Five Guys Burgers and Fries Review

First post in a while but I haven't totally forgotten about you!  I consider myself a hamburger connoisseur - I think a good hamburger is a thing of beauty.  So simple, yet so much potential for soul satisfying goodness.  The first time I heard about Five Guys is when Obama stopped by one on his campaign for presidency.  And this was when his coolness and buzz rating was off the charts, so hey, Five Guys must be awesome if the future president (you all knew he was going to be the president) is getting his munchies there.  Too bad it was a predominantly East coast chain.  But fancy burgers have been a little trend lately.  For example, Denny's introduced a more gourmet burger with 'hand-made' patties just about a year ago.  Actually an improvement I say.  So it was only a matter of time before Five Guys made it over on the West side I guess. 

I walk in, there's a load of signs plasted along the windows facing the street with quotes from various media sources about how great the burgers are.  'Zagat rated'  'Best $5 burger'  Yadda yadda.  And there's a bunch of newspaper and magazine clippings posted everywhere.  Yes, I get it, there's a lot of hype about this place.  The menu is simple enough though you do have to choose your own toppings.  The lady at the register was helpful enough.  I basically chose the 'Everything' burger which I figured was the standard.  It doesn't actually include every topping under the sun despite the name- I think it was: mayo, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, grilled mushrooms, and grilled onions.  I was asking about the cajun fries but the cashier lady let me have the regular fries with the cajun seasoning on the side since I was a newbie.  Thanks lady. 

I didn't bring my camera and I'm not quite sure how to get pictures off my new crappy cell phone so no pictures, but next time.  I hate to pass judgement on just one tasting anyway.  But here's my first experience. 

A burger from Five Guys is pretty awful.

It's an impressive looking burger.  A couple of thick beef patties (1/3 pound each?), a load of toppings.  Taste wise it's the flavor is not there, it's totally underwhelming.  I tried a couple more bites, still the same result.  I tried a few lonely grilled mushroom that fell out while taking the first bite and that thing was rubbery and tasteless.  I'm a freak for mushrooms, it's one of my favorite things in the world.  So much umami fun-ness in those suckers but these sad things were just filler.   I start to pick apart the burger to see what did have flavor.  The meat patty by itself pretty bleh.  I think they use lean meat because it wasn't juicy at all and they cook their meat well done (according to the menu or something I read).  At least the tomatoes and pickles were good. I actually did see one lady sitting next to me shaking a packet of salt straight onto her burger.  It's not a good sign when people have to season their own food to taste it.

The fries are great though, they're those boardwalk type fries that are nice a thick yet crunchy.  The cajun seasoning is fine, it's like Red Robin's seasoning salt or whatever, it's definitely good to get on the side.  

The 500 dollar blender on my wishlist

All I have in my apartment is an immersion stick blender, which is useful and a good multitasker and compact enough for a lot of easy blending jobs, especially soups or sauces.  Lately I've been finding it lacking in the smoothie and drink making department, but I've finally experienced the straw that broke the camel's back. 

So I'm been digging these expensive chocolate soymilk protein drinks like from Odwalla or something, but it's basically soymilk, sugar (or cane juice or whatever they call it), chocolate, and banana (mostly for texture I think or else the drink would be too thin and watery).  Supposedly chocolate milk is good for you some how, like a great post work out drink.  Anyway, I get an idea for just a Mexican chocolate milk, just blend up milk, cocoa powder with some chipotle and arbol powder, and cinnamon.  Now, if you've ever blown bubbles into your milk when you were a kid, you would know that the milk can create a large mass of foam.  Well, that's what happened, milk spilled over the cup after 2-3 seconds of blending with my stick blender(even though I only poured enough milk to fill the cup half way).  I poured some of the milk out and some how lost a huge load of cocoa powder into the sink too because it didn't even get integrated into the milk.  I tried whisking the mix a little bit more hoping to recover something for the ordeal but it was no use as the drink was a gritty mess. 

