Variations on a Theme

My first official restaurant review. Our latest date was to The Next Door Bar and Grill, Wegman's latest out of the grocery store restaurant.  The best way to describe the experience was like listening to Jazz for the the first time. I want to like it, but I keep telling myself I am not experienced enough to understand the sophistication. The restaurant was an eclectic mix of food and decoration. Most of the food has an oriental accent to it, but the appetizers begin with Tuscan French Fries. Its not just tapas either as there are plenty of large entrees to chose from. There are several rooms centered around a large center room with a sushi bar like feel. Our room had odd lighting, and sort of cheap like ivy arbors on the wall. Decorated by a new graduate from the Italio-Americo-Japanese Interior Decorators Correspondent School. The ceiling was painted with faux clouds and reminded me of the an upscale dentist office. Other rooms seemed far more charming and could be rented out for private affairs.

The food was quite good with a few home runs and a few doubles. 

Cindy started out with grilled eggplant (.8, .7, .7), and I had the mussels with french fries and herbed mayo (.9, .9, .9). Id go back just for the mussels and a few beers. The eggplant had no distinct grill flavor,  but rather extruded tubes of eggplant marinated in oriental flavors.

For dinner Cindy had the Halibut (.9, .8, .85), and I had the duck breast (.9, .8, .7). The Halibut was very good as was the duck. The duck came with a side of  more eggplant, which was a let down.

We were on the tail end of the bell curve of age in the restaurant. There were few couples, and mainly groups of 4 or more. It was loud but you could still hear a conversation at your table.

I felt that people were there to be seen, not to enjoy a good meal.  Cindy was seduced into ordering a cocktail by the waiter. He suggested a foo foo drink with the word seagull in it. It came in a martini glass and was light blue. It tasted like blue gatorade and vodka, actually I think blue gatorade and vodka would have been better. I asked for a bitter beer. I got something from California that was good, but obviously not memorable. You know Dundees makes a great Pale Ale, if you tout you are using local ingredients, don't hand me some California beer.


Personally I think the restaurant needs to pick a theme and do something really well. It borders on weird. Next time I will ask to sit at the sushi bar and have a salad (some interesting choices) and the mussels. Perhaps a glass of wine.

Great family table wine (.85)

Will satisfy both liberals and conservatives

Fried chicken (.7, .8, .8)

Attempting to cook fried chicken can only be done in a secluded environment, where no one can witness the probable failure. I chose an evening where only I would experience the upcoming culinary tragedy.

My mother is a women of few words, and has had 80 years to form some opinions based on her experience. So I don't take her comments lightly. According to her; "Only black people can make fried chicken". I had no counter example since I had failed, and never witnessed any other white person able to compete with gold standard of fried chicken at Mary Macs Tea Room in Atlanta.

I was not able to sneak into the kitchen to watch the magic on our last visit Atlanta, but I was able to buy the cookbook. Usually I think cookbooks just describe in vague details how to prepare their star dish. I have always suspected they have left out some key ingredient or process. Restaurants have little motivation to describe how you can recreate something at home, rather they want you to feel some how inadequate when your version does not match up. Thus you keep coming back.  In fact selling a cook book with mistakes is a wonderful plot to increase customers.

Like all beginning cooks, I followed the recipe as best I could, and hopefully I could change the recipe next time to make perfection.

The resulting chicken was very good. Not great, but good. The meat was juicy, the coating was crisp, and plentiful. The biggest issue was that it lacked salt or spice. My brother has since suggested I add some Franks hot sauce to the batter. Oh Lordy, I can see my father shaking his head.

Roasted red peppers (.99, .8, .8)

There is nothing like the aroma of roasted red peppers being brought back into the kitchen from the fire. Like everything else I have tried, it's all better cooked over a wood fire. At first I did it quickly in a hot fire, Ive since gone the low and slow route.

Basically I core the peppers first. My thought is that if they are hollow and open, the inside will develop the wood fire taste as well. Its like seasoning both sides of the product.

I leave them on the edge of the oven for about an hour. They are not completely black when done, just charred about 50 percent. They will be fully cooked and dehydrated a bit. Once brought in and cooled, the skin will just come off. I then slice them and keep them in the fridge. They are wonderful on sandwiches and as little buds of flavor for a soup.

