food blog

All right! The masses have spoken, and dictated my dinner!

If I go to hell for this, it’s your fault.

Also, you may notice in that photo that those two lobsters cost me $25. Bastards weren’t even on sale anymore! They would have been $12 if I hadn’t dilly-dallied and waited to buy them. Now I’m broke AND morally reprehensible!

I made sure to remove myself from the room during the main part of the process, so I don’t have any photos until right at the end. I asked Ian specifically to use DFW’s recipe (well – the very standardized cooking process that DFW presumably got from the Main Lobster Festival documentation and recounted in that essay: “You need a large kettle w/ cover, which you fill about half full with water [the standard advice is that you want 2.5 quarts of water per lobster]. Seawater is optimal, or you can add two tbsp salt per quart from the tap. It also helps to know how much your lobsters weigh. You get the water boiling, put in the lobsters one at a time, cover the kettle, and bring it back up to a boil. Then you bank the heat and let the kettle simmer—ten minutes for the first pound of lobster, then three minutes for each pound after that. [This is assuming you’ve got hard-shell lobsters, which, again, if you don’t live between Boston and Halifax, is probably what you’ve got. For shedders, you’re supposed to subtract three minutes from the total.] The reason the kettle’s lobsters turn scarlet is that boiling somehow suppresses every pigment in their chitin but one. If you want an easy test of whether the lobsters are done, you try pulling on one of their antennae—if it comes out of the head with minimal effort, you’re ready to eat.”) just for the irony.

I think this is the lobster’s digestive bits? Apparently you can eat it, though it’s probably not particularly healthy, since it contains all the gross gunk that the lobster ate but didn’t want to digest, or something like that? Anyway – I learned all of this just now, in trying to look it up. At the time, I just ate it. It was delicious.

Ian, I think, got a girl-lobster. His didn’t have this giant mass of gunk, but instead it had what I’m pretty sure was roe. I think my green poison tasted better, honestly.

Deliciousness Verdict? Lobster’s pretty good. Crab might be better, though. I’m willing to allow someone else to this for me again someday, but not until it goes on sale again. I am a murderer. I can live with it.

Also this weekend, I decided I wanted to try to re-find this one amazing elusive Chinese buffet I ate at once with my boss. It’s the biggest I’ve ever seen, and surprisingly decent. Mostly I’m jonsing for their cotton candy ice cream again; I won’t lie. I thought I’d found it, and Ian and I drove half an hour to get there, but it was the wrong one. We probably should not have stayed.

That’s right: genuine Chinese pizza. (Yeah, yeah – don’t make fun. This is like my fourth plateful, after I was already giddy and high on deep-fried-everything-else. The pizza was a last resort.) They also had mac & cheese, a disconcertingly huge number and variety of clams and oysters (I tried one of every single type, including the kind that was topped with what looked like cheese but I think was actually some kind of Bearnaise or hollandaise sauce or something? I also woke up at 5am this morning with a herd of evil rhinoceroses trying to claw their way out of my belly. I spent 40 minutes or so kneeling curled up on the ground with my forehead on the floor. Aw, I’m pretty sure the two things had very little to do with each other.), more things fried than you could possibly be currently imagining, pink cheesecake, giant gummy flavorless knobs of what I think they were trying to pretend was sushi, and piles and piles of crab legs. Also some Chinese food.

It’s funny: when we first pulled into the parking lot and I said, “no, this isn’t the right place, but let’s just stay anyway,” Ian added that at least the parking lot was packed – it appeared to be a popular place. The food must be good. Then we walked in and saw these customers. I’m not making fun of these people. Or, I am, but I don’t want to be too mean about it. But I knew these people. I was familiar with these people. These were Topekans. Not just Topekans: these were Furrs customers. Sunday-afternoon-earlybird-dinner Furrs customers. A well-built woman stocking up on onion rings and cheese sticks and loudly informing her friend that she didn’t like it when her food touched her other food. An older woman drinking a glass of rose (yes!) and talking about her medical problems. The old man in the booth behind us who kept yelling at his server. The couple in the booth on the other side who had figured out the trick, how to cheat the system, and were eating only the crab legs and absolutely nothing else (and had apparently also brought their own nut cracker tools with them). Every time I looked up, Ian was giggling in nervous embarrassment.

Deliciousness Verdict? Not so much. Empire Buffet in Woonsocket, Rhode Island is not recommended.

But no making fun of the Chinese pizza, you guys. That shit got devoured.

Okay, listen – you know how almost always when Ian makes me food I claim it’s the best thing he’s ever made? Well. Just for the sake of fairness? Don’t ever make these shrimp. I think the problem was probably that they were pre-de-veined, so there was more meat open to the brine. But they were, you know, salty. Too salty for me, which, if you’ve ever eaten a meal with me, you probably realize means they were VERY VERY SALTY. [cough cough insert Isley video clip here, cough]

Just wanted to share that Ian makes some shit shrimp!

That is all!!

FOOD BLAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWG!!

Thank you Iman for your help and expertise in getting this mission so successfully accomplished, and for not slicing the top of that glass bottle off with a carving knife. The chicken could have been crispier or garlicier or black-soy-ier, according to Isley, but according to me, who did not know what it was supposed to taste like, it was pretty great anyway. Also, there was an egg on top, so, plus. The salad, however, was even better and super-easy and must be made again for sure.

Ooops. Another Me-Made-Catch-Up:

Wednesday-Thursday:

Friday, in three photos, since it was so damn good:

Saturday-Sunday:

I made effin bagels today.

