Omnivore's 100

The VGT Omnivore's Hundred, from very good taste: a blog about eating and drinking

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you've eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: Post a comment linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Seems I have a lot of things to try. I really don't think I could eat horse, given a choice. Never say never, though. There are many things I've "almost" had - pine needle tea, andouille, caviar w/out blini, homemade absinthe, lobster w/out the Thermidore. Now I'm hungry.

Persimmon Upside-Down Cake

This fall I've been totally persimmon crazy. My fuyu persimmons have been ripening and they're finally pretty soft. I was thinking about what kinds of things I could do with them - jam, bread, pie... cake! For a while I was thinking Tarte Tatin, but I ended up deciding to do something a little different. I lucked out when I came across a recipe from Emeril Lagasse for Pineapple Upside Down Cake. I don't usually go for Emeril recipes, but this one was done in a cast-iron skillet, which I thought was really cool, so I could get that Tarte Tatin feeling with a cake. Warning: this cake is very sweet; whipped cream or crème fraiche will help cut the sweetness.

Start with slicing the persimmons into pretty rounds about 1/2-inch thick. I love the star pattern inside the fuyus. Also let the butter soften. Coarsely chop the persimmon butts to purée and add to the cake batter. Emeril's recipe calls for 1 cup of buttermilk, so I puréed the leftover persimmon with buttermilk to make 1 cup.
Next make what will become the top of the cake. In an oven-proof skillet over medium heat, melt 4 tablespoons of butter. Then add 3/4 cup of light brown sugar, increase the heat to medium-high, and cook until bubbly. Arrange the persimmon slices in the bubbling goo and cook for about 2 minutes. Flip the persimmon slices and remove the skillet from the heat.

Now start on the cake batter. Stir together 1 cup of cake flour, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Cream together 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup of granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, mixing until incorporated.

Add the flour mixture and persimmon purée in 3 alternating batches, mixing at low speed until combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally.

Once the batter is finished, scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula once more to make sure everything is combined, then carefully pour over the persimmon slices in the skillet.

Put the skillet in the middle of a 375°F oven and bake until the top is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Remove the entire skillet to a rack and cool for 5 minutes.

Very carefully flip the cake onto a plate.

Now make some whipped cream. A trick I learned doing pastry at a restaurant is to whip the cream in a frozen metal bowl and only add flavors once the whipping is almost finished. Also, make sure the whipping cream is very cold. These measures prevent "weeping," that is, liquid seeping out from the whipped cream after it sits for a while. Whip the cream on high speed until soft peaks form, then add brown sugar to taste (I don't like mine very sweet). Whip it some more just until the peaks don't collapse. Stop there before you start getting butter!

Mystery Peppers Pizza

My husband came home from work with a bag full of peppers. Apparently, they came from his mother's neighbors' garden. After roasting and tasting them, I decided I had better figure out what type of peppers these were as they were very hot. A little research returned that these were mostly Hungarian Wax peppers, with a few Fresno and a pimiento.

Still trying to use up the Guinness my dad bought, I decided to make a beer pizza dough. Then I remembered one of my favorite CPK pizzas - roasted peppers, caramelized onion, and fresh chèvre. Theirs also has roasted eggplant, but since I'm not crazy about eggplant, I left it off. Bacon would have been nice, too, but I found that mine had gone off.

Mystery peppers

Fire roasting peppers

Roasted peppers

Guinness dough with sauce - on parchment for easy moving

Top with whole-milk mozzarella, roasted peppers, caramelized red onion, and chèvre

Baked for about 6 minutes on the highest oven setting using pizza stone

To roast peppers
Turn a gas burner to high and lay the peppers on the grate. Turn them periodically until they are charred all over. Pull them off with tongs and throw into a clean paper bag, rolling it closed after each addition; that steams them so the skin comes off easily. If you have a culinary blowtorch, you can touch up any missed spots before putting the peppers into the bag. After about 20 minutes, pull the peppers out of the bag and scrape off the skins.

To caramelize onions
Cut an onion in half longitudinally and then into thin slices. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil. Cook the onions on the lowest heat until they are dark brown and sweet - this can take up to 45 minutes.

Guinness pizza dough
I made the dough in my bread machine combining the "Pizza Dough" and "Pizza Dough with Beer" recipes:

• 1 cup flat Guinness
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 2-1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast

In the future, I'd like to make soft pretzels with this dough.

