Foodgeek Blog

Good morning, foodies.  Having the day off today, and still being up first thing in the morning, I decided to make myself a nice breakfast.

I recently discovered the secret to making the most delicious, knock-your-socks-off, amazing fried potatoes every time:  It’s onion and garlic, which I guess isn’t that surprising in the grand scheme of things, but anyway…  A couple of weeks ago I made breakfast for my brother, sister-in-law, and niece (who is, hands down, the smartest, most adorable child on the face of the earth) and decided (sort of on a whim) to sweat some onion and garlic in the pan before I cooked the potatoes.  The effect is striking.  It’s not just a matter of adding the flavor of onion and garlic to the flavor of the potato, they enhance the potato’s flavor as well.

This morning I added mushroom to the mix, and let me tell you, it was a good decision.  The other thing I’ve started doing is using a mixture of butter and vegetable oil in which to fry the potatoes.  Butter has a very low smoke point and burns easily, but by adding the vegetable oil (actually, I think we use corn oil) you raise the smoke point of the mixture.  This allows you to cook hotter, so that you get nice, crispy potatoes and also the flavor of delicious, delicious (non-burnt) butter.

In the photo they sort of blend in with the plate, but I also made myself a couple of over-easy eggs.  No magic here, except the aforementioned delicious, delicious butter.

Ok, here’s the thing: I have a somewhat frequent argument with a coworker about the proper cooking medium for eggs.  See, he’s something of a health buff, and he uses cooking spray.  When I tell him that I use real butter, he insists that I love it because it’s bad for me.  This is not the case.  To be fair, it’s not even entirely the (delicious, delicious) flavor.  It’s about depth.  If you’ve ever cooked eggs in cooking spray, you know what I’m talking about.  The white of the egg comes out paper thin, and lacking the fantastic texture of which eggs are ultimately capable.  If this is alright with you, then mazel tov, enjoy your cooking spray and absurdly thin eggs.

It’s not alright with me.  When you come right down to it, it doesn’t matter what fat you use, as long as you use a fair amount of it.  This is the part where I can hear Dave’s voice in the back of my head saying “See?!! Lot’s of fat!  You like it because it’s bad for you!”  No, Dave, that’s not why I like it.  There is a textural component here that you just don’t achieve with cooking spray.  I’m not talking about total immersion.  You could use butter, vegetable oil, peanut oil, it really doesn’t matter, but there has to be some depth to whatever you use.

On the subject of total immersion, though, you can achieve almost the same textural goodness (albeit lacking a bit of the flavor) if you poach the eggs.

Anyway, back to breakfast…  Top the thing off with some whole wheat toast (I admit I did use a buttery spread rather than real butter here) and a cup of coffee, and you end up with one very happy blogger.

Have a great day.

Last night some friends and I had our usual Friday night gathering (formerly Thursday.) Lately we’ve taken to doing themed dinner nights more and more (almost exclusively), and this week’s theme was dishes named after people.  The menu included:

• Steak Diane
• Fetuccini Alfredo
• Sally Lunn bread
• Creme Dubarry soup
• Shrimp de Jonge
• Caesar salad
• Savory Napoleons with sun dried tomato pesto
• Dolly Madison strawberry shortcake
• A terribly creative dessert that I’ll go into in a moment
• Valvioli (this is a ravioli recipe devised by my friend’s five year old, Valerie)
• Eggs Chausseur

I got there early this week and helped out with the prep because that is a whole huge list of dishes (even for us.)  The Creme Dubarry soup was quite good, and a really simple and interesting dish.  You start by sauteeing some leeks in butter and oil (a teaspoon of each — yes, a teaspoon of butter), then adding cauliflower, potatoes, and chicken broth and boiling until the veggies are tender.  After that you puree the whole darn thing and season to taste.  It’s very good, but a little bland, and we ended up adding garlic, salt, a little lemon juice, and parsley.  The name comes from Madamme Dubarry, who was a mistress of Louis XV, and favored white, puffy hairdos (like cauliflower, get it?)

Steak Diane is basically filet mignon covered in a “sauce” of mushrooms, onions, garlic, and worcestershire sauce.  Hard to go wrong with a really delicious piece of meat covered in mushrooms, onion, and garlic.  I don’t even like worcestershire, and it was delicious.

The Fetuccini Alfredo was kind of an afterthought.  The Valvioli was served with an Alfredo sauce that I threw together, and there was leftover pasta dough from making the ravioli.  So we cut the leftover dough into some rough fetuccini noodles and threw the sauce on it.

That brings me to the aforementioned terribly creative desert.  One of our hosts, Tammy, is the most amazing culinary improviser I’ve ever known.  You know that Amish friendship bread starter that you get from a friend or coworker once a year?  Well, she ended up with an abundance of it one year, and managed to rework it into several different times of bread.  Also cookies, cheesecake, and pizza dough.  Yes, you read that correctly: Friendship pizza dough.  Just astounding in the kitchen.

So anyway, she and I were talking about dessert possibilities, and the surplus of Alfredo sauce came up.  I said that I thought someone could probably create a “dessert Alfredo sauce,” but I didn’t see how one could work a traditional Alfredo sauce into a dessert.  Tammy seemed to agree, especially because I use oregano instead of parsley.  So the evening goes on, I forget all about that conversation, and Tammy hands me a ramekin with some unidentified dessert product in it.  I, of course, taste it without even asking what it is (because Tammy made it, and she has a genetic condition that makes her completely unable to cook anything that isn’t delicious.)  The thing has a generally creamy texture, but with a nice bit of crispiness on top, and it’s got chocolate melted on top of it.  Chocolatey, and a little salty.  Really, really good.  As I was speaking the words “What’s in it?”, I got a very definite taste of Parmesan cheese.  That’s right.  Tammy reworked the Alfredo sauce into a delicious dessert.

Sally Lunn bread is interesting.  It’s basically a pancake batter that you bake instead of frying it.  Approximately the texture of corn bread, but it tastes like pancakes.  As a side note, different recipes use different leavening agents.  Our recipe used baking soda, but there are yeast recipes as well.

The strawberry shortcake was made into a layered dessert.  From the bottom up: Cake doused in amaretto (sort of an adults only dessert), strawberry yogurt, strawberries, unsoaked cake, whipped cream, more strawberries, and a sprinkling of vanilla sugar.  Delicious.

All in all, a very good evening.