Donuts or Doughnuts

All throughout the Christmas shopping season, I had my eyes on this nice and little mini-donut maker.  How simple it would be to make a batter, pour it into the little molds, close the lid, and within a small time limit have wonderful cake donuts.  Well, I didn't have time to get the device and waited until after Christmas when I thought I may be able to find one at a discounted cost.

Well, little did I know, they were sold out, of everywhere.  Bella Cucina had this special deal with Macy's and according to one store clerk, they were so sold out that they were not allowed to order more from the Macy's warehouse.  Not a single store in the St. Louis metropolitan area, had one of these donut makers left.

I was sad.

Next came my wonderful wife who was with me and dragged along with our kids to at least two different Macy's in two different malls, looking for this rare and impossible to find device.  I didn't want to order it online as it was as much as $10-$15 for shipping on a $25 item made it definitely not worth my time.  So, my wife looks on Amazon and gets me a donut pan as well as a donut cutter and cookbook and I am ecstatic.

Here is a run-down of what I am doing:  I am making baked donuts.  That would be the great tasting donuts that you know and love but without the frying and grease part.  It would also cut down on calories.  Now, making a baked donut also means that besides the calories that I am cutting out from the act of frying, I can also alter the recipe to a more sugar free or even fat free method and reduce the calories even more.

My pan:

My pan with some chocolate chip cookie donuts:

Now, if you follow a simple recipe, your donuts will be perfect every time.  No more greasy wheels of sugar but instead perfectly light and simple shapes of goodness. So, for everyone who wants to make donuts, I highly suggest this donut pan.

Well, completely unrelated to this, a few searches in Flickr proved interesting in regards to donuts:

It breaks me heart...

One of my most favorite restaurants in St. Louis is called The Stable.  Ever since I first wrote about this a few years back, I personally have known as many as 50 people who started to go there.  Not all of them are foodies but just people who wanted to get a good meal.  Now, this Saturday my family is going to throw my grandmother a party and if I am not mistaken, she is turning 88.  I decided to take her and my father as well as the rest of my family to The Stable for brunch.  What occurred once we entered the door may have been one long string of not-so-great events that culminated with a bad feel and an apology from the waiter.

Now, we did The Stable because I looked at their brunch items, which looked reasonable.  We arrived, were seated quickly because of our reservation and waited for about 15 minutes before our drink order was taken.  About 5 minutes later we got or drinks.  After our drinks came, it too the waiter no less than 1 hour to come to take our food order.  My grandmother ordered the Elvis toast, my father ordered the Cajun biscuits and gravy, my wife and I both ordered the Bauernfruhstuck and we got the Farmer's breakfast for the two kids to split.

This is where things started to go wrong:

The menu says that the Elvis toast is "French bread drudged in and cinnamon egg custard and pan fried.  Topped with peanut butter, bananas and bacon."  Now, from the picture you may notice something right off the bat: there is honeydew on the toast, not bananas.  Instead of bananas, which they were out of, they offered another fruit choice.  Well, my grandmother thought that the fruit change likely wouldn't matter that much because there are still two large pieces of French toast.  Well, that wasn't French toast.  Apparently, "French bread dredged in and cinnamon egg custard and pan fried" means to just make toast and burn it on top.  It wasn't French toast or even remotely soft on the inside!  It was rock hard toast.  With peanut butter and the substitute fruit.  We complained to the waiter and he explained that they get a lot of complaints on this menu item.  So, not only do we probably give it a 2 out of 5 since it wasn't anything like what was advertised on the menu.  But, if it is a menu item that has had that many complaints, maybe someone should have said "hey, let's fix this or remove this."

The Bauernfruhstuck, was steak, grilled onions and peppers, hash browns, eggs, toast and bacon. 

The whole plate and the eggs were all cold.  The hash browns were undercooked and rubbery.  That was it with mine, but cold and rubbery is enough for me.  2 out of 5.

My kids had their food as well, which was also cold.

My kids, both were starving, because it took an hour for our food to arrive, but this was a very normal food dish; albeit cold.  I was told that they were short staffed and I can see why.  It looked like maybe the waiter was the one cooking all of the food.  The brunch hours are till 2pm and while this was a planned event, I find it very unlikely that we will return for another brunch.

How much is too much chocolate

Yes folks, God is smiling down upon our tiny human minds as he has given us, with the help of a talented writer, a cookbook: an instruction manual, of how to infuse our favorite desserts with alcohol.  Sure, you may think that your chocolate pecan pie is good, but can you imagine how good it will taste with a cup of whiskey?  :)

Before we settled into our Christmas vacation, I made my favorite recipe from the book, to be given to my son's teachers at his school.  The recipe in question: Jagermeister Fudy Brwonies.


