Elizabeth and I had planned on making Enchiladas tonight, but well, one thing led to another and with neither of us being terribly hungry, I wound up unfed at quarter to ten. I wanted to eat something, but having little in the cabinet and not really wanting a lot, I was left cobbling together a snack from the fridge. I walked over to the stairs, telling Elizabeth, “I’m going to make myself something to eat.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“Nothing you’d like.”

That was enough. She is notoriously unadventurous with food. When we started dating, she considered Italian food to be exotic. However, since I saw Ratatouille, I’ve felt a need to experiment in my kitchen. It was 9:55, time to play.

I should preface this by saying that there are certain things about my own eating that make me a bad foodie. First off, I try to keep semi-kosher. I’m not religious per se, and my own kitchen is as unkosher as all get out, but it makes me feel more connected with my cultural heritage. Even before I decided to abstain from swine, I’d gone away from seafood of any form. I don’t like things that swim, though I wouldn’t be disinclined to trying dolphin at some point in time. I’d like to take a bite out of every endangered species on the planet, you know, so I can try them before they’re gone. Now that the bald eagle is no longer on that list, it’s sort of lost it’s mystique. On the other hand, I love fake meat, and am willing to try just about any form of it. My current favorite fake meat is the breakfast sausage from GimmeLean. The really nice thing about it is that it comes in this big tube and you sort of have to just wrench out a chunk of it when you want some sausage. Because you have to work it in your hands a bit to put it in the shape you want it, it feels a bit less like heating up a frozen snack, and more like actually making something.

Anyway, back to my experiment.

The counters had just been wiped down, and since GimmeLean is pretty sticky, I put down a piece of wax paper. I took out three chunks of GimmeLean, about a teaspoon or so each, and rolled them into balls. Afterwards, I smashed them down hard. Once they were flat, I took out a bit of adobe sauce saved from last time I made chipolte sauce, and spread it thinly onto each patty.

I should mention here that this might have been a slight mistake. Adobe sauce is extremely hot. It’s what really keeps in the heat in a canned chipolte. If I’d had any chipolte sauce left, that would probably have made these better. But I didn’t, and this was supposed to be a quick snack.

After the adobe was down, I stuck a bit of sharp white cheddar into the middle of each sausage and folded the whole thing up, smoothing out the edges. One of the nice things about working with GimmeLean is that, since it is so sticky, it comes back together very well. It’s sort of like working with clay that way. After they were patty like again, I just heated up some olive oil in my iron skillet and fried the sausages lightly on each side, about 30 seconds sizzling on each side. Finally, I put down some paper towels and let the oil drain a bit. (Total cook time, for those that haven’t noticed, was about three minutes.)

Though I warn you about my mistake with the adobe, I actually think they came out pretty well. There’s a good kick to them, and anyone who’s afraid of spicy should stay away. I think the best one was the one with the most cheese, so feel free to put a big chunk in there. Just make that you don’t put in so much that you can’t close the sausage again. You’re trying to heat it through, not fry the cheese. Besides the high degree of spiciness, they ate very easily. Especially when just off the paper towel, when the cheese inside was still hot and melted. Though I think that a real salsa would have done better than what is basically hot sauce paste, I’m glad the adobe was there. It gave the sausages that great tongue burning kick, and nice smoky flavor, and a third flavor that didn’t overpower the rest of the snack or stay so mute that you couldn’t tell it was there. The cheddar worked well with the sausage. The flavors are similar but distinct, so you can’t always tell where the one ends and where the other begins. The sausage definitely was the principle flavor, but if you like fake sausage, it was a good flavor to be in the lead.

On the whole, I’m proud of my little snack. Proud enough that I’m going to keep on working on it until it’s perfect, and when it is, I’ll update this post and tell you. For now though, if you find yourself not really starving but a bit peckish, and it’s late so you don’t want to be in the kitchen for a while, you may want to give it a try. Your tongue will have mixed feelings, but ignore Negative Nancy, the spice hater. Enjoy.