Culinary Calculus

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail

For those confused about the word calculus, don't fear, there will be no math here. The definition of calculus (from Wikipedia)

To modern theoreticians the answer to the question "what is a calculus?" is: any systematic way of reasoning.

The problem with knowing a subject too well is that everything else in life is somehow defined in those familiar terms. Recipes are really instructions. The world of software has a rich technology base for describing instructions. Ergo, this post.

For some time now I have been struggling with a format to best express recipes. The current format is usually a list of ingredients, followed by paragraphs of procedure. While this works, its lacks of rigor is distasteful in many ways. The biggest problem is that natural language (english being one), is a terrible choice for describing operations that can happen in parallel. Cooking if done efficiently is an exercice in concurrent operations. Rarely is there just one thing on the stove, and even one pot meals are best done if while one thing is cooking, others are being prepared. 

My father loved cooking and was a great cook. As he got older he became a slower chef. Not because he couldn't chop as fast, or because his stove was not as hot, it was because he lost the ability to consider what operations can be done in parallel.

My first inclination was to express a recipe in some grammer that was not only human readable but also compter readable. The benefit of the latter is because once a language is  computer readable it can easily be formated in any desired way, units, proportions can all be altered with ease.

Not everyone can just read a recipe and get an idea of how much time will this take me. Sure there are cooking durations, but more often than not, you don't have to stand attention the entire time. I want to know a) what I have to have and b) how long do I need to do this and not do something else. Cooking itself is something that can be done in parallel with other life activities. 

So I have tried my hand at a format, its a spreadsheet of sorts. Time goes to the right. Any task that is in the same column can be done in parallel. For example while something is browning, you can be dicing vegetables for the next step. As the number of dishes increases, so does the things that can be done in parallel. 

The term mise en place is a french colloquium for getting everything ready before you start. That process is a specific instance of this general idea. Also the french notion of four mother sauces, is really just what we software call base classes that are later instantiated, or you use them to derive even more specific sauces.

Its not rocket science, but I do think that the recipe world needs a more formal methodology for expressing the process. 

Pizza dough (.9, .8, .8)

Combine 2 cups warm water, and one packet of bread yeast, 2 tbs flour and a dash of sugar. Stir and let sit in a warm spot for 30 minutes. The mixture should begin to foam as the yeast begins to party.

In a mixer combine 4 cups unbleached bread flour with 2 tsp salt. Mix slow to combine.

Slowly add yeast mixture while mixer is on very low.

Mix for 5 minutes. The dough should be very wet and sticky.

Remove dough from bowl, form into a ball. Oil sides of bowl and replace dough back to mixing bowl. Spray a little oil on top and cover with a towel. Let dough rise for 2 hours in a warm place. Remove ball from bowl, and form 4 equal sized balls. Flour and oil each dough ball and cover. Let rise another 1/2 hour or so, then form pizzas by hand.

Pizza sauce (.8, .8, .8)

In a saucepan combine

8 oz can tomato paste

14.5 oz canned diced tomatoes

1/4 red wine

2 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp red pepper flakes

salt, pepper.

warm on stove for a 10 minutes to incorporate.

Osso buco (.99, .99, .9)

Best meal I ever made. Perhaps it was the day, the mood, or whatever. But I don't recall having a better meal from our kitchen. The last time I prepared Osso buco I fell for the saffron trap. Use a spice that is super expensive, and it must be good. Sorry, I didn't like it. Think of the money will save! I plated the veal shank on its cooking liquid, and this on risotto that had been cooked with chicken stock.

Dust veal with flour and brown on both sides in a bit of oil. Remove veal. To this add 3-4 shaved carrots, an onion, and either celery or fennel chopped. Cook this on medium for a few minutes. Add One 12 oz can of Del Monte diced tomatoes. 1 cup of sweet marsala wine, 1/2 cup red wine. 1/2 orange juice. Add back the veal and cook for 2.4 hours.

To make the risotto, start by simmering 4 cups of chicken broth. Add a cup at a time to the risotta until it can not absorb any more. Keep stirring. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

A Classic Batter For Fried Fish

My Mother in law found this hand written recipe from my wife. There is no date (children, always date your writings). Anyway it was full of fish with smiles, a creepy finger testing the depth of hot oil, and potential other things that could be fried using the same recipe. 

I will soon try. Perhaps hand writing recipes with chef comments and animated fish is the way to go.