Double seafood is fucking awesome. If you don’t dig it, you’re a Communist. USA! USA! USA!

(Both of these were taken with my camera phone.)

This is a nasty looking photo. It’s a stripped bass (head severed) with three mussels in it’s gullet!

Cleaning squid is by far my favorite task. I found this little guy inside a squid!

Here’s an article in the NY Times about Miracle Fruit that was a cover story in the dining section today. Miracle fruit is a berry that, once eaten, changes your tastebuds for about an hour. Say you eat a lemon, it will taste like lemonade.

The article features one of my friends, Franz (who has blogged here before), who introduced me to miracle fruit through one of his miracle fruit tasting parties. It was like a food orgy. Franz rules and you should check out his project StreetWars (which I used to be apart of), the OG IRL watergun assassination game. It’s coming back to NYC this Summer.

You can tell someone is a restaurant cook just by looking at how fucked up their hands are. If you are an avid cook, then chances are you’ve hurt yourself doing it. Either with a knife or through heat. This isn’t through any lack of skill, shit just happens. And the more you cook, the more likely you are to fuck your shit up.

So, there are three things you can do with your knife: Stab (and in an out motion with the tip), slice (a back and forth sawing motion) and chop (and up and down motion as with an axe). Guess which method I used to break down this thumb?

If you guessed chop, then you are right. You know when you are dealing with an onion and sometimes you get a weird layer underneath the crispy skin and before the to-be-delicious flesh? A kind of leathery layer? Well my paring knife slipped of that layer and landed into my fingers (I got two fingers with one motion). This was on a Wednesday afternoon and I had to come up with multiple ways to keep it safe and clean for the rest of the work week, but still be able to use that digit.

Here are some products in my arsenal for minor mishaps:

Continue reading…

Here’s what Wikipeida says:

Gluttony (Latin, gula)

Derived from the Latin, gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In the Christian religions, it is considered a sin because of the excessive desire for food, or its withholding from the needy.

Depending on the culture, it can be seen as either a vice or a sign of status. Where food is relatively scarce, being able to eat well might be something to take pride in (although this can also result in a moral backlash when confronted with the reality of those less fortunate). Where food is routinely plentiful, it may be considered a sign of self control to resist the temptation to over-indulge.

Early Church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony (Okholm 2000), arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. He went so far as to prepare a list of six ways to commit gluttony, including:

• Praepropere - eating too soon
• Laute - eating too expensively
• Nimis - eating too much
• Ardenter - eating too eagerly
• Studiose - eating too daintily
• Forente - eating too fervently

The “obsessive anticipation of meals” is sending me and OCD housewives like Martha Stewart to hell. I hope I don’t have to hang out with them there.

In my America, douchebaggery would be a sin.

Also, I agree that dainty, or picky eaters (with or without the fetal alcohol syndrome), should be sent to the third circle of hell. This includes vegans who request vegan mashed potatoes in the middle of Friday night dinner service, people who order their $27 protein well done and this woman who came in claiming she was a vegetarian / pescitarian but then said she sometimes ate poultry in teeny tiny amounts. What the fuck is the difference between eating a bite of chicken and the whole fucking thing? That’s like me saying, “Oh, I’m not a cannibal, I only had one finger.”

My friend Mechanic writes:

dear chewy at chew food?

what is the difference between chinese soy sauce and japanese soy sauce? or for that matter, all soy sauces from different countries? are they all the same? are they very different? i don’t get it. if i get soy sauce with my sushi can i put it on chinese food?

please let me know,

soy confused

Oh, sirry lound eye! There are many different kinds of soy sauce, made with slightly different ingredients.

I’m not gonna lie: I looked it up on Wikipedia for you. But I will give you the ADD version here.

Japanese soy sauces often contain wheat (thus making it not friendly with those with gluten allergies), whereas Chinese ones contain mostly soy and little or no other grains.

There are different colors and sweetness levels of soy sauce. You’ll often see in recipes that cook’s recommend tamari, or Japanese dark soy sauce. Tamari is wheat free, darker in color and richer in flavor. I try to keep both regular Kikkoman and a bottle of tamari in my cupboard. You taste the normal soy sauce and you go, “Oh! That’s soy sauce!” and then you go and taste the tamari and you go, “Oh! That’s fucking delicious soy sauce!”. Japanese soy sauces generally are made from equal amounts of water and soybeans, which makes it sweeter and gives it a higher alcohol content.

