chappie

Also, if anyone else knows of tasty insects ripe for the picking, please feel free to share.

On the Delmarva Peninsula it is scrapple...

I am from the Eastern Shore, so I really had no other choice during the 4th celebrations than to drink the magical Bud 10 oz. Doing otherwise would be considered suspect in these parts. "They taste different than the regular Bud," don't you know.

Six years ago I made 10 gallons of hard cider from unpasteurized cider purchased at a farm and (I believe montrachet) champagne yeast. I read up on the process enough to do it right without getting overly scientific (specific gravity, etc.). It was remarkable. Crisp, bubby and dry, with just a touch of sweetness. I think too many of the commercial ciders are entirely too sweet. I used cleaned Newcastle and Guinness bottles, as well as a couple of American sparkling wine bottles, which also accepted a cap. I gave half of it away as Christmas gifts, and the rest barley made it to February. It was easy, and I would love to do it again.

Having just returned this instant from a $12 injection of carnitas, corn tortillas, beans, rice and tomatillo sauce, I must ammend my previous post to say that my town does at least offer cheap, plentiful and serviceable Mexican food.

The original recipe is here: http://www.olympus.net/dggordon/EatASample.htm You might want to do a photo search online to make sure you have the same worms.

I live in a small town (population 10-12,0000) on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and I have the opposite complaint. We are saturated with high-end restaurants, most of which live up to their billing and turn out some amazing food if you're in the mood to shell out $80 and up for two. My gripe is that, other than the rash of sit-down chains that have flooded the area the past few years, there are very few "downscale" eateries. I usually find myself heading over the bridge in search of cheap but authentic ethnic foods when I'm in the mood for some lowbrow grubbing. I would rather go anywhere than fast food or the Ruby Tuesdays and Applebee plagues.

Sunday, while relaxing at my friend Nicole's parents' house, her dad was showing me his heirloom tomato plants, when we noticed they weren't looking too keen. Something had eaten the tops and several leaves, and I noticed a few tiny green fruits with what looked like deer-sized bites missing. We searched the three plants and removed about 20 fat, pinkie-finger-sized hornworms. The writhing mass filled two cupped hands. As people gathered to observe and debate what to do with the vermin, I wondered aloud if they were edible. Nicole disappeared, fired up the internet and procured a recipe (though her printout was only page 1 of 2, so I thought perhaps it was a joke). We decided to try it, so we heated some olive oil in a cast-iron skillet, then tossed the writhing creatures in alive. They squirmed in agony for a brief moment before rigor mortis rendered them into plump green sausages. The recipe had warned not to cook them too long or at too high a temperature, lest they burst, but, this being my first attempt at sauteed hornworm, I ignored the advice and fried them a little longer. They did rupture, oozing a dark green substance into the oil. After a quick drain on paper towels (which were stained dark green), we salted them and brought them outside for tasting. Six people tried them, and everyone was amazed: the worms tasted like fried green tomatoes. Their texture was not unlike softshelled crabs, and I detected a hint of the "mustard" that is inside a crab's shell. Next time I'll be more gentle so they remain plump. I'm thinking Green Tomato Hornworm tacos, and I'm also considering placing a classified ad in the local paper for people infested with these delicious blights to call me. Sorry the pictures aren't better, but all I had was my cellphone. I'll report any future experiments with better documentation...

I'm thinking of trying a recipe for barecued chicken using strongly brewed tea, lemons, cider vinegar, salt and spices. Basically, make up a batch of strong, vinegary "iced tea" brine, soak the chicken overnight, dry, rub with some spices and grill. Maybe baste with some reserved marinade. Does a recipe like this exist? Does this sound workable?

What they don't need are these ridiculous "rating" shows. That Top 5 host is perhaps the worst TV personality I've ever seen. They also don't need high-end cuisine. I liked Ming Tsai, for instance, but he was way too focused on fois gras and such. I've been really into the book Nourishing Traditions, which is produced by the Weston Price Foundation, and I'd love to see show along those lines. Traditional whole foods, lacto-fermented vegetables and beverages, etc. Jacques Torres is creative but his show is useless you have the time and equipment to turn out chocolate champagne bottles and statues. Pawwwwluh Dee-yun is over the top. The catering woman in the Hamptons ... who cares about those people?

