Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Getting Smoked

My wife's mom bought a smoker/grill a while ago, and this weekend finally got to use it. What it really means is that my wife and I ended up smoking and grilling just about everything in sight. The last couple of days we've been grilling fiends. Grilling/smoking/BBQ'ing is something we're relatively new at, so each time was a bit of a learning experience. According to our test subjects, all the food turned out very tasty. Once we get a house, we're looking forward to doing a lot more outdoor cooking.

Kitchen Cautions

I rediscovered an important tip about cooking today. Anytime you're searing something covered with Scotch Bonnet peppers (or any other hot pepper for that matter), always, always, always make sure your kitchen is well vented first.

Excuse me while I go tend to my leaking nose...

At least my sinuses are clear now.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Mmmmm, turkey's in the oven, cornbread (Jiffy cornbread mix and a can of corn kernels), sweet potatoes (just plain roasted) are done and there's an ice cold 6-pack of Molson Ice in the fridge. All that remains is the gravy, dressing and macaroni and cheese. The mac and cheese is half done. Just need to toss it into the oven to finish. Gotta come up with a tasty veggie dish now.

Oh, this is gonna be soooo good...

Spent most of yesterday cleaning the apartment. Boy, did it ever need cleaning. Vacuumed corners that probably hadn't seen the business end of the vacuum cleaner since we moved in. Scary sight. But the place looks better now. Still cluttered, but clean. We just have too much junk in our apartment. One of these days, we'll have to go through and decide what's junk and what isn't.

Grits

Grits: A coarse cereal made from something called hominy, which apparently is a type of corn.

Anybody from the South, or with roots in the South can tell you what they are. Anybody not from the South will look at you funny wondering why you're talking about eating sandpaper. Anybody not from the South over the age of 25 will recognize grits as something Flo from Alice is always telling people to kiss.

My first encounter with grits was on that TV show, Alice. It was one of those sitcoms that I grew up watching, because it was funny and had strange characters. Flo was always telling people to 'Kiss my grits', which didn't really mean much to me at the time. Perhaps it was some unknown part of the female anatomy or something.

My second encounter with grits was many years later, when I made my first trip to NY to visit my future wife. There I learned it was a white gloppy substance that people ate for breakfast.

So over the years, I've learned to eat grits, and even how to cook them. Grits aren't something that I'll go out of my way to eat though. When I do eat them, it has to have lots of cheese. I've been told I cook a mean pot of grits though.

When cooking grits, caution must be exercised at all times. Cooked grits have high viscosity, and a very high specific heat. Anyone who's had grits splashed on them will tell you it BURNS. And it sticks to you, prolonging the burning process. If you try to lick it off, you'll burn your tongue, and the part that got splashed will still burn. I've always imagined that if there were grits back in medieval times, they would have been used for castle defense when the caudrons of burning pitch ran out (or even before).

Castle Defender: "They're coming! Prepare the grits!"

And I'm sure if the US military could come up with a way to keep grits steaming hot in a bomb, it would be far more effective than napalm.

Anyway, how do I cook grits?

2/3 cup water
2/3 cup chicken broth or stock
1/3 cup grits
pinch of salt
Cheese (whatever kind you want)

If your chicken broth/stock is homemade, go with all broth/stock. If it comes out of a can, go with half water/half stock. Canned broth tends to be a little on the salty side. Add grits to water/stock in a pot and bring to a boil. Stir often. Grits will stick to the bottom of the pot. When the grits become thick and gloppy taste for texture and add pepper to taste. If the grits are still a little hard and coarse, add 1/2 cup water/broth and stir. Cook until they become thick and gloppy again. Stir in the cheese (as much as you want). I like extra sharp Cheddar in mine, sometimes with a good healthy handful of Parmesan (freshly grated, not the stuff in the can) on top to garnish. You can use whatever kind of cheese you prefer. Serve in a bowl or over a fried egg. Immediately immerse the empty pot in hot water and let it soak. Don't ever let grits dry in the pot, or you'll need a chisel to chip it out.

Dining out

Finally, a decent place to get Chinese food in Charleston. Our other favourite restaurant was Osaka, a Chinese/Japanese restaurant with a really good sushi bar. Unfortunately, it suffered some fire damage several months ago, and we're still waiting for them to finish renovations and re-open (at least we hope they're doing renovations and planning to re-open). In the meantime, we've been going to Shi Ki Japanese Restaurant on East Bay. Their sushi bar is pretty decent too, and they're one of the few Japanese restaurants that serves udon noodle soup.

Yesterday, we read about a new place, Red Orchids Chinese Bistro on Sam Rittenberg. So we went over there today to check it out. It's kind of a higher class restaurant in Ashley Crossing Mall, a very unassuming strip mall. The food is very good, several steps above your traditional cheesy Chinese restaurant with the all you can eat buffet (I just stay away from those places). Prices are very reasonable, and you get a good amount of tasty food, so it's a very exceptional value.

