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« April 2009 |
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| June 2009 »
 This Fresh Forkin' Friday brings a birthday to my house. How do we celebrate? Not with cupcakes or worse, cupcake cakes, but with ice cream. Brownie batter ice cream to be exact. It is ridiculously simple and disgustingly good: concoct your vanilla ice cream mix, pour into your ice cream maker. While it's churning, make boxed brownie batter (be organic and whole wheat, if you like). When the ice cream is almost ready, pour the batter in the mixer, and let it churn for about ten more minutes. Pour the whole mess into a carton or freezer-friendly tupperware, and let it go for a couple of hours. The resulting mess is fabulous ice cream on top with a fudgy batter layer on the bottom. Each bite is the perfect beater-licker's dream.
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 If you have not pulled your own mozzarella, you should. Fresh mozzarella is a wholly different being than the shredded pizza cheese, string cheese, or even the “fresh” mozzarella found in stores. The only specialty item you will need is mozzarella curd, which can be purchased at co-ops and Lund’s.
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 This Fresh Forkin' Friday kicks off Memorial Day Weekend, truly the summer opener. Fire up the grill, dust off the ring toss, reassemble the ladder golf, and gather your points so that you may artfully convince your father-in-law that craft beer is the way of the future. One of my fellow foodists is messing with the welding torch today (they're fun, you should get one) as we try to jimmy-rig a spit roaster to put over my fire pit—because we want to try spit-roasting his enormous shoulder ham. A worthy warm-weekend endeavor.
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 I got to spend a bunch of time at Abbott Northwestern Hospital last weekend for the birth of my daughter, Avery. We got to the hospital on Friday night about 11 p.m., and our new package was delivered about noon on Saturday. So, after the delivery, there was dialing, texting, and answering phone calls to shout to the world that I was a daddy, and then it dawned on me . . . I had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours.
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 If you ran over to Create Catering on Saturday, for one of Philip's pulled pork sammies and a Surly, but found him absent . . . he had good cause. Avery Sharon Dorwart was born on Saturday morning, so he was otherwise occupied.
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 Last night, I was at Surdyk's 13th Annual East Side Wine Tasting, you know, tasting wine, noshing nosh, and sucking on a hooka. I came across a guy offering Alice White wines in what looked like little juice boxes full of wine. Boxed wine has its own legend in my family (much related to the pink Franzia that eternally sits in my sister-in-law's fridge), but I am not above a taste. Now, I know that the boxing of wine has become more fashionable of late, but it's been a hard sell for me in the past. Yet it was tasty, and he sold it in a very convincing manner: the little boxes allow you to take wine where the glass bottle would not. I'm sure he meant on a boat or on a camping trip or to a backpacked picnic high on a mountain top. All I know is that this Fresh Forkin' Friday has me thinking about all the planting I have to do this weekend, possibly made a smidge easier by the little juice box that could accompany me.
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 The rhubarb is coming, the rhubarb is coming! I know that I keep harping on the impending vegetable season, but the showing of rhubarb in the garden is another early harbinger of said season.
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 You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here ... because I'm ready for MY beer.
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 Reluctantly, I believe that molecular gastronomy is here to stay. I have resisted many of the trappings of the “movement.” Foams, vapors, and airs don’t do a lot for me, at least from a cheffing point of view. I very much like to eat in this manner and have had great meals from some of the best in the field like Comerc24 in Barcelona. But my cooking is rooted in French technique, which is tried and true and continues to excite me and teach me new things everyday. So, I picked up an introductory book to answer the many questions I field weekly about the topic.
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 Does Mom really want brunch? This Fresh Forkin' Friday, you have to ask yourself, or better yet, her. In case she's not such a stand-in-line-waiting-for-the-guy-in-the-vest-to-light-the-sterno-under-the-vat-of-cheesey-eggs kinda gal, maybe you still have time to get her this. Or this. Or you could get her cheeses of the world, but I'm getting tired of asking for that.
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 Ever heard of a fish chop? Well, it’s not a wrestling move or a deadly one-punch tae kwon do maneuver. A fish chop is the meat that remains around the collar of a fish; this lesser-known cut of the fish is generally used to make fumet (fish stock) or, if you work in my kitchen, many times it is known as family meal. If I remember correctly, famous chef David Burke even tried to patent a halibut version of this cut, which he sells as a “halibut T-bone” in most of his restaurants.
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Lincoln Center, New York—On a rainy night in Manhattan, after a years-long drought of a different sort, a Twin Cities chef took home a James Beard Award tonight—La Belle Vie’s Tim McKee beat out 112 Eatery’s Isaac Becker, Restaurant Alma’s Alexander Roberts, and two Missouri chefs for the honors of Best Chef Midwest.
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 It's James Beard Award season in NYC, and everyone's frothy with excitement!
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 This Fresh Forkin' Friday happens to fall on May Day! I've never danced under a Maypole or had an anonymous basket of goodies hung on my door handle, nor have I any special feasts or dishes planned for the day. But at Larry U, we'd wake up on May Day to a campus lawn freshly planted with Dum Dums and every bit of sidewalk chalked with "Hooray! Hooray! The first of May, outdoor lovin' begins today!" Go forth, frolic.
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« April 2009 |
Main
| June 2009 »
|
This Fresh Forkin' Friday brings a birthday to my house. How do we celebrate? Not with cupcakes or worse, cupcake cakes, but with ice cream. Brownie batter ice cream to be exact. It is ridiculously simple and disgustingly good: concoct your vanilla ice cream mix, pour into your ice cream maker. While it's churning, make boxed brownie batter (be organic and whole wheat, if you like). When the ice cream is almost ready, pour the batter in the mixer, and let it churn for about ten more minutes. Pour the whole mess into a carton or freezer-friendly tupperware, and let it go for a couple of hours. The resulting mess is fabulous ice cream on top with a fudgy batter layer on the bottom. Each bite is the perfect beater-licker's dream.
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