I've been wanting to drink more smoothies lately since they're easy, tasty, and pretty nutritious.  And way too expensive when buying it outside at juice places or buying bottles of it.  Using my stick blender has been a hassle since it has trouble pulverizing frozen fruit.  After doing a little research on blenders and watching Alton use it, I came across the Vita-Mix.  Supposedly comparing regular blenders to a Vitamix is like comparing a shovel to a bulldozer.  This is basically food service grade stuff.  It apparently canpulverize the raspberry seeds in your smoothies and can make soup with the heat of its motor if what the people on the forum are saying is true.  The model I'm looking at is like $450.00 though.  Bleh.  I'll probably get one eventually, I'm totally loving what I'm hearing about this thing. 

A sandwich 5 years in the making

One of my favorite shows on Food Network is "Best Thing I Ever Ate."  Each week has a theme and it just has a bunch of talking head interviews with celebrity chefs or food personalities who wax poetic (is that how I use that term?) about their favorite dish spliced with footage of the dish/restaurant/whatever.  I dig how everyone is just so passionate about what they'r eating. Cat Cora mentioned this sandwich here at about the 3 minute mark at a place in Santa Maria that looked really good.  I always wanted to go to Santa Maria to try their barbeque back when I lived in Santa Barbara 5 years ago, which is just about 1 1/2 hours south of there.  Supposedly it's one of these great traditional barbeque enclaves like Kansas City or Memphis with their own unique culinary specialties you can't find done well anywhere else.  I never made the trip there but maybe one of these days when I'm traveling up and down California.  Anyway, the traditional cut of meat of Santa Maria is tri-tip, and I saw a smaller 2 1/2 pound roast for sale wandering the meat aisle at S-Mart after checking out the discount produce.  I figured I'd finally try making it myself during the long Easter break.  I probably spent like 4 hours going to 3-4 stores collecting the right things, like going to OSH to get wood for smoking, Safeway to get bread, another grocery store which I knew had a wider variety of barbeque sauces, balsamic vinegar, etc.

Preparing the Santa Maria style salsa and tri tip was pretty simple.  I followed most of this recipe for the salsa.  Most of the traditional recipes for Santa Maria tri tip uses like a dry rub consisting of garlic powder, garlic salt, pepper, and dried parsley.  I don't have garlic salt and just used garlic powder and salt and  added in fresh garlic and parsley for more flavor (I apparently forgot at the time that fresh garlic and herbs burn on the grill).  I used some hickory chips for smoking and cooked it on a gas grill over high heat for a few minutes and then over indirect heat until a digital thermometer read around 132 ish.  Not sure if anyone knows what a digital thermometer is but you leave a metal probe inside the meat and a coated wire comes out from it, and I ended up burning my finger trying to take the probe out after cooking.  Sort of sucked. 

The sandwich was really good overall, probably one of my better dishes I've cooked in a while.   

Salmon burgers

Here's a random concoction I made up, trying to make something interesting out of fish like tacos or something that isn't just a piece of fish on a plate.  I keep some frozen salmon and mahi mahi around in case I think of something to make, and I forced myself to take a piece out of the freezer and thaw out in my fridge and use it.  At first I was just going to cook it and eat it plain with some vegetables on the side but never got around to cooking it.  After a few days and some panic over whether it was going to spoil soon I thought I should make a burger out of it.  I think most of the recipes for salmon burgers were like recipes for tuna salad: some herbs, some pickles like capers or cornichons, and mayonnaise.  I put a little chili sauce and a bit more yogurt than mayonnaise.

For some reason I thought the mayonnaise and yogurt would basically make the salmon patty un-overcookable but I was wrong. The patty was leaking a bunch of water as I let it set up in the fridge and it was this super wet unmanagable mixture.  The thing was falling apart in the pan too, so I figured it would take a while before getting overcooked.  If you ever had overcooked fish, or any overcooked piece of meat really, it's basically inedible.  It's like eating cotton balls, the food like sucks all the saliva out of your mouth and it's tasteless.  I chose an awful bun to eat it on too.  I got a dutch crunch roll from WinCo but it was terribly dense.  It was disappointing because I was looking forwards to eating it but I could barely take a couple bites out of it.  Ah well.

