Fried Butter on a Stick

That's right. Fried butter on a stick. If you didn't think Denny's Baconalia (not to mention their Mac 'n Cheese Big Daddy Patty Melt), the Heart Attack Grill, or various Epic Meal Times and Man v. Food episodes were enough evidence to prove America's obsession with eating fatty, artery-clogging goodies, then behold, fried butter on a stick!

Seriously.

It's a stick of butter, battered, fried, and drizzled with glaze. And then you eat it. And then you die.  

I can't embed the video, but you can check it out at this YouTube link. I think my favorite part is how the reporter giggles when her colleague says "heart-attack inducing." ...Would you eat it?

Quote of the Week: Butter

“When I think about forever I get upset. Like the Land O’Lakes butter has that Indian girl sitting holding a box, and it has a picture of her on it holding a box with a picture of her on it holding a box. Have you ever noticed that?”

—Sally Draper, Mad Men

Maine Lobstah

Who goes to Maine on her spring break? This girl, that’s who. While other people might choose to sun themselves on warm beaches and drink tropical cocktails, I headed north to Portland, Maine, to spend a week off from school with my Maine family.

The first night that I arrived in Maine lobster was on the menu. I enjoy lobster, but I haven’t really engaged in the whole steaming a live lobster. Being in Maine, however, basically requires that lobster be eaten, so it was a necessary endeavor.

We started out with live lobsters. They are such strange creatures—like giant sea bugs that just happen to taste amazing if you can only crack through their tough exterior.

Maddy was very intrigued by the lobsters…

 

Cooking lobsters, of course, means killing lobsters. It’s rare in this day and age to have a close experience with the food that you are about to eat. So much of our food is preprocessed and packaged—it passes through multiple hands before it actually gets to your table, which seriously deteriorates any direct connection with your food. But with lobsters it’s different. Even though it’s unlikely that you would be out on the boat actually catching the lobster, you do get to interact with it before it becomes food. And by interact I mean take away its life.

It’s not so bad really—just grab the crustaceans and throw them in a pot with a little water to steam them. I didn’t feel particularly guilty, but it was weird to lift up the lid and see the lobsters, which so recently moved around their little claws and bodies suddenly be so still. And so red. It reminds me of when Bebe in Kill Bill 2 explains how she killed her fish, Emilio—one moment he was flapping on the carpet and then after she stepped on him he wasn’t. “Is that not the perfect visual image of death?” asks Bill, “a fish flapping on the carpet, and a fish not flapping on the carpet.” The same might be said for the lobster—a lobster waving its claws, and a lobster not waving its claws.

 

After we were done steaming our lobsters it was time to eat, but unfortunately there were no lobster crackers in sight. So what do the men do? Bust out tools of course—all of a sudden there emerged hammers, pliers, screwdrivers…you name it. So while they bashed away at their lobsters with the tools my sister artfully and skillfully helped me cut open the lobster tail with a pair of kitchen scissors. Aren’t the social constructions of gender simply fascinating?
 
The lobster meat itself was delicious. I started off with the tail but soon discovered that my favorite parts of the lobster were the joints and claws. There is something about the claw and joint meat that just seems to capture the essence of the ocean a little bit better. I love the taste of the sea concentrated into food—it’s like a taste of the infinite possibilities of that mysterious, watery realm.

If you find yourself in Maine, eating lobster is a must. You definitely don’t want to miss out on devouring one of this strange yet delicious sea creatures...just don't forget the lobster crackers.

Coffee Talk

It's like butta...

An Off-the-Hook-Rook Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is, of course, one of the best holidays of the year, especially for a foodie. Almost every holiday is an opportunity to cook copious amounts of food, but Thanksgiving revolves around it. Families and friends come together, create a mess in the kitchen, and cook enough food to feed an army. This year Thanksgiving dinner was definitely off the hook at the Rook house.

So what was on the menu? Tasty snacks, bread and butter, salad, soup, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, cranberry relish, ambrosia, banana pudding, and raspberry bars. Yes.

The turkey was going to take about four hours to roast, so around noon I popped open a beer and prepared the guest of honor, cleaning it, patting the skin dry, coating it with my special combination of butter, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and stuffing it with apples, onions, garlic, herbs, carrots, and celery.

While I got the turkey ready, Tara put out a nice repast of cheese, crackers, olives, and cocktail shrimp. No Thanksgiving is complete without snacks to munch on throughout the day before the big meal.

 

This year we decided to break up the meal a little bit. When I took the turkey out the oven to rest for a while before carving it, we devoured a first course of bread and butter, soup, and salad. Tara baked the bread--it was fabulous. The bread was hearty, warm, and perfect for dipping into the amazing soup that Tara also made. 

The soup was a combination of vegetable stock, carrots, buttercup squash, butternut squash, apples, and a variety of spices. After allowing all the ingredients to cook through until soft, Tara pureed it and served it with just a little bit of sour cream on top. It had a hint of spiciness and lovely flavors that invoked the autumnal season.

My mom prepared the salad--a waldorf salad with a bed of romaine lettuce that was topped with green grapes, apples, celery, and walnuts. The light dressing she tossed it in was delicate and refreshing. Again, it was a perfect representation of fall flavors.

All in all, the bread, soup, and salad were a perfect way to pregame for the main course. We also opened up a delightful bottle of red wine to start off the meal.

