Happy Holidays intrepid readers! Here is hoping that all has been bountiful and well. Thanksgiving was a comfortingly low key affiar this year and we only wound up making some basic artichoke cream cheese dip. The eating around has been at it's recently common trickle, with one somewhat odd trip for tepanyaki and hitting up common haunts that I've previously covered.
On a somewhat related front, I've been collaborating with my friends at www.dshootist.com on some video projects for The Germ short film festival. We've thrown around some really interesting ideas so far and the inspirational topic is food. So you know I've got a few tactless plots festering in my brain. Once we get into production, I'll hopefully have the presence of mind to share some behind the scenes stills.
But on to the reason for the season. Eating! In this particular case, Mrs. EOF cast dinner responsibility on me so that she could finish working on her finals. Digging through the freezer for something interesting, I found a nice little package with some wee sea scallops. As I'm pondering them, I find myself wondering maybe a cream soup? Upon looking for bacon, all I can find is a chub of hot breakfast sausage and it all starts to gel. Milder shellfish, milder unsmoked pork...I've got some seriously questionable new potatoes...screw it! Let us boldly assume we can meld this into a chowder!
The stuff:
1 lb Small to med sea scallops
1.5 lbs New potatoes chopped (about a dozen)
3/4 lb Hot breakfast sausage
6 tablespoons Unsalted butter
4 tablespoons Flour
1 qt Chicken stock
2 cloves Garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon Black pepper
Begin by heating up your soup pot to start browning and crumbling the breakfast sausage. For the potatoes, if they're good you can just peel them, since mine were almost vodka, I used the par-boil method where you boil the potatoes for 3-5 minutes and then rub the skins off with a paper towel. Chop the potatoes and add to the sausage. Stir through the sausage and cook on medium heat for another 5 minutes if par cooked or until just before they become tender 10-20 mins from raw depending on your chop-size. At this point add in the butter and stir until fully melted and then add the flour, garlic and pepper and stir until incorporated, 1-2 minutes. Now add in the quart of chicken stock and again stir thoroughly and bring to a simmer. Allow to simmer for 5 minutes to allow thickening. Add your thawed sea scallops and simmer another 5-10 minutes or until the scallops are still soft but pull apart easily in your burned fingers.
When you serve this, be prepared. Prepared to fight off your family and/or friends, because once you taste this, you'll be reserving seconds and all subsequent numbers of refills for yourself! And don't expect them to capitulate easily. I'm still nursing some pretty bad scratches and a mild concussion from my last batch.
Happy Holicookerying!
Pook
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Eating Out and Getting Hye
Oh happy day! Why so happy? Well, because my hangover isn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been. If you follow us on the Facebook as well, you'll have seen our braggart's photo of the the bounty of fine beers in our fridge. And together they're enough hangover fuel to keep us in the bathroom all day, working from both ends if you catch my drift. Bless Old Doc's for their well focused beer section and enough wine to drown a Frenchman.
But also important to hangover avoidance is having a good food base in your guts before you start upending one bottle after another. After another. And boy, oh boy did we ever find ourselves a wicked good base to fight the alcohol wars from! Just around the shopping complex, past the tiny tiny Ace Hardware, and the art gallery and rather near the Way of Japan dojo is Hye Deli.
I've known of Hye Deli since I was a tiny wee scumbag Fresnan. Alas, my folks were nowhere as foodly adventurous as their young regrettable spawn. So I have lain in ignorance these 30 years. But no more! I was craving deli, I was craving new and as always craving local. So we're off to get Hye!
The inside of the deli is the epitome of a generationally owned business. It's a little sparse, a little hodgepodge in the seating and decorated with pride in the old country. In this case the old country is Armenia, so you've got the maps and celebrity pictures with famous folks and oddly...judges? Yup, there are 3 or 4 celeb-type pics of well known law givers of Armenian descent. Hey, at least it's not another stupid photo of Bubba, right?
In the meantime, I am a hungry little princess! So hungry in fact that I'm essentially eating for two. So I order two sandwiches. One for me and the second for my psychic food baby that is constantly expanding my waistline. And this being a new culinary tradtion to explore, I really want to step outside of what I already know and try something unique.
But first I've gotta have me some falaffel! I fell in love with falaffel in Santa Cruz of all places, being ignorant at the time that there were several thriving Fresnan communities that love it as well. And it's been at least 3 or 4 years since I've had any, so I'm jonesing. Theirs was lovely. Crunchy exterior and warm, moist, well spiced center. All wrapped in a much more pliable and flat type of pita than I've ever experienced. Sadly tzatziki is Greek, but their tahini sauce was still quite good. Overall a wonderful revisiting of a favorite sandwich.
Also, it is worth noting that the folks at Hye prepare everything fresh as you order. So if you're in a rush, make sure to call your order in ahead of time and they'll have it piping hot and ready to go for you.
Round 2! Fight! So our second sandwich contains a meat new to my mouth-world. It's called soujouk. From what I've read, it is a popular type of dried sausage, often fried for breakfast. Somewhat similar to linguica, but larger and with an underlying kick of cumin. It's sandwich fixings are pretty standard, the awesome pita bread, lettuce, tomato and mustard. It was extremely delicious, although some might take pause at the unique structure of such a sandwich. It essentially came together like a salami burrito, which feels a little odd at first, until the the flavor pleasure overrides your confusion. I'm going to keep an eye out and see if I can buy some of the sausage for home use.
