tales of lightning storms and faked pregnancy and farm stands (oh my!). I love farm stands and Dutton’s is a jewel – if you’re ever near Manchester Center, VT stop in.

But let’s address that second item -- you've all seen the now ubiquitous style of loose, flowing women’s shirts with empire waists, which suggest a certain “with childness,” yes? Well, they’re everywhere and I own one, to my sainted mum’s great chagrin. I guess she doesn’t want anybody thinking she could be a grandma yet, fake or otherwise. So, of course I wore one out to dinner on Friday night to Ye Olde Tavern, and was having a really lovely time rubbing my belly with one hand while I gestured with my cocktail in the other, remarking on how much “Baby enjoys a nice martini.” Cue our waitress appearing as if from nowhere. At least when I go to hell I know I won’t go alone because my relatives have never laughed so hard.

Hijinks aside, I had a wonderful dinner of wild boar chops (Ricky – I knew you wouldn’t steer me wrong!). I think wild boar tastes more like lamb than pork, but in any case it was awesome.

Now then, lightning storms. Southern Vermont saw a doozey on Saturday night, and while the weak-hearted hid under their covers (Aunt Kathy I’m talking to you!) the rest of us watched one hell of a light show over the Green Mountains, drinking and idly wondering what would happen if the cabin was struck.

But then I’m ahead of myself. Earlier that evening we began to see some ominous clouds roll in – not good since we had just built a fire to grill steaks. And that lead to some high-heat, crazy grilling that should only be attempted if there’s just no other way. While the rest of us ran around like loons trying to get everything done before dinner, at least one of us could not be bothered.

Amazingly, the steaks came out of their trial-by-fire quite nicely, and we had a stormy dinner of steak, goat cheese stuffed tomatoes, fresh baked bread and salad, topped off with a local organic beer. Nothing brings a family together like inappropriate humor, Mother Nature’s rage, and fine food and booze. Can’t wait for next year!