Chris Hennes

I mentioned in my first post yesterday that my days in State College were numbered. Well, now it's official: this summer I am moving to Oklahoma City. A few months ago I started an eGullet forum thread on places to eat in the OKC area, so if you live there and haven't checked it out yet, head on over and lend me a hand! One of the most exciting aspects of OKC, as far as I am concerned, is the prospect of having a gigantic garden someplace with a really long growing season. This summer I am going to have to live vicariously through the denizens of the eGullet gardening thread since I can't grow my own this year . But next year I will be back with a vengeance! Rumor has it I can grow just about everything there is to grow in the OKC region, but I'm most excited about tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, blackberries and strawberries. I'm already plotting a smoke house and a greenhouse, as well. This is gonna rock! (Sorry I won't be joining you in Philly, Katie and Sandy---no job offers there!)

Lunch today was at one of the first places I ever ate at in State College, and probably the one that does the most repeat business from me over the years: the Golden Wok. Over the years I have tried basically everything on their menu and arrived at the simple conclusion that the correct answer to "What would you like today" is "Beef chow fun, side of hot oil, and an egg roll." A few colleagues today decided to add on some egg drop soup, as well: The egg rolls here are worth the price of admission: GW is the only place in town to get a reasonably good, hot, crispy egg roll. The fact that the chow fun is mighty tasty is a bonus . ETA: I forgot to mention the price---the chow fun and egg roll combo is about $7, which as far as I am concerned is a great value.

Yeah, it's sort of inexplicable to me why that is not recommended more (just make sure you trim it up so you don't set anything on fire!). I suspect that I am losing a little of the pizza stone effect since the stone can't absorb as much moisture through the parchment, but the crust still gets crisp, you don't have burning cornmeal, and it slides off the peel perfectly, without deforming. Edited to correct first sentence.

The ice cream for breakfast bit was a little much for me. I don't really care for much sugar at any time of day, but in the mornings especially. I drank a lot of black coffee with this "slice of heaven" . They don't grill it in front of you, so I don't know the mechanics of it, but there isn't a crisp layer, so I wouldn't be surprised if "grilled" was code for "held in the oven until ordered." The flavor is just carmel: no fruit involved. As far as caramel rolls go, these aren't bad, though. And as you may have gathered, they are what State College is "famous" for.

Well, putting the kibosh on the meat grinder makes things tricky, but I have used a food processor successfully for "ground beef" before I got my grinder, so I suppose it would work OK for Mexican chorizo. Ruhlman's got a recipe in Charcuterie, but I haven't tried it yet. Mexican Chorizo doesn't require anything else exotic as far as I can recall. Thanks: I love food photography, so I spend more time than I really should doing things like white-balancing the images, etc. In general, the shots in my kitchen are taken with an external flash unit pointed at the ceiling, angled towards the rest of the kitchen light sources so the effect isn't too jarring. I typically use a wide-open aperture to give a very short depth-of-field, which I think is particularly effective for food, and I try to carefully white-balance the images. The shots taken elsewhere are all available-light shots, since I hate using a flash in public spaces. I am relaxing my self-imposed camera-in-restaurant ban for the week, at least when I am eating alone, but I still refuse to use the flash. Me too!

I may have exaggerated the "suffering" bit a little: the coffee was perfectly acceptable, actually . The service really was so bad that I had to wonder if it was affected, like those places that were popular a few years ago esp. in Chicago where the waitstaff was deliberately rude. Somehow I doubt that, but you are all welcome to come here and find out for yourselves... just don't say I didn't warn you! I'm at the office now, so the chocolates have to wait until this evening. I figured I would continue on with the tour of my kitchen, since that seems to be a foodblog tradition as well. Along those lines, this is a close-up of my kitchen bookcase, mostly containing cookbooks, of course: I'm sure there are quite a few familiar volumes up there... the top shelf is baking and pastry, the next is bartending, general cooking, and the complete collection of Cook's Illustrated annuals. The third shelf down contains the "subject-specific" books, plus Joy (which didn't fit on the shelf above when I needed room for the Maraschino liqueur!). On the bottom are the references, seldom-used volumes, and the pasta machine my grandmother gave me when she discovered Di Giorno . This week you'll be seeing quite a bit out of Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie as well as Greweling's Chocolates and Confections. Also, about 50% of my dinners come out of the Cook's Illustrated annuals.

My eyes! The goggles do nothing! I must admit, I'm having a hard time imagining blue cheese on guacamole. Maybe next time I have some I will experiment (on one bite!).