On the contrary, I would think it was almost an asset in the view of the judges and the network. Demographics, demographics, demographics. I would have cut Deborah first among the finalists. Harmony was beautiful and seemed a really sweet person, but she froze before the camera more than anyone else. She had to go. Eric's food was wretched; did anyone see the "recipe" for his "kissing cousins"? Cook rice, cook veggies, cook lobster, shrimp and scallops. Pour melted butter over all.

I haven't read this entire thread yet, but I've watched all but the last episode (I already read the results), and was puzzled by some of their eliminations. I agree the informative quality of Food Network has gone way downhill in lieu of banal feature shows about festivals, quick, mindless review-type shows, and Rachel Ray (gag). This show taught me how difficult it is to both convey personality and cooking ability simultaneously, while being filmed. The winning couple were naturals and technically solid, and I imagine the panel liked their niche. I don't know how Deborah made it as far as she did; her personality seemed utterly contrived and her intent less than noble. I think they cut the best of the bunch in Hans. He seemed straightforward, honest and concerned first and foremost with food. Some of the rest were almost cartoon characters.

I agree that Joss is hands-down the best sushi in Annapolis. Yin Yankee has two dishes I enjoy: grilled romaine salad and their signature tea-smoked duck, but their sushi is sloppy and bland. Tsunami is way too trendy to take seriously, and the new place occupying the former Nikko is boring and of questionable freshness the time I tried it. Joss is honest and dependable, and you absolutely must try the buttery, smooth escolar. I always get two orders, one to start with and one as "dessert." I live on the Shore, but only visit the top-dollar places (208, Bistro, Inn at Easton, Columbia, etc.) about twice a year; I have a hard time shelling out $100 for a plate of food when I can cook it and have a better time at home for 1/4 the price. Of those, the Inn at Easton gives you the most bang for your cheddar. We go to Out of the Fire often because, a) we have several friends who work there (ask for red-headed Nancy as a waitress!), and b) you can navigate the menu for a great meal at any price. Often we'll just split a pizza (the one with arugula and goat cheese is fantastic) and order salads. Crabs are best eaten in someone'd backyard, where you can get messy and linger, sipping on 10-oz. beers. My biggest complaint here is that there aren't enough authentic ethnic restaurants. I often drive to Glen Burnie or northern Va. for Korean, and spent my youth going to D.C. for weekends with dad, where we'd pick a new place in Adams Morgan every time.

Well, I made a batch of polenta/steel-cut oats porridge and it was delicious. This time I did half oats, half polenta, soaked overnight with some yogurt whey. The taste and texture of the oats combined with the creaminess of the polenta perfectly. I will eat leftovers tomorrow (I stirred in a knob of butter at the end and topped with pumpkin butter...) Next time I will probably lean toward a 2-1 ratio of oats to polenta, because a little polenta seems to go a long way.

To whoever implied my recent breakfasts were healthy, you should know that today I had two ice cream sandwiches, cold leftover polenta and some Sunkist. A horrible fall from my steel-cut crest. Today I was watching that awful show "$40 a Day" (I once enjoyed Rachel Ray but now can hardly stand to hear her sniggle) and on a menu board was something called Breakfast Polenta. Has anyone heard of this or does anyone know where I can find a recipe or basis to create one? I love polenta... I wonder, would corn and oats taste well together? Because a blend of steel-cut and polenta could be intriguing, the finer corn providing a sort of creamy glue, the oats lending the whole-grain goodness. Chilled, sliced and fried, this could be promising. I'll report back any experiments.

