Chips/crisps, the challenge of home manufacture

If you choose to make chips/crisps at home, there are some pitfalls (similar pitfalls restaurants can face, but more on that later). If you make them at home in a FryDaddy, the heat it accomplishes is set and unchangeable, so you cannot really be suave in chip-making unless you vary the thickness of the chips to match the temp, which is too hot for thin chips. In this cooker, the best you'll get are very nice chips if you let them overbrown so as not to be soggy, and throw some herbs in the oil along with the potatoes. And SALT!!!

If you use a modulated-heat method, such as oil on the stovetop, you can fry on somewhat lower heat and achieve a golden brown, crispy crisp/chip.

Which brings me to restaurants: So many fry their fries/frites/chips (that last int he British sense) at too low a temperature, and end up with soggy brown fries with a bitter texture, rather than the delightful, fluffy and resilient frite of one's dreamlife: That golden brown crispy fry with a steamy potato inside, quite ready for the mayonnaise into which it really should be dipped. Hate mayonnaise? No fear, there's vinegar there for you to have an also finishing effect.

Vinegar makes the world go 'round, unless it's good mayonnaise.

In that vein...

If you're looking for soul food and find yourself in Columbia City (Seattle) please take the time to visit The Silver Fork for a burger that has !!! after the name (hot links on top) or a bone-in pork chop sandwich. You won't be sorry! Don't worry about the sketchy people in the parking lot, they have problems of their own :-( and shouldn't be a bother. I haven't been lucky enough to return for awhile, but here's a recentish write-up in the Seattle Weakly [sic] and their photo (credit Steven Miller).

Cold, rainy barbecue

Not known for its barbecue, Washington nonetheless strives to dish up some of that sort of goodness. Word has it some really great specimens used to be on offer underneath the 520 overpass on Northup Way in Bellevue. Dixie's Barbecue was the lovechild of a gent — Gene Porter — from Mississippi who named his hotter-than-hell sauce "The Man," and those who survived a tiny taste of The Man were given a bumper sticker to that effect.

Alas, 2010 saw his demise, and neither The Man or the man are around anymore. (Apparently you CAN take it with you.)

The joint perseveres nonetheless, and though I can't say the BBQ sauce is not too predominant and sweet, and the brisket a little on the tough side, it's nonetheless a pleasure to darken the door, order lunch, and feel the awesome past and better days of the place. The images below will show you why, when you go to Dixie's, you feel a million miles from Washington State, the Eastside, and its shadow of a software giant.

File under: Go at least once, miracles can't last forever, and have fun.

Sandwich of the day

When a boy needs a sandwich, sometimes it's a ham and cheese on brioche with house pickles.

Field trip to new Hitchcock Deli on Bainbridge Island

The Hitchcock Deli is now open, and it's amazing. I love both the working environment and the food. I've had two lovely sandwiches, and ca't wait to start buying dry-aged meat and fresh fish from the case. And some bread-and-butter pickles, they have those too from local cucumbers. I'm not alone in loving it in a simple, satisfied way. The top picture is of a house-made braunschweiger sandwich with butter, gruyere, and a little mustard on rye.

Night Kitchens

Walking through Belltown the other night, I passed the Macrina Bakery kitchen vitrine. I became used to seeing this kitchen bustling with baking and whatnot in the mornings when I passed by on my way to work a few years ago, but I'd never thought about it being visible at night. Nothing unusual about the kitchen, just a fun sight. Made me think of In The Night Kitchen, which I now learn was controversial because Maurice Sendak's illustrations showed a naked little boy. Sheesh.

Oysters, old school

Somehow, among all the other things going on, this weekend has been about oysters, some I had this weekend and others I have had in the past or will have in the future.

Saturday found us for the first time at Emmett Watson, in Pike Place Market, a remarkably hard-to-find oyster joint stuffed into a crawl space at the foot of a big engineered cliff. Menu on a paper bag, condiments in a Red Stripe 6-pack holder, and oysters on the half-shell adorned with nothing more that a plastic thimble of ketchuppy sauce and lemon. Rating: 2 stars. Rationale: The oysters were too big and not cold enough. I rank red sauces lowest on the totem pole with oysters, as I like to taste the liquor and will always prefer vinegar if I need tang. Points for charm: neutral; the vintage promise was appealing but the delivery was a little, well, (Calling Nina Garcia!) sad. Scuzzy is a word I heard bandied about.

In contrast, let's reminisce about just a few past oyster high-water marks:

1. Hitchcock: This is the very recent past, but Hitchcock has shown me a new oyster dimension in which herbs and a few molecules of berry or granita can bring into focus the plain oyster like no other dressing, even a shallot mignonette, which I also am a fiend for.
2. Oysterbar in Grand Central Station: Pan Roast. Perennial, though I am not lucky enough to keep going back; geography intrudes. Sigh.
3. Reading about the introduction of oysters into pre-revolution French Court life: barrels came, and hundreds were consumed with abandon in short windows of time. No restraint. Here's a blurb about the excess among nobles in 16th Century England:

In a period of three days, Elizabeth's court managed to consume 67 sheep, 34 pigs, 4 stags, 16 bucks (used to make 176 meat pies), 1,200 chickens, 363 capons, 33 geese, 6 turkeys, 237 dozen pigeons, 2,500 eggs and 430 pounds of butter, plus a cartload and two horseloads of oysters.

What/where are my oysters of the future? At the Taylor Shellfish Farms outpost in the Melrose Market. While I was up on Whidbey Island this weekend for some very fun hijinks, others were having a glass or two of wine and having delectable oysters on the half-shell brought to them with a choice of lemon, mignonette, and a tomato-based cocktail dressing — with the option of Tobasco. Buy 'em for $7/dz and they're shucked for $2.

The secret of the universe

As it turns out, it's cottage cheese pancakes. The 1959 edition of the 1896 Fannie Farmer Cooking School Cookbook explains all that weird stuff called "life" on page 290.

Don't be fooled by the foxy look of my book's cover, left; be convinced by the ingredient-encrusted page of my book, shown below.

Don't plan to make them if you can't serve them hot, immediately as they are made, i.e.if you have too many people or for some other reason can't be in production mode.

Nothing is better (You'll hear me say that about a few things, but not too many).

Put in a bowl:
I cup cottage cheese
3 beaten eggs
2 tbs butter
1/4 cup flour, sifted   <--  Not 3/4 cups as I mistakenly told a superfriend!
1/4 tsp salt

Beat only until blended.  Cook by tablespoons on a hot griddle. Spread with tart jam or drizzle with real Vermont maple syrup. Serve. Makes 12.

I made a little bit of that up. The actual printed recipe doesn't specify my home-state syrup (instead saying you can serve them with jam rolled up and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar) and tells you to serve them as dessert. I prefer a tangy, eggy, best-ever breakfast treat. The tang of the cottage cheese with the syrup is the secret of the universe.