Conference Lesson #1

Drunk engineers like Bob Jovi more than they should.

Softball

We had a softball league game earlier in the evening. On the ride to the fields, my daughter Allison was recounting her first pitching experience which happened in a game last weekend.

"Strikes are fun. Unless you are hitting. Then they're not fun."

Just struck me as something Nuke LaLoosh would have said in Bull Durham.

C'mon Food Network

I was flipping through the on screen guide last night and saw a show I had never heard of on Food Network. The show is titled Meat Men and it is about a large high end beef supplier outside New York City. Maybe they have other meats, but they didn't in this episode. I set the DVR to tape it and I just watched it. Well, kind of sat through it while playing Draw with Friends. I have games going with each of my sisters in law.

Ignoring the disappointment that they only show cutting things that were already broken down and aged. No sides of beef. Just porterhouse and tomahawk steaks. No talk of where it came from or their suppliers. But they appear to dry age themselves.And to give credit where credit is due, the beef looked good. This show could be awesome. It could be informative and really show people where their food is coming from. Not that I was expecting that from Food Network,  but the show could have been something special. Instead, it is your standard dime-a-dozen faux reality shows with made up emergencies. My grievances about this particular episode in no particular order:

The parade of fake, bullshit emergencies: First, a panicked chef calls and need 10 porterhouse steaks for the currently ongoing dinner service. Luckily, cameras are there to catch both sides of the phone conversation. The steaks get there late after the delivery driver gets lost, but they are there just in time. Whew.

Every single knife they have is dull. At the same time. Lets put every knife in a box, get the knife guy back to his shop to sharpen them all. Nothing gets done until we get our 20 knives back. Seriously. They did that. Are you freaking kidding me? This place only has 20 knives? And they must all get sharpened at the same time daily. In one of the asides the main guy says, "And I don't even have a knife in the building." We're talking about cutters that are honing knives after every fifth or sixth cut. No back up blades. But wait, it gets worse...

A celebrity chef calls while everyone is standing around and needs sixty tomahawk steaks for the current evenings dinner. That's a 6 and a zero. 60 custom steaks for a party, a few hours after the order is made. Again, cameras are there to catch the chef ordering as well as anxiously looking at the door for the order to arrive.

Plus, everything has to get done by midnight so a turkey hunting trip can happen the next day. And with all the bullshit, they still had to show everything 4 times. You know, in case you missed 3 minutes of the show, you could be caught up that they still had no knives and a big order to fill.

Top Chef often seemed over the top for the sake of producing drama but this was just silly. Based on what they showed, I think I may have more knives in the house than they have at their business. If they needed emergencies, they could have made up some believable ones. How about a compressor goes and they are losing cooling? Maybe a delivery truck breaks down. Band saw blade breaks (they probably don't have a back up and would have to drive to Buffalo to get a replacement). Or if they want blood, someone gets cut or hurt.

The show probably shouldn't have pissed me off as much as it did, but what a waste. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, this show was one of the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked. You want to watch 30 minutes of people working with and discussing being a butcher, watch this instead.

Thanks for listening. I feel a little better. I'm off to try and draw something on my phone.

Happy Mother's Day!

Progress

I walked past the future Trader Joe's this morning. Looks like a concrete floor went in today.

Eating Modernist Bacon

This post is long overdue. The bacon has been done awhile and this was the third time we've eaten it. I can say without doubt, this is the best bacon I have ever made. The only problem, I'm not sure if this deliciousness was derived from a combination of the recipe/technique or because this batch was made from the highest quality pork belly I have ever purchased. If only all of our problems were this bad....

The next mission is to try the Ruhlman bacon cure with the Modernist technique on an Adventures In Food pork belly. Challenge accepted!

Popcorn

I buy popcorn in bulk from either Hannaford or Honest Weight. Heat a pot on high, add some oil, then add the kernels, slap a lid on a shake every so often. When it's done, I mix in some butter and salt. Delicious, right?

Well last week I was flipping through a friend's copy of Cook's Illustrated. I dropped my subscription to Cook's Illustrated awhile ago for a number of reasons. I wasn't actually making any of the recipes. I hated their writing style - everything they do is not "the best" and they have proven it by updating the "the best" recipe to be "really, seriously, this time it's the best" recipe. They also write like they've invented the technique. While I have no proof, I feel confident in my assumption that they didn't invent brine. The magazine often refers to techniques and recipes that are online for a few months. A magazine at that price is should have content worthy of being saved. Two years from now when you come back to the recipe you wanted to make but never had time to cook it until this weekend...and are directed to find some online content that you may or may not have access to? Screw that. So I let the subscription lapse. And it was like a bad break up. I got a lot of letters asking me to come back. I got phone calls too. Couldn't we just be friends? It finally ended when I told a telemarketer that I didn't like the magazine and I would never buy it again. A little over the top and untrue, but the letters and phone calls stopped.


I think if I ever went back to them, it would just be online only. I hope I'm not leading them on. I'm way off track here..let's go back. Last week I was flipping through a friend's copy of Cooks Illustrated. Not even sure if it is the current issue. I think it was. One of the tips in the back was for popping corn. They recommend heating the pot, adding some oil and then dropping in a few kernels. When those few kernels pop, add the rest of the kernels, slap the lid on, give it a shake and move the pot off heat for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, put the pot back on the heat, crack the lid and shake frequently until the popping stops.

I tried it. Dammit, it worked really well. Amazingly well. After the little pre-heating, I don't think there were any un-popped kernels at all. The popcorn came out great too. Next time you are making popcorn, give it a try.