Next up was all the traditional fixings for a Thanksgiving meal. The turkey turned out just the way I like it--the skin was nice and crispy and the meat was still moist. I carved it successfully and served it up, snacking a bit on pieces of skin along the way.

Sonya is the queen of mashed potatoes, and as usual she prepared a perfect dish of creamy mashed potatoes. She uses red potatoes and leaves the skin on, also adding some garlic and half-and-half to make it the right consistency. As always it was delicious.

Last year I made a cranberry relish with a recipe that my friend Melissa gave me, and it was so good that my mom requested I make it again this year. The recipe consists of bourbon, shallots, orange zest, sugar, black pepper, and cranberries--it's slightly sweet but still has a nice bite from the bourbon, shallots, and orange zest. This year we decided to try it with spiced rum since we already had some on hand and it added a little different flavor but was quite delightful.

Tara made the ambrosia salad this year. Ambrosia is kind of a 1950s' throwback, but we still make it every year. It's definitely a Rook tradition. Our ambrosia consists of mini marshmallows, shredded coconut,  sour cream, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and maraschino cherries. Somehow this year the maraschino cherries didn't make it in the ambrosia, but as always it was sweet in that way that only ridiculous doses of high-fructose corn syrup can create. An American classic.

We always make the stuffing (or dressing rather since we don't cook it in the turkey) using our Grandma's recipe. The recipe isn't written down anywhere, we just do it by intuition. The basics are bread, pork sausage, celery, onions, salt, pepper, and Bell's seasoning. This year I took over preparing the stuffing--tearing up chunks of wheat bread and mashing it together with the other ingredients until it was combined evenly. When it was done the top was lightly browned and crispy and the inside was soft, hearty, and perfectly seasoned. It might have been the best stuffing I've made yet.

We usually try out different vegetable sides every year, so my mom made a brussel sprouts dish using a recipe by Chef Ric Orlando. She opted for the balsamic roasted brussel sprouts, tossing the little strange vegetables in olive oil, garlic, shallots, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, salt, and pepper and then roasting them until tender. It was a lovely new addition to the more traditional aspects of our Thanksgiving dinner.

I had completely forgotten about gravy until I went to carve the turkey and saw the the gravy boat was sitting on the table. I was about to give up on the idea of making gravy but instead placed the giblets and turkey neck in a small sauce pan and covered it with water, allowing the water to come to a boil while I carved the turkey. I melted some butter and added flour to create a rue, removed the giblets from the water, and mixed it all together, hoping that it would reduce quickly. It didn't get as thick and flavorful as I would have liked it, but when it was close enough I poured it into the gravy boat and we were ready for dinner. 

After dinner we were so stuffed that there was nothing else Tara and I wanted to do except lie around and watch Labyrinth. After an hour and a half of David Bowie, psychedelic scenery, and wacky Jim Henson puppets, we emerged to find out parents noshing on dessert. Ever had banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery? If not, you need to try it. The pudding is nice and creamy with pieces of banana and Nilla wafers mixed throughout it. Covering the pudding was a layer of whipped topping. We were promised it would be phenomenal, and it definitely was. Tara also made some delicious raspberry bars. Normally we would have some sort of apple or pumpkin pie, but this year the pudding and raspberry bars were more than enough.

 

Thanksgiving is a great holiday for eating rich food, raising a toast, and giving thanks for all that we have in life. I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving as much as we did. Cheers!

The Perfect Turkey

Do you want to know the key to a cooking a perfect turkey? Butta. Of course we all know that butter makes everything better, so it makes sense that it would enhance the already delicious star of every Thanksgiving dinner. I take turkey very seriously. Come on, how many times a year does one actually cook a turkey? Just once a year, so it better be done right. 

First I take a stick of butter and let it come to room temperature so it's nice and soft. Then I take fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme, chop them up, and mix them in to the butter. While adding parsley would make it a more poetic recipe, I've been told that parsley doesn't actually work well with turkey, so I just stick to the three other herbs.

Then comes the fun part. Take the butter and smear it all over the turkey--really coat everything. Your hands will get messy, so my advice is to just enjoy it. Who doesn't love the feel of creamy butter all over your hands? Sexy. You should also lift the skin of the turkey and put some butter underneath the skin so that it can melt into the turkey breast and help to keep it moist. I save a little butter to put into the cavity as well.

My family prefers to cook the stuffing in a separate dish rather than in the cavity of the bird, but I still like to enhance the tastiness of the turkey by stuffing it with some savory items. I  chop up apples, onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, add some more sage, rosemary, thyme, and butter, and then stuff the bird with the mixture. The intention is not to eat this concoction but to allow the flavors to seep into the meat while it roasts in the oven. Delicious. And when it's all done, voila! The perfect turkey. The butter makes the skin extra golden and crispy and the flavors of the herbs and stuffing mixture give it that quintessential autumn loveliness that a Thanksgiving turkey should embody.   

Until next Thursday I'll be dreaming of golden, buttery skin and savory turkey meat--anticipating that moment when a foodie fantasy will become reality. Here's wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and, of course, tasty Thanksgiving. Cheers!

Quote of the Week: Ambrosia Under a Tree

"Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing room, is ambrosia eating under a tree."

—Elizabeth Russell