Then there’s that Chinese soy sauce that derives it’s amino acids from old human hair! I think rich Western white women try to eat this to get thick, lush, shiny straight hair.

Other countries that produce their own versions of soy sauce are Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea and Indonesia.

There’s also a trend to produce more low-sodium or light soy sauce, which tastes like crap and will make your food taste like crap. You might as well just dip your sashimi into urine.

Can you use the soy sauce that you get from a Japanese restaurant on food you get from a Chinese restaurant? Probably. Most of them use Kikkoman brand anyway. Unless it’s a low-end Chinese joint, where they often use some salty brown liquid that isn’t made from soy at all, but from water, salt, msg and brown. But it does have a cute panda on the packet! Like Alton Brown says, it’s always important to read the ingredient list on your soy sauce.

You could always go get a brick of ahi tuna, make some steamed veggies and purchase a dozen bottles of various soy sauces (which are available in any Chinatown grocer for about $1.50 a bottle) and have a soy sauce tasting party.

This kind of soy sauce contains 5% Dolemite.

Wok the Fuck? (animated video link)

Serving up a big bowl of hilarity.

One of the reasons I love the Japanese is because they do adorable things with food. At SeriousEats.com they found this website that shows you how to make cute animals and other things out of hot dogs.

Japanese moms seems to go the extra mile for their kids. Western moms gotta get their shit together. Check out these bento boxes:

See more like these at CookingCute.com

The hot dog: Not just edible in a phallic shape anymore.

Sorry I haven’t been posting as much lately. I’ve been working about 60 hours a week at The Restaurant. Here’s something to tide you over:

Twenty way to use vinegar.

Vinegar: Not just for douchebags. 

My problem with Starbucks is that they do not have simple syrup out on their little fixin’s bar. I see people order ice coffees and put white or raw sugar in it. I cringe at the thought of getting a mouthful of grainy, sweet sugar while trying to chillax and enjoy a refreshing iced coffee on a hot day. Especially since you just paid $4 for it. You have to ask for their “classic flavored” syrup when ordering, I’m pretty sure they charge you for it, and you don’t even get to control the amount they put in. Big mistake, Starbucks. You’ve made The List.

The place around the corner from me, The Coffee Den, is where I get my iced coffees from. They are kinda expensive ($3 for a large) and the coffee isn’t the best. However, they have simple syrup out which I greatly appreciate.

Simple syrup is so named because it’s really effing simple. Sugar + water + heat = deliciousness. You can make it during a commercial break of Hell’s Kitchen and it’s extremely hard to eff up. And because of this newfangled thing called “science”, the syrup is actually about 20% sweeter than the OG sugar.

Take equal parts sugar and water and heat in a sauce pan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves. You can add more sugar if you want it thicker. Store at room temperature or in the fridge for several months. (I use raw sugar, which I just found out isn’t actually better for you.)

Make flavored simple syrup by throwing in a cinnamon stick, a vanilla pod, some lemongrass or a few citrus rinds. Put it in iced beverages, adult beverages, over fruit or whatever else Google tells you you can do with it.

R. Kelly is currently working on a song about sex and simple syrup.

I am beginning to wonder why most Food Network cooks tell you to use olive oil for everything.

You see, I just bought a new drum of extra virgin olive oil (organical Fairway brand) and that shit is flavorful. So flavorful that it can overwhelm your food and palate.

Plus, olive oil has a relatively low smoke point, which doesn’t make it ideal for high heat cooking (I’m staring at a recipe right now that is telling me to coat beef in olive oil before searing it).

At The Restaurant, we use an oil blend (I think it’s mostly veg and some soy) for 99% of things. I asked Chef why they use both the olive oil and the blend for dressing salads and he said it’s because he doesn’t want just the taste of olive oil to come through. Makes sense.

Neutral-flavored oils are: Corn, peanut, canola, grapeseed, sunflower, safflower and light olive oil (”light” referring to the taste, not the fat or calorie content).

Here’s a handy little guide for your cooking needs. Fuck what the recipes say and go with science. From whatscookingamerica.net:

Scienticians say too much evoo can cause
automatonitis and corporate shillitis