Alton Brown Approved: Sardines on toast

I was watching Good Eats a few months ago and Alton did an episode about dieting.  I didn't catch the whole episode but it did make me notice that Alton has been looking mighty skinny on those Welch's commercials.  I haven't watched the last few seasons of Good Eats as regularly as I'd like, mostly because a lot of his show topics are hit or miss, but apparently he was a huge balloon last season.  He says he lost 50 pounds in 9 months so kudos to him.  This dieting episode wasn't all that great, like he showed how to make a smoothie, making it way more complicated than it has to be.  He did talk passionately about sardines which made me get some.  I'm not stranger to sardines though, I used to have rolls of bread filled with sardines packed in tomato sauce in elementary school. Maybe it's an Asian thing.  I went to the Food4Less around here and wandered down the Asian section and they had cans of sardines packed in tomato sauce stored there right next to the oyster sauce and whatever.

Alton made some sardines on toast, with a shmear of avocado to offset the fishiness.  Avocados are expensive as hell too and mixing it with fish seems weird, so I vetoed that idea.  I don't know if the stronger fishy flavor of these fish bothers people, it's not like it's a bad sign like a fishy smelling hooker is.  It's just a different taste.  Anyway, get some sardines packed in oil, brush the bread with that canning oil.  I thought that was the coolest step Alton did.  The sardines themselves you can just smoosh on some sourdough bread.  I put some herbs, roasted tomatoes, and some lemon in the mix too.  It's a pretty good late night snack or quick meal. 

Pan evolution

Having good equipment in the kitchen is essential to making good food, and since I'm a guy getting a bunch of random gadgets is always fun.  I read a good post on the internets about steel pans detailing their pros and I read they were basically the same type of pans that are used in restaurants.  I always figured, if its good enough in the industry it's probably really good for me.  I thought I had to go to a restaurant supply store to get them but never got to go to one.  I did try going to the closest restaurant supply store near me once but it was closed down.   But then I saw that Sur la Table was carrying the pan I wanted so I eventually picked up a couple.  Steel pans need to be seasoned and cured like cast iron pans.  I don't understand the entire process, but it's something about attaching carbon to the metal toa nonstick surface.  Supposedly it's nicer than teflon pans and the like since there aren't chemicals to create the nonstick surface, so that's an added bonus. 

I bought one pan a week ago from Sur la Table and been seasoning it for fun for the past week.  It takes years to create an awesome surface from regular normal cooking but I've just been seasoning my pans for fun.  I just stick all of my cast iron and steel pans into an oven with a little oil inside and just bake them for a while at various temperatures.  Sort of sad what I do for fun, but it's kind of fun to look at how it changes. It's like those fashion people who like those distinctive wrinkles in their jeans after wearing them for a long time.

Meatballs and garlic bread

Meh, here's another thing that I was too lazy to post up.  Here's another dinner idea I stole from Everyday Food, meatballs with a some garlic bread on the side.  I always liked meatballs as a kid, which are basically the only good part of spaghetti and meatballs.  Whenever I got to an Italian restaurant I'm always tempted by the spaghetti and meatballs, but I really don't want the spaghetti.  Whenever I buy TV dinners spaghetti and meatballs or swedish meatballs are some of my favorite entrees to buy.  But then I feel like I have to eat the pasta or else I'm wasting a lot of food.  Maybe if the pasta were acting more as a side dish than a cohort or main part in the dish.  Ah well.

Meatballs make semi-good leftovers too since they can turn into sandwiches. 