More yummy chinese food

Went to another very yummy Chinese restaurant Friday night. Dragon Palace out on Daniel Island.

It's an unassuming place in a strip mall, but inside it's gorgeously decorated. The smells and tastes reminded me of eating at Chinese restaurants back home in Edmonton. Had Roasted duck with shitake mushrooms, steamed conch and beef chow mein. Very tasty food, not as warm as I would have liked, but still very tasty.

Saturday we went back for lunch. This time we tried the dim sum items on their menu. There aren't many of them sadly. We ordered shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, little juicy pork buns (another dumpling variant), and the roast duck cold plate. It's not a traditional dim sum with carts wheeled around, but the food was pretty tasty.

Now all Charleston needs is a real Chinese restaurant with real dim sum service on Sundays.

Let the eating begin!

The eating season is upon us. Thanksgiving luncheons at work today (my dressing contribution is baking in the oven now), maybe another one tomorrow before heading off to my wife's parents house for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Ham, roasted turkey, smoked turkey, macaroni and cheese, dressing, pie, biscuits, collard greens (which I refuse to eat) and all the other yummy stuff.

Then it's off to Chicago for RSNA. That'll be 4 days of hotel living and restaurant eating. Looking forward to downing more than a few deep dish pizzas from Pizzeria Uno and Gino's East. Mmmm...deep dish pizza...mmmm.

And then back in time to start the Christmas baking. Stocking up on supplies to send out Christmas cookies again this year. We did fruitcakes a couple of years ago, which were surprisingly well received. I think it was the thorough soaking with rum we gave them. Making more than a 2 or 3 fruitcakes becomes rather expensive though. Last year we made spritzer cookies, which always seem to be popular. Butter, sugar and flour. That's pretty much all they are. It's hard to make them not taste good :) This year we'll be doing it again.

Once the cookies are done, it'll be time to start planning Christmas dinner. More turkey, ham and dressing. More mac and cheese and greens.

After that is New Year's dinner. Usually a little lighter fare. Leftovers from Christmas (if there are any left), maybe a ham, rice, a pot of black eye peas (which my wife's mom says bring good luck for the new year).

And then 10 months to rest up before starting it all over again.

Christmas baking is done!

10 pounds of flour, 7.5 pounds of butter, and about 4 pounds of sugar later, our baking is done. Now all that's left to do is package up the cookies and ship them off. Everyone will get their cookies late this year, but at least they taste good.

Petition for Coffee Crisp in the US!

Oh, this is delightful! Stumbled on this petition site to bring Coffee Crisp to the US. There are reports of Coffee Crisp sitings, news articles about the effort, and interesting stories about Coffee Crisp in peoples' lives. Sign the petition!

e-Everything

I was just watching Kitchen of the Future on the Food Network.

Connected refrigerators that know what's in your fridge with RFID-tagged foods. The stove that you can control with your cell phone. The steam iron that tells you if it's on, or that it's still hot.

So now our e-fridge can tell us if we have any e-cookie dough to e-bake in our e-oven and then later e-eat. And we can do this all with our e-cellphone (mostly).

Carolina Barbeque

One of the best things about South Carolina (next to living close to the beach and ocean) is the barbeque. I'm not talking about burgers and hot dogs on the grill. No sir. I'm talking slow cooked, wood smoked hunks of pig. Smoky juicy tender shreds of pork and slabs of falling-off-the-bones ribs. Mmmmm, oh yeah.

There's lots of places to get barbeque around here. I haven't been to all of them, or all that many of them. But the ones I have been to have all been good. I'd hazard a guess that you would be hard pressed to find a bad barbeque place around here.

But what's a guy to do when there's no barbeque place around? Well, you could do it yourself, but that takes a lot of time and babysitting. Definitely the way to go though if you've got a few hours to kill and are trying to avoid yardwork. But not everyone has that much spare time.

That's where the slow cooker comes in.

I love my slow cooker. It is without a doubt my favourite kitchen appliance. My wife isn't too wild about slow cooker food (she says all the flavours get melded together), so I don't get to use it quite as much as I want to.

Slow cookers are the perfect appliance for busy people. Throw everything in before you leave for work, and when you come back dinner's ready! And that makes it perfect for barbequing. Not real barbequing of course. That would require smoke, and slow cookers aren't that good at smoking. But you can fake it pretty good with one.

So here's what you do. Brine your hunk of Boston butt per Alton Brown's Pulled Pork recipe. Then go with the Pulled Pork Barbeque recipe from Slow Cookers for Dummies.

