Accidental Hedonist

Dear StarChefs,

I openly mock the Brie and Pear Soup, Scallops Marinated in Citrus Juices and Asparagus Al Proscitto recipes that you have chosen for your Super Bowl Party Menu.

I mocketh thee, I mocketh thee, I mocketh thee.

Quick question: Do we need to hold out our pinky finger if we eat these dishes on Sunday?

Love always,

-Kate

PS. For an authentic Pittsburgh Super Bowl Menu, check out Lenn’s site.

Technorati Tags: Food, Pittsburgh Food, Super Bowl, Super Bowl Menus

These are the internet finds that I love. Here’s an article that demonstrates how scientists are tracing the availability of species through the use of menus found in history.

It also gives a fairly interesting history of Lobster in America.

From the article:

A study of the cost of seafood on more than 200,000 American restaurant menus has revealed fluctuating prices that reflect the changing abundance of dozens of species over the past 150 years. The records show how the price, adjusted for inflation, of fish and shellfish, including lobster, swordfish, oysters, halibut, haddock and sole, has climbed as stocks have collapsed.

Lobster, for example, fetched little more than a couple of dollars a lb in the 1850s. “Prior to the 1880s, it was unusual to see lobster on menus at all except in bargain-priced lobster salad,ˮ said Glenn Jones, of Texas A&M University, who led the research.

“It was considered a trash fish — it was not something you’d want to be seen eating. In colonial America servants negotiated agreements that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than twice a week.ˮ

I find information such as this fascinating. If you’re big into Food History, this article is a good read.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Food History,

I’m writing this, not to pass judgement nor to cast any aspersion. Rather this is to simply compare two different food cultures when relating to the same food product.

The following is directly from a menu of a place that sells “California style Pizza”. It is their description of their sausage Pizza:

Chorizo Sausage, porcini mushrooms, black olives, roasted garlic and pepperoncini covered with melted mozzarella cheese and a hot spicy sauce.

This description is fairly typical of “California Style” pizzerias.

This description of a Sausage pizza comes from a local pizzeria here in Seattle with a decidedly east coast bent:

Spicy Italian Sausage

No complaint…I’m just saying.

Well that didn’t take long.

From the inbox:

Okay Mz Smartypants. What would you serve at a super bwl party?

xxxxx@aol.com

Oh that’s simple. First, I would only make anything if my team was in the Super Bowl. The one thing that would have to be on my buffet table is BBQ chip chopped ham.

BBQ Chip Chopped Ham

• 2 lbs chip chopped ham (For more Pittsburgh authenticity, use Isaly’s chip chopped ham).
• 1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce
• 1 onion, sliced
• 8 kaiser rolls

Place your chip chopped ham in a slow cooker. Add enough BBQ sauce to cover the meat. Mix in sliced onions. Cook for 4 hours.

Serve on a kaiser roll. Add shredded American cheese if your feeling a bit upscale.

As always, if you want to e-mail me a question, my address is kate AT accidentalhedonist DOT com.

“The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail” – Stephen Fry

I’m a football fan. Growing up in Pittsburgh during the 1970′s, it was a requirement of citizenship. I’ve been to more than my fair share of games, and have participated in more than my fair share of football parties.

It always amuses me the way the Food Press treats Super Bowl© Sunday. God Bless ‘em, their hearts are in the right place, but for some reason, some of the folks just don’t get it.

Let’s meander over to the Food TV site and take a look of what they are pimpin’. At first it looks promising, with a focus on Buffalo Wings. But when you click on the link for Sara Moulton’s Big Game Party Guide, you start to see the cracks in their veneer.

I should say that I like Sara Moulton a fair amount. I enjoyed her live show on Food TV, and it’s quite apparent she knows food inside and out. But she misses the point of eating and football. Case in point? Her recomendation for “Make-Your-Own Salad with Lemon Garlic Dressing” as a dish for the Super Bowl© Sunday table. I am also particularly amused by her decorating tip that states “Use TV trays for a retro touch.” How post-modern! Intentionally dress down your living room for the game!

A while ago, I touched upon the inevitable trend of taking working people’s cuisine and dressing it up for the upper class. You can see this clearly demonstrated on Super Bowl© Sunday. Epicurious, Conde Naste’s website for their food mags Bon Appetit and Gourmet, has a list of 100 recipes for the Big Game. Included in this list includes such tailgate classics as “Cucumber, Sweet Onion and Mint Curried Mayonnaise on Peasant Bread”, “Goat Cheese and Pistachio Spread” and “Roasted Asparagus and Red Onion Quesadillas”. I’m sure these recipes are tasty, but the football fan in me is screaming “Where’s the Keilbasa recipes?!? Where’s the Cheesesteak recipes?!? Dammit, where are my jalepeno poppers??” There’s nothing inherently wrong with these foods either (except the fact that they’ll clog your arteries a bit faster).

