Chitterling Sushi (yes, sushi made with chitterlings)

I did this about two years ago but figured it was worth digging up. My brother and I made jokes about "Negro-fyin'" sushi, then debuting it in Japan, where he lives. The original concept involved nori made from dried collard greens, dirty rice rolled around what else but the Black-est of Black American dishes...chitterlings. Well, I don't have the skills to make nori, kelp or otherwise...getting perlo rice to stick is nigh impossible if you make it right (I'm TERRIBLE with rice in general and wasn't willing to risk the experiment on my first shot at making sushi rice) so I bought it from a local sushi spot. I used some nori that I'd brought back from Japan my previous trip over and this is what came out.

 

It was my first time making sushi, and unfortunately, the Chinese clever I was using wasn't quite sharp enough to get a clean cut, so the rolls ended up a bit flattened. Flavor wise, I was pleasantly surprised. The vinegar in the rice cut the fatty flavor of the chitterlings well. I add lime to mine anyway, but the extra bit of tang didn't hurt. Definitely better than a natto roll...

Back to the grind...

After two weeks with, and recovering from a cold, I've decided that today will be my last day of debauchery.

I've made pastas and puddings, had burgers creme brioche. Was I eating because I was sick? No. It's become even more clear to me how big an impact training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has had on my diet. When I'm training (3 nights a week), I have a protein shake with almond milk and flax oil every week day morning. On evenings I'm at the gym, I finish my night with another shake in a base of Odwalla Super Food. For lunch, I usually have tuna and brown rice, a salad with protein or something else clean so that my stomach isn't a rumbly mess by the end of the night and I have enough energy to make it through multiple rounds of sparring.

So goodbye butter paneer and cheesecake brownies. It's been fun. We'll meet again one day, just no time soon. 

"To eat good food is to be close to God..."

...To have the knowledge of God is the bread of angels"

I don't think there are a lot of food centered movies out there...the only one I can think of is Eat Drink Man Woman (which I own but haven't watched). I stumbled across this one by accident.

It's a story of two brothers trying to start up an Italian Restaurant...but what struck me most is how it gives you a real look into how people who love food think. I was also beyond to surprised to see some of my favorite actors in it: Tony Shalhoub, Liev Schreiber, and Marc Anthony.

The best part? The movie was adapted into a book that includes recipes. From what the reviews say though, the recipes aren't so hot, but the recipe for the real star of the movie (timpano) can be found in Cucina & Famigila.

You need this book. You really do.

It's doing wonders helping me bridge the gap between healthful cooking and fun cooking. I'm picking out, basically two healthful ingredients, and working from there.

I love desiccation based cooking, and I'm REALLY enjoying simple food prep lately (much props to the Greeks). Tonight, I looked up broccoli to see what went well and basil, chives, garlic and lemon were high on the list. (Cilantro was too, but I wasn't feeling very Asian/Latin). Here's what I came up with.

Base: Broccoli and Shrimp
Compliments: Chives, garlic, basil, lemon, parmesan, olive oil
Method: Roasting

The roasting makes the broccoli almost meaty, which is in turn brightened slightly by the lemon. Decently fast and minimal prep work. I went light on the basil since it can be so overpowering. 

Charcoal Grilling and Driving Stick

I now get why so many men are drawn to charcoal. There is something primal in taming fire, ashes and embers swirling about your face, flareups lurking around every corner.  There's a sense of power in throwing a piece of meat down on the grill and using only your intuition to determine whether the heat will do your bidding or destroy your catch.

Over the past few months I've been practicing grilling using charcoal on my new notebook grill. Anyone even informally acquainted with the world of grilling has run into the great schism between the schools of charcoal grilling and gas. Let me state my bias now. My father has been grilling using charcoal professionally for over twenty years , so I grew up in a house where the idea of gas grilling was sacrillege....right up there with liquid smoke and par boiling. He has only now, at the age of sixty, begun to express interest in the use of gas. That said, I've only tried gas grilling once at a friend's house. It was fast, easy, clean, efficient, reliable and predictable...all the wonderful things that gas grilling has to offer. At the end of the day though, it reminded me of cooking on a range. A range that was outside.

The whole experience reminded me very much of learning to drive. My first car was a four cylinder Isuzu Rodeo. It had a manual transmission and I hated it. The shifting. The jolts. The stalling. After a few embarassing moments slowing down traffic on the wretched roads of Orlando, I began to enjoy the control. I began to enjoy the fact that I had such precise command over such a large machine.

I found this same enjoyment in working with a large and lop-sided piece of coho salmon. The uneven heating worked to my advantage. The light charcoal flavor didn't overpower the delicate flavor of lobster like I thought it would. A few of the initial notes were drowned out, but the effect was a pleasant calming of flavors.

The car I drive now is an automatic, and while it's easier to change radio stations, I do miss the feel of control driving manual transmission. For that reason, I plan on sticking with charcoal, at least for a while.

Tasty, Tasty Critters...

TST in Hong Kong

I'm sitting here eating my high protein, low carb dinner of a 1/4 rotisserie chicken and ruby red grapefruit and I feel terrible. A few minutes ago, I walked into the kitchen to assemble my meal and pulled out a bag of quartered Mediterranean chicken. By the way, how vague a term is "Mediterranean"? I love you Publix, but all I taste is oregano. But yes, the chicken...I opened the bag and was greeted by what looked like a massacre...disturbingly similar to the remnants of my little Siamese's latest birdie victim after one of his killing sprees.

This, my friends, is a peek into one of one my deepest and most personal internal conflicts. I, you see, am a foodie and an animal lover. If it moves, I'll eat it. Sea urchin, lion, wooly mammoth, whale, guinea pig...yes, even those animals that are regarded as pets here in the US, I'd at least give them a taste. I'm an equal opportunity carnivore. I don't believe that just because I find something cute or have decided to keep a certain species as a companion because of convention of culture, that the rest of its furry brethren are thereby exempt from trial by knife and fork. Say what you will, but that's where I stand, sit and eat.

