Eating Out Peppermania!

Sick of all the pepper posts yet? Lordy, I hope not! Because it’s coming time soon to start germinating all of those seeds we mentioned back during X-mas! And life is showing no signs of slowing down my manic pepper seeking behavior. Beyond growing tons of and reading everything I can get my hands on about them, it seems that good ole Fresno is going to be putting on a Fresno Chile Festival. Notice the lack of an “I” at the end? That’s right, it’s a celebration of the species, not the dish. Up until now I assumed the name of the pepper had some relation to ash trees, like our town. But a bit of snooping uncovered that the pepper itself is named for Fresno, CA USA! Of course, the internet doesn’t yield any reasons as to why it was named for the ‘No… But hey, I’ll take it as a compliment anyway. That means I’m gonna have to give a little extra attention to my Fresno plant that I’m overwintering to have some fresh pods to show off this summer. Haven’t heard a date yet, but we’ll post it as soon as we know.

Why the sudden pepper nerdism? There’s a lot of good reasons. They’re fairly nutritious, they bring strong flavors to a dish, they’re very easy to grow and in a garden, some varieties add very striking color to your garden and are just a pleasure to look at. Ok…all that’s true, but there’s also a bit of a goofy macho edge to it too. It’s not like I want to eat pure capsaicin or anything. But I do get a bit of a chuckle when folks react very strongly to what I consider extremely mild heat. For example, I like to toss a couple habaneros into my scrambled eggs. That comes out hot. Usually right at my comfortable limit before I’d dive for the milk. And there is a nice, subtle mood altering effect of a pleasant burn. I liken it to the satisfaction one feels after a brief massage or work out. Sorta like a nice little glow radiating from the mouth and tummy out through the rest of one’s essence. Like heroin, but totally nothing like heroin. Here’s the recipe

Jalapeno Atomic Buffalo Turds

6 med to large jalapeno peppers
½ lb softened cream cheese
4 oz habanero jack cheese
2 tablespoons chopped Spanish chorizo (the hard kind! not raw Mexi chorizo, or cook it first)
6 slices Serrano ham
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and cover a baking pan with tin foil (your dishwasher will thank me!). Grab some latex or nitrile gloves for pepper chopping. They’re just jallys, but they’ll still give you a good sting if you scratch something before washing thoroughly. Take your peppers and lop off the stem end, about an 1/8th inch from where the stem connects to the pepper. Then slice the pepper down the middle. Take a teaspoon and scrape out the seeds and placental tissue (the white stuff) and set aside. Then chop your habanero cheese roughly and place in a bowl, add your softened cream cheese and the spices. Take a fork and mash everything together thoroughly. Alternately you could put this into your food processor and spin it up. Spoon or pipe your cheese mixture into your jalapeno boats until they’re about 2/3rds full. With 6 of your peppers, dot them with pieces of your chopped Spanish chorizo and the other 6, wrap them around the pepper, trying to make sure to tie up the open end of the pepper. Place on the baking pan and toss into the oven for about 15 minutes, or until the ham begins to crisp on top.

Voila! The pepper will still be a bit crunchy and bring a nice green flavor that’s blanketed by the spicy herbed cheese. Depending on if you used the cayenne or not, you’ll find the cheese is actually more spicy than the jalapeno. The regular recipe is actually very mild. Mild enough to introduce non-chile fanatics to a fun little appetizer. And good enough for Rockabilly impresarios Motel Drive to slake their hunger on the road. Make sure to check them out this weekend at the Babylon!

-Pook

Eating Out In The Yard

The back yard!  And it's breakfast time!  How often in the winter time can one say that more than half the ingredients that you're using came from your overwintered garden.  But fortunately we've still got some peppers on the overwintering plants that are slowly ripening in the Okie greenhouse.  And there are a good number of herbs that can withstand winter's chill, as long as you keep them from freezing.  So what did we make?

Red Hot Egg O'Muffins!