I bring this up as I recieved a newsletter from a fairly well-known chef from the West Coast who suggested that one should make paella for the Super Bowl.

That *thunk* you heard was my head hitting my desk. Rice? At a football game? Are you inSANE? Perhaps one might recommend adding cilantro to hamburgers! Blasphemer!

My point here is that food provides context. One can get an exact idea of an experience by the food that one eats. When you see Pumpkin Pie and Roast Turkey, and you know it’s Thanksgiving. Egg Nog and Fruitcake? It’s Christmas. And when you see beer, chili , and Buffalo Wings, you know you’re probably at a sporting event in the States.

I’m not going to watch the Super Bowl© this year, as I’m still a bit stung by my team losing in the Championship game. But if I do watch, you can be damn sure I’m not going to be eating “Lettuce Scoops with Coriander Yogurt Cheese”

Yes, that was also on Epicurious’s list of football recipes

For those of you into food (and you know who you are), you will know of what I am about to speak. We enter each new restaurant, scour each menu, and read each new cookbook in search of it.

“It” being “the one”. The one dish, the one recipe, the one experience which brings such exquisite pleasure that we seek to recapture it as often as possible in many different ways. “The one” is so revered, that we speak of it in hushed tones. We pass it on secretly to those we love. We tell others of it only when we feel they can appreciate and respect the knowledge that we bequeath upon them. Heathens often never gain knowledge that “the one” even exists, so protective are we who carry the burden of it.

Most of us are aware of “the one” as an institution. At one point you may have heard of your great Aunt Helen who gave the recipe for her Apple Brown Betty to her favorite niece…and no one else. Perhaps you have been permitted into the kitchen to watch your father as he creates his batch of 5-alarm chili. Here, “the one” takes on greater signifigance, as you have been taught the recipe through the oral tradition. And if you really cared, if you truly are chosen, then you would have perfect recall on the ingredient list.

If you have been on the recieving end of one of these experiences, then you have been part of “the one”.

Restaurant goers have their own versions of “the one” as well. They have that one place that is so special to them, that they dare not speak it’s name to those who may befoul the place due their culinary ignorance. The sweat with fear that the local restaurant reviewer will find their secret hideaway and tell the whole damn city about the place, forever corrupting it with the stench of “public recognition”. But yet they feel they must visit the place often enough to keep it in business. So they may tell a few people…but just enough to keep the place afloat.

Or there may be a particular dish on the menu that’s so compelling or so perfect that to tell people of it would be akin to having a million people flock to a national park. Yes it may be popular, but in the process it would have lost something, its soul perhaps.

I have several “the one”‘s, of which I will tell you nothing. I know of a place that’s so perfect I visit it regularly with Tara, but you will never hear about it on this site. I have a recipe which I will never publish. I have a dish at a local restaurant that creates a flashing light of bliss everytime I bite into it.

I will never tell you of this dish…

…until I find something better. Then maybe. Only if you are deserving.

Time for me to bitch…restaurants who give little or no thought to their dessert selection make me upset. This doesn’t just happen at the chain restaurants (The TGIFridays, the Applebee’s, the Chili’s), but even at locally owned joints. It’s really enough to ruin a meal for me at times.

How can you tell if they’ve given no thought to their desserts? Well, I’ve seen the following desserts on more than a few menus throughout the restaurants I’ve been:

• Cheesecake (any variation)
• Creme Brulee (any variation)
• Carrot Cake
• A Chocolate Decadence type dessert (sometimes called chocolate explosion, or chocolate insanity)
• A pie or crumble type dish with vanilla ice cream on top
• Tiramisu

How uninspired! There’s so much available to make, and most of it on the cheap, that it’s near blasphemy to put these on a menu. Ever hear of parfaits? How about Red Velvet Cake? The Dessert world is almost unexplored at most restaurants!

And dont’ even get me started on outsourced desserts. On more than one occaission I have turned to Tara while sticking a fork into a dish and said “They didn’t make this here”. I understand that there are costs to deal with, but do you know the labor costs of making a strawberry shortcake? Virtually nil. Make your cake in the morning, and when ordered plate with whipped cream and maserated strawberries, place in a bowl with cream, and voila! It’s that easy.

I know I know, I’m getting worked up over this, but when did restaurants wave a white flag when it comes to desserts? But if you want to differentiate your place from the others, desserts is where I would start.

I will now get off of my soapbox.