We started with the root and vine chips, which were a mix of yuca, battata and plantain. They were a bit too hard for my taste, and the radish sauce tasted like creamy ketchup. Not impressed, but still ate my fair share sans dip. The half platter finally arrives (after a very long wait, and much discussion over sold-out items). It must be noted that every time I go to this spot they are out of something, whether it be the veggie pastelillos or the new featured sangria. The consistency is definitely lacking.

[The radish dip was a big disappointment. When we ordered, I expected spicy and creamy, not insipid clawing sweetness. Something akin to biting into a fresh radish, not Thousand Island dressing. To be fair, it did compliment the spicy yuca.]

This particular sampler, priced at $12.50 is a great deal for two, and the romantic setting makes it a great date item. The sampler includes a mix of four menu items, providing the opportunity to try a good chunk of Camaradas’ offering. The pastelillos, which is a fried meat or vegetable patty similar to an empanada, was divine. It was fried just right and the filling was scrumptious. [I found them to be the most interesting item on the platter; The chorizo and shrimp skewers were enjoyable, but somewhat flat. Not much going on. The pastelillo filling on the other hand had a good mix of spices and begged for the deep frying.]

The chorizo (yes, I had a bite) was great, excellent [smoky] flavor and perfectly charred. Have you ever had fried mozzarella sticks? Here their called croquetas [and look more like McDonald's hash browns than mozz. sticks]. They did the job, but were very plain. However, they were accompanied by a perfectly well balanced garlic sauce that more than made up for it. [Plain? Even with the mild garlic sauce, they were like black holes of blandness.] If you’re on the afore mentioned date, I’d pass on the sauce. The shrimp skewers – fantastic! What a way to cook a shrimp. They had a faint sweet and tangy flavor. Slightly charred, they came unaccompanied and didn’t need a chaperon whatsoever.

Drinks? Red wine sangria of course. The taste is the refreshing combination of bite and juice. I am a fan of their sangria because it is a great deal and so home-grown. The fruit is undesirable, which is unfortunate because who doesn’t like a little wine infused orange. But the balance more than makes up for the repetitiveness of green apples. [The beer selection was also quite good. I accompanied my meal with a Brooklyn Six Points.]

Inconsistent service, a hit-and-miss menu, and picky vegetarians aside, Camaradas scores due to the decent priced menu, and unique ambiance. [I'd be a regular if I weren't moving. The atmosphere, sangria, and reasonable prices were enough to keep me going back. I only wish they hadn't been out of vegetable and chicken pastelillos, northern and southern alcapurrias, and chorizo croquetas. Mind you, this was 7pm on a weeknight.]

She said [He said] is a new feature where two or more Gourmetros eat out and discuss. In this case, it was Skip and Butter (our shiny new SpaHa correspondent) Have any recommendations? Let us know.

Just in case anyone didn’t know, I am obsessed with Iron Chef. So, it only follows that I’d be a bit obsessed with Iron Chef restaurants, gimmicky though they might occasionally be. And just to clarify, I’m talking original Japanese Iron Chef – RYORI NO TETSUJIN, bell pepper-crunchin’ and all (I don’t despise Iron Chef America, and Alton Brown is one of my favorite foodie icons ever, but it just isn’t the same).

I’ve been to Morimoto in Philly a few times (and lurve it lots), but have yet to make a call upon the New York incarnation, which is totally on the list. But, my recent excursion in the Land of the Rising Sun gave me the chance to drop by La Rochelle, Chef Hiroyuki Sakai’s lovely restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo. And good lord, it was delicious.

I’ve not had the pleasure of a coursed meal without being on my parents’ dime before, so I can’t say that I knew what to expect. I was pretty concerned about being a totally gauche American and getting my forks confused, but I’m pretty happy to say that the experience was excellent enough it didn’t even occur to me to think about it. So without further ado, the food:

Aaron and I chose the Histoire Prix Fixe set menu (Chef Sakai’s Grand Traditional Menu, 15000 yen/person, approx. 130 dollars), having no idea what else to do, and really feeling up to a splurge on our last week in Japan.