After brining your hunk of pork, throw it on a hot pan and sear the outside. Put the seared meat in the slow cooker, and toss some sliced onions and chopped garlic into the pan. Brown and add a half cup of your favourite barbeque sauce. Simmer for a few minutes, then pour over the pork. Pour in a couple of 18 oz bottles of your barbeque sauce, turn the slow cooker on to Low, and head off to work.

When you come back home 8 hours later (or however long your work day lasts), you've got a hunk of cooked pork in your slow cooker that's so tender you'll have a hard time lifting it out in one piece. Careful not to burn your tongue eating while you shred.

It's not real barbeque, but it sure tastes damn good.

Let's eat!

Alton Brown says it pretty well in his latest rant/blog after seeing Supersize Me!.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Is MacDonalds food bad for you? What do you think? Does that mean you shouldn't eat it? No, it just means you shouldn't live on it or anything else made by someone you wouldn't hug.

I have a new vice

and it is called Cold Stone Creamery. One just opened up on King St and their offerings are sooo good.

They offer ice cream in three sizes, Like It, Love It, and Gotta Have It. The Love It size is the one I usually go for, and is almost more ice cream then I can eat at one sitting.

But the place is very cool (literally). You tell them what you want (or come up with your own ice cream/topping combination), they throw some huge scoops of ice cream on to this ice cold marble slab and mix everything together in front of you. You can get it in a regular styrofoam bowl, or one lined with a waffle cone. Then the trick becomes eating it before it turns into a liquidy mess and drips all over your fingers and pants. Or else wait until it becomes a liquidy mess. I suppose it's up to you how you want to eat it.

Is it the calories, or is it the weight?

Today's lunch time discussion centered on food and weight gain. The question that was posed was this: Neglecting influences such as metabolism, exercise and such, if you eat a pound (or kilogram) of food and nothing else, can you gain more than a pound of weight.

The actual answer to the question itself wasn't important. What I thought was more interesting was the distribution of answers. One of my friends at work asked a few random people in the cafeteria at lunch. Almost all the men said no, if you eat a pound of food, the most you could gain was a pound of weight.

However, the women that were asked all responded by saying yes it was possible, and that it was the calories that mattered, not the weight. Most of them quoted the rule of thumb saying 3500 food calories = 1 lb, so if that 1 lb of food you just ate had 5000 calories, then you could gain more than 1 lb of weight.

Interesting. So if eating 1 lb of food can make you gain more than 1 lb of weight, where does the extra come from? On the other hand, if calories is the only thing that's important then eat as much as you want as long as it's low-caloric density food.

Of course to really answer the question you need to factor in variables such as metabolism, physical activity and the like.

So how would you answer? Based on the trend from my friend's informal poll, you'd say no if you were a guy, and yes if you were a woman.

The holiday menu

In a couple of short days, we'll be headed to the wife's folks place again to work on another holiday feasting. Their feasting and our working :).

This year we're doing the turkey and macaroni and cheese as usual, maybe the greens too. For the day after, we're going to be roasting up a bunch of those little chickens. The things people call Cornish hens. 18 of them. Prepared like the turkey so they'll be brined and all. Should be interesting. I don't think we'll be able to fit more than 5 or 6 of these things in the oven, so we'll be using every oven on the compound to do this one. Fortunately they only take an hour to cook. We tried out a few of them on a couple of friends last week and they turned out pretty good. If we can get the timing right and manage the 3 separate ovens I think this should turn out pretty good.

There's just one thing that bothers me about these little chickens. You can Google up plenty of pictures of cooked or uncooked Cornish hens. Finding pictures of what they look like alive is a totally different matter though. Kind of makes you wonder if these things are actually real, or if they're really some kind of manufactured food. Like Soylent Green or something like that.

Dining with Robert

We had the pleasure of eating at Robert's of Charleston for the first time last night. We'd read about the restaurant several times over the years since we've been here, and finally had a chance to make it there for dinner.

Robert's is not your typical dining out experience. My first thought when I walked in was that it's a lot smaller than I expected. There is seating space for about 36 or so, and judging from when we finished dinner, only one seating per evening. A very cozy environment, although it can get a little loud at times with everybody talking over the piano playing in the background.

If you go, be prepared for a bit of a long drawn out dining adventure. Dinner is a 5 course prix fixe menu (including white and red wines), which may sound a bit daunting at first. However, courses are served with enough time in between to give you and your fellow diners plenty of time to savour each dish, and then relax and digest a bit before the next course arrives. Seating started at 7:30, and we left around 10:30. Be prepared to take your time. There's nobody rushing food to you or running you out the door so your table can be filled by the next party. You have all the time you need to enjoy and savour the food.

Then there is the singing. Chef Robert is, it seems a classically trained singer, and dinner begins with him singing in the appetizer as he walks around the room proudly displaying it to the guests. While the appetizer is being served by the rest of the wait staff, he sings a few more happy upbeat tunes. This happens several times throughout the night, making dinner almost a theatrical event and much fun.