The Mrs. chose a polish sausage sandwich and went with a side of the falaffel. I really liked the presentation for the side dish. It was simple but orderly and well balanced. Just enough pita and tahini for the 3 falaffel patties. Equally tasty as the aforementioned falaffel. I can only assume that her sandwich was good, because she devoured it immediately and still won't speak of it to me. Like some crazy gold prospecter who found El Dorado and will kill to defend the secret. I'm almost afraid to recommend it, lest one of my dear readers and my beloved wind up in a monkey-knife fight. That's right, she fights with a monkey who is holding a knife.
What a life!
-Pook
But also important to hangover avoidance is having a good food base in your guts before you start upending one bottle after another. After another. And boy, oh boy did we ever find ourselves a wicked good base to fight the alcohol wars from! Just around the shopping complex, past the tiny tiny Ace Hardware, and the art gallery and rather near the Way of Japan dojo is Hye Deli.
I've known of Hye Deli since I was a tiny wee scumbag Fresnan. Alas, my folks were nowhere as foodly adventurous as their young regrettable spawn. So I have lain in ignorance these 30 years. But no more! I was craving deli, I was craving new and as always craving local. So we're off to get Hye!
The inside of the deli is the epitome of a generationally owned business. It's a little sparse, a little hodgepodge in the seating and decorated with pride in the old country. In this case the old country is Armenia, so you've got the maps and celebrity pictures with famous folks and oddly...judges? Yup, there are 3 or 4 celeb-type pics of well known law givers of Armenian descent. Hey, at least it's not another stupid photo of Bubba, right?
In the meantime, I am a hungry little princess! So hungry in fact that I'm essentially eating for two. So I order two sandwiches. One for me and the second for my psychic food baby that is constantly expanding my waistline. And this being a new culinary tradtion to explore, I really want to step outside of what I already know and try something unique.
But first I've gotta have me some falaffel! I fell in love with falaffel in Santa Cruz of all places, being ignorant at the time that there were several thriving Fresnan communities that love it as well. And it's been at least 3 or 4 years since I've had any, so I'm jonesing. Theirs was lovely. Crunchy exterior and warm, moist, well spiced center. All wrapped in a much more pliable and flat type of pita than I've ever experienced. Sadly tzatziki is Greek, but their tahini sauce was still quite good. Overall a wonderful revisiting of a favorite sandwich.
Also, it is worth noting that the folks at Hye prepare everything fresh as you order. So if you're in a rush, make sure to call your order in ahead of time and they'll have it piping hot and ready to go for you.
Round 2! Fight! So our second sandwich contains a meat new to my mouth-world. It's called soujouk. From what I've read, it is a popular type of dried sausage, often fried for breakfast. Somewhat similar to linguica, but larger and with an underlying kick of cumin. It's sandwich fixings are pretty standard, the awesome pita bread, lettuce, tomato and mustard. It was extremely delicious, although some might take pause at the unique structure of such a sandwich. It essentially came together like a salami burrito, which feels a little odd at first, until the the flavor pleasure overrides your confusion. I'm going to keep an eye out and see if I can buy some of the sausage for home use.
The Mrs. chose a polish sausage sandwich and went with a side of the falaffel. I really liked the presentation for the side dish. It was simple but orderly and well balanced. Just enough pita and tahini for the 3 falaffel patties. Equally tasty as the aforementioned falaffel. I can only assume that her sandwich was good, because she devoured it immediately and still won't speak of it to me. Like some crazy gold prospecter who found El Dorado and will kill to defend the secret. I'm almost afraid to recommend it, lest one of my dear readers and my beloved wind up in a monkey-knife fight. That's right, she fights with a monkey who is holding a knife.
What a life!
-Pook
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Eating Out WTF DUDE?
Hidey ho guys and gals! It's the long lost blogger finally crawling out from underneath his sticky rock, with a new blog design to boot! I have been absent, but not idle! For the most part anyway. Number one on my list has been learning how to run the Adobe suite that I recently acquired by going back over some older video footage and doing the old cut and splice. They're not currently foodcentric, but I'll make sure to post them once they're done.
In other news, I recently announced (much to my own terror) that I'm going to be putting on a show at the upcoming 2013 Rogue Festival! I don't want to give away too much too early, but it is going to be an EOF production, so grub is in the theme. I'm collaborating with my good friend Jody Patterson from Ratbox Productions on the project and I think we've got a fun concept to run with. We'll be putting out various media teases and promos as the day approaches, so stay tuned for that!
But on to the reason for the sneezin'. Now that the computer is stable again and I have something resembling storage space again, I've gone through my photo collections and weeded out a few shots that didn't make it to post time or a few series that just didn't get written. So I give unto you, the brickabrak file:
First from Coffee Bandits in Merced
FFA Mixer @ The Lamp Post
And another meal at Livingstone's
In other news, I recently announced (much to my own terror) that I'm going to be putting on a show at the upcoming 2013 Rogue Festival! I don't want to give away too much too early, but it is going to be an EOF production, so grub is in the theme. I'm collaborating with my good friend Jody Patterson from Ratbox Productions on the project and I think we've got a fun concept to run with. We'll be putting out various media teases and promos as the day approaches, so stay tuned for that!
But on to the reason for the sneezin'. Now that the computer is stable again and I have something resembling storage space again, I've gone through my photo collections and weeded out a few shots that didn't make it to post time or a few series that just didn't get written. So I give unto you, the brickabrak file:
First from Coffee Bandits in Merced
FFA Mixer @ The Lamp Post
And another meal at Livingstone's
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