Oh, dear reader, the lengths I will go to to satisfy your (inexplicable) craving for the one true grilled sticky experience. Behold, ladies and gentlement, Ye Olde College Diner a.k.a. "The Diner": Clearly, from this image, you may ascertain that there is no foie gras, no truffles, nay, this morning, no English frickin' muffins!! (though in their defense the high school-aged daughter of the owner was waiting the tables, and offered to go down to the store to buy some after her mother cussed her out). The interior certainly belongs in the PA diner genre: I was seated relatively promptly, but from there on out I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld: is that the Soup Nazi over there?!? Or maybe in a Philadelphia, a la Mamet: "oh, no, we don't have that, sir" to nearly everything the gentleman at the table next to mine requested. Bagels? Nope. English muffins? Nope. Cereal? Nope. ("Well, there may be a box of Total down there somewhere," shouts the owner from across the diner.) Finally, the waitress begins walking to my table, presumably to take my order. Hah! Hah hah hah!!! Dream on, kid. She takes a seat with the two guys at the table across the aisle, and takes five minutes to eat some breakfast and chat up her friends. Grrr. I've been here 12 minutes at this point, and have received a single cup of coffee. No order taken, no refill, nada. I am starting to recall why I avoid this place... Finally, the waitress leaves (presumable to go to the store, or to school, or something) and the owner notices my table. I put in my order and it comes out promptly. Incredibly promptly. Like, how did they have time to scoop the ice cream that fast?!? Here it is, the moment you have all been waiting for, THE GRILLED STICKY A LA MODE: In all actuality, the sticky itself isn't bad, and the Penn State Creamery vanilla ice cream is perfectly acceptable. But for the love of god, you can get this at nearly every restaurant in town!! If you are ever in State College, walk the half block to the Corner Room and order exactly the same thing. It probably even costs the same! These grilled stickies are everywhere, which is presumably how The Diner stays in business.

lol, I don't even feel bad doing it anymore... as far as I am concerned, rolling it out is the only way to go when you want a thin, crisp crust. Well, I promised you all chocolate, so here's the first project: Gingerbread Truffles from Shotts' Making Artisan Chocolates. Here is the mise en place: The procedure is to heat the cream and corn syrup to boiling, let it cool down just a bit, then pour over the chocolate to melt: Once the chocolate is melted, stir to emulsify: Add the butter and spices and stir to combine: Once firm enough (after approx. one episode of CSI ), pipe out (I am lazy and used a scoop, obviously: Now they sit overnight, and tomorrow I will shape and coat them.

Wow, what a groundswell of support for the diner! OK, I'll go there. I think the ones they sell elsewhere in town are all produced at the diner, but I'm not 100% sure of that. I'm currently nursing a Manhattan and watching C.S.I reruns:

OK, I ran out of grenadine last night, which was fortuitous since we have an active thread over here on the subject of making your own. Here is my attempt at Katie Loeb's recipe: First, the mise en place: The method makes half the grenadine by reducing pomegranate juice and sugar over heat, and the other half by combining cold juice with sugar and shaking vigorously for a long time: Here is the cold-method half after shaking: Here is me making a huge mess reducing the hot-method half: The hot-method grenadine looks disturbingly like stage blood (but it tastes better!): And here is some of the finished grenadine in my squeeze bottle: This really made wonderful grenadine: thanks, Katie! The orange flower water was a master stroke. You're a genius!

OK, giving myself a break from shaking this bottle of POM and sugar... Katie, how much vodka is "a little"? Are we talking like a teaspoon, or a shot?

I made the pizza for dinner tonight and the crust turned out great! I just used the standard boule recipe, and I really liked it a lot in this application. Next time I will bake it longer and try not to set anything on fire! Here is my foodblog post on the matter.

OK, for dinner tonight I decided to go with pizza while the basil was still fresh. Here is the mise en place: The recipe is a hybrid of a Cook's Illustrated recipe, with dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and sauce inspired by Fat Guy's post over here. Here is the dough, ready to be rolled out (we're going for a thin crust here): Here my wife got a hold of the camera -- me rolling out the dough: And saucing it: Here it is ready for the first shot in the oven. The trick with this recipe is that the pizza is baked twice, the cheese is added after the crust has started to set: Here it is with the cheese place on, before going into the oven again: And here is the finished pie: I had a bit of an adventure baking this: I cut my parchment sheet too large, and it curled under the pizza stones and came into contact with the heating elements (electric oven). And started on fire! Doh! We had all the windows open in an attempt to air the place out before the fire alarms went off in the whole building because of me . But, the pizza was none the worse for wear, though perhaps a bit underdone, to my liking. ETA: I forgot to mention: our attempt to stave off the fire alarms was successful .

I was spoiled growing up, we had what I would consider a very good local creamery. When a Haagen Daz store went in just down the block, guess who went out of business? Hint: It wasn't the local creamery . (To be fair, the Haagen Daz was bought out for the retail space they occupied, they didn't go under. I still like the story!) Yup, Spat's is still open. A better bet is to go to the Rathskeller just downstairs: same food, half the price! Spats is a little too expensive on my budget, so I've never actually gone in, although I think they have a BYO night which would help ease the pain! As may be becoming obvious, I don't really eat out that much, at least not at nicer places. I love food, and budget restrictions mean that I get the most bang for my buck by making it myself. I also tend not to go places that friends and colleagues have already been to and reported negatively on, so I am missing quite a bit of breadth of personal experience in the area. ETA: Oh yeah, the local La Bamba closed before my time here (I've only been in the area five years). ETA (more): Wait, there have been two failed restaurants in State College called "La Bamba," according to my research! Is the one I linked to above (burritos as big as your head!) the one you are thinking of? There was another one that closed in Winter '92.