Appetizers:
1. Three small appetizers together: Seafood consomme jelly, served with mini skewers of turtle and prawn, above an asparagus salad with sea urchin, lobster, and creamy dressing.

2. Large champignon mushroom, stuffed with foie gras. Topped with sabayon, two slices of strawberry, and served on a bed of asparagus in a marsala sauce.

3. Light salad: Japanese turnip (kabu) sliced thinly, layered with lobster and ripe mango. Served with a Prosecco and lemon dressing. AND might I add, the parsley on it was gold-leafed!

4. Steamed abalone and shark’s fin, accompanied by fava beans, bok choy, and starches in a truffle sauce.

5. Bordeaux (I can’t remember the name…Santa Marrillion?) Sherbet.

6. Wagyu prime rib, served with grilled seasonal vegetables, in a yuzu sauce.

7. Fresh strawberries, served with a lime cream and (yuzu?) chilled yogurt.

Mmm, foodgasm. Everything was beautifully flavored and very seasonally appropriate but if I had to pick favorites, I’d definitely go for the kabu salad and the wagyu prime rib. The salad had this fantastic mix of textures and flavors, crunch and light and sweet and tart and mmm, I really need to see if I can hack duplicating it. Even a pale imitation would probably taste pretty good . The prime rib was incredibly buttery, without leaving the cloying feeling of coating your soft palate with fat.

Minor caveats: I hadn’t ever had shark’s fin or turtle before, and while both were pleasant, I have vague moral concerns about the acquisition of shark’s fin which weren’t dispelled by any sense of overwhelming deliciousness. I was also uncertain about the idea of a Bordeaux sorbet, as I’m terrible with wines (pass the Belvedere, please), but it was really very delicate and refreshing.

I’ve only got the one crappy picture, as it feels verrrrry strange to be trying to surreptitiously photograph your food in a nice French restaurant, but hopefully, it’ll give you a sense of the lovely plating. If you look at the top of the salad, you can just make out the gold-leafing on the parsley (warm lighting + turning off the flash to be sneakier = poor detail >_<). The next time I’m in Japan, I’ll definitely be going back. I might read up on fork etiquette first, though…

Technorati Tags: Iron Chef, Sakai, French Cuisine, Tokyo

It was with this in mind that I began, call it… a quest. I need to find pizza in New York that I know as my own. Since then, I’ve been sampling just about any pizza I can find. There are qualifications. 1) A New York Slice is thin, not too little cheese, not too much. 2) There is a decent amount of sauce on the slice, but not so much as it overpowers the rest of the meal. 3) The slice should not cost more than two dollars. And finally, 4) You can get a slice at the counter, and walk out eating it.

I have tried many of the pizza places in New York, but I have not yet found my perfect slice. The closest I’ve come is Nina’s Pizza on Meeker Ave off Sutton in Greenpoint. It fulfilled all qualifications except for the crust, which was thicker than a traditional New York slice. I no longer live in Greenpoint, and Nina’s is a ways off the L train, so it’s not really in the running for me anymore anyway. So I’m still looking for my slice again. Still, while I’ve been looking, I have found a number of extremely wonderful alternatives.

My current favorite is the potato pizza from the Sullivan Street Bakery on 47^th between 10^th and 11^th. For those of you who hear “potato pizza” and quiver, you have no idea what you’re missing. Sullivan Street’s potato pizza has a very thin crust, covered in scalloped potatoes. There’s perhaps half an inch of potato on top of the crust. There’s no sauce, no cheese, just crust and potato. The slices are small, but heavy. It’s three bucks a slice, but if you eat two that’s a decent meal, and in midtown, a six dollar meal means a lot.

The pizza itself is absolutely fantastic. It’s served room temperature. The crust is very moist where it touches the potatoes, but crunchy just underneath. I think there’s some onion in there, but that might just be me trying to figure out how to make it. The pizza is well spiced, a bit of rosemary is in there, good amount of salt and pepper. I have no idea if it actually is healthy, but I know that at the very least, it tastes that way.