Red Lobster Redux

I didn't eat anything all day and I was starving by the time I got out of class at 4:30, so I went out to eat.  I decided to go to Red Lobster for the first time without having the all you can eat shrimp.  I was thinking of getting just something small, I was hoping they had some kind of soup and sandwich deal because I was curious about their clam chowder.  I don't think I've had it there and I consider mysellf a connoisseur of them.  The menu at Red Lobster is pretty limited.  I guess I could've ordered an appetizer.  It looked like they started selling their lobster nachos again.  There's a little symbol that says "New" above it about I think they just brought it out of retirement.  I would've gotten but I didn't want to fill up my bad food quota so early in the week. 
Anyway, I just ordered off their daily fresh fish menu.  I think Anthony Bourdain said to not eat fish on Monday because restaurants get their fish on Thursdays for the weekend so the restaurant is basically trying to get rid of it on Monday.  Not sure if that counts for a place like Red Lobster where who knows where they get their fish but whatever.  Man, eating fish is an expensive proposition.  I always though Red Lobster was like the Sizzler or Olive Garden of seafood, like it was a running joke that the food was mass produced and thus cheap.  But it's about 15 bucks for a half portion of red snapper.  Yeah a half portion is what a normal sized portion should be, the size of a deck of cards, but still disappointing for some reason.  I guess I'm too used to eating all you can eat shrimp there for about the same price.  The fish was decent enough.  I got it grilled but it might be better broiled because it was a little dry.

Potato tacos

Here's another thing I made a while ago that I was too lazy to post on.  So I had a hankering for potato tacos one day.  I first had potato tacos while in a Spanish class with good ol' Ms. Fajardo at Santiago Canyon College during the Summer.  Everyone had to do a presentation in Spanish about how to cook something. "Cut the onions"  "Mix together" etc., relatively simple stuff.  Ms. Fajardo brought in potato tacos for everyone and did a little presentation on how to make them.  Even cold they were pretty great.  I tried making them at home but I suck at frying.  I don't have anything the technique or why it's not bad (thanks Alton Brown).  I just feel weird about using up so much oil to make one dish.  I know professional fryers say that the flavor of fried food is better from used oil and actually put used oil in new batches of oil, so yeah I know you can reuse oil but it's just awkward to me. 

Anyway, I just tried shallow frying these tacos, where basically the oil only goes up about half way up your food instead of completely covering it in deep frying.  I ended up burning most of my first batch but a few tacos made it out unscathed.  I didn't remember if flour or corn tortilla were more traditional, but I used flour because I figured that texture might be crispier but I don't think the flavor was there.  The potato filling was bland too, not sure if I needed to salt it more or what.  For something so simple it sure is a pain the the ass to make. 

Girls who can tenderize my meat: Camille Becerra

Here's a chef that I was in love with that was on Top Chef season 3 for a few episodes.  I thought she was absolutely cute but the sad thing was that she barely had any talking head interviews or even have her dishes show up in the competition.  She wasn't the token eye candy on the show (I believe that role was taken up by Casey Thompson that season), the token villain/pain the ass person, or token punk rocker so I guess Bravo didn't have a reason to show her.  And believe me, I went through and rewatched each of the 4 episodes that she was in before she got eliminated plenty of times.  But at least she's cute enough to show up in random modeling pictures with her doing random stuff with food, yaaah!  I remember there's a great picture of her chopping up some beef sort of sexily, which gives a guy foodie like me a hard on, but I can't remember where I saved it.  Oh well. 

Eggplant dip

Here's the first thing I've actually cooked in quite a while.  There's a supermarket chain called S-mart, which has pretty lousy prices and there isn't a great deli, bakery, meat department, or anything inside so I don't go there too often.  Sometimes I go in if I don't feel like battling the crowds at WinCo for one item or to use the BofA atm inside.  The one great thing about S-mart though is that they have a little cart full of discounted veggies and fruits that are somewhat beyond ripe.  I bought 4 avocados once for 69 cents, it was the greatest thing ever.  Yeah they were a little brown on the inside but it was still tasty.
Anyway, I saw some eggplant going for sale, but I don't cook with it very often and don't run across it at restaurants too often.  The only idea that I could think of was making baba ganoush, so I grabbed one, roasted it with some garlic and blended with some tahini I bought a few days later (8 bucks a bottle!), lemon, and parsley.  Toasted up some whole wheat pita chips and everything good to go.