The food is equally as good as Chef Robert's singing. Starting with a sea scallop mousse (much tastier than you might think it could be) and finishing with a decadent slice of triple chocolate tart, it was probably one of the most enjoyable dining experiences I've had in Charleton. It's a bit pricey though, so save your quarters before you go.

This is what was on the menu when we went

Sea Scallop Mousse, Maine Lobster Sauce
Fresh sea scallops blended with cream, eggs and baked
Fresh lobster broth emulsified with cream, Golden Beet relish

2001 Salmon Creek/Chardonnay or non-alcoholic California Chardonnay

Our Warm French Bread served with unsalted butter

Roasted Breast of Duckling
Oriental rice noodles - Orange ginger barbeque sauce

Mesclun Garden Greens and Radicchio
Fennel, Grape tomatoes, Calamata olives and Parmesan cheese
Virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and honey dressing

2001 R. H. Phillips Cabernet Sauvignon

Roasted Chateaubriand or our fresh fish of the day.
Port Sauce and truffle butter roasted tenderloin of beef to your liking
Port wine reduced with Beef broth
Black truffles suspended in creamery butter
Appropriate fresh vegetables seasoned with Roberts Original Seasoning

Triple Chocolate Tart, Wild Berry Sauce & Praline
A rich flourless cake infused with coffee liqueur served with fresh fruit and a sprinkling of praline powder

Lavazza Italian coffee or a selection of teas

I'm droolin' on my keyboard...

The Passionate Cook is a foodblog guaranteed to make you hungry even if you've just eaten. Haven't gone through all of the recipe categories, but the ones I've seen so far look totally yummy. The food photos are pretty much guaranteed drool-inducers, and if they're any indication of the finished product, I definitely need to try some of these recipes out.

I have to go wipe off my keyboard now...

Found via The Girlie Matters

Guinea Pig dinners

Now that we have a house, and a grill to use for the house, the wife has decided to start doing some entertaining for some of her fellow med student friends. So in an effort to get us to use the grill more often, she's started this Sunday dinner thing that she calls 'Guinea Pig dinner', where we end up cooking or grilling something we've never tried before. And since we haven't done too much grilling at all, there's a lot to try. So far we've stuck to relatively simple things: burgers, sausages, hot dogs, chicken, mostly to learn the nuances of the grill.

So, armed with a copy of How to Grill and Betty Crocker's Grilling Made Easy, today we have ribs and chicken to subject her friends to.

Basically we've graduated from experimenting with food on ourselves to experimenting on her friends.

When we get good at this, maybe I'll start inviting some of my friends...

Getting ready for Christmas dinner

Now that we have a house, the wife decided that we would be doing Christmas dinner at our place this year. That means instead of us heading out of town, the horde will be descending on our little house.

This year, instead of the traditional roasted turkey, we decided to try cooking it on the grill. So to practice, I threw my first turkey on the grill yesterday. We stuck with Alton Brown's tried and true Good Eats Roast Turkey (from the Romancing the Bird episode. The bird was brined overnight and then a basic BBQ rub spread liberally over and under the skin. Placed a drip pan under the rack over the two middle burners and fired up the two outside burners. Made a little foil packet filled with mesquite wood chips and tossed it on the grill. Once everything got nice and hot, on went the turkey and some sweet potatoes. Roasted everything until the thermometer in the turkey read 165°F (I never roast anything without a thermometer anymore) and everything came out just about perfect. The only problem was an area on the back of the turkey that didn't get cooked all the way. Must have been near a cool spot on the grill. Not a place where there's much meat for eating anyway, and the rest of the bird turned out fine. It didn't come out quite as smokey as I was hoping (a lot of the smoke escapes out of the grill), so I think next time I'll try to fashion some kind of foil tent to put over the turkey and wood chip packet. Still, it was a mighty tasty bird.

Christmas dinner warm-up

For a pre-Christmas dinner test run, the wife is hosting another post-exam party for her fellow med school students. We've also started the monster task of our Christmas baking, so the kitchen has seen a lot of activity the past couple of days. It's only going to get even busier from here on out.

My first attempt at nanaimo bars got off to a bit of a rocky, but very tasty start. Making it went ok, but when the wife wanted a variant without coconut, the second batch ended up not having enough graham crumbs for the amount of chocolate in the bottom part of the crust, so it turned out very chocolatey.

Then I screwed up the middle section, so had to disassemble the bars, scrape it off and re-do it. Then when it came time to cutting, the top chocolate layer ended up being not very cuttable, so the middle parts ended up getting squished out when I cut them into squares.

So they didn't end up looking like much, but initial reports from the people at work that I shared them with were very good.

