Onion Rings

“The secret to making onion rings is confidence.”
—Tara Rook

What’s better than homemade onion rings at 3 in the morning? Well, I can think of one thing that could be better, but that’s another story.

My sister Tara is an expert at making onion rings, and I had the pleasure of trying them last weekend. Apparently the secret to making onion rings is confidence, but you’ll need a few other ingredients as well:

Onions
Breadcrumbs
Flour
Eggs
Confidence

Start off by cracking the eggs into a bowl and stir them up with a fork. Then combine the flour and breadcrumbs in another bowl. If you want to add salt, pepper, or other spices then this is the time to do it.

Slice the onions into rings—you can go for either thick or thin rings depending on your preference. Be sure to separate the onion slices so you’re not doubling up the rings.

 

While you are preparing the onions you can get some oil started on the stove. Make sure it’s nice and hot before you put the onions in.

Take the onion slices and dip them into the flour mixture, then into the eggs, then back into the flour. Now you’re ready to place them in the oil. If you are immersing them in oil then just throw them in and wait until they turn golden brown before removing them. And if you are using a shallow pan then make sure that one side has reached that golden-brown perfection before turning it over to finish it off.

They taste great served up with a sprinkle of salt and some Sriracha on the side for dipping. Just remember, if you don’t maintain confidence during this process your onion rings will be inferior!

Morel Mushroom Egg Scramble

When I woke up yesterday I knew that I wanted to use the morel mushrooms in the dinner I was going to cook for my parents that night, but I just couldn’t resist trying them out ahead of time. I decided that a morel mushroom egg scramble seemed fitting, and I set to work.

Scrambled eggs are indeed simple, but it is often the simplest tasks that require attention and skill to create something truly spectacular. I started off by cracking two eggs, adding a splash of milk, and whisking them up with a fork. The milk helps them to become light and fluffy, and if you can get fresh eggs it will taste even better.

I set the eggs aside and sliced up some of the morels. I also grated a small amount of cheddar cheese. 

Next I heated up some butter in a cast iron pan and sautéed the morels for a couple of minutes.

Turning the heat to around medium to medium-low will help keep the eggs from cooking too quickly and drying out. Add the eggs to the pan and use a utensil to push the eggs around in the pan. I generally keep the eggs moving the whole time so that you don’t end up with certain pieces cooked too much and others not enough. When the eggs are almost done but still a little moist add the grated cheese and continue to scramble the eggs. Adding just a little bit of cheese gives the eggs more flavor but doesn’t overload them with melted cheese. It also helps to fluff them up a bit.

And voila! A dish that is satisfying and delicious in its simplicity. The morels (or other mushrooms if you don’t have access to these spring fungi) add a hearty, meaty quality to the eggs that is much lighter than something like bacon or sausage. I recommend a little crushed red pepper or hot sauce to accompany these tasty eggs.

Backyard Morel Mushrooms

It’s morel season and we’re lucky enough to have these lovely little fungi popping up in our backyard. There is something very satisfying about being able to walk into the yard, pick something up off the ground, cook it, and eat it. Especially when it is as delicious as a morel mushroom.

 Mushrooms are fascinating to me. They are beautiful and strange, deadly and delicious, and always magical. Morels are particularly intriguing because of their appearance. These mushrooms appear as a honeycombed web of tan, gold, and brown—they seem almost alien, but damn are they tasty.

 After some mushroom hunting in the backyard we stored the mushrooms for future use. If you spot some and cannot eat them right away be sure to pick them and keep them in the fridge so that animals don’t eat them. Just don’t wash them before storing otherwise they will become mushy and unusable. We just threw ours in a bowl, loosely covered it with plastic wrap, and placed them in the fridge. Apparently the key to storing morels is to keep them cool, dry, and ventilated, so some mushroom hunting websites recommend keeping them in a loose paper bag.

Just as you can taste the ocean in seafood, you can taste the earth in mushrooms. That thick umami flavor connects you right to the soil with every bite. With our morels I made a morel and egg scramble with cheddar cheese for breakfast, and later on we enjoyed Cornish game hen with a morel sauce. Recipes coming soon!