Breakfast Ultra Combo

Here's an oldie that I made a while ago.  I always skip breakfast because I'd rather have those last precious minutes of sleep before I absolutely have to leave for class than eat.   So I had the idea of stocking my fridge with items in order to whip up a quick breakfast sandwich in the morning.  I cooked up a bunch of fresh breakfast sausage and froze them, froze some bacon, and froze a box of english muffins.  Eggs only take a few minutes to scramble up and I always have cheese in the refridgerator.  With all this stuff I was hoping to be cooking and done in about 15-20 minutes: stick bacon in toaster oven, english muffin in toaster, eggs in pan, microwave sausage, assemble and top with cheese.  At least that's what the vision I had in my head was, I never actually attempted making it it in the middle of the week.  Here's one sandwich I made during one weekend.  Unwieldy but still good. 

Food, food, everywhere, nor any morsel to eat

Yeah, no cooking really still.  I did spend like $40 bucks on bunch of vegetables to make myself one my mounds of salads but haven't gotten to prepping the veggies and stuff.  I went out to get some fish or seafood but I have no idea where to get that at like 8:30 at night.  There's plenty of fast food joints and Mexican places around here but I think the only place I know of on the top of my head around here is Red Lobster.  I might have to check that place out again and see what kind of healthy stuff they have because I associate that place with fried shrimp, shrimp scampi, and cheese biscuits. 

I drove around Stockton looking for a healthy place to eat at and got to see some of the seemingly scarier parts.  Like I've never seen a lot of these stores (like Rite Aid) with iron bars and gates in front before.  I ended up going to Burger King hoping they'd have entree salad but I didn't see it.  I think Burger King probably has the most convoluted menu out of all the fast food joints.  Anyway, I got the side salad which was probably the most depressing salad I have ever seen.  Just iceburg lettuce, a few slices of tomato, and some cheese.  Carrots are usually standard on these types of things but that's a bit too fancy for the King.  I also got a Whopper Jr. when I really shouldn't have.  I have no willpower.  BK has a veggie burger, which was news to me.  I've had a veggie burger before but didn't pay much attention to it, so I'll have to try it again. 

Eating/cooking sabbatical

Not to worry, I do have the blog in the back corner of my mind.  I stopped cooking a few weeks ago because it was the week before Spring break and I didn't want to have a bunch of food rotting away in my fridge for a week.  Not that I cleaned out my fridge or cleaned out the trash before I left for home, which would have been nice.  Coming home to moldy dishes in the sink and stinky raw chicken in the trash isn't fun.  But at least I didn't have any extra food lying around in the fridge.  During Spring break I just went out to all the restaurants and fast food places that I don't have easy access to while up at school.

I haven't been eating lately due to some personal and health issues. I want to shift my diet towards more veggies and fruit for my own sake but I'm still a bit lost.  I do want to take up cooking soon again because eating a lot bananas, nuts, and chips and salsa isn't exciting. Unhealthy but awesomely tasty cooking is pretty intuitive, but I'm lost for inspiration on how to make healthy stuff.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  I do have some leftover pictures to blog about I suppose.

French Toast

A few of the things I bought from Penzeys spices were some vanilla extract and cinnamon so French toast was on the menu.  I had some dessicated French bread that I tried to slice up but it was dry enough to just break off into chunks.  But I just wanted to get rid of the bread somehow, so I just used the biggest evenly size chunks of bread I made.  I let the bread soak up the custard for a long while, maybe 3-4 days, and then cooked in a pan.  The uneven pieces and the amount of crust to inside of the pieces of bread I cut didn't really help cooking and texture.  Definitely need to use large slices of bread.  I made some whipped cream and a sauce out of blueberries but it really didn't help.