The first batch of spritzer cookies were finished yesterday. Only, oh about 5 more to go.

Then for the wife's party of Friday, we're making some greens, mac & cheese and roasting a turkey. Most of that will get started today. We usually do a pretty good job with the greens (I don't eat them myself, but the people that do eat them have told me they're very good). Starting with a good stock is important, and we usually make the greens with a homemade turkey stock. Yummy. Mac & cheese will be thrown together tonight for baking tomorrow, and the turkey will be brining overnight for roasting tomorrow.

All of this is just to get our cooking skills honed up for the arrival of the Horde next week.

On top of all that, we're also heading out to go get the tree tonight. Looks like we're going to get wet doing it too.

Making stock

There's nothing like a good savory stock (unctuous as Alton Brown might say) to liven up a soup or gravy. This time of year is when I usually make most of my stocks, because of the abundance of roast critter carcasses left over in the kitchen.

Usually there's the Canadian Thanksgiving roast turkey or chicken in October. Freeze the carcass from that to make a stock for the US Thanksgiving practice turkey a few weeks later. Then that turkey carcass gets frozen to make the stock for the real US Thanksgiving turkey. Another one frozen for Christmas stock. Finally, the Christmas turkey (and maybe even a ham bone if I'm fast enough) gets frozen for another batch of stock.

People seem to get intimidated by the thought of making their own stock, but it's really one of the easiest things to make, and takes practically no effort at all. Even less if you use a slow cooker, which is what I make all my stocks in now.

My basic stock recipe is pretty basic, but the great part of it is that it can be spiced up with anything I feel like.

Basic chicken/turkey/beef stock
1 critter carcass (chicken, turkey, whatever you have on hand)
1 large onion coarsely chopped
3 or 4 cloves of garlic (you know what, it's garlic...just use as much as you feel like)
500 g bag of baby carrots
15 mL peppercorns
15 mL allspice berries
15 mL each of dried thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano
1 or 2 bay leaves
1 or 2 dried chilis (like it spicy? Add a few more!)

If the bones aren't cooked already, roasting them in the oven for a while will add more flavour. Toss everything into a large 6 or 8 qt slow cooker. Fill with water to about 1 cm below the top rim. Make sure the bones are fully submerged. Turn the slow cooker to low and leave alone for the next 12-18 hours. Stir once or twice to break up the bones and meat. When the bones are soft and crumbly, your stock is done. Strain through some cheesecloth into a suitable container and enjoy or freeze! Make it into soup, or use it to cook up some ramen noodles instead of using those overly salty flavouring packets they come with.

If you put too much water into the slow cooker, you'll end up with some spill over, so I usually put a half sheet pan under my slow cooker to catch any spills. Makes cleaning up easier.

Shrimp, crab and lobster shells also make a great stock. Doesn't take nearly as much cooking time though (just simmer for an hour or so) to get a nice tasty seafood stock.

Tasty meaty fare

Went to check out a new Brazilian place called Amazon Grill last night. Way out in Goose Creek, it was out in an area that we've never been to before, so finding the place was a bit of an adventure to begin with. But after being lost for only about 30 minutes or so, we finally found our way to the place, located in an unassuming strip mall.

The restaurant was a nice, well lit place with the buffet running down the middle. Not a huge selection, but enough to keep us interested. We saw black beans, stewed beef, chicken, fish, rice, some delicious fried bananas that everybody kept going back for, and a cauldron of reasonably tasty soup made with beans and meat. At the other end of the buffet was the salady and fruity stuff and in between a freezer section with ice cream for later.

The real attraction were the guys bringing around spits of meat and sausages fresh off the grill to each of the tables (which apparently only happens on Fridays and Saturdays). If you opt for the buffet and grill, they stop at your table, you grab a piece of meat and they slice it right off the spit for you. There were a few different varieties, including bacon-wrapped chicken, brazillian sausages, sirloin, tenderloin and filet. All of them were very tasty, and if you managed to get some of the inner more medium sections, very tender and juicy. Even the outer more well-done parts of meat were tasty and full of that grilled rotisserie flavour, although somewhat tougher to eat.

It's definitely a very meaty restaurant with anything resembling veggies being in somewhat short supply. Meat-loving carnivores out there are sure to love the buffet and grill. Definitely a place we'll have to go back and try again.

Over at the Map Room

Yesterday the wife and I met some fellow labrador-owning friends to celebrate a birthday at The Map Room over in West Ashley. First time we'd been there, so I was looking forward to it. It's located in a strip mall where the Kaplan Learning Center used to be (it's moved next door) in an impressively large space. There's a largish bar area toward the back middle of the area with a couple of rows of booths and tables in the front section of the room. There's a stage area in the back right corner where live music plays. A large open space in front of the stage provides plenty of music for dancing. The music last night was pretty jazzy stuff, so not much dancing going on while we were there. In the other corner next to the stage are a bunch of comfy looking couches arranged in front of a TV and a couple of video games for people to hang out on.

