Never saw this before, but I got this from a coworker today in mail. Thought I’d share this with people. Pretty friggin awesome.
“Artist assistants stand next to 3,604 cups of coffee which have been made into a giant Mona Lisa.
The 3,604 cups of coffee were each filled with different amounts of milk to create the different shades.”
Apparently, some people aren’t thrilled about the new Sun Maid Raisin girl because she’s too sexy. I saw this little tidbit via sports website Barstool Sports. See below:
But honestly, if you find that offensive, I think you need to stop having a reaction to fully dressed fake 3D models of raisin mascots. Of course, no one objects to the St. Pauli girl, especially considering that she totally digs chefs like Chef Boyardee. Seriously, I’m much better looking than that asshole.
And if you REALLY want the queen of sexy food mascots. Look no further than Campari, because without Salma Hayek – I’m not sure anyone really would drink this stuff.
No, this is not a review.
It’s not even a think piece or a historical piece.
This is simply my way of securing ramen into one of the pedestal shelves in the corner of my heart – a place where everything stored is normally greeted with the type of hug that is shared only between intimate friends and ex-lovers.
All of this started with a very good bowl of ramen in Los Angeles and a hour long conversation between friends during our drive back to San Francisco. Our argument was centered around the noodle thickness at the ramen restaurant we both visited separately. As if by fate, I even received an invitation that very night for a ramen tasting party.
Some people don’t understand the relationship. For those people, I can only explain it as symbiotic. Many people develop irrational fears with certain foods because of bad experiences and improper exposure, but almost equally, people often develop an irrational love for foods that are consistently present at our most emotional and developmental moments. If you choose to label this as “comfort” food, you are more than entitled to, but I’m not certain that they are the same. While comfort food may be items of homage that recall fond memories of mom’s culinary repertoire, it is not always intrinsically emotional. I can only relate by telling you that the idea of comfort food is to ramen as “In My Life” is to “Tears in Heaven.” It just possesses a different gravity.
To this day, I can still eat 3 packs of Nissin Ramen (seen above) easily in one sitting. Personally, I love an over-easy fried egg and Chinese beef tendon meatballs on top. The little blue robe blonde Japanese kid is a close personal friend and childhood fixture. He’s been there more than most people in my life – cold wintery mornings, tough emotional times, drunken stupors, weekend hangovers and all types of mental breakdowns. Of course as the years have rolled on by, ramen has taken new forms and risen to new heights. In high school, I found out that ramen could not only be fresh, but it could also contain all types of wonderful tasty partners nestled in a big bowl of broth. This was an epic discovery because on that day, my brain melted to soft jelly and my heart warmed to a feverish pitch.
My most recent discoveries (epiphanies sometimes) over the last few years have really pushed my expectations for a great bowl. It has become a yearning and a constant search for something great – akin to the longing for a recognition of one’s soulmate. With newfound maturity and a fully developed palette, ramen now has a different mystique. The ability to properly critique (a happy byproduct of exposure and experience) has elevated the craftsmanship of ramen into art. The noodles, the broth, the egg, the pork, the house selection of accompanying vegetables and the texture are all now subjected to a rigorous analysis stemming from the mouth to the cortex of the brain.
I have to tell you that it isn’t all love. This affinity to ramen is both a curse and a blessing. The average price of a bowl normally sits at about $8-$9, which is not a lot of money for a meal by most people’s standards, but it becomes the weighing scale in determining how judiciously it was spent. A bad bowl of ramen feels like it has come at a grave and heavy expense, but a great bowl of ramen may feel as light as pennies. Not many specific items in the culinary world have such a well defined teetering seesaw scale. Ask the likes of my former chef and friend Tim Luym and many other enthusiast chefs alike – and, they will tell you all about the inherent thrills and mind numbing disappointments that await at every ramen shop. Sadly, the most common phrase that seems to come at the conclusion of most ramen meals is normally, “well, if they only did this…” or “the _____ wasn’t that good…”
I won’t lie to you. Success is a long drawn road. You will come by failure upon failure many times in a quest for a good bowl. You may even begin to believe it doesn’t exist. Your search is one of desperation as you cling to merely the whisper of a recommendation that there may be good ramen…somewhere. You will begin to take recommendations 10, 20, 30 or 400 miles away. You even take recommendations 3000 miles away. You may go as far as NY to find it, and – if you are like me, you schedule a block of time in your calendar just to eat it.
Content people and those without this obsessive affliction may simply settle for a “that’s pretty good” type of place. And, for most people who enjoy things on a comfort level, that’s perfectly fine. But please understand that if you want greatness out of what you decide to keep as a constant in your life, you will have to work to achieve it. And that work is sometimes fruitless, but ultimately, you will find that true love and devotion is rewarded.
And when it happens to find you…
it is nothing but satisfaction, redemption, relief and exhilaration. It’s kind of feeling where the world begins spin around you without focus on anything but your tasty noodles. Mesmerizing.