Song of the Week: Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)

Quote of the Week: Mushrooms

"Nature alone is antique and the oldest art a mushroom."

--Thomas Carlyle

Song of the Week: Sex and Candy

Quote of the Week: Electric Kool-Aid

"Electric Kool-Aid will rain in the air like a typhoon, swizzle up every vein, 6,000 heads smashed out of their nuts, ricocheting off the walls like electric golf balls... The sky falls... But that's not all." 

--Tom Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

 

Song of the Week: Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)

Quote of the Week: Polar Bears and Mangoes

Hurley: Did either of you see a bald guy with slippers carrying a coconut come through here?


Charlie: No, but I did see a polar bear on roller skates with a mango.

Song of the Week: Schnitzled in the Negev

Quote of the Week: Apple Butter Toast

"We ordered out for mindless dribble,
Overused, half wit, ishkabibble,
Corner store junkies giving advice,
We ordered out for paradise.

Apple butter toast is nice,
Envisioned on a third wind twice, 
My fine breaded friend was denied by the vice,
And they missed the perfume."

--Disco Biscuits, "Mindless Dribble"

Thought for Food: Chocolate Air, Denny's, and Bacon Cologne

"I always try to eat locally, in that if something is within arm's reach I jam it in my mouth."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Thought for Food - Chocolate Air, Denny's & Bacon Cologne
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Eh, Put It on the Pizza

Sometimes you just need pizza. It's one of the greatest comfort foods of all time. Who doesn't love pizza? Seriously--having a party? Can't go wrong with pizza. Want to relax on the weekend and order in? Just pick up the phone and have pizza delivered to your door. Need all the essential food groups in one bite? Pizza!

But as convenient as it is to order in pizza, it's also a great food to prepare with friends. The other night I met up with a good friend to make pizza, sip on red wine, enjoy some music, and even watch a late-night home viewing of Romeo + Juliet. 

We started off with pizza dough from a local New Jersey bakery. If we were up for it we could have made it from scratch, but instead this dough served as a delicious and convenient alternative. After struggling with rolling out the dough for some time (we have issues), we began to prepare the toppings. Rather than using tomato sauce we loaded the pizza up with pesto, adding a thick layer of basily goodness to the dough. Next we topped it with lots of shredded mozzarella cheese, followed by sliced baby bella mushrooms, romano cheese and basil Italian sausage, and caramelized onions. 

After twenty minutes in the oven our golden-brown pizza was ready to be devoured. The flavors were delicious and even more satisfying knowing that we'd made it ourselves and each collaborated to the masterpiece. There are so many options for pizza toppings, but I have to say that our combination of pesto, sausage, mushrooms, and onions was pretty killer.
 

Speaking of communal cooking experiences with pizza, you may want to check out this demented video. If you like watching disturbing videos that you wish you could turn away from but simply can't because they are so weird that they hold your gaze for far too long (i.e., Jersey Shore) then feast your eyes upon this slowed-down version of a Olsen Twins' song "Gimme Pizza." Simply bizarre.

Song of the Week: Caramel Prisoner

Quote of the Week: A Self-Contained Universe

"A bowl of ramen is a self-contained universe, with life from the sea, the mountains, and the earth. All existing in perfect harmony. Harmony is essential. What holds it all together is the broth. The broth gives life to the ramen."

--Maezumi, Ramen Girl

Becky's Diner

Are you looking for the best blueberry pancakes ever? Then you need to head to Becky's Diner in Portland, Maine. Located at 390 Commercial Street, Becky's is serving up some serious, out-of-this-world blueberry pancakes. 

Basically that's all that I have to say. These pancakes are simply ridiculous. When they arrive, you think, oh these pancakes look pretty good. But then you look on the underside of the pancake and realize it's exploding with delightful, delicious Maine blueberries. Be sure to ask for real maple syrup to have a truly amazing pancake experience.