The book is called Elegantly Easy Liqueur Desserts and is where all of these great recipes are from.


This is the book that has great things like the Jack Daniels Whiskey and chocolate pecan pie and it is delicious.  There are also some great creme brulee recipes and other fun things that would make your next party look like some fancy swing-dig.

This brownie recipe has 1/2 cup of the tasty liqueur in the batter and then some more in a chocolate glaze for on top of the brownies.  Let us not forget to mention the 6 ounces of chocolate in the batter and the 9 ounces in the sauce.  The recipe calls for walnuts, which I omit, and it still comes out with a perfect consistency and texture.

This book is highly recommended and for that price , I suggest you pick it up.

 

 

The new year resolution...

 I live in Columbia, a small town right to the Southeast of St. Louis.  Columbia, which has a population of about 8,000 people has many of the amenities of a bigger city but the old-world, small-town feel of a small place.  Columbia is only starting to slowly come out of the shadow of St. Louis with its own specialty restaurants and stores.  For instance, I heard recently that the Thai House, has only now been mention in the River Front Times and now readers are becoming aware of it.  The thing with Columbia is: it only has a few of these restaurants.  As I have already reviewed, it has at least one bad bar-pub food restaurant and several good ones, such as Joe Boccardi's and The Thai House. However as the stltoday writer mentioned, there is only two coffee houses, or cafes within the whole town:  http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/illinois/news/article_131cc253-41ac-51d6-ae26-f6be7e9cf200.html?mode=story

As a New Year's resolution, I would like to review more of what Columbia has to offer the Metro area.  I have reviewed only one restaurant in town and friends of the owner insist I just had a bad time and assure me that the bad restaurant experience I had was not normal.  They tell me that I definitely need to to go back and try again. There are just a few restaurants in Columbia and I would also like to review both of the coffee houses or cafes in the area.

Does St. Louis even exist?

St. Louis may have been the location that such great inventions like Dr. Pepper, Cotton Candy or even the Ice Cream Cone could have been invented or were first introduced to the masses.  However, it appears that this city is dead and I am just too naive to know it.  I think that a city that has a diverse culture as well as almost 3 million people can come up with a way to get on the map, nationally, as far as food is concerned. 

Well, what does St. Louis have for anyone to even stop by and see?  Well, Crown Candy was featured on an episode of Man vs. Food for its challenge of taking down 5 large milk shakes.
http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Man_V_Food/Photos/Slideshow_St_Louis?slidevalue=1

But is that all?  With all of the travel shows and cooking shows, St. Louis seems to go by unnoticed.  This is odd because St. Louis, was settled in 1703 and founded in 1764.  It is rated at about the 15th largest city in the nation and for some reason always comes up bottom when it comes to press and people knowing about it.

This makes me wonder what people think is located or happening in St. Louis. I know we have Anheuser-Busch, which still is classified as the world's largest brewery, as well as Brown Shoes, Energizer, Purina and even Macy's-Midwest.  We used to have a huge Chrysler plant just outside of the city and TWA was also here. 

The picture above denotes exactly what I and many other St. Louisans feel.  Anthony Bourdain, chef, writer and TV personality was here in St. Louis 2 months ago to promote and sign his new book.  From what we learned by asking him, during the Q&A part of his show, was that he doesn't view St. Louis as nothing more than an airport hub.  When asked if he was coming to St. Louis, he told us all that he is doing a show based in Missouri, but covering Ozark cuisine, which most St. Louisans find appalling.  St. Louis culture and people are completely different from Ma and Pa Kettle.  What is sad is that I had even contacted a staff person for his company and was assured that when Mr. Bourdain does come to St. Louis, I would be allowed to take him locations.  This was the highlight of my day or even the year, but as the reality starts to set in, I discover that this holds me over about as much as a single White Castle would, on one of my hungry days. All and all though, the whole thing reminds me of a young kid who is such a fan of a superhero and when he gets to go to a convention and meet his hero, he stands face to face with a pot-bellied, drunk, clown in a cheap costumed getup.  Mr. Bourdain was a hero of mine as a chef and writer and while I like the way he talks and writes and while I was a fan of his show, after he basically said that St. Louis is good but not good enough to do a show on and show the world, I lost faith in him. 

What makes St. Louis bad, I wonder?  I know as a food and restaurant critic that St. Louis has a few minor flaws involving restaurants, but that can't be the only reason, can it?  I know that there are great restaurants like The Stable or Mosaic, but do those places outshine the bad places like Mayan Cafe' or Riefschneiders Grill and Grape?  Celebrity chefs come to St. Louis to open their restaurants but don't seem to care about the quality that they produce, as my wife and I experienced when we ate at Sleek, Chef Hubert Keller's restaurant. Maybe they are right in that people only hear about those bad places and not the good places.  If that is the case, then I am sorry about that as my regular full time job does not allow me to go out each night and eat at a different location.  In some cases, when I go somewhere for food, I actually bring my whole family and the location may not be child-friendly.  Also, in some cases, if we get in and wait for more than 20 minutes before someone even talks to us, we skip it.  So, there may have been a diamond under the rough, but we never found out because no one even noticed us.