I'm also an animal lover. I've been reading "On Food and Cooking" and after the chapter on eggs, I can no longer eat regular eggs with a clean conscience. I buy free-range now. I cut back drastically on beef consumption after finding out how cows are treated before slaughter.  I take injured birds to wild life preserves.

I also tried vegetarianism twice. Love eggs. Like tofu. Quinoa is great. Not so big on beans. Vegetarians have a wide range of food from which to choose. The problem though, is that those of us who are true lovers of food are drawn to the entire spectrum of flavors. Leaving one shade out just isn't a long-term option. I have, however, successfully been able to cut back on the amount of animal protein I take in. I generally only eat meat once a day and 90% of the time, it's turkey, chicken, fish or those wonderful swimming lunchables we call crustaceans.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite, but I hope to one day find resolution to this issue...I'm just not going to hold my breath.

My disappointment with continental breakfasts...

I just threw out the last of my "hot chocolate" from an overnight break in Fort Lauderdale with my cousin. I woke up this morning to a buffet of English muffins, reheated sausage, overly sweetened juice and assorted cereal boxes. It brought back some painful memories.

I was a tender eight years old and on vacation with my parents and younger brother in theBahamas. As kids do, the first morning there, we woke up obscenely early to take in our new environment. I had been reading through the literature that hotels give guests and had found the highlight of my vacation. The hotel was offering a "continental breakfast". I was elated. I imagined rows of food, imported from the most exotic corners of the world, a buffet of international flavors and tastes that I had never before experienced. I was going to eat from every continent, Antarctica included. I was ready.  We (well, maybe just me...my brother wasn't, and still isn't much of a foodie) trotted happily down the corridors, passing unopened gift shops and friendly staff as we walked.

What happened next was a defining moment in my life. It was the moment I learned to question words.

I saw muffins. I looked around the room quickly, trying to take in everything that was offered. Blueberry muffins. I walked up to the closest station, and in what was most likely an effort to protect my delicate eight-year- old psyche, began to wonder if my assumption that Frosted Flakes were really American was true. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I didn't understand. I saw a croissant, and assumed the French creation is what allowed the charlatans to pass this offering of cold breads and boxed grains off as "continental". I passed a box of Rice Krispies down to my brother who thankfully wasn't yet tall enough to see the trays of warmed over lies that lay before us. I envied him.

Old recipes aren't always good recipes.

I just got off the phone with my grandmother. And let me say now, that she is an amazing cook. Her chitterlings rock almost as hard as her avgolemono. Well, her stove broke down and she's been a few days without it, so, being the resourceful 95-year-old she is, she's returned to some of the recipes of her past. Now...I learned years ago, that when my grandmother starts talking about dishes from when she was a child, that I, well, have to take them with a grain of salt. This is probably good advice concerning anyone that's lived through the Great Depression.

 

I was about sixteen years old and visiting her in her now 90-year old home in Tarpon Springs, FL (sponge capital of the world, baby!) that was built by her grandfather. Well, she and my uncle were reminiscing, somewhat fondly I might add, about Depression-era life. They were going through all the foods they grew, trapped and collected to get by. Robin, sweet potatoes grown in the back yard, raccoon, opossum and chickens that she raised until well after I was born. The conversation worked its way around to the topic of pones and my ears perked up. Always excited about a new recipe (especially one worthy of the literary attention of Twain) and with the promise of old-timey flavors dancing through my head, I extracted the concept of sweet potato pone from the two of them and started setting up supplies.

 

Aside from the sheer labor involved in older recipes, the most difficult part about cooking from them is that well, there aren't any. People back then cooked out of instinct and habit and assumed everyone else did too. My mother has a cookbook from the 50s that's a collection of recipes from the Gulf Coast of Florida. They list ingredients and not much else. Even for cakes...you get a list of how many eggs to use, how much flour and sugar and that's about it. Flavorings like vanilla and salt don't list quantities and there are virtually no instructions for mixing or the application of heat. Fine for a sandwich, but difficult for a cake if you don't understand the mechanics of baking.

 

Well, I made my way to the kitchen, peeled a few sweet potatoes, grabbed a grater and headed back to the living room to get to work. Having peeled 20lb bags of white potatoes by hand for my father's catering business, and having watched my grandmother sit and snap peas while watching television or chatting with friends, I knew that soul-food food prep was generally an intense process. Still, I was determined to make my pone. I sat...for what must have been half an hour, running sweet potatoes across the fine, zesting side of the box grater. After about 15 minutes, my little teenage hands were beginning to wonder if someone had played some cruel trick on them...but I pressed on. Hands raw and exhausted, I mixed the mush of sweet potato, eggs, flour and blackstrap molasses and put it into the gas stove to bake. The work was hard, but it would be worth it. My labor would not be in vain.

 

An hour or so passed and I waited excitedly as the pone cooled. I dished up plates of pone, topped with whipped cream and passed them out to my family.

It so, totally, wasn't worth it.

The stuff tasted like the Depression...the whole thing...the US Dust Bowl to Japan's February 26th Incident to the rise of the German Nazi party...all in one bland, molassessy-bite. I immediately acquired a deeper appreciation for refined sugar and dairy.

 

With this in the back of my mind, I understood that, when my grandmother told me that her breakfast today consisted of refrigerated beef consomme, sliced and topped with lemon juice and pepper, I should let her keep that taste experience to herself.

Starter Course

I SWORE I wouldn't start another blog...but my food thoughts have just been sitting...alone and undocumented...getting sadder and sadder. This blog will make them happy.