How difficult is fancy to do?

I am a fan of shows like Top Chef and Iron Chef and one thing that some chefs do to make their food more appetizing is to make it look and sound fancy. I remember chefs making things like seared Kobe beef on a bed of field greens with a raspberry and wine reduction.  Well food lovers, that does sound fancy doesn't it?  I even bet that this dish can be found in some places for as much as $10 a plate!  Well, let us look at what it is really.

A piece of expensive beef cut, from hand massaged cows, then seared in a pan, which we can all do.  Then that is placed on a handful of either watercress, arugula or some other lettuce leaf.  Then some red wine was placed in a skillet with some raspberry puree' and boiled down for 10-15 minutes. 

Now, did my description sound complicated? Here is a visual example for some pepper and rosemary encrusted pork tenderloin.  Something like this can be found in some restaurants for about $10-$15. It is easy and uses what I have here:

That up there, clockwise, is: a mortar and pestle, salt (I used Hawaiian Sea Salt), dried rosemary, peppercorns, dried mustard, celery seed, two thick pork tenderloin pieces and parsley.

Now, this is what you do.  You mix all of those spices and seasonings in the mortar and pestle and grind it all together.  Then you set your oven for 450 degrees.  Then you rub the mixture all over the pork and cook in the oven for 30 minutes.  Then you let it rest and when slicing and serving, cut some fresh parsley for on top.

This picture above is before cooking...

There you have it, some rosemary and pepper encrusted pork tenderloin.  Now, if I wanted to be fancy, I could make a mushroom risotto from Gordan Ramsey's book to have the pork lay over. But who wants to do that much extra work right?

So, what's for dinner?

I admit, that the photos I take for this blog are not the most professional looking nor do they always sometimes make the food look really tasty. Like the above picture, that may not look that delicious, but hey, that was the cactus dish I made, before adding the quinoa.  It had chopped onions, tomatoes, green chilis, garlic, and salt and pepper besides the chopped cactus in it. While I did take a course on food presentation, to be honest, I have so little time each day to experiment and cook fun things that I don't have the added hour or so to plate this dish and then clean it up and take the most awesome photo of it I can.  And let's face it even further, if you are a stay-at-home person or just the one who cooks at home, chances are that you don't have the time to make it look really nice either.

I posted a status message about this on Facebook as for some reason, just a pan full of onions cooking smells so good that I once wondered about making a relish purely on diced and cooked onions; and did it by the way. The problem with that photo is that onions are pale and pretty much colorless.  So taking a picture of them doesn't show a lot of color and such so they look like a blob or just not so appetizing.

Now when I am out and reviewing restaurants, I pull my tiny camera out and take pictures of the food and the place, on my own, and quickly as to not get thrown out or have anyone complain towards me.  These in-restaurant food photos tend to have the lighting off a bit or the color and again, as most restaurant reviewers don't want to be recognized, now with the growing number of food bloggers, and the increasing number of people bringing cameras with them wherever they go, I find it easy to take a snapshot and get away with it.  What I can do in the future, is try to take better photos at home, with a better camera.  This way, when I am doing something, you can get a better view of it.  Even my wife suggested using a stand to place a camera onto it so that I could record my process of cooking or doing something fun, like make caviar and place it on here for all to see.  Either way, with luck and more time, better photos will be on here.  Or maybe, when I finish each dish or thing I cook, I can plate it and take a good photo or two.

Iron chef ingredient theme: cactus...

Yes folks, it is not just for storing water in the dessert and letting Spike rest his back against.  The cactus is edible and last year I had the first try with the fruit, the prickly pear and after peeling it, chopping it and boiling it I was able to make a low calories and interesting jam, out of the fruit.  Now, a random, for fun, trip to Whole Foods inspired me to purchase 7 cactus leaves. I bought them because I remember them coming up in a box for the Food Network show "Chopped" and no one had a clue what to do with it.  Well, in case you are ever left with a few leaves of cactus and wonder what to do with it, here was my experiment, which turned out well.

You first have to clean them and the easiest method I did was to get the sharpest knife you have, in my case it was a ceramic kitchen knife, and slice against the grain, slicing each 'eye' off with the needles.  Oh yes, please be careful, those needles drive in deep and fast and hurt. Some people online suggested a cleaning pad, and that didn't work too well as it took off some of the skin, revealing the slimy insides.  Also, other suggested using a vegetable peeler on the whole thing and again, that leaves only the slimy inside. How slimy? Not as slimy as Okra but close.

The next part was easy, as many online sources suggested everything from grilling to boiling and by far the easiest thing to do was just slice it up, and saute' in a pan with some olive oil for about 8 minutes on high heat.  After 8 minutes, it was tender and had gone from bright green to a darker olive green color. I tasted like cooked green beans and I wanted to do something fun with it. So, inspired by its Mexican culture, or South American ideals, I added some chopped garlic, onion, tomatoes, green chilis and some freshly cooked quinoa to the pan, along with a good helping of salt and pepper.

All in all, everything turned out good so if you are interested in my recipe, or more information of what I did, let me know.

That's not sugar free!

As a chef attempting to make sugar-free recipes I find myself surrounded by a set of chefs, who are idiots. Listen, I don't care how much experience these other chefs have but when you say that you have a recipe for something that is sugar-free and then you have sugar listed, like maple syrup, corn syrup, HFCS, honey or other things, it is NOT sugar free.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/232686/make_sugar_free_homemade_apple_butter.html

I just finished making apple butter the second time and this time, this recipe, made eleven 8 oz jars and this was done with a completely sugar-free recipe: which means that no sugar was added.  No honey was added, no blue agave nectar, no corn syrup or anything like that.  It is the most close to nature for these products and as such, this is how sugar-free should be. 

