Like just about everybody I know in the Northeast, I go apple picking in the fall. This year, the wife and I took a crazy trip up north to Applewood Orchards in Warwick, NY (to be detailed in a later post). We exited with half a bushel of apples, a pumpkin and smiles on our faces.
Unfortunately, our mood quickly turned sour when we wasted our first four apples on this recipe for the “Best Apple Crisp Ever.” Oh, hyperbole, why am I such a sucker for thee?
Categories: Baking · Dessert · Problems
Tagged: brown sugar, apple crisp, Applewood Orchards
I bought an apple today. It cost $1.00.
That is way too much to pay for a piece of fruit.
Categories: Curiosities · NYC · Opinion · Problems
Tagged: apple, expensive, fruit, New York City, one dollar
I know you’ve all been eagerly awaiting the conclusion of the wine saga that started with this post.
Who am I kidding? No you’re not.
But in case you’re wondering how homemade Chardonnay turns out in the hands of two suburban retirees and their food-blogging son, that picture tells it all.
Although the darn thing wouldn’t clarify (even after many attempts at filtering) it went down fairly smoothly. I swear. It tasted like a decent white wine, despite its odd coloring.
And when you get down to it, wouldn’t you rather have a better tasting wine than a better looking wine? I thought so.
* By the way, that’s my wife’s hand, not mine.
Categories: Curiosities · Drinks · Problems · Products
Tagged: chardonnay, clarify, DIY, homemade wine
Speaking of cooking problems, my new rice cooker is cooking up some of the crappiest rice I’ve had in a long time. I mean, the whole premise behind even getting a rice cooker was to make some of that delectable sticky rice that routinely emerges from the machines of my friends and TV personalities.
Well, guess what? I’ve now used this thing six times and I have yet to see even two grains of rice stick together. It has had the complete opposite effect that I was anticipating: the machine rice is dry, undercooked and each grain slides away from the other like they were magnetized metal shavings.
Again, I ask: what am I doing wrong here?
I’ve tried adding more and more water each time, but I only see incremental improvements. Could the problem simply be that I’m using the wrong kind of rice? Does Uncle Ben make his long-grain rice impervious to the effects of automatic rice cooking?
Maybe I’ve deluded myself into thinking a rice cooker (that someone shelled out good money for at my wedding) should be able to take any kind of rice and transform it into something light, fluffy and moist.
But I guess cooking perfect rice is just a little too much to ask of a rice cooker.
Categories: Cooking · Problems
Tagged: dry rice, long grain, malfunction, problem, rice cooker, sticky rice, Uncle Ben
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Why can’t I cook tuna steaks?
What is it about those seemingly succulent red wedges that brings out the worst in my culinary skills? Granted, my culinary skills are meager to begin with, but I’ve already mastered salmon. How much harder can tuna be?
After my latest adventure, I now consider the perfectly cooked tuna steak my white whale. I just can’t stop pursuing a better recipe or method. This time, I tried to adapt a salmon recipe for tuna and I can’t say it worked out so well.
I won’t go into the details, but please, for the love of cooking, can someone help me get this fish right?
Categories: Cooking · Problems
Tagged: orange, sesame seeds, tuna steaks
One of the fundamental rites of passage for any engaged couple is to ask for and receive a machine that enables you to prepare foods you’ve never thought of making yourself. Things like waffles, bread, frozen margaritas, and fried candy bars are yours for the making if only you register the right way.
Already owning a bread machine - which we use only to make banana bread and only when we have some over-ripe bananas laying about - and cowering in fear at the prospect of owning a deep fryer, the wife and I chose the ever-so-sensible ice cream machine.
As stereotypically lazy Americans, we were surprised that making ice cream actually takes work, even with our newfangled technology. Often things have to be heated or melted or mixed or strained by hand before the motorized monstrosity even comes into play. Such a revelation would have led lesser couples to excommunicate such a contraption to the back of the cupboard.
But we persevered.
After some unsuccessful experiments with frozen yogurt and “light” ice cream, however, the wife threw in the towel. Heavy dairy is not her bag.
So I persevered.
But only a couple times a year when I’m alone and feel like making the effort (that sounds dirty, sorry). One such opportunity presented itself last month when I decided to finally put the instant coffee I had bought for this very purpose to use.
I found this recipe for Coffee Oreo Cookie Mount Gay Ice Cream one day after work and thought I’d give it a shot. And by shot, I don’t mean the Mount Gay rum. That ingredient was immediately jettisoned in keeping with my long-held “no alcohol in dessert” decree.
The addition of egg yolks make this more of a frozen custard than a straight-on ice cream. This recipe was also my first venture into “tempering” territory and I think it went surprisingly well (i.e. the eggs did not get cooked by the warm cream mixture).
The one thing I would change would be the time of Oreo addition. When I added them right before pouring the liquid into the machine, the cookies broke down and became part of the ice cream. So instead of little bits of cookie flecking the coffee ice cream, I ended up with a true coffee/Oreo hybrid.
This is similar to the melding, at a molecular level, of Seth Brundle and the fly in David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly. Below is a picture of my ice cream and Brundle-fly for comparison.
To fix this, I would wait until the last five minutes of the hardening process before adding the cookie chunks. This way they would get mixed into the ice cream without falling apart.
And thus, to finish with the comparison, you have what the ice cream should look like next to the original Fly: a garden-variety human with a few insect parts mixed in.