Food was pretty decent, with a varied selection of appetizers and pub fare done up a little more sohpistication than your usual pub grub. I enjoyed the fish and chips that I had, although the wife wasn't terribly impressed with the shrimp and grits (too greasy for her liking). Our friends seemed to enjoy the spring rolls and chicken satays they ordered.

We had a good time there talking and enjoying the tunes. Seems like it would be a good place to stop off on the way home and hang out for a bit after work.

I was kind of disappointed there weren't more maps decorating the room though, considering the name of the place

Starfish Grill resurrected!

Up until sometime last year, Starfish Grill was the place to go grab a snack over at the Folly Beach Fishing Pier after a hard day of sunning yourself, or just to look out onto the ocean while enjoying a decent meal. It's since been replaced with Locklear's Beach City Grill, so Starfish Grill seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It's back now (well, soon will be anyway), a little further inland on Folly road in the Merchant's Village shopping center (where the James Island Publix is). I spotted the big "Starfish Grill Coming Soon" sign on my way to get my hair cut this weekend. It's not going to have quite the view it used to, but it should provide yet another reasonably priced eatery on James Island to choose from. I'm looking forward to trying it out when they open.

A baking snafu

Tomorrow there's supposed to be a baby shower/lunch thing for one of the techs at work, so I thought I'd contribute a little something. After flipping through a few of the cookbooks, I found an apple cake recipe in Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking. It sounded interesting and tasty, and better yet I already had all the ingredients on hand. I consider myself reasonably skilled at cooking and baking, and the recipe didn't seem all that complex. Basic cake recipe using the creaming method. Still as I was reading through it I had this feeling in the back of my head that there was something missing. Naturally, I ignored it.

This was what I ended up with.

Doesn't look pretty, but it is tasty. Hardly presentable though. Think of what it would do to my reputation as a cook!

While doing the post mortem on the 'cake', I realized what that nagging feeling was telling me. There was no liquid in the ingredient list! No liquid means no gluten formation, and no gluten means the cake has no structural stability.

Duh. I need to learn to listen to those nagging feelings more often. I've made enough cakes using the creaming method that I should have picked up on this earlier. For some reason I didn't and now I have a pan full of proto-cake.

The book itself is great, but apparently I'm not the only one to discover problems with the recipes, as a few of the reviews on Amazon point out. Sadly the list of errata mentioned in the reviews has apparently gone offline. Hopefully they'll come back soon because there are some tasty looking recipes in his book.

I guess I'll have to go empty handed now.

Carnivore date night

Last night the wife and I went out on a date to Oak Steakhouse. It was a very pleasant evening, although it got a little loud at our second floor corner table with all the noise from people waiting at the bar echoing off the ceiling towards the end of th evening.

The food was quite spectacular and we ate ourselves a little silly. Really, how can you not at a place like Oak. I started with a carpaccio of beef while the wife went with the foie gras. Both very excellent. I'd never had a carpaccio before, so it was an interesting and tasty experience. Not at all like what I expected.

By the time we finished our salads (ceasar for me, the spinach salad for her), we were already getting full. The dressings on the salads were perfect, and we just couldn't stop eating them.

Then came our entrees. At Oak, being a steakhouse and all, large hunks of meat are the star items on the menu. All of them grilled, and all of them very yummy looking. I went with the 36 oz bone-in ribeye which came out on a hot cast iron pan. The wife ordered the 28oz porterhouse. For some reason ours didn't come out sizzling like the other diners' plates did. Anyway, it was a carnivore's dream. The ribeye was a bit charred on the outside, but cooked to a nice medium/medium rare on the inside. I sliced off a decent sized 5 or 6 oz serving (no way I was going to be able to eat the whole thing at this point) and started eating. A bite of the ribeye with the accompanying foie gras was utterly sinful. Buttery sweet texture and flavour of the foie gras went perfectly with the ribeye.

We left with enough meat to last us through at least 3 more meals. Definitely a place we would go to again, although probably not too often.

4.5 stars out of 5 (-0.5 stars for the rather loud atmosphere on the second floor. I bet the third floor would be much quieter).

Zappo's

There's this new pizza place called Zappo's at King and Race St that we tried out yesterday. The wife says it's the best New York style pizza around (she ought to know). She's never been a fan of Andolini's, the perennial City Paper Best of, because she thinks the dough is too sweet.

Zappo's was a pretty decent pie. Thin crispy crust, slightly chewy (not as chewy as Andolini's) and not too sweet (just the way the wife likes it). Being a deep dish kind of pizza guy, Zappo's pizza didn't seem too different from the others I've had around here. Reasonably priced though. Haven't gotten around to trying the other items on the menu yet. It's located pretty much on the way home from the dog park, so I have a feeling we'll be stopping by on a quasi-regular basis.