Anyway, even if you’re not so into potato pizza (which you really should be, I mean, it’s potato, and it’s pizza – there’s nothing NOT to love), you might still want to check out the Sullivan Street Bakery. The bread’s outstanding, and they’re known for having some of the best sandwiches in town. I haven’t tried them. My buddy James has, and though he didn’t agree with “best sandwiches in town” he did like the sandwich. Also, there are another four kinds of pizza. There’s the mushroom, which I won’t eat because I can’t stand mushrooms. A friend of mine tried it though, and proclaimed it the best mushroom pizza he’d ever eaten. There’s one with just a tomato sauce on top, which I thought was decent, but inferior to the potato. Also, they have a plain crust which I have no interest in, and a zucchini which I haven’t gotten up the nerve yet to try. What can I say? I work in midtown, and I need to be able to find food cheap that I will want to eat!

So if you find yourself in the forties with nothing to do, I’d take the hike out to 10^th and check out the Sullivan Street Bakery. And if you find great pizza for less than two bucks, I’d appreciate a shout.

After a botched Shake Shack trip (who closes early on a Saturday?), Greg decided to take the five of us to RUB. We made the three avenue trek still reeling with disappointment from being denied salty fatty shaky goodness (but mostly the custard).

We were seated quickly and ordered the Taste of the Baron ($45), an eight-meat sampler with two sides, and some Blue Moons. Out of the meats, the pulled pork was the stand-out winner: tender, supple, and none-too-greasy. Since my ‘cue background comes from Virginia, I am used to pre-sauced meat. Early saucing makes sense; it tenderizes and infuses the meat with its tangy juices. RUB’s sauces –original, spicy, vinegar, and … garlic? — come on the side, and compliment the meat so well we were glad to mix and match instead of committing to just one.

I went back with Marc a few weeks later for the three-meat platter (with two sides, $22.75). The pulled pork, spicy sausage, and beef brisket passed the test again, and the former still trounced the others. The sawdust-dry brisket was the only disappointment. Both times. I’m excited to try the burnt ends (the fatty part of the brisket), but I wouldn’t try the regular brisket again. The baked beans and shoe string onion rings rock, and the cole slaw, forgettable.

The TotB filled all of us (see picture, above), and the deep fried Oreos were about as good as any dessert I’ve eaten at a bbq joint. RUB’s good eatin’.

Thanks to Eric for the awesome shots.

Because I was on such a Cinnamon-Raisin peanut butter high after my PB Loco experience (their motto is peanutbutterlicious! who doesn’t love that?), I picked up some of Peanut Butter & Co.’s Cinnamon Raisin Swirl at the grocery store. I mean, even if it didn’t live up to PB Loco’s high standards, it couldn’t actually be bad, right?

I haven’t had other flavors of PB & Co. butter, so I can’t say if this is true for all of its flavors, but this is a GRAINY peanut butter. I don’t know if this is because of their use of evaporated cane juice as opposed to refined sugar, but I have never had peanut butter with this much grain going on. (And this is from a girl who regularly eats almond butter, the grainiest of the grainy butters.) Plus the raisins were hard and the cinnamon was much milder than I would have liked.

That said, I still ate it…and I found myself craving the PB & Co. butter at odd hours of the day. I did get used to the grainyness, and I could see how some would find it more natural-seeming and therefore more appealing. But I like my butters smooth & flavorful, so I’m sticking with PB Loco.

Thanks to Bizzy Grl over at Flickr for the beautiful pb shot.

So, this morning, on my way into work, I shelled out two bucks and bought two delightful packages of Hostess products: a package of “NEW!” Banana Twinkies, and for comparison, a normal package of Vanilla Twinkies.

The first thing that you notice is that they actually do look a little different. The regular vanilla Twinkies are a paler shade of yellow, just a couple shades darker than an off white. The Banana Twinkies, on the other hand, are a true gold. They even look a little bit bigger, though this could just be because my banana Twinkies are sitting side by side on their little piece of waxed white cardboard while for some reason, my vanilla Twinkies are askew of each other. Quality Assurance seems to have faded at the Hostess Factory. (I’d show you pictures, but I’m too poor for digital camera ownership.)