About a year ago, I was on an extended steel-cut oats routine inspired by the book Nourishing Traditions. I'd soak them overnight in filtered water with a spoonful of yogurt or some keffir milk (this is said to break down the grain's 'anti-nutrients,' or compounds that block the absorption of nutrients). Then I added a little more water and cooked them until no longer runny, adding dried cherries or raisins near the end. To finish, I stirred in a knob of butter, a spoonful of flaxseed meal, poured some maple syrup over the top and served with either keffir or yogurt. Over a period of months I lost several pounds and noticed a stablization in both my appetite and energy througout the day. It kept me full and going. Of course, laziness killed the habit, and now I only eat porridge sporadically. I keep telling myself I'll go back on the routine...

As a middle-schooler, I used to savor the weekends I spent with my dad in D.C. solely for the trips we'd make to a tiny Trinidadan restaurant called "The Islander," where we'd order goat roti and chana. A few months ago someone gave me a frozen goat leg that is still lurking in my freezer while I search for the perfect recipe. I'm interested in making Mexican-style goat tacos, or using the whole leg to make a curry. Or, can it be jerked and grilled? I would imagine very, very slowly if so...

http://www.corndogday.com/ My friend just informed me that Saturday is National Corndog Day. I don't think I'll be able to make it to any of the registered Corndog Day parties, but I'll fry up a poor man's beef Wellington in tribute anyway. I really like this: "It is of great honor on NCD to complete the perhaps not so aptly named, “triple-double.” If over the course of National Corndog Day, at an official NCD party, you consume 10 corndogs, 10 beers, and 10 "units" of tater tots (100 tots total) you have achieved the notorious “triple-double.” It is a feat that has been seldom accomplished. For those a little wary of being able to complete the "triple-double," completing a "double-double" (choose which two) is also still a respectable feat." Quadruple double might involve ten strips of bacon wrapped around the corndogs, or ten Tastykakes.

It's called Carroll's Market, and it's been there since I can remember (I'm 28). He raised his prices when he brought in the gas 8-10 years ago, or so, but I still can't resist a simple sausage sandwich with mustard and hot pepper relish. I hate to say this, but I've heard from multiple sources that the pies are Sysco — and they're way overpriced. Still, they taste good, I suppose.

I live in Easton, and while my current income doesn't provide for frequent dinners at the high-end places, I do eat often at Out of the Fire, on Goldsborough St. You can navigate the menu to make your meal as moderate or expensive as you wish; some nights I've had simply a salad and mezze platter, or a pizza and a few beers; others I've gone all-out with every course. This summer they offered a skate dish that was one of the best pieces of fish I've ever tasted, and a recent sweetbread appetizer was amazing. Inn at Easton is fantastic, and I've enjoyed the few times I've been to Columbia (Easton) and 208 Talbot and the Bistro (St. Michaels), but I return the most to Out of the Fire. Ask for Nancy -- the redhaired Nancy, preferably; the other Nancy is a great waitress, too, though. On a cheaper note, Rusticana in Easton turns out my favorite pizza outside of NYC. Seriously. Alice's in Easton is a great lunch spot; owner/chef Dave Sarfaty's soups are delicious and hearty, and the paninis are popular. Latitude 38 in Oxford is a popular place for Sunday brunch or an affordable bar dinner, people rave about the cream of crab soup at Legal Spirits in Easton (skip most everything else there), and I'm addicted to a brand-new, tiny dive on Dover Street in Easton called Taqueria Mixta. All Spanish on the menu (and spoken), serves soft corn tacos the way they eat them in Mexico: sprinkled with cilantro, onion and radish only, with a squeeze of lime. If you're staying in St. Michaels, you should duck into rugged, bawdy Carpenter Street Saloon on a busy Friday or Saturday night; trust me, you'll make friends. They run a shuttle van that will take you home, even to Easton.