A truly tiring and wonderful drug. It’s enough to make you want to pass out afterwards…
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday. Sadly, I didn’t get much rest due to the 12+ hours spent driving to and from Los Angeles. It certainly didn’t help to have wrapped up Thanksgiving dinner at 12:30AM only to drive out at 5:00AM on the same day. But I regret none of it because I had a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving with some very close friends as well as some very new friends as well. All in all, it was a dinner filled with food-coma induced silences and probably the raunchiest post Thanksgiving conversation ever (including using condoms as a hotdog condiment holder/dipper, toasted latex as bacon, and a late night chitchat phone call to a random 16 year old in Texas who was apparently looking for action on twitter). Mom wouldn’t approve. Anyways, Thanksgiving is about the company and the food, so a special “thank you” goes out to Peter, Angelo, Kai, Haruka, Violet, Ben, Gariff, Richie, Sky and Zhaira for being terrific company on this festive night.
The Food:
Cherry Wood Cold Smoked and Roasted Diestel Farms Turkey (17.8 lbs)
Rainbow Beet Salad with Yuzu & Meyer Lemon Gastrique
Roasted Brussel Sprouts w/ 18 Year Barrel Aged Balsamic
Fig and Sausage Dressing
Crunchy Pecan Crusted Mashed Yams
Creamy Mashed Gold Potatoes with Green Onions
Classic Apple Pie a la mode with BiRite Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Classic and Bourbon Vanilla Cranberry Sauces
Good Ole Gravy
The pics:
Cherry wood fire and heart shaped turkey cleavage.
The REAL butterball.
The last of the fresh figs I could find anywhere…
Jason Biggs Food Porn – Don’t lie, you know you want to.
The lineup
Finally, I’m rolling out a prompt on-time Wednesday Test Kitchen. I really must say that there was only very minimal planning this week for what I wanted to make. The colder weather really dictated on how I wanted to approach these two plates. Both are hearty and best when hot.
I ended up with some really nice wild head-on gulf shrimp because I originally intended to make some Shrimp and Grits, but I had all this nice fennel, sausage and fumet stock hanging around, so I decided that a soup would be best. My roommates occasionally do a Tom Yum soup, but I didn’t want to mess around with spice blends or any packaging. I decided to make my own interpretation – which oddly ended up pretty close, but vibrantly more layered and brighter than your standard. With the exception of dried shrimp paste used in my Gold Cayenne sambal, there were no powders used. I threw in andouille and 4505 Meats Golden Dogs. Why? Because they have a spicy sweetness to them that tasted awesome when paired with the soup. That and it’s my soup, I can do whatever the hell I want to it.
The other dish was a creamy farro risotto. It was cold and I really felt like something warm and creamy. (That’s what she said. Sorry.) I was planning on cooking persimmons all week and blending it into savory, but I wasn’t inspired to pair it with meat that night. I just had no desire to cook meat. (Yes, it’s shocking, but it can happen.) I happened to have wonderful farro literally fall into my hands when I opened my kitchen shelf. It was meant to be. The dish really harkens back to the good old days of the Orson kitchen (really not long ago actually, feels like forever…) when there was a seasonal farro dish on the menu (once with cabbage stock and later with peach). What was wonderful about the presentation of the peach farro dish at Orson was really the complexity established with elements of savory and sweet. It wasn’t an established comfort food, but it was definitely a comfort dish. I partially wanted to recreate the philosophy of that dish, but at the same time, do nothing even remotely similar in terms of flavor combination. The dish gets finished similarly, but I guess nothing in the prep process or ingredient list was remotely similar except for lemon. I don’t think it’s a reinterpretation or copy, but I’d like to call it a tribute.
Onto the Menu:
Tom Yum Soup
-Fumet fennel shrimp stock, wild Gulf head-shrimp, 4505 Golden Dogs, Andouille, homemade Gold Cayenne sambal, finished with torpedo onions
Pumpkin “Farr”-o Risotto
-brown butter sautéed persimmons, Meyer lemon, Andante Minuet and yuzu zest
*the yuzu zest adds to the depth of flavor and complexity, but I also tried a bowl with Meyer lemon zest, which meshed better into the flavor profile. Both were awesome as garnishes, but the yuzu was like the Veronica to the Meyer lemon’s Betty. Tough choices.
It seems that for some reason it’s gets easier and easier to get aggravated by really stupid things. Maybe we can blame the weather change. Generally, I’m a fairly calm and positive person, but the last couple of months, I’ve been very agitated with things that normally don’t bother me and sometimes I don’t even know why…
“But, I’m trying Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd…”
To suppress or alleviate this unwanted sense of anger, I sometimes desperately try to find the most relaxing or soothing things to do. It’s the kind of stuff that provides you the right distraction for a happy few minutes. It’s the desperate escape your brain needs sometimes. Aside from listening to mind numbingly happy songs like 1234 or Here Comes The Sun, I try to enjoy simple cooking/food related things that make me smile and keep my blood pressure a nice mellow low of 150 or better. Cooking can be therapeutic even though many people often feel that its a chore, so I thought I’d give people a few good examples. Maybe you can come up with your own as well.
The following is a list of some of the cooking related things that make me smile:
Remember we’re almost at the holidays. Stay relaxed, stay calm and stay hungry.
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