In regards to diabetes, which I attempt to make all of my foods work well with, some things are good to eat and others are not.  For instance, meats have almost no GL's or glycemic loads so they are okay for people with diabetes while other things like processed white flour is high on the glycemic load list and the sugars therein stay in your bloodstream longer so they are not good.  Now, what I love concerning this is the statement on the American Diabetes Website, http://www.diabetes.org/ , stating that "All of our recipes meet the ADA Guidelines and can help you fit nutrition into your busiest days."

So you think, "good, there are recipes that I can make and it will be good for my body."  That is not the case though.  Some of the recipes use high processed things and then on the bottom of the recipe it states " Not all recipes presented here are necessarily appropriate for all people with diabetes, nor will all recipes fit into every meal plan. No two meal plans are alike. Work with your health care provider, diabetes educator or dietitian to design a meal plan that's right for you, and includes the foods you love". 

This is contradicts itself.  A website claiming that all articles on the site are written by women and then having articles written by men with an annotation under them, does not still qualify it.  So, why did the site say that all recipes are good for Diabetics but not all recipes are good for Diabetics?  I have no idea but it would be a good question to ask them. The worse part is that on the site it says that these recipes come from a book that is given out by the ADA.  This is as bad as someone saying that they are going to make a Vegan Pumpkin pie and then use butter and not use pumpkins.

Well, to everyone who reads this: Diabetics should not take in that many glycemic loads per day, as your body has a hard enough time dealing with little bits of sugar anyways.  My products, use as low GL foods as I can get and I do a bit of molecular gastronomy at times in order to make them as diabetic friendly as possible.  These people and most others, seem that they do not care about the consumer.

"Here is my diabetic friendly candy bar, using high fructose corn syrup and all-purpose bleached flour.  Enjoy"

Helping gravity plays favorites...

I know it looks weird, but on that Saturday a while back when I went to Wasabi and later reviewed them, I spent the day helping my wife photograph Michelle and Katie.  The two of them, also known as Gravity Plays Favorites. During this shoot, right here, they both were going to hang from the bar while holding onto some feathered fans.  They couldn't get on the pole though, while holding the fans so I had to help. I was getting a picture of me helping and here it is.

What is St. Louis known for?

While most of our culinary history, the culinary history of the world, is mostly made up of coincidences and synchronicity, there are some things that certain cities or cultures can ultimately agree upon.  Somewhat.

I remember hearing about the history of Buffalo wings. There are four general accepted origins of that type of food and all of them claim to be first and none of them will back down.  Similar and dissimilar to this, St. Louis has some general grip to the claims on foods that they state; also thanks to the World's Fair.  The World's Fair of 1904 was a BIG deal.  It was a culmination of everything new and of the West as well as the World, brought together at one location. Cultures brought their clothing, smiths brought their weapons, inventors brought their inventions and cooks brought their foods.

Now while you may be thinking to yourself that you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who invented these things, that may be, but this is the first time that it was ever made public. Sure, I may have invented the chocolate brownie, but if I never told anyone or showed it to anyone than it didn't matter. Now, off of a good website: http://stlplaces.com/stl_foods/


So, what was invented here?

Toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, prosperity sandwich, pork steaks, the concrete dessert, peanut butter, the slinger, Provel, St. Paul sandwich, Brain sandwich, whistle, Vess and 70up sodas.  While this list may fill you up, TUMS were invented in St. Louis as well.  Now, could someone around the world thought of just cutting their pork a little thicker and thus creating pork steaks?  Sure, but no one knew about it until someone in St. Louis started doing it.

Now the above list is just some things that were invented in St. Louis, probably because no one else thought of it.  But at the World's Fair, some things were invented elsewhere but were first shown off, to the world, at the fair.  For example: ice cream was invented by the Arabs as earlier than the 13th century, but the idea of placing ice cream in a waffle cone was first introduced at the Fair. Ice tea, Dr. Pepper and Cotton candy were also introduced at the Fair.  Although why no one ever thought of placing ice in hot tea and making a cold tea drink is beyond me, but the others were all new.

So there you have it and as a friend suggested and as I was thinking, if Tony does come to STL, he should partake in at least some of these STL traditions and inventions.

The problem with being human...

It is inevitable and it is not easily taken care of. We will all get sick sometime in our life and whether it is once or many times a year, it always strips our soul of everything that makes us happy and generally makes us feel like crap.  Within the past 3 days, my wife and both of my little ones came down with a flu knock-out that has me in a strange position: the last one.  I am the last one in the house and the timer is clicking down. They all think that I will get it, but I am hoping that they are wrong.  For you see, I strongly believe in holistic healing, which means that I'd rather eat an item than take a pill that has what that item has. I never understand the women who are at risk for bone issues and they refuse to drink milk.  They will sit and fight to swallow two calcium pills or chew some bad tasting supplements but won't drink the milk. 


My view, as a chef, is to make those healthy things into things that are so delicious that no one knows.  Imagine eating a chocolate chip cookie and getting your vitamins for the day.

But enough speculation....what have I been doing?  Well, being hope for a few days, with nothing to do makes a person like me, want to cook.  Right now I have some BBQ pork in a crock pot, home made BBQ sauce with that.  I made some fresh bread this morning, some hoppin john last night and likely will make some gelatto and some other goodies as well.  A chef, with plenty of time and supplies is a dangerous thing.