Yummy Ham

This was my Thanksgiving ham from yesterday. Just a very simple preparation with a basic brown sugar/mustard glaze. Amazingly simple. Just grab one of those smoked hams from the meat section in the grocery store, stab it with a thermometer and bake until it reaches about 125°F (52°C). Take it out, slather on the glaze and throw it back in the oven until the thermometer beeps at 145°F (63°C). Remove, let it rest for a few minutes and carve.

Add some smashed potatoes, fresh peas and corn and you have Yummy.

10-17

Went out to this new sports bar called 10-17 tonight with a couple of friends. Small crowd tonight (not much sports going on I guess). Nice place, although I think it suffers a bit from poor location. It's tucked away in the Quadrangle Shopping Center next to the Piggly Wiggly on Skylark Drive (across from Citadel Mall).

Big comfy sofas in the front of the room, large spacious tables to gather around in the rest of the place. There are about 4 or 5 big flat screen TVs lining the walls to watch and dartboards and a shuffleboard to play on too. Plenty of board games to play while you're sipping a few brews or chowing down on some food. The menu is a mixture of standard bar grub and a few German dishes. Since Max & Moritz over in Mt P closed down earlier this year, 10-17's become about the only place I can think of where you can get decent German food. The two people from Germany that I was there with tonight didn't seem to object to the food, so I guess it must have been pretty decent by their standards. Prices are pretty reasonable too with most things in the $6-10 range.

Best of all, the whole place is smoke-free, so you can go there and spend a few hours hanging out without smelling like an ash tray when you leave.

Overall, it's kind of like the Map Room but with sports instead of music. A nice comfy place to go hang out with friends after work.

Tryptophan coma time

Tis the season for travel, family gatherings and tryptophan-induced comas. Later on this afternoon we'll be bundling up the dogs and our kitchen, packing up the car and heading off to the in-laws for our usual Thanksgiving catering gig. The wife's parent's really don't do whole lot of cooking and don't have the best equipped kitchen (by our standards anyway, although it is nice and big) so we usually end up packing along a good chunk of our kitchen for these things.

Not sure how many people to expect this year, but I don't think it will be too many. We only ordered a 20 pound turkey this time. Maybe this year I'll remember to photo-document the turkey cooking process. This year we're working on our gravy making technique.

Turkey pickling

Arrived at the in-laws safe and sound, although a little later than expected. Turkey's in the cooler brining, and I forgot to take pictures again.

Rats.

Well, it's a good looking bird anyway. I'll try to remember to take pictures of it tomorrow when we start roasting it.

Happy thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving!

Turkey's roasting away in the oven, cranberry sauce is done and we're working on the mac and cheese. In a few hours, the house will be stuffed with people and about an hour after that, stuffed people.

Hope everyone else has a good one!

Where the spices are

I was watching the Good Eats fruitcake episode last night which features a segment where he visits a spice shop. So it got me thinking: with all the variety of cuisine and the long culinary tradition in Charleston, why isn't there a decent spice shop around? And if there is, why haven't I found it yet?

So what's up? Where, besides the local grocery store, are you supposed to go for good quality spices and people who know what they're selling?

Christmas feasting

For various scheduling reasons, we ended up having the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve instead. Rather than the traditional roasted turkey, we ended up doing a rib roast and salt dome fish.

The salt dome fish was something we did a few years back for another Christmas dinner with the family in LA. Had a much larger fish back then, but this year it was just as tasty.

First you start off with a good sized bass, or in our case, 3 smaller ones.

Then you make up the mixture of salt (kosher of course), egg white and water

Lay down a layer of the salt on a sheet pan and put the fish on it

Then cover it all up with the rest of the salt and bake for about 40 minutes at 350°F

When it's done (stick a thermometer into the middle and if it's 130°F, it's done), pick off the salt dome, remove the fish, brush off any extra salt and serve.

Contrary to what you might think from being baked under so much salt, the fish doesn't really turn out very salty at all, but it does stay nice and moist and oh so yummy. It's received rave reviews from the family both times we've done it so far.

The rib roast turned out very tasty too.

Maui Luau

Thursday in Maui we went out to the Old Lahaina Luau.

The commercial luau seems to be one of those quintessential Hawaiian tourist activities, but it's basically a big outdoor restaurant with a show to watch while you're eating dinner. There were some interesting dishes, some pretty tasty, others not so much.

Some awesome banana bread was available along with a pretty tasty ahi (tuna) poke. There was purple poi there too, which was a lot more watery than I was expecting. I was expecting poi to be something more of a mashed potato kind of consistency, but this poi was more like a salad dressing consistency. Didn't taste like much either and didn't really add anything to the meal at all.

