How politics is screwing up BBQ

So, I have my technology/business thoughts blog, The Comvolution, and this one, which is about food, with occasional rants.  Although I try and limit political ones because thinking about politics enough to write intelligently about it will either be wrist-slitting depressing or one of the activities “Most Likely to Drive Someone on a Murderous Rage”.  However, as a funny adjunct to this (food-related post), here’s a link to the official CPI.

Now I didn’t buy groceries much in the early 80’s and I don’t remember those prices exactly  but I can guarantee that a hunk of ground beef that cost $2.26 last year (and which would cost at least $2.50 now) was a helluva lot less than $1.00 in 1985.  The Big Mac index has the price of a Big Mac at $1.60 in 1985 versus $3.80 in 2011 (and I bet McDonalds has shrunk their margins on Big Macs to contain the cost of the ingredients).   I did buy groceries a lot starting in the early 90s and I rather specifically remember buying pork ribs to BBQ and chicken to grill at well under a dollar a pound, like $.59 (ish). Today, (St. Louis cut, the only one of course to BBQ) ribs at Coscto  are $2.99 - $3.99 a pound. 

Yes, once again (like with the unemployment rate) our Federal leaders prove they subscribe to The Goebbels school of communications (and I prove Godwins law).

So, on to the real point: BBQ. The original premise of BBQ was to take a cheap, tough cut of meat and transform it into something awesome with a prodigious investment of time and care. With beef brisket as the ultimate example because it was so cheap (I’m thinking the first brisket I bought to BBQ was a $1.49 pound), so awful unless it’s cooked properly for ages and when BBQ’d correctly, mind-bogglingly awesome. Exhibit A is Franklin’s in Austin, pretty much considered to be the pinnacle of Brisket art these days: people will line up for up to 3 hours each day to get their remarkably tender, unctuous and fabulous brisket before it’s gone by 2PM (shout out to Ben Phenix for taking on line duty so I could experience this myself).  

But Houston, we have a problem. Because beef brisket now costs as much as steak.  So the risk reward scale is way out of whack because if you don’t nail it you’ve screwed up a $100 chunk of meat, and even if you do nail it it’s anathema to the original premise of the craft. In fact, given shrinkage, even without the time investment it’s far more cost effective to feed a dozen people steak or prime rib than it is to feed them brisket.  Factor in the time and the effective cost brisket is up there with lobster (unless you're a telecom lawyer in which case it's like truffles).

So, if you want to remain true to the original premise of BBQ, brisket is off the menu.  In fact, so is pretty anything that came from a cow (or a sheep). Beef shanks – virtually free when the CPI was at 100, are now $5 a pound +/-, and half of that weight is bone. Same for oxtails.  Whole lamb shanks (which are spectacular when BBQ’d right) are at least that.

Fortunately, there is (at least for now) the fabulous and still (relatively) humble pig. $15 will still buy a 6-7 pound pork butt or shoulder which can be turned into something special.  Good news for everyone but the kosher and hallal amongst us.

Yet, shockingly enough, that’s a lot higher than it would have been and likely to rise more quickly because the Feds are trying to raise meat prices (!). Because we all know what’s much more important than the health of the nation’s economy is buying votes in key states like Iowa in the months before an election. And of course the reason meat is so expensive in the first place is the insane ethanol mandate (another vote buying effort in the guise of energy policy) which consumes 40% of our corn to create fuel that uses more energy to produce than it provides, is more expensive than gasoline (if you remove all the subsidies), and lowers our gas mileage (so we’re paying for it yet again).  

Back, unavoidably, to politics. What shall it be: wrist slitting or murderous rage?

Tastes like chicken?

That's the line you hear about all kinds of unfamiliar proteins. The cliche even gets its own Wikipedia entry. Its not like that's saying much since chicken is relatively bland and pretty much a canvas for whatever you're seasoning it with. Still, in my time in Holland where my main meal of the day was lunch in the canteen, I ate tons of it. They served it alot, and even in the canteen (not the pinnacle of cuisine by any means) it was normally pretty good. Always a vehicle for the seasoning, it still tasted...distinctively..."chickeny".