Well, my "Cornographic Crawfish Chowder" won the contest hands down! Tasting one of the runner-ups, I had wondered if I should've used some andouille, but people seemed split on whether they liked sausage in their soup or not... Here's what I did: Made stock with 6 roasted, dekerneled cobbs, a quart of frozen lobster stock Dad had, celery, bay leaf, carrots, garlic and onion. Rendered salt pork, added some butter and cooked down one onion, two cloves garlic, four red bell peppers and five poblanos, finely diced. Seasoned with pepper, two chopped chipotles in adobo (plus some of the sauce), cumin, Old Bay and a secret ingredient: an unlabeled, unidentified, granulated dried shrimp + spice product Dad picked up last month in Vietnam... Then in went five diced potatoes, the roasted corn I'd cut off the cobbs, and stock. When potatoes were tender I added cream (started with 2 and half quarts and reduced slowly -- don't know what I ended up with...). Cooked four bags of frozen sweet corn, pureed them in the food processor in batches, pushed through a sieve for an intense corn background/thickener. Then at the very end I added 3 pounds of crawfish tails. Seasoned to taste (I added some splashes of Tabasco chipotle sauce, more of the secret Vietnamese shrimp stuff, and a thinned-out tablespoon of dried mustard...) There were about 80 tasters, 15 or so chowders. Most crockpots were scraped dry, but there was one next to mine -- a crab chowder that smelled good -- that was still over half full by the end of the night. It tasted like soymilk powder mixed with crumbled chalk, margarine and the outflow of a chain-smoking crustacean with dysentary. The runner-ups were a Rhode Island chowder that contained sausage and a very pure, clean rockfish (striped bass) chowder. Next time, if I were to try to replicate my effort in a pinch, without simmering stock forever, I'd try using a bunch of shrimp paste in the corn stock, and acquiring a food mill to save steps on the corn essence.

My only problem with that is that the tails are precooked. The mushrooms may work, but I don't want to distract from the flavor of the corn or poblanos. A friend makes a similar chowder with andoille, but I'm not looking for that sharp of a meat flavor, either. I'm going to render some salt pork to start, and there will be potatoes... because I don't think chowder is chowder unless it has a pork product of some type and potatoes.

I entering a friend's chowder cookoff for the second straight year this weekend. Last year I spent a fortune on a lobster, andouille, mussels and saffron chowder that was unbelievably good -- but due to some poor planning and slow crock pot, too cold upon tasting there to win. This time I'm going for a corn chowder with crawfish (a restaurant owner friend has a bunch in his freezer he's willing to part with). I'm thinking of cooking several bags of sweet corn first, then running it through a food mill to make a thick base to add to the chowder. I'm also going to boil down some corn cobs, from which I've cut the kernels -- I'll carmelize them Other ideas are poblano chiles, red pepper for color and some canned chipotle. Mom has some lobster stock she made this week, so I might add that -- and of course I'm going to reduce some good cream to add at the end. Any other ideas?

Most sushi places around here aren't too adventurous, so you end up judging them on quality rather than range of menu. However, one nearby offers fresh escolar on a regular basis, and I can't get enough of it. Usually I'll save it for last, as sort of a "dessert" sushi. It's creamy and buttery both in taste and texture, and whereas many other types of sushi tend to taste similar (to me at least) over the course of a full-out gluttonyfest, escolar is always unique on the palate. However, I've been told that you shouldn't eat too much of it in one sitting, because it'll make you poop...

Jesus, what a nightmare! I'm curious; what was the followup here? Surely he had some sort of apologetic explanation as to how on earth a family could treat its guest so horridly. The old Polish mama might've gotten an eyeful of yolk, lard and blood as a I stormed out, had it been me... When I was in college, a roommate's girlfriend, after tempting us with boasts of her family's "special dish," prepared for us something we could only later describe as Bastille Stew. To serve four, she shaped unseasoned ground turkey into four large lumps, covered them with water in a medium pot, added a dash of salt, a can of mushrooms and a splash of kitchen boquet. And nothing more. The other (unlinked) roommate and I stared in disbelief as she offered: "My family likes simple meals, but sometimes I eat it with ketchup." One gray, boiled tumor of bird swimming in brown-colored water. The boyfriend tried his best, nodding his head and exclaiming: "It's mushroomy. I like mushrooms!" We never did let him live that one down.