Just before dinner started, people gathered around the imu to watch the roasted pig being uncovered.

The roasted pig served at the luau (I don't think it was the same one that was uncovered) tasted pretty good - tender, flavourful and not too dry. I thought it would have a little more smoky flavour than it did, but it was pretty mild. Since I was still recovering from whatever flu-like thing I had contracted, I didn't eat a whole lot of food, although I did manage to pack away a few yummy desserts.

The white squares were some kind of coconut square which I thought were very good, as were the macadamia nut tarts.

The dinner wrapped up with more dancing telling the history of Hawai'i

Old Lahaina Luau is an attractive setting once you get inside, and there's plenty of things to check out while you're waiting for the buffet to open up. You can check out people making Hawai'ian totems and other crafts, or learn basic hula steps from one of the staff. Or just wander around with a fruity drink in hand and enjoy the scenery or the expansive ocean view. It's a little on the pricey side, but if you've got room in the budget and looking for your first luau experience, it's worth a try.

Food: 3.5 out of 5
Ambiance and entertainment: 4 out of 5

Another good reason to love chocolate

As if chocoholics really needed another excuse

Chocolate improves blood vessel function: study

"In this sample of healthy adults, dark chocolate ingestion over a short period of time was shown to significantly improve (blood vessel) function," said Dr. Valentine Yanchou Njike of Yale Prevention Research Center, a co-investigator of the study

Slow cooker roasting

For a slow cooker experiment (did I ever mention how much I love my slow cooker?), I thought I'd try roasting a chicken. Adapting a recipe from my Slow Cooker for Dummies book, I combined some jerk seasoning (Walkerswood is my favourite...it's seriously hot and a little bit goes a long long way), lime juice and garlic together and smeared it all over the chicken inside and out (make sure to get it under the skin). Left it in the fridge overnight and then in the morning, stuffed a few cloves of garlic inside and placed it into the slow cooker along with a half cup of chicken stock.

When I got home 8 hours later, I was greeted with the fragrant aroma of roasted jerk chicken (yum). After turning the cooker off and letting it cool a bit, I checked out the results.

There ended up being more liquid and fat coming off the chicken than I expected, so it turned into more of a braise than a roast. All the meat was falling off the bone, making disassembly a very easy job. The end result was very tasty though. I have a tendency to be a little heavy handed with the jerk seasoning, but this time I got it right. The chicken came out nice and tender, with just the right amount of spiciness. Very yummy, especially with a cold beer to cool things off when it gets too spicy hot.

Next time, remove the skin, skip the added liquid and try cooking it breast side down.

Key lime pie to die for

I don't know why it's taken me so long to sample the offerings from Sublime, but today I finally got to try the key lime pie I've heard so many people rave about.

I have to say, it shattered all my expectations. It's not your traditional gelatin-set key lime pie. Oh no, it's much, much more. It's kind of frozen custard-y, not quite ice cream-y, not quite sherbet-y, but kind of almost all of them at the same time. Whatever it was, it was Y-U-M-M-Y.

It's my new favourite dessert. I've just been ruined for all other key lime pies now.

I can't wait to go back and try the key lime cheesecake.

And, as Jeff Allen points out, they don't just sell pies anymore. I was just there this morning browsing through the new offerings while I was waiting for the key lime pies I ordered to be boxed up. They have lots of neat local offerings like raw milk, local peaches, green peppers, bacon, beef and jams. All very tasty looking items.

Kind of reminds me of a local corner grocery store like my dad used to run when I was a kid. Only he didn't have desserts this good.

Necter Wings

Today I found some really hot wings over at Necter (formerly Brinson's Beef and Brew). I'm talking make you sweat, your nose run, eyes bleed hot. I ordered a dozen wings and told the waiter I wanted them as hot as they come. I wasn't disappointed, and the wings were delightful (definitely not for the faint-hearted). These were the hottest wings I've had since moving to Charleston.

To me, they beat out the Habanero Hots or Braveheart from Wild Wing Cafe, which I've always thought of as more medium (although they do tend to be a bit of a creeper) and not nearly as hot as they sound. Then again I have a pretty high tolerance for hot food.

Definitely going back for more.

I've heard Buffalo South has some pretty hot wings too. I'm going to have to stop by and check them out.

Caffeine: Not just for drinking anymore

In addition to hyper-caffeinated drinks, mints, and chocolate covered espresso beans, caffeine buzzed geeks can get their fix in yet another form: Caffeinated Sunflower Seeds.

At 120 mg of caffeine per bag, it's a little less than what's in a can of Jolt Cola and a little more than a cup of coffee.

I'm thinking you probably don't want to be snacking on these while pounding back a 6 pack of Jolt following a shower with your caffeinated body wash.