It's said you can judge the quality of a French bistro by their roast chicken. I've had some pretty amazing roast chicken in France, usually with no sauce at all - just basically seasoned and perfectly roasted and somehow on the plate its far more than the sum of its parts. And I'm usually pretty happy with the chickens I make, although I don't roast them - I either smoke them, or "smoke grill" them on the Weber kettle which I think is the ultimate cooking method for chicken. In less than 2 hours the chickens get infused with perfect smoky flavor, fabulously crisp skin, and come out incredibly juicy.

The other day I was relatively rushed for wall clock time to make dinner. I had the 2 hours to cook it, but not the 4-6 hours to brine it. I've always brined chickens and turkeys regardless of how I cook them - got in the habit early on and its just hard wired into my preparation. But I didn't have the time, and I figured no biggie - won't be the best bird I ever make, but should be fine. Particularly since I was using what I usually do - a Purdue Oven Stuffer (don't see the point in bothering to cook a scrawny 3 pound bird). An 8 pounder gets 2 full hours on the grill, which imparts lots of smoke. And I spatchcoc them, so there's also plenty of surface area to season.

It was gorgeous and perrectly cooked as it always seems to be with smoke grilling - somehow there's a ton of margin for error there. Plenty of smoke flavor. Nice notes from the garlic and herbs I rubbed the skin with. But once you got past the seasoned surfaces, the chicken tasted approximately what I'd imagine Soylent Green tastes like. It didn't taste like chicken. It tasted like nothing.

I've always scoffed at the idea of free range chicken at 2-4x the price of the generic stuff. Even though I'm usually fanatic about ingredients chicken was one where it seemed the generic market stuff was just fine. But I guess its not fine. Its the brine.

So now I'm off to find a chicken that tastes like chicken.

Back Quackin

After my hiatus in Europe (with lots of eating and drinking, but no cooking to speak of), its back stateside and back to at least an occasional update.

My first venture back in the kitchen: smoked peking style duck, with a chicken on the side. I've had mixed experiences with how much edible duck you can actually get from a duck, even a big 6 pounder like this one. Plus Simone refuses - on grounds of general cuteness - to eat duck. So I figured tossing a chicken in the smoker would provide both food for the squirt and a hedge on the duck.

This turned out to be nothing less than a stroke of brilliance. Smoking is a fabulous way to cook duck, since the long slow heat both renders out lots of fat and infuses the fat that's left with fabulous smokey goodness. And what happens to that tasty fat when it renders out of the duck? Usually, not much. However, put a chicken on the rack underneath the duck, and Voila! The chicken gets constantly basted with a delicious stream of smokey duck fat. The end result: the moistest chicken I've ever cooked, even though I smoked it past the temperature I prefer to because of the squirts general aversion to pinkish chicken meat.

Both birds wer brined in basic brine for about 6 hours. They were both about 6 pounds; the chicken just a bit more. About 5 hours over a combination of oak, pear and cherry. The duck was mopped over the last 2 hours with a mixture of honey, port and soy sauce. The chicken was untouched save for the fatty baste from the duck and whatever mop might have dripped onto it. The results on both sides were magnificent - really didn't need a thing. But a side saiuce of 1/3 Siricha and 2/3 Kewpie mayo gilded the lily.

For a side, a mix of quinoa and kasha with madiera, tamari, fresh basil and cilantro and fresh sesame leaves. I didn't even know there was such a thing as sesame leaves but after trying them I thought they'd be a perfect addition. Sort of a cross between basil, mint and tarragon.

The salad is spinach, arugula, avocado, scallion, strawberries and red pepper queso fresco in a peach vinigrette. The dressing was pretty good but not close to the stuff American Flatbread dressed their spinach salad with the night before at their beer tasting dinner. I got lazy on the salad ingredients - they were from H-Mart. AF doesn't do that, and it shows.