Nigella Lawson's food = bleh

Ok, I'm watching Nigella Express right now and I have to comment about it.  Ok, so Nigella Lawson is a bit chunky but from the chest up she is actually my cup of tea so I try to catch her show.  I like a lot of the British cooking shows; their accents are always fun and it's nice to watch other people cooking other than Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, or whoever Food Network forces down your throat. 

The food that Nigella cooks is terrible though.  So cooking shows for me are food porn- you try to imagine eating the stuff and it inspires you to want to cook it.  I probably would have never decided to pick up cooking back in the day if I was watching Nigella because her food just looks and sounds awful sometimes.  Like she was making a chicken stew with bacon, garlic, riesling, and dill.  Not sure how to describe it to anyone who isn't familiar with those flavors, but it's probably like taking barbeque sauce, adding Sunny D, and a splash of wheat grass.  And then she made a terrible looking crab salad with Asian dressing dealie.  Bleh.  Good thing she's easy on the eyes.

Chocolate panna cotta

I was watching "Worst Cooks in America" on Food Network and one of the contestants made a panna cotta in the final meal she cooked. I've seen other people cook panna cotta but I figured if that was the dessert they cooked in the meal that won them $25,000, I should try it out. I haven't had panna cotta before. I'm not sure why I don't see in restaurants more often, I'm sure I would've tried it if I ran across it by now. From the looks of the ingredients it looks like an Italian version of pudding. I wasn't sure on the ratio of gelatin to liquid and other ingredients. Hell, I wasn't even sure how much gelatin was in each packet in the box I bought so I probably put too much into 1 serving.  I ended up making some flavorless thick ass cement that I had a few bites of and threw away.

Chicken Vindaloo

I bought a load of spices from Penzeys spices, a place that sells spices online and seems to be reputable across the foodie nation. The only thing I really wanted to get was some ground dried horseradish to make my own Arby's horsey sauce (heh) to put on sandwiches, but I ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff. I probably would've bought a lot more but spices tend to get a little expensive. Anyway, I ended up with some hot curry powder and Vindaloo powder because I was hankering to try making some curry.
After watching a couple Youtube clips, I found you make a paste from the spices, vinegar, and chile peppers and marinate the chicken in it. Then sautee some aromatics, toss in vegetables, add chicken, a little water and simmer.

Chicken fritatta

I had some five day old cooked chicken leftover from my Superbowl nachos that I needed to use but couldn't really think of any good things to make out of it with the stuff in my fridge and I was too lazy to go to the grocery store to buy stuff to make anything intersting. Alton Brown, the greatest cooking personality ever, always said frittatas are good refrigerator velcro, meaning it's a good substrate for putting random crap in. So here's some leftover chicken, some frozen garlic butter veggies from Trader Joes, eggs, cheese, and herbs. Instant dinner that's relatively quick and easy. Though the chicken ended up dry enough to being inedible so it was overall pretty lousy. I was proud of the homemade salad I made though.

Japanese mortar and pestle

There's a small Japanese grocery and gift store near campus call Sakura http://www.sakuragroceries.com/. It's inside the same shopping center as this place to buy cooking stuff so I wandered in after wanting to buy a empty glass drizzle bottle to make some Piri Piri oil (basically just chili oil). The place doesn't have fresh vegetables, fruit, or meat, it's almost like a Japanese 7-11. I don't have an affinity for Japanese food in general so I don't do much cooking in that area. Though I went to one psychic randomly who said I should eat more miso soup so maybe I should stock up on that. There was some macha green tea I might buy sometime and bought some organic soba noodles since I figured it could be useful someday.
I've been meaning to get a mortar and pestle since I've been stocking up on spices and stuff to use and I wanted to get this Thai one that I saw in a magazine http://www.saveur.com/gallery/SAVEUR-100s-Kitchen-Gadgets-and-Books which is around 25 bucks online (I couldn't find one at the local Asian megamart). Th smallest Western style mortar and pestle went for as low as 40 bucks at the kitchen supply place. I saw this small Japanese mortar and pestle and it was 8 bucks for the bowl and about 4 bucks for the pestle. It's kind of neat looking because it has all these ridges going along the sides. The bad part is that spices do get stuck in the grooves, so it doesn't grind super well. Good enough for me though, I don't care that much and it's relatively cheap.

