French Laundry

I'm finally going to make it... 42 Days and counting.  I WILL be breaking my current pescatarian status for this.

What the Hell Is It?

Well, first of all, it was invented in the 1970's, which tells us a lot right there.  Secondly, it is described as a "blend of various texturing ingredients, flavorings and colorants."  Mmm!  

The primary ingredient is surimi... which in itself may need an explanation.

Cutesy of Wikipedia -

Surimi (Japanese. lit "ground meat")... a Japanese word referring to a food product  intended to mimick the meat of lobster, crab, and other shellfish.  It is typically made from white-fleshed fish (such as pollock or hake) that has been pulverized to a paste and attains a rubbery texture when cooked.

Meat from lean fish or land animals is separated and then minced numerous times to eliminate undesirable odors.  The result is beaten and pulverized to form a gelatinous paste.  

Right.  So we gots the seafood paste.  Now what do we do with it?  Make it into a crab leg maybe???

... The most common surimi product in the Western market is imitation or artificial crab legs... sold as krab in America...

[It was developed to] process the increased catch of fish, revitalize Japan's fish industry, and to make use of what was preciously considered "fodder fish".

A typical ingredient list looks like this:

Pollock, water, egg-whites, cornstarch, wheat starch, natural and artificial flavor (natural flavors include but aren't limited to amino acids and proteins obtained through aqueous extraction, and there are artificial flavoring compounds like esters, ketones, nucleotides, and monosodium glutamate, etc.), less then 2% snow crabmeat, soybean oil, mirin, potato starch, salt, sugar, soy protein isolate, monosodium glutamate, sorbitol, sodium tripolyphosphate.

"Prior to freezing cryoprotectant materials such as sugar and sorbitol are added to prevent degradation of the gel-forming properties of surimi.  Starch & egg whites are added to improve the texture, color and to stabilize the gel matrix".  

Oh, and the color.  That typically comes from water insoluble compounds like carmine, caramel, paprika and annato extracts which are mixed and then applied to the crab meat bundles... in order words, big weird bundles of the shit are painted with chemicals to be red... or pink... or orange... or whatever it is. 

Sigh.  Another great example of modern food production in action.  Wow.

I have a friend who buys it cold and enjoys right out of the bag.  I have expressed my lack of support for this practice and she has told me to shove it up my ass and that she doesn't want to hear any more of my holier-then-tho preachy bullshit. We agree to disagree.

Prepare To Be Horrified

For the bride that wants a truly unique wedding...

Babette's Feast

This is an incredible food movie... we watch it each year on Thanksgiving.

Flavor Combinations - Obsession Du Jour

Fig and tamarind.

Moroccan Feastival

The other night I made a Moroccan feast.  

A friend was leaving for a trip to Morocco so I wanted to send her off right.  

We were eating traditionally, communally, off platters with our hands.  

I started off with hot towels served table side, and then broke off six courses of glory - three salads - a garlicky cucumber tomato salad, a warm sauteed eggplant in a thick red tomato sauce, and a chilled marinated carrot and parsley salad- all were served with a big basket of torn warm bread for scooping.  Then came lemon chicken served whole.  Next couscous and currants, then the motherload - sweet and savory bastilla, then a bakliva cake with a burned butter mint sauce, next came mint tea, and finally an overflowing bowl of whole fruits. 

If there was a cooks equivalent to spiking a football I would have done it at the end of the meal... and then I would have done some kind of asshole dance too.  It was good... by God it was good.

California

Oh, Hai.  How have you been?  Sorry I haven't written you in awhile but I have been busy learning how to become a proper gypsy.  I've taken up some new hobbies including beard growing, showering with only a Nalgene bottle and a stick of gum, and bird watching. Things are really going great.

So right, where have I been... ?  There was Manhatten, Philly, the Smokey Mountains, Asheville, Nashville, Memphis, Hot Springs NP, Austin, Carlsbad Caverns, Madrid, Santa Fe, Taos, Flagstaff, Vegas, Red Rocks, Death Valley, Mohave Desert, Joshua Tree, San Diego, Los Angeles, back to Joshua Tree, back to Flagstaff - this time for two weeks, Sequoia NP, Berkeley, San Fran and now Sonoma... Oh, glorious, glorious Sonoma.  

I've been in Cali for quite some time and have little concept of time anymore but I think I have been here for (boop, boop, beep, bop... calculating)... almost three weeks.  Holy shit!  That seems like a long time.  Wow.  

It's just so glorious that I can't leave... a perfect storm of ocean cliffs, green green mountains, mossy redwoods, and rolling hillsides covered with vineyards... brilliant yellow mustard flowers blowing in the breeze. Mwa!  

And the food, the wine, the oranges, lemons, Dungenous crab, avocados... Sigh.  Cali cuisine, so distinct, so healthy and so fresh.

Plus, I have found so many new obsessions... Nutritional yeast, canned fish, agave syrup, kombucha...

Oh, and my favorite - Ak Mak

It's SO good.  Flat bread crackery type things that are wonderfully healthy yet really flavorful. They are so light and airy with this really distinct and desirable texture... one that I've never seen before.  And the taste is really complex and all sesame-like.  Mmm!  Plus if you're a God-fearing person they are somehow holy... I don't know how, you will have to read the packaging to know how or why they will get you closer to divinity or whatever but, suffices to say, they are some tasty-ass Jesus crackers...