Archives for the 'Food Porn' Category
Girl Scout Cookie Fry-Off!
My friend Ron from Lush Angeles was visiting Portland this weekend and crashed at my place. When Ron and I are in a kitchen together it’s a sure bet that things are going to get fried. After a dinner of delicious karaage, General Tso’s chicken, and fried mushrooms, we were looking at a big wok full of fry oil and wondering what to do next. The Girl Scout’s Tagalongs we’d bought that afternoon were about to meet an unexpected fate…
Inspired by the tastiness of our initial experiment, we decided to have a Girl Scout Cookie fry off the next day. Fueled only by bourbon and our love of crispy battered things, we put four different cookies to the test, frying them up and finishing them with a sprinkling of sea salt.
Consensus favorites of our tasting panel were the Do Si Do (below) and Dulce de Leche, both of which had the perfect texture for frying. Thin Mints are pretty much a waste and destroy the clarity of the oil. Tagalongs are also potentially messy, but the peanut butter inside is deliciously gooey when they’re fresh from the fryer. The ones photographed at the top of the post actually have pieces of bacon embedded in the batter, creating a dangerous combination of chocolate, bacon, and peanut butter.
Unsurprisingly there’s at least one State Fair booth that beat us to this. They also favor the Do Si Do:
The gals at the Fried What! stand on Main Street seem to come up with a new deep-fried item each year. This year, they’re cooking Girl Scout cookies in oil. A Do-si-do, aka Peanut Butter Sandwich, is dipped in batter, fried till golden brown, sprinkled with powdered sugar (and chocolate syrup if desired) and served four to an order for $3.50. They’ll be available only until the stand’s cookie supply runs out.
I mentioned we had bacon. Of course we couldn’t resist battering and frying that too.
All photos by Ron, whose blog will soon be covering Los Angeles’ emerging cocktail culture
International Bacon Day is Tomorrow!
Crispy friend Courtney alerts us to tomorrow’s very important holiday: International Bacon Day. There is, of course, a website:
Bacon Day is a day of Bacon… think Iron Chef but all day and the secret ingredient is Bacon. Breakfast traditionally consists of bacon waffles, with a side of bacon, and any other concoctions thought up. Throughout the day there are showings of Kevin Bacon movies and any other movies with leading roles given to pigs, e.g. Babe, Piglet’s Big Adventure. Lunch must have BLTs and there are snacks around and slices of bacon everywhere. Dinner is a fight for your food quite literally. It is more a tasting of all things bacon and everyone wants a taste. Due to the vast quantities of bacon cooked, the grill outside is the best bet. If you are invited to a Bacon Day celebration, it is traditional to bring something to eat (of course containing bacon) which can be made there if the host allows, and drink (which may or may not include bacon).
Need some ideas about what to bring to the party? Consult Crispy’s extensive bacon archive here.
The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name
Obviously, I’m referring to the love of cilantro.
And now, one man has come out of the closet with a impressive blog defense of Coriandrum sativum. I give you: Fuck Yeah Cilantro.
The blog’s motto:
IF YOU DON’T LOVE CILANTRO WITH ALL YOUR HEART I WILL FIGHT YOU
NO JOKE
Enjoy.
Via The Agitator
Shroom Paradise
If you like mushrooms, you would have been in heaven at the most recent SF farmers’ market that I visited. Several types of mushrooms were on sale fresh from the farm. The shitakes rocked really hard as they were soft and incredibly fresh.
The quality of food in SF is amazing. San Franciscans, who keep voting for food restrictions, do not deserve their bounty or in the least take it for granted.
Hardcore Meat Photography
Flickr groups are a wonderful thing, allowing users to share images related to a theme and often hosting some excellent discussions. There’s everything from the wacky Stick Figures in Peril group, to the narcissistically inspirational Wardrobe Remix, to the genuinely artistic, like Low Light Lowlife.
So I was happy to discover the Hardcore Meat Photography group. It’s name is a send-up of a notoriously snooty Flickr group called Hardcore Street Photography, but the group is no joke to its 193 members. With 350 photos of different kinds of meat they almost have enough for a calendar. Check it out, and by all means contribute. Tell ‘em Crispy sent you.
Crispy video: Pig in a box
This weekend in Miami my folks threw us a little engagement party and we roasted a pig in the backyard using a Caja China. What is a Caja China? Allow me to explain.
“Caja China” means Chinese box. Cubans engage in a bit of complimentary stereotyping and tend to call anything that’s inventive or ingenuous “Chinese”. Basically, it’s a way to cook a pig under a spit. It’s a stainless steel, aluminum, and wood box into which you put your pig. Coals go on top of the box’s lid and they radiate heat down onto the meat. I’m not sure why this is a good thing, but the result is a delicious pork roast.
My dad’s buddy, Cuco, was the chef in charge and he used his own home-made Caja china. A beautiful thing about Miami is that there are plenty of farms you can go to pick out your still-walking pig and take it home with you in a less-than-animated state. My dad brought home a lean 85-pounder which he marinated in mojo overnight. Cuco put the pig bottom-side down on the stainless steel interior of the box so that the skin receives direct heat only at the end of the cooking.
Cuco was an absolute trooper, braving a couple torrential downpours in his quest for porcine perfection. In the video you’ll see that halfway through Cuco opens the box and removes liquid that has been pooling in the pig’s main cavity. He does this so that the meat won’t stew. Another important step is making sure to remove the ash whenever you add more coal to ensure that it doesn’t block the heat. The box is opened one final time to flip the pig, exposing the not-yet-crispy skin. To get it deliciously crackling, Cuco’s secret is to brush it with saltwater. He says the salt draws moisture out of the skin so that the it crisps. Listen to the crackling when the pork is carved so you can hear just how damn crunchy it got. The meat, however, was succulent—truly crispy on the outside.