Pizza sauce
Mix together about 3 Tablespoons of tomato paste, some olive oil, salt, pepper, and oregano to desired taste and consistency.

Assemble on parchment, so the whole thing can be easily slid onto a (preheated) pizza stone. Bake in a preheated oven on the hottest setting (mine is broil) until the cheese is bubbly and turning golden brown. If you don't have a pizza stone, bake the pizza on a cookie sheet.

The crust was rather thick, but it baked really well. The Guinness flavor was awesome, but the peppers were a little hotter than I would have preferred. I think I also would have preferred more onion, but I only caramelized one (fairly large) red onion... I just love caramelized onions!

Cilantro-Pecan Pesto

I had a bunch of cilantro that needed eating, so I decided to make a pesto with it. I tossed it with Mangia Italiano's black pepper pappardelle and topped with a fried egg from a local farm. The egg put this dish over the top. Major adjective: unctuous.

Black pepper pappardelle with cilantro pesto and fried egg

Pesto Ingredients:
Garlic, 1 large clove
Cilantro, 1 "bunch" ~ 2 fluffy cups of mostly leaves (sometimes you can't help getting some stem in there)
Toasted pecans, ~ 1/2 cup (or use whatever nuts you may have on hand)
Olive oil, ~ 1/2 cup (eyeball it)
Grated hard cheese (I used a raw milk gruyere-type), ~ 1/4 cup
S&P if you need it

Throw everything except the olive oil and cheese into a food processor or blender and pulse it a bit just to get everything mixed and chopped. With the blender/processor on, drizzle in the olive oil until the mixture turns saucy. At this point, because I'm lazy, I put the cheese in and pulse it a bit. I think most people would advise you to pour the almost-pesto into a bowl and fold in the cheese. Toss it with pasta or spread it on bread... or slather it all over your naked flesh... that part is up to you.

Beer chops

My dad came for a visit about a month ago, and on one gorgeous night we decided to do some grilling. A quick trip to Local Harvest and we came home with pork chops, sweet potatoes, and broccoli... And a 4-pack of Guinness!

I brined the chops for about 4 hours, then rubbed them with sage and salt & pepper before sending them out to the grill. The cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of the chops. Ours were about 1.5" thick and took about 15 minutes on a hot grill. Note that thanks to modern science, pork can now be eaten less than well-done. :D

Peel, cut into chunks and boil the sweet potatoes until fork-tender. Then mash with butter, cream, sugar, and cardamom... until creamy and to taste.

Cut broccoli to desired size, toss in garlic-infused olive oil, lemon, and salt & pepper. Make a single layer in a sheet of aluminum foil and seal edges into a pouch. Put it on the grill for about 15 minutes until the broccoli has brown, crispy edges.

NICSA 8: Home Groan

The Something Awful Forums are very special. Very special indeed. There is a sub-forum, Goons With Spoons, which is "dedicated to the discussion of cooking, food, and beverages."

Every so often, GWS "hosts" what is called Iron Chef Something Awful, or ICSA. Slap "Newbie" in front of that and you've got yourself a NICSA, which "differs from ICSA in that it excludes regulars from entering the final poll."

A few months ago, we got a heads up that the next NICSA challenge would be local/home grown. As I'm both a newbie and obsessed with local food, I decided to enter... NICSA 8: Home Groan. My entry, Cafeteria Fraiche, is summarized below.

Smoked trout and smoked bread

Maple-toasted pecans, pickled red onions, smoked figs, mizuna salad, raw milk cheese, and butter

Daube de boeuf with celeriac purée

Persimmon fool with maple whipped raw cream

This food was so good. The smoked trout was so amazing, in fact, that I had a hard time believing I had  actually produced it.

Pear Tarte Tatin

I think it's fitting that my first real food post is of the one dessert I've been making for years: Pear Tarte Tatin. Sorry for the no step-by-step photos; you'll just have to believe me when I say that bubbling away in this here cast-iron skillet is butter, sugar, and pears; and that a fine pastry crust was crafted beforehand.

By the time I managed to take the final terrible photograph, we had already eaten some of the delicious, albeit messy, result. A dollop of lightly-sweetened whipped cream (homemade or GTFO) may have accompanied our plates.