Oven "fried" pizza

Tried my hand at making pizza from scratch again this week. As per my usual M.O. I Google recipes and try to find recipes from reliable sources that seems easy enough to do. Saw this thing for oven "fried" pizza on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqvr8F57pUg. It sort of has the same technique as making a grilled pizza, though of course on the stove. You put the dough in a hot pan on the stove, flip, put on toppings, and stick into oven to finish. I'm not sure if I'm not working the dough enough or stretching it out well enough but it doesn't seem to have a good texture. I used this white wheat dough from Trader Joe's, I was hoping it would have the same taste as regular flour, yet healthier but it's mostly like wheat flour so the flavor and texture are completely off. Oh well. I might just have to stick with making French bread pizza.

Prosciutto and butter sandwich

Here's another sandwich that I first had at 'Wichcraft in Vegas. I mostly got it because it was the cheapest one there. Every sandwich was like more that 7 bucks and this thing was maybe 4 or 5. The combination is good, can't complain about prosciutto and bread and butter are one of my most favorite things in the world. I think supposedly it's sort of a play on the classic ham and cheese sandwich. Whatever I guess. I found a recipe and the people at La Brea bakery also have a sandwich like this. They had an optional scallion and parsley oil to drizzle on top which I made for fun.

Leftovers Philly style

Steak is pretty awesome leftovers because they basically ready to be made into other dishes. Made this Philly cheese steak with maybe too much provolone because I was afraid it was going to start sprouting mold. Well, one of the pieces of cheese had some weird stuff on I took that one off and the other two looked fine. That's safe right?

Girls who can tenderize my meat: Marcela Valladolid

Thought I mix up the posts by writing about this host on the Food Network that I'm totally digging. She's Marcela Valladolid, who has a show called "Mexican Made Easy". I do love Mexican food so it's already a match made in heaven. Apparently she was also on the Martha Stewart edition of The Apprentice, which I have never seen in my life in any shape or form. I haven't been able to catch her show because it's only on at 9:30 in the morning on Saturday and I'm usually up all night (until like at least 6 in the morning) for no particular productive reason so I end up sleeping through her show. The commercials for her show make her seem pretty peppy, which could be hot if it doesn't reach Rachael Ray levels.

Pork chili Fritos pie

Here's the chili I made with the left over pulled pork I made a few days ago. Just added the pork to the base, then poured over some Fritos and topped with a bit of cheese. A good late dinner for you're in the hankering for street fair-ish food.

Steak with jalepeno butter

I have to say, grocery shopping the day before the Super Bowl sucks. The only reason I was at Costco was to get some ciabatta sandwich rolls, which was the only place in Stockton that I absolutely knew had them off the top of my head. The line was long enough so you couldn't even see the cash registers, it was just a huge line going back to where the books and socks usually are. Anyway, I did see some prime grade New York steaks there. If you're going to eat steak, go for the best, baby. It's tastier and easier to cook since you don't have to do too much to it.

A steak dinner is a relatively quick meal to make, maybe 30 minutes or so. Rachael Ray would be proud. This is just a steak with a jalepeno/garlic composite butter, some chili and garlic broccoli, and garlic naan.