My other advice for Becky's is that if you want sausage, be sure to order the Italian sausage instead of regular sausage links. There's nothing like a nice piece of meat in the morning, and the regular sausage just doesn't compare to the Italian. It also tastes particularly good when doused in some of that real maple syrup.

Unfortunately I have no photos of my Becky's Diner breakfast, so you'll just have to trust me. Go to Becky's Diner. Eat blueberry pancakes. Be happy.

Quote of the Week: Cool Glass of Water

"The starting point, that first delight, the dot, could be anything in your experience. Suppose you are very thirsty, and you are presented with a glass of ice water. The first thought, or the dot, occurs when you hold the glass of ice water and you are about to drink, knowing that it is the real thing and it will quench your thirst. Then, holding the glass in your hand, you bring your arm close to your mouth, you bend your neck, you raise the glass, and you begin to drink. Having the idea, the connection, the first delight, the stroke is that you proceed with the appreciation of that basic goodness. Strangely enough, when you are very thirsty, while you are drinking a glass of water, your mind is almost completely without anxiety at all. You can try this yourself. While you're drinking a glass of water, you have no thoughts. You are purely synchronizing your mind and body together in drinking that nice, cool glass of water. That is the concept of the stroke."


--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala

Quote of the Week: Culinary Animals

“Humans are culinary animals: We cook our food, we mess around with it, we season it, we change it, and we have done so from the very earliest times. Indeed, cooking, like language or art, is one of those fundamental behaviors that define us as human and distinguish us from other animals.”

—Elisabeth Rozin

J’s Oyster

I require oysters in my life. It’s just a simple fact of my existence. You could call it an obsession, a passion, a love. The world as we know it could cease to exist, but I’d still be happy if I had some oysters.

Is oysterphilia a word? It should be.

So it was only natural that, being in Maine for my birthday, that I devoured a plate of oysters by midday. We’d heard that J’s Oyster was one of the best places to get oysters in Portland, and I immediately felt at home as soon as we walked through the door. For a bar at mid-afternoon on a Wednesday it was pretty full of people downing pints and devouring seafood.

And then I saw it—the stuff wet dreams are made of for any oyster lover. A heaping pile of oysters right in the center of the bar. It was beautiful. I could hardly contain myself.

To accompany my oysters I decided to get a Bombay Sapphire gin martini with a twist of lemon. Usually I go for olives in my martinis, but the lemon twist seemed like a better accompaniment to enhance and not overpower the oysters. 

Warning: The bartenders at J’s Oyster are incredibly generous with their martinis. In addition to serving an entire martini glass filled with gin, they also give you a little carafe on ice that is filled with whatever was left in the cocktail shaker. So essentially you get two martinis. Two martinis and a plate of oysters for my birthday? Yes, please.

J’s is also quite generous with their oysters. We ordered a dozen, but I swear there were at least 15 on the plate. We were definitely not complaining about that! The oysters, interestingly, were not from Maine waters but instead hailed from the James River of the Chesapeake Bay region. I had yet to try Chesapeake Bay oysters, and I’m always happy to try out oysters from different regions and get to know the flavors associated with particular waters.

In comparison to the more salty, briny Maine oysters, those from the James River have a more subtle salinity to them. They are milder in flavor and intensity than most Atlantic Ocean oysters but I’m still a fan. And the gin martini with a lemon twist? Definitely a great accompaniment to oysters. I highly recommend it for your next oyster experience.

After the oysters we were still in the mood for some seafood so we ordered a bucket of steamers. Steamers are soft-shell clams and require a proper procedure before they can be eaten. First take the clam out of the shell. They have this little appendage that extends out of the shell and is covered by a black membrane, so you need to shuck this membrane by holding the clam and peeling it off. It’s a little weird, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Dip the clam into a bowl of clam broth to get off any extra sand, then dip it in some butter, and eat up! These steamers were delicious—I’d never experienced them before and I’m hooked. They take a little work but are definitely worth it. 

If you’re in Portland, Maine, and looking for a great, casual bar on the port with a rustic atmosphere and incredible seafood, then J’s Oyster is the place to be. Just be sure to have an oyster for me…

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