The Great Cheesesteak Debate

For whatever reason I've become less and less enthralled with either cooking or eating "fussy" food and increasingly intrigued with authentic local and ethnic foods and the idea of comparing and critiquing different renditions of them. As an ex-NYer, this is probably innate - I'm capable of analyzing a pastrami sandwich or slice of pizza with the detail and critical, detached mien of a medical examiner and arguing the relative merits of different versions like a trial lawyer. As a current Washingtonian, there's not really a"local" food to apply this skill to. Maybe a crab cake, but that really belongs to the PROM (Peoples Republic of Maryland). So I’m turning to other regions. This is somewhat tricky since I can’t say what’s actually authentic in places I haven’t lived – but I can say what’s good.

Item 1: the Philly cheesesteak. This is an interesting one because quality ingredients are anathema - authenticity apparently demands cheap cuts of beef and Cheese Whiz. And there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of potential variation in the cooking process. Whatever. The debate in Philly about where to get the best is heated, and lines form around the block of the most popular purveyors – the most renowned of which are Pats and Genos. Now, as you’ll often find with places that become icons, many critical locals deride both of them as tourist traps. However, that’s part of the point here. If I lived in Philly I’d immediately embark on a quest for the best – but as a tourist searching for authenticity these seemed like the must-try places. And, conveniently located across the block from each other, they’re perfect for a taste-off.

At 5:30 on a Saturday afternoon, both had fair sized but not terribly daunting lines. Pats line seemed shorter, but the wait ended up far longer. The Geno’s sandwich ordered wiz wit came just that way, cheese whiz and onions. At Pats apparently mushrooms are also an option (my wife did the ordering there) and that one came with whiz, mushrooms and onions.

The Geno’s sandwich came on a soft roll with no real texture to the crust but a nice taste to the bread and interesting overall soft but chewy texture. The Pats roll had a relatively firm crust and with an airy interior, and was devoid of taste. Sort of like Styrofoam with a thin layer of cardboard on top.

The meat in the Geno’s sandwich was quite tender. No knives were available to slice the thing in two for taste testing, but between the plastic fork and pulling it apart it was doable. The meat in the Pats sandwich was tough and elastic. While the bread separated easily, the plastic fork was no match for the rubbery meat which was also impervious to separation by pulling. I honestly don’t know what texture you’re striving for in a perfect authentic cheesesteak but I doubt it’s akin to rubber Kevlar which is what the Pats steak was like.

Taste-wise, I don’ know if or how they season the meat at Genos, but it tasted wonderfully beefy and well-seasoned, if not by application of spices than by contact with the grill. The Pats beef was stunningly devoid of taste – nothing more than a tough vehicle for the whiz, onions and mushrooms; somehow the veggies were also relatively tasteless, unlike the Geno’s onions which were wonderfully sweet and rich without any burnt notes that you can get when frying onions.

The verdict? No contest. While it’s a greasy nutritional nightmare made with crap ingredients, the Geno’s sandwich made it easy to see why locals wax poetic about Philly cheesesteaks and line up for a block to get one after a night of drinking – while I was stone sober, I know I’d love one of these things at 2AM. The Pats sandwich, on the other hand, was so lame it was like a play for the AMA or Self magazine - no reason to risk cardiac arrest or sacrifice your diet because a plate of salted tofu and lettuce would be every bit as tasty.

49 years ago: 1st spaceship orbits the sun

So, since it was a whole day since I’d done any serious drinking, and always wanting a good reason to celebrate, I deemed the Luna 1 Moon shot a worthy excuse. Luna 1 was launched by the USSR in the early days of the space race, January 2, 1959. It was meant to be the first spacecraft to orbit the moon. But a malfunction in the ground-based control system caused an error in the rocket's burntime, and it missed. By 5,900 km. As Maxwell Smart (Don Adams, RIP) would say, “Missed it by that much.”

Given the draconian regime at the time I’d imagine mission control was a pretty dire place when Luna 1 went awry. No doubt more than a couple engineers were assigned exciting new careers in Siberia – or consigned to even worse fates. Too bad for them that they didn’t live in the era of spin control. Because while Luna 1 missed the moon, it did become the first spacecraft from Earth to successfully orbit the sun. Today they’d probably be heroes.