2 eggs
2 english muffins
2 pats of butter + 1 tablespoon
2 habanero peppers
2 tablespoons chives chopped
1 pinch each salt and pepper
4 thin slices cheddar cheese

It's a pretty simple scramble.  Slice the peppers thin and toss into a bowl, add your 2 eggs, the chives, salt and pepper.  Beat with a fork or whisk briefly.  Add your +1 tablespoon of butter to a preheated pan and after it foams, add your eggs and cook.  Toss your muffins into the toaster and just before they're fully toasted, top them with the cheddar cheese to melt.  Then put your scrambled eggs onto your muffins and get ready to sweat!  Garnish with fresh radishes and an orange from the garden and you're ready to face the horrors of a new day!

-Pook

Eating Out The Last Post Of The First Decade

And so as 2010 winds down to a frigid and entertaining finale, we take some time to reflect up on the year that was.  To look back on who we were then and who we have grown to become today.  To assess our triumphs and tragedies and try to put them all into perspective.

It's amazing how much life can change.  Back in 2000 I was living in Los Angeles, a good enough cook to feed myself but hardly worthy of braggadocio.  The lions share of my writing duties entailed editing or entirely re-writing poorly laid out surveys for a telefundraising company.  And the height of my performance skills was being able to lie to a boss or a girlfriend with equal facility.  And if you'd told me that I'd wind up back in Fresno living the life I do today...well let's say that I would have considered it unlikely.

Even just a year ago, Cap'n Scurvy's Apocalypse Hoedown Revival was still a conceptual script.  The majority of my writing were short stories of such a disgusting nature that one reader commented "I can kinda taste poo in my mouth".  I was certainly studying the ins and outs of the foodly arts, but again, I was in my infancy of experimentation.  Learning how to make a roux, developing a taste for shallots, altering a few recipes found online and being brave enough to attempt to serve them to friends and family.

And that brings us to this year.  Which I believe is a rare and wonderful one, personally.  First off, I'm still in love, which is quite nice.  Then, the Hoedown opened to warm reviews and even set an attendance record for the Rogue Festival (no pressure for next year).  And we landed a weekly food spot on Chuck Leonard's Central Valley Talk Live!  Which, besides being asstons of fun, getting to shake my butt on camera while cooking for an appreciative studio audience, I've also gotten to meet some of the most interesting people involved in the Tower District and the greater Fresno art scene.  Hell!  I bartended the opening of an art gallery!  Whodathunk a moment like that would creep into my life? 

And that brings us around to the blog.  We're almost at a full year of depraved food themed nonesense dribbling from my fingers and flung out to an uncaring internet.  It's rather shocking to me that I've been able to keep up in some respectable manner with providing content.  Initially the idea was to focus solely on snarky food reviewing and some insight into where our food comes from.  Alas, not working a "real job" tends to leave us with a few dollars too few to run up to Erna's Elderberry House for the $159 prix fixe menu, or over to Trelio for a 3 hour wine sampling orgy.  So, we've dribbled in those that we could as the meals made their way into our lives.  The other direction got fairly de-railed after the farmers market debacle.  The short lesson being, that a high enough percentage of people are unlikeable enough to make interviews unpalatable.  But a few requests from a kind Canadian couple for some tastier vegetarian type dishes gave me the inspiration and drive to start highlighting some of our favorite dishes that we cook at home and some of the other local sources we get the ingredients from.

And sure there have been lows.  As any writer who has ever whined on a blog has said, some days the words just aren't there.  Or in some cases are too drunk or too trite by the light of day to post.  A couple week to two week breaks, in which I could regroup creatively and muster up a post that hopefully we both find entertaining.  If not, it's often said that I speak merely to hear myself talk, so it's not so odd to type merely to see my thoughts. 

It's been a long and sweet year.  Many triumphs were achieved, many morels were eaten in a brandy cream sauce and many new and odd foods were brought into my culinary balliwhack.  And despite any bumps in the road, this year really made me feel accomplished as a creative, shaved, ape.  Maybe this year I can even connive some of the fancy upper crust bloggy types to link back to the ole EOF in place of pages that haven't been updated since 2008, but probably not.

And thats not so bad.  It was the intention upon creation for Eating Out Fresno to be a crass and boisterous blog.  A place where the only censorship is self imposed and only then when the rambling doesn't serve the subject of the post or the flavor of the writing.  And thats certainly not for everyone.  But I'm overjoyed that you, dear readers believe that EOF is for you.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your attention this year.  And I hope that I can remain interesting enough to keep you enraptured for years to come.

-Pook