Hopefully through this new year in less than 2 weeks, I will be able to check out more restaurants for you, get more interviews with some of the St. Louis chefs and try to find more things to place this city on the map. Whichever the case, I hope everyone has a good Christmas season.

My castle is the white one...

While having a quick discussion at work with an employee, I thought about a food product.  These tasty and small morsels have infiltrated ever level of American culture since their invention in 1921!  The small burgers which have been mass produced and sold out of white edifices, complete with parapets and stone walls, showed up first in Kansas in 1921 where they were first sold for 5 cents each.  Can you imagine paying a nickel for a white castle hamburger now?

The story has it that after the novel, The Jungle, was release and showed how unsanitary the meat-packing industry was, two people set out to bring ground beef back to the tables of so many families.  They tried to make their restaurants look as clean as they could and did so by designing the interior with stainless steel and white walls.  The very first castle buildings were made of porcelain.

The two partners who founded White Castle, Anderson and Ingram, became well known for delivering the same quality of product, in any of their locations, partly because not only did Anderson invent the hamburger bun, but he also invented the food assembly line.  This was the first fast food restaurant and everything that we associate good fast food with, started with White Castle.  They started making their own meat plants and even their own bakeries.  A restaurant could get freshly ground beef, onions and freshly baked buns all for their restaurant.  They soon started to make their own factories to make paper hats, building materials for other castle restaurants and even the boxes and packages.  It was completely self sustained and did everything but raise their own cows and grow their own wheat.

Musicians from Eminem to the Beastie Boys have sung songs involving White Castle hamburgers.  Movies, such as Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, show off how popular the food is with those who smoke pot or do other drugs. 

While things are done a bit differently now, no one can argue that even at the inflated price, White Castle hamburgers are not worth their weight in gold.  I feel like picking up a crave case right now.

Your punishment is to wash the dishes...

I know it sounds like a punishment but I know that other people get paid for it and some people do it for free.  This morning, after 5 years of service, our dishwasher died.  Once a year, we have had to call in a service request and have the pump fixed.  So, it cleans the dishes but cannot pump the water out when it is finished. I know that after spending 30 minutes cleaning the pots, pans and other dishes by hand, that there is someone who will tell me "when I was young we had to wash dishes every day by hand."  This kind of a statement is fine but not one that should be taken seriously when you live in a first world country.  People used to have to dig a hole in the ground for their latrine, but no longer as we now have indoor plumbing.  When a toilet breaks, do we go outside and pee on the side of the house?  No.  In America, air conditioning, heat, indoor plumbing, electricity and a dishwasher are pretty much considered necessary for life.

 So, our 5 year old dishwasher has died.  It was the first dishwasher we purchased when we moved from our apartment to our house. I looked and as a first time homeowner, after 1 year being married, my wife and I looked for the best we could afford.  The Frigidaire was the best we could get at Best Buy for $299.  Thank God we purchased the extended 4 year warranty as this dishwasher had a broken pump or motor, every year that we had it.  Sure enough, the pump broke this year, after the warranty has expired.  I consider us lucky to have used the dishwasher, sometimes running twice a day, and not even using every cycle.  It lasted this long!

The dishwasher was first patented in 1850 by Joel Houghton.  It was wooden and used a hand crank to power the device and spray water onto the dishes.  It didn't work too well.

In 1886, the first real dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane and was the first motor powered dishwasher. She had said that "If nobody else is going to invent a dish washing machine, I'll do it myself!" Josephine was wealthy and had servants that did the washing but wanted to make a machine that would do the cleaning and not chip her dishes so easily. She started by measuring the dishes she had then created a rack that would fit them. She then made a large copper drum where the rack and dishes would sit as hot soapy water sprayed over them and then were rinsed afterwards.  She later formed a company, that would later be called KitchenAid. Her grandfather was the inventor of the steamboat and she had enough money to make many of these dishwashers and show them off at the 1893 World Fair.  She hoped everyone would get them but only restaurants and hotels bought them up.

In 1924, William Howard Livens invented the first dishwasher that was run with indoor plumbing.  It had a front door for loading, a spinning sprayer and even a rack for loading dishes onto. Although rumor has it that didn't work properly and flooded the kitchen floor with water.

By 1970, electric dishwashers were commonplace and in almost all US homes for domestic use.