Having spent some time in Russia, I can report its amazingly easy to celebrate in authentic Russian style. There’s one essential - vodka – and it requires absolutely (pun!) no preparation. Unless you consider sticking the bottle in the freezer preparation, and even then lack of a proper chill wouldn’t prevent any self-respecting Russian from banging back a few shots of vodka. Maybe even before lunch. But with a snack. When you drink, you eat. When you eat, you drink.

A Ukrainian friend swears cod livers are the perfect nibble between shots of vodka to keep you standing longer and prevent hangovers. Cod livers come in a little can that looks like a cat food can. Once you open it, you find the stuff inside looks and smells a lot like cat food too. Only worse. I had no desire to validate his contention, but one time a friend popped one of the nickel sized livers in my open mouth mid-sentence. It was what I imagine cat food tastes like. Only worse

The real deal Russian vodka that we always drank over there and my Eastern European friend rave about is Moskavanya (green label). It’s actually pretty cheap if you can find it. We have stash, andI drank a few shots of it. Although with chicken wings instead of cod livers.

Recipe for a Recession

I guess this is pretty easy one.
- Issue scads of low-interest variable rate mortgages to people who could barely afford them
- Raise interest rates to burst the housing bubble and drive housing prices down thus rendering said mortgages simultaneously unaffordable and un-refinancable
- Nearly double the price of oil and gas, jacking up the basic cost of daily living and the price of everything you buy including food.
- Create a frenzy to produce ethanol from corn, rocketing up the price of the one item that pretty much our entire food chain is based on.
- Set timer, sit back and wait.

That's an easy recipe for a recession. Now that its here, lets look at some recipes that are great to make in a recession (in other words, cheap).

Fusion Hummus

You can buy a small tub of hummus in the grocery store for $3. Or you can make 3x as much for about $1.50, and it'll be better. Hummus is great stuff. Its relatively healthy, cheap, and can be made in 5 minutes from pantry ingredients so you don't have to make a special shopping trip. Basic hummus is just chickpeas, olive oil, garlic and lemon juice whizzed up in a processor. It's much better with tahini (sesame seed paste) added, but tahini's not a pantry item for most people. IMHO hummus is better using a pantry staple: peanut butter. With that, a dash of sesame oil, and fermented black beans, you get the basic hummus flavor but with a mysterious (unless you know whats in it) and fabulous added flavor note that makes it addictively good and a more versatile complement to non-Mediterranean dishes including Asian, Southwest, BBQ, and others.

3 cups chickpeas (2 washed cans, or use reconstituted dried beans)
3 cloves garlic
3 TBSP peanut butter
2 TBSP olive oil
2 TSP sesame oil
1 1/2 TBSP fermented black beans
3/4 TSP salt
Juice from one large lemon, divided in half

Whiz the ingredients in a processor with half the lemon juice in a processor. Taste. The amount of lemon is really a matter of taste; add more lemon juice (and salt) as needed. That's it.

This makes a big 2+ cup batch which will keep weeks in the fridge. Its no problem to halve it, but if you serve it to a crowd you might be surprised at how much they eat. It's really good, much more so that run of the mill hummus.

All the ususal dip uses plus a great sandwich condiment with veggies or smoked turkey'; add chopped up chicken and sweet onion for an awesome and healthier chicken salad; or spread on top of a salmon fillet and broil.

Lamb Ice Cream!!

The height of the 12 course tasting menu at Avenues - Lamb Ice Cream, on top of a a blue cheese cheesecake. Bizarrely fabulous. Woke up this AM jonesing for more, but that wasn't going to happen. So instead we decided to do short ribs to riff on the Kobe Beef short ribs they paired up with a squab breast. Just used the pot roast recipe below but with 1/2 cup more wine, left out the mushrooms and subbed in short ribs (about a dozen) for the chuck. Cooked for 3 hours, cooled, ditched the bones, skimmed and trimmed the fat, then back into the broth for another hour at 400. One more skim and trim, and then put the pieces under the broiler for about 8 minutes to crisp up.