How does one construct this dessert?
As this is my first food post, I'll stress now that I will not be writing out a traditional recipe. I'm going to descibe the foundation of the dish, which allows for much more creativity. Not every creative variation will be successful, just as not every scientific experiment proves something.

That said, NO FREESTYLE PASTRY! I of course use a recipe for the pie crust. My preference is the "Deluxe Butter Flaky Pastry Dough (Pâte Brisée)" from  The All New Joy of Cooking. I do it all in the food processor with frozen salted butter. In fact, I never even buy unsalted butter; I don't see the point. As if this salted caramel craze is a new thing... um... some of us have always loved salty sweets.

Let me explain why I use pears instead of apples in my Tarte Tatin. Pears are simply more interesting than apples. My absolute favorite are the Red Bartlett variety. They taste like flowers - I kid you not. Supposedly, the red ones are unique only for their color, but I swear their flavor is different (better) than the green ones. The trick with using pears in this dessert is to find perfectly ripe, yet firm fruits. I suppose if the pears were a bit soft, the world wouldn't end, but you certainly don't want to cook them into a mealy mess. If you worry about such a thing, perhaps try the hardy D'Anjou pear (it comes in red, too); just know that the pear flavor will be milder.

Here's what you do:

1. Peel, core, and halve enough pears to line your oven-proof skillet (I prefer cast-iron because it's what the Tatin sisters would have used, but the type of skillet best used is a very common debate).
2. Procure 2:1 sugar and butter (salted, of course). Melt the butter and then pour the sugar evenly over the bottom of the skillet. You want enough butter-sugar slurry in the bottom of the skillet into which to firmly mold the pears (maybe 1/4-inch). If you're not sure where to start, go with 1 Cup of sugar and 1/2 Cup of butter.
3. Then, mold the pears into the slurry... think about this for a moment, though... this "pie" is going to be upside down... I'll give you a hint: the pears will get flipped once...
4. Turn on the heat. HIGH.
5. The idea here is to poach the pears in the caramel while browning them and simultaneously stiffening the goo (you can see in the photo above that the liquid is quite bubbly), though keeping the fruit relatively firm.
6. Once the pears get some nice color on the underside, use a fork or paring knife to carefully flip them (see in the middle photo - still very bubbly, but with nice caramelization on the fruit, actually could have used more).
7. Let the pears and caramel bubble away for a while until the liquid is very dark. Should you stick a metal spoon into the boiling liquid and after a moment, it turns into a hard, dark amber material, that's probably good. The final baking will change the consistency a bit anyway.
8. By this time, you've rolled out your pastry to the correct size such that it can be carefully lain upon the pears and tucked in around the edge of the skillet.
9. Here's where the only other recipe-type element comes in: bake this concoction at 375°F for about 30 minutes, until the crust is golden.
10. Let it rest in the skillet for another 30 minutes, then run a knife around the edge of the skillet to loosen it for the flipping. Tightly hold a large plate on top of the skillet and quickly flip the Tarte Tatin onto the plate. If pieces of pear have stuck to the skillet, replace them into the tart and no one will be the wiser. Or just eat them if you're not concerned about the final appearance of the dessert.

What to take away here:

• Pastry is pastry; use what you like, but always use a recipe
• Fruit is fruit; use what you like (I've seen accounts of tomatoes being used)
• Believe it or not, it's very hard to burn this thing unless you let the toffee turn black or leave it in the oven too long
• Even if you can't get the toffee to set right, how can butter, sugar, fruit, and golden pastry be bad?
• A cranky Frenchman or food-snobby American girl might tell you that nothing except butter, sugar, fruit, and pastry belongs in a Tarte Tatin, especially cinnamon, and that is indeed true!

This just in: I just watched Jacques Pepin make a Tarte Tatin and he does it quite differently. I actually think his method would work really well with a softer fruit, like persimmons... hmm... (that's called "foreshadowing").

Herro

To encourage myself to cook more delicious food, I thought I'd finally start a food blog. The thing is, I don't generally follow recipes (except for baking, of course), so this blog is more about the qualitative aspect of cooking. Sort of like conceptual physics versus math-based physics (is that a thing?).

The first few posts will be a kind of backlog of creations I've photographed... badly... I'm slowly learning how to photograph food with low-end devices. There's a real digital camera here somewhere, but I refuse to look for it, as I think the battery is permanently dead. And I realized I do have a very good manual camera, but it takes film!

Expect thorough examination of specific ingredients, as well.