My wife reports favorably on Faccia Luna but I don't go out for pizza much. Otto's brews great beer, but I'm not enamored of their food. I have eaten there on a number of occasions and while it was always competent, it was never any more than that. It helps that a number of local places carry their beer now, too!

Thanks---I love the slicer. There is a little more info and a better picture on the eGullet slicer thread. I have not been to the restaurant at the Toftrees resort because I heard that is was basically a typical mediocre steak-and-potatoes kind of place. Obviously, I can't report firsthand on that, unfortunately. The dinner places I like in town are Zola New World Bistro and Alto Italian. The owners of those two (Paul Kendeffy and Dave Fonash own both of them) have recently purchased the Gamble Mill, which just reopened, but I haven't tried it yet.

Katie, Sandy, glad to see you following along here: it should be a fun week. Responding to a few of your comments: As I explained to Katie and Capaneus when I was there, I don't think there is any food in State College worth making the trip for, with the possible exception of Herwigs, which I will show you all later this week. And maybe my BBQ . You call that noise? Maybe I should try to upload an audio file from Mad Mex on Friday. Now a bar in a college town, that is noise! Alas, all the pork you see is from Niman Ranch. I would love to take hummingbirdkiss's advice and foster a relationship with a local farmer or some 4-H kids, but I never thought to do it while I was here. I will make a point to do so in my new location, however... Thanks! Me too!

Well, there is a reason that this blog will mostly be me cooking, and not me going out to eat. We do have a Wegmans, we do not have a French Laundry . You could have a look at the eGullet State College thread, but what you will find is a few places to have lunch, and maybe two or three places worth eating dinner. Also, I'm not sure who is providing the ingenuity in this thread, but it sure isn't me!!

So sorry! Much as I complain, things aren't so bad here, Wegman's being the main case in point (Meyer's dairy being the other!). Wegman's will be what I miss most about State College when I (finally!) leave... The other thing I will miss is my kitchen: Here is a wide shot: The kitchen takes up a full 1/4 of our apartment... in fact, I rented the apartment five years ago, sight unseen, based purely on the amount of the floorplan occupied by the kitchen. I don't really like my landlord, but I could never bring myself to move because I love the kitchen so much! I hope that wherever I move to this summer I can find someplace with a big countertop like I've got here (admittedly, a bit cluttered on the day I took the photo). I'll give a tour of the cabinets over the course of the week, but starting at the bottom left and going clockwise around the photo you can see my fish tank, the liquor cabinet, the main dry goods pantry, the door to the deck, then the cookbook collection. Next to that is my meat slicer, then the fridge, appliances, and the rest of the cabinets. The main counter is usually mostly empty (and certainly doesn't usually have my laptop on it!) so that's where I do the bulk of my cooking.

Great news, Elsie: congratulations! It sounds like you got pretty creative with the method, using a bowl to cover the bread. Very nice. I'm thinking of having a go at a pizza tonight, but we'll see what I'm in the mood for when I get home...

All the pork shoulder is called for in other projects right now (wait until you all see the list of stuff I am cooking this week!!), but I've still got that half-belly to use up: maybe as an eGullet team we can come up with something that involves pork belly and chocolate (and maybe coffee too?). My general plan for the blog this week is to basically show you what I normally eat and cook, but I've condensed several larger projects that I don't usually do all in one week to keep things interesting (for you and me!). Of course, for lunches I am flexible because you don't want to see me eat Qdoba burritos every single day (though I do love them...), and I figure I had better show Capaneus and Katie Loeb the fine Austrian fare at Herwigs since I raved about it last time I was in Philly.

OK, now, there are some sacrifices I just can't make! ← Do you really think they are that wings are that hot? ← Actually, I've never had them, so I have no idea. People around here talk about them like they are crazy-hot, but I don't know how much truth there is to that. In my opinion the best wings in town are at Mad Mex (<-- might want to turn your audio off before clicking that one!): we'll be heading there on Friday for happy hour . Still, until I have compared them to The Gingerbread Man's I can't make a definitive comment... They are still there, though I hesitate to go near a cheesesteak in this neck of the woods. When I need my fix, I head to Philly! Is the CJ Peppers steak worth seeking out, or just above average for Central PA? Man, I hope not!

OK, now, there are some sacrifices I just can't make! Sounds like a grilled sticky is in order, though: maybe I will have one for breakfast tomorrow (<homer voice>mmmm, ice cream for breakfast</homer voice> ).

As a general rule I avoid Ye Olde College Diner like the plague, but perhaps for this blog I can make an exception to show everyone else the home of the "grilled sticky." Or maybe I'll just pick up a box of them at the Wegmans and top it with Haagen Daz instead! It is probably sacrilegious in these parts, but I'm not a huge fan of the local creamery ice cream...