The vanilla Twinkie cake is very spongy. It doesn’t taste like “vanilla” so much as like “sugar”, or more accurately, like “corn syrup”. There’s a distinctive after taste, sort of bitter and in the back of my throat. It comes on pretty quickly, I think it’s in the cake. That flavor is in the Banana Twinkie as well, but definitely lessened. Actually, the Banana Twinkie has a surprisingly strong banana flavor on top of the flavor of corn syrup, and frankly, it is not unpleasant. It’s there enough that you can definitely tell that it’s not the normal Twinkie, but light enough that it’s not overpowering. What’s more, although it’s the same cake itself, the proximity to the filling has managed to infuse the Banana Twinkie’s cake with some of its flavor. The cake itself seems moister than the regular Twinkie, but this could simply be that because the Banana Twinkie is so new, there really isn’t as much time for it to sit around in factories (or the deli shelves). The banana flavor is definitely artificial though, which is kind of funny.

See, the Twinkie was originally a banana flavored treat. That’s the reason that it’s tube like and sort of, you know, phallic. It’s supposed to look like a cuter banana. (The shape is actually due to the shortcake tins that they’re baked in, but they chose those shortcake tins for a reason!) Twinkies stayed banana from their inception until World War II, when a national banana shortage forced Hostess to replace their banana filling with Vanilla (no, not a joke). The fact that they’ve been brought back without any real banana in them is a loving testament to our boys fighting Adolf. (The banana Twinkies do contain less than 1% of banana puree, meaning that for every batch of 100,000 Twinkies, there are about three bananas – we can’t give those boys everything or else what’ll they want to come home for?)

For the health conscious out there: though I’ve heard people think that the Banana Twinkies are healthier than the regular, they aren’t by any stretch of the imagination. The Banana Twinkies have another 5 calories per cake, plus another gram of fat and have a small amount of trans-fatty acids, which the Vanilla Twinkies do not. However, the Banana Twinkies do have slightly less sodium (maybe responsible for the fainter aftertaste?), cholesterol, and carbohydrates than the vanilla, and a couple fewer grams of sugar. I know that few people are eating Twinkies for their health anymore, but I still thought you might like to know.

All in all, I’d consider the Banana Twinkies to be a bit better than the regular. The banana flavor really helps you forget that you’re basically eating a stick of sugar and saturated fat, and helps to cover up that horrible aftertaste that you get from the Vanilla Twinkies. Prepare for indigestion and, if you’re like me, a sugar headache. Still, if you’re a dedicated junk foody, the Banana Twinkie will form a nice new addition to your sweet repertoire.

I’ve been checking out your site (I like it, especially your review about doughnuts) and I had a little suggestion for you. I assume that you too are an NPR man, but I can imagine that catching Morning Edition is a bit of a stretch for you. Because of that, you may have missed the news that Twinkies have just gone back to using banana cream instead of vanilla. They used to be banana, but there was some shortage back in WWII and they switched over to vanilla. Now though, back. I think it’d be a good article for the gourmetro. In fact, if you needed, I’d help you eat the Twinkies. I need an excuse, I can’t put that much saturated fat into my body for no good reason. Hope you’re well, still hoping that we could go out for breakfast some time. Later.

Jake

—–

Jake, Thanks for the note, it’s been a while. I am a bit of an NPR man, myself, and as you guessed don’t really listen to Morning Edition. Their podcasts rock my world (Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, and I’m getting into This American Life). I had heard about banana’s triumphant return to the twinkie, but don’t think I could make myself eat enough of them to write a post (I like to save my saturated fat for those aforementioned doughnuts. That said, I am intrigued by the filling switch since I’d previously heard they were discontinuing the tuber altogether (nb – link doesn’t exactly say they’re discontinuing the twinkie, but that Interstate Bakery’s fallen on hard times). So if you want to have some and tell us about it, please do!

Best,
Skip

I can’t wait until the gourmetro gets here!