Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Eating Out A Dead Relative

Feliz dia del los muertos!  Or All Saints Day or whatever reason you employ to extend the costume and makeup wearing season.  And a rather busy season it has been!  (These are what I call excuses to prevaricate on why I don't have a well thought out foodly post)

Indeed!  So we're fresh from the festivities at the beloved City Arts Gallery in the Tower.  Fresh off of several hours of standing and slinging of drinks.  And I discovered a new and interesting aspect of recipe making and general taste creation.  You're only truly creative when you are lacking in the optimum components for your art.

It's something I have been experimenting alot with on the Central Valley Buzz with our food segments and other types of culinary endeavors.  I grab or invent on the fly, entirely foreign recipes or dishes, that I read up on the style and technique, but have never attempted before except NOW on live webish TV.

I guess in a way, that's my own special cheap thrill.  Lacking the urge to break many bones attempting to ape the Jackass crew, instead I offer up my ego should I ultimately fail in making a fairly simple, yet new dish in my given 15 minutes.  So far, I'd say I'm 50/50 on ultimate success.  Of course, you keep smiling for the camera, but I often notice a forgotten ingredient or the rare outright screwup that I have to backpedal quickly from, since I don't have "back up food" or one of those handy dandy proper chefs to cook offscreen for me.

And really, where I am now in my foodventures, I wouldn't want all of that theatrical artifice.  This is where the actual fun lives, in these moments of discovery, while you're still trying to produce banter.  Gabbling madly about this or that, that you know by rote while your upper brain is going "FUCK!  I'm burning this!  Crap!  The other burner is too cold!  Shit, do I add the cumin now?  What fucking camera is on screen at the moment?"

Oh yeah.  I promised to kick down that coconut green curry soup recipe.  Well, I'm thinking it's time to make it again sometime this week, so not only can we enjoy it again and not waste all of the green curry paste, but I think it'll be mighty tasty again once we snag some lemon grass and figure out what galangal looks like.  If we're going to rant about it, might as well fake it as right and proper as possible.  I hate to make promises, since they're easily broken.  But expect a double post this week, I need me some Thai penicillin.

-Pook