Post Super Bowl nachos

I woke up at around 2:30 in the afternoon on Superbowl Sunday, made a roasted pork sandwich and watched the game. The Superbowl starts at around 3:30 on the West coast and since I ate a late lunch I wasn't even hungry by the time the game ended around 3 hours later so I didn't even have any munchies during the game. I was going to make chicken nachos for the game but hell, it's a fine late dinner as well. It has all 4 food groups and very filling.

Pulled pork sammy

Here's the final pulled pork sandwich I made out of the 'Wichcraft book. I think I should've used pork shoulder like the recipe called for instead of pork tri tip because the pork was a tad dry. I also roasted for quite a while in a convention oven so that could have contributed to some dryness. Still pretty darn good.

Feeling a little chili

Honestly, I don't think I've ever cooked this much in such a short amount of time. Well, cooking in a sense of making stuff that takes more time than making a sandwich or cereal. So good times.

I'm not the biggest chili connoisseur or purist so I don't care whether it has beans or not, chocolate, cinnamon, or whatever people want to put in as long as it tastes good. The ingredients in this chili are pretty standard while browsing through recipes posted at some chili competition websites, besides the beer and maybe chicken stock. On a random side note, have won hottest chili at the neighborhood 4th of July block party (when there were only three entries). Got a neat little drink bottle that has like a thing in the middle that freezes. Good idea but it had a tendency to leak so I only used it once. Yargh.

Anyway I decide to make the base for a chili to fold in the leftover pulled pork after I'm done making a few sandwiches out of it. By the way, I'm taking these pictures from my cell phone because I forgot to bring the charger to battery for my camera when I moved, so excuse the random blurriness and ghettoness.

Chicken sausage sandwich a la Martha Stewart

I saw this recipe for chicken sausage sandwiches with just peppers and onions in Everyday Food magazine. This is one of these Reader's Digest sized magazines I randomly browse in the checkout line for quick ideas. It's a pretty nifty magazine, has a bunch of easy recipes. This is barely a recipe, but hey, if it's good enough for Martha Stewart to publish it's good enough for me. You basically just take some chicken sausage, saute up some peppers and onions, toast a bun, slather some mustard, and pile everything on.

I was a bit disappointed in what I made. For some reason I did get a little stomachache after eating this, so maybe the sausage was weird. I never tried this sausage or heard of this company before but I gave it a shot since it was made in Lodi, which is the neighboring city like 10 minutes north of where I'm at. Figured, local = bueno. Meh. I'll just get some Aidells sausages next time. And make sure you get some good bread. My philosophy on these things is that you have to be able to eat the bread by itself and this telera roll was super chewy and bland.

The pulled pork experiment

I had some leftover beer that I can't quite finish, so decided I should cook or marinate something with it. I was thinking of making some breakfast sausage with beer marinated ground pork but got side tracked when I saw some already made raw breakfast sausage that looked ok. Then I saw this piece of meat that I've never seen before called a pork cushion tri-tip and ideas of dishes started floating in my tiny brain. First I started thinking of making over roasted pulled pork sandwiches. Then I can use the leftover pulled pork for a small batch of chili maybe. Got home and brought out all my leftovers out of the fridge and dumped it into a bowl. I mean, I have no idea what to do with parley stems but figured they might be a good flavoring agent.

I have Tom Colicchio's 'Wichcraft book. I've been to the one at the MGM hotel in Vegas a couple times and it's pretty good, though maybe my love of the name of the place and the overall concept of fancy sandwiches is blinding me. Anyway, the recipe in the book looks easy enough. There some interesting ingredients, cloves, anise and caraway seeds. I have no idea what caraway is.

Hello world!

After years of putting off making a food blog on the back burner (hey-o!) I finally decided to get into business. Not sure why I wanted to make one. I'm not exactly Julia Child (or that Julie lady who cooked through her book) and I'm not going to win the Pulitzer prize so I'm keeping my standards pretty low for this thing. But hey, if it'll help me keep cooking for myself and perhaps learn some new/easy recipes, I'll be down with it.