Who makes bagels? I do, that’s who. I am a madman.

Somebody go tell Ian to start foodblogging again already.

A bunch of the restaurants around here have lobster mac & cheese on the menu. I don’t know whether this is really an east coast thing, or if this is, like, a 2009 thing? But anyway, places I’ve been visiting recently have it, and it sounds GREAT, so I always order it. And it’s…good. But I always end up wishing it was better. So I figured…I have $79 I don’t need! I can MAKE it better!

Parmesan reggiano, fontina, white cheddar, gruyère – about $5 each
Three lobster tails – $15
Tub of crab – $15
Celery – $29

The fontina, incidentally, is splendid at lunch with ham.

The thing is, I’ve read Consider the Lobster. I’ve considered it. I can’t kill a live lobster. I know, I know, I’m a terrible hypocrite – I’m perfectly willing to snarf pre-killed lobster, not to mention pre-killed crab, pre-killed fontina, pre-killed cow, blah blah. But, though Ian has repeatedly professed his (disturbingly insistent) willingness to kill one for me, and has informed me that he’s done this before at someone else’s house, I don’t want anyone to kill a lobster in my house. I don’t want to buy a lobster that will be killed in my name. So it was either the lobster meat they had at the store ($36 A MOTHERFUCKING POUND!!!!) or frozen lobster tails. The frozen lobster tails seemed wildly cheap at $5 each, so I got a few of those. Out of wild and obviously totally unnecessary paranoia, I also got a tub of crab meat, just in case, and figured I’d have mega-awesome crab salad sandwiches for lunch for a couple of days instead.

Shocker, I know, but…this is $15 worth of frozen lobster tail meat:

No crab salad sandwiches for me! But actually, I think using half-crab was a good thing: maybe it’s because they were tails, or warm-water tails, or because they were frozen, or because the crab was local and fresher, or something, but…the crab was frankly more flavorful and sweet and tasty than the lobster. Next time, I’ll go full-crab. It was easier, at least, if not cheaper. The lobster you had to skewer, and steam, and open (the recipe directions for this segment read, in their entirety, “Steam the lobsters [15 minutes], cool, pick out the meat.” I don’t know whose delicate hands were about to “pick out the meat” from THEIR lobsters, but mine were soldered shut and had to be smashed in half between my meaty paws before stingily surrendering their two bites of meat each), before then cooking again via sauté in butter. The crab came pre-cooked and in a little plastic tub. It didn’t even have a shrink-wrap seal to pull off! One good thing about cooking lobster, though: they change color! That’s cute.

(Until, you know, you Consider it, and remember that it’s because they’re burning, like a sunburn, and if they had been alive at the time you STILL WOULD HAVE SKEWERED THEM FIRST and then you would have STEAMED THEM TO DEATH.)

So I kind of made the recipe up, combining a few different ones, but the main one I used was, as the cute story goes, from a lobster fisherman’s blog! The dirty little secret that Ian does not yet know, of course, is that he uses Martha Stewart’s mac & cheese recipe and just adds lobster. He should have guessed by now, frankly. It always comes back to Martha when I do the foodblogs.

So. Was it better than the restaurant versions? Yes. I totally think it was. Was it still kind of disappointing, though? Sigh. Yes. Good things about it? The celery, the selection of cheeses, definitely the crab. Bad things? It wasn’t creamy/ liquidy enough (though, ahem, perhaps that’s because I used an entire pound of pasta), and I would have added more cayenne, more black pepper, more salt, and maybe some like Old Bay or something? Ian was in charge of the cheese sauce and I don’t think he added enough STUFF. Then again, I had a monster cold, so I also just kind of couldn’t taste anything. The recipe also recommended nutmeg, which I don’t really generally like and also couldn’t find our bottle of anyway, so we skipped. But I think it needed SOMETHING that was lobster-specific, you know? I really think the Old Bay is a good idea, though I didn’t think of it at the time. Just a tiny bit so you can taste something, but not enough so you’re like, “wtf, is that Old Bay?” Also, more salt and less colds. And not less pasta but more sauce. And probably also a green. Asparagus or something? Or tomato or red pepper? Tomato, probably, rather than red pepper. Red pepper might overpower the fish, which is vaguely delicate and I guess the whole point. And seasoning or something in the panko, maybe? Also, fuck it – if you’re cooking every single separate component in butter, and spending $30 on sea-bug, why the fuck aren’t you using heavy cream in your cheese sauce?? Whole milk?? Psh. That shit’s for amateurs. Also, lobster mac & cheese is overrated – next time it’s crab mac & cheese all the way. I feel like I’m complaining a lot, and I don’t mean to. It was good. It was really good. But was it worth $94? Um. Yes? Because I have to say that or else I’ll feel really really terrible for not sending a bunch of money to Haitians?

PS – Okay. So. I just turned to Ian and asked him if he had anything to add.

“Did you mention that we always fight over making cheese sauces?” he asked.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT.

I’m sick!

Recipe for the saddest bowl of chicken noodle soup ever:

* Half a box of leftover chicken stock
* Half a box of alphabet pasta that’s been getting dusty on a shelf for a year
* Salt
* Pepper
* Cumin, I guess?
* More salt, since you can’t taste ANYTHING
* Garlic powder & onion flakes, since you’re too sad and lazy to use a knife right now

Heat. Add parm on top. Eat while wrapped in blanket, watching heavily-edited torture porn on Syfy. Enjoy!