Ice cream and sci-fi: two great tastes that taste great together!
Categories: Dessert · Problems · Tools of the trade
Tagged: Brundle-fly, frozen custard, homemade ice cream, hybrid, ice cream machine, instant coffee, integration, oreo cookies, the fly, wedding register
Fluffy, subtly sweet and always delicious, pancakes are one of life’s simplest pleasures.
But lately, it seems that everywhere I turn, some ambitious chef or restaurant is trying to overly complicate the already-perfect-as-is pancake.
It started innocently, as these things do, with a few berries, some unique syrup flavors and maybe a chocolate chip or two. And then, all of a sudden - bam! - we’ve got nuts in the batter, mountains of powdered sugar, and not a dollop of good old fashioned butter in sight!
This madness must end.
Of course, I’m too much of a hypocrite to lead the charge, what with my eyes glazing at every mention of a “pancake special” at brunch. In fact, it was my saying “yes” to two such specials in recent weeks that instigated this post in the first place.
Categories: Opinion · Problems
Tagged: butter, Country Pancake House, Devil's Alley, French toast, oatmeal flapjacks, pancakes, Ridgewood, syrup
That greyish slab of meat you’re looking at is not a pork chop. It’s a tuna steak.
This particular experiment gone wrong was adapted from a Men’s Health recipe for seared swordfish steaks. I foolishly thought that if I replaced the expensive swordfish steaks with the affordable (i.e. previously frozen) tuna steaks, everything would be fine. Did I mention how foolish this was?
I did follow the recipe very closely, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper to each side of the steaks before tossing them in hot oil. After searing them for several minutes, I flipped the steaks and threw the whole skillet in the oven for another 8 - 10 minutes.
When removed from the oven, I was disappointed that the fish did not look as professionally “crusted” as I expected. But the real surprise came with the taste test.
After cutting in and sampling a bit, my worst suspicions were confirmed. Not only were they overcooked (not a hint of pink on the inside), but they retained that unpleasant fishy taste.
Like any desperate cook (or politician), I tried to cover up my mistake. There was still some oil in the skillet and I thought it would be a good way to moisten up the meat before turning to the refrigerator and spice rack for additional flavors.
Somehow, I ignored the fact that the skillet had just finished a good 10 minute bake at more than 300 degrees and was therefore extremely hot.
So I grabbed it.
It took a split second for my brain to realize what my hand was doing. But that split second was all it took for the burn to take hold. I like to describe it this way: OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!
Ten minutes under cool water and a good numbing ice pack later, I was finally able to use my left hand to eat some of what I prepared.
The conclusion: my fingers were better cooked than the fish.
Categories: Cooking · Problems
Tagged: tuna steaks, men's health, swordfish, seared, burned hand, fingers, string beans
Riddle me this: what do you call Chicken Marsala that doesn’t include any Marsala?
This was my dilemma last weekend when, halfway into the cooking process, I discovered a distinct lack of Marsala wine in the apartment. (I had also run out of mushrooms, but that’s another issue.)
During my extensive search for a substitute alcohol, I retrieved a tall blue bottle from the back of the pantry that had long since faded from memory. The liquid, dubbed Attitude III, was described on the bottle as “Blueberry Wine with grape spirits added.” Hmmmmmm…
I tried a little and, tasting a slight resemblance to the sweetness of Marsala and port wines, decided to throw it in. I almost immediately regretted my decision as strange, blueberry fumes rose from the pan. In a desperate attempt to save the sauce, I grabbed some refrigerated chardonnay and poured in a healthy splash.
Then, as a final cover-up, I doubled the amount of lemon juice I normally add. If there was going to be an edge to it, I thought it better to err on the side of citrus.
The result? Surprisingly, not bad.
Although it took a bite or two to get used to the less-familiar taste, the wife and I both enjoyed the experiment.
I can’t say it was the best meal I’ve ever had, but I can’t say it was the worst either. It was just a happy accident… but one I hope not to repeat anytime soon.
Categories: Cooking · Curiosities · Problems
Tagged: attitude 3, blueberry wine, chicken, grape spirits, lemon juice, marsala, substitutes
As someone who’s alive, I consider water not only a thirst-quenching beverage but also an essential contributor to my avoidance of death. That’s why this recent Today Show report that certain types of plastic bottles could be harmful to one’s health immediately struck me as worrisome.
How is it that these vessels of life-sustaining liquid could be so tainted? Once again, we must blame chemistry.
Well, not the whole scientific field. We’re talking about the chemical makeup of certain plastics, most notably those with the recycling numbers 3, 6 and 7 (as seen on the bottom of the containers). Supposedly, the chemical composition of these plastics are such that repeated use, especially with the heat introduced by microwaves, could somehow cause the seepage of unsafe substances into the water or whatever you happen to be storing in these bottles.
While such concerns have been around longer than recent reports might suggest, they are still just that: concerns. A definitive link has not been established and the scientific jury is still out. Some doctors say these bottles are uniformly unsafe, while others suggest that most numbered plastics (those with a 1) are approved for normal, non-carcinogenic drinking.
Between this mess and the discovery of traces of pharmaceuticals in much of America’s public drinking supply… I guess it’s back to rain water in crystal goblet for me.
Categories: Problems
Tagged: chemicals, drinking, harmful, microwave, recycling numbers, safety, today show, water, water bottle
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