Tandoori Tikka Chicken

Speaking of World Market. This marinade fell in to my basket while I was there. Luckily I just happened to have a kitchen full of chicken, skewers and electric grills.

No trick photography! This is a single, shocking shot!

The funny thing about this stuff is there's "No ... Artificial Colours", and yet the package clearly depicts bright red/orange (rorange?) chicken bits. How is this not false advertising?

It's easy. Easy peasy. In the directions they tell you to add orange food dye if you want orange chicken.

Mmm. Charry.

It's nice to have the choice to be honest.

Anyway, it's a simple and quick marinade. Yogurt and the packet. We had greek yogurt, which worked out very well, actually. I think I'll be doing this again.

Mint Aero Bar

After some encouragement from santos, I'm attempting to dust off this blog. I'm going to start with the fantastically photogenic mint Aero bar.

Mint Aero Bar

Because, damn. Look at how green that is!

They're rare here in Seattle, but cost plus has 'em. Get 'em while they're GREEN.

leff brand kimchi

Ever since I was 10, and my sisters came to us from Korea, we had kimchi in the house. I've never gotten to the point where I eat it with every meal, although I certainly see the appeal of that aspect of Korean life. In short, yay kimchi!

raw kimchi

Also, yay home food! Up with home pickling! Obviously, I snagged a copy of Wild Fermentation the first chance I got. And naturally the first recipe I tried was kimchi. It was incredibly easy, and surprisingly successful for a first attempt.

It goes like this. Chop up your asian style cabbage and a daikon radish. Brine it for a bit. Drain it. Mix in the hots and spice paste, push down until it's covered by it's own juices. Wait a week or so, and voila, kimchi. I'm not going to copy out the whole thing because if you're in to home pickle you're getting the book anyway.

Pre funk

I had fear that it wouldn't work. I had western peppers like habaneros and junk. But the spices did the trick. I was amazed. It tasted like kimchi almost immediately. After a week of sitting out, it tastes even better. Obvs, I recommend the book if you're into the idea at all. It's got all kinds a stuff in there.

bubble bubble toil and trouble

Note about the container. I've tried sauerkraut in the wrong shaped deal. It failed. If you're gonna try it, get a nice strait walled bucket thing. You'll be much happier.

the dominos challenge

Yes yes, by now you've all heard about the "new dominos" turnaround with the real people and the endearing honesty. It's all very exciting. There's the pizza configurator*, the progress bar, and oh yeah, they changed the formula. So is this new coke, nacho cheesier doritos, or a toasted subway sub?

The big question is, should we compare New D to Old D, or new D to Other Pizza? New Dominos v Old Dominos is a pretty easy challenge. It's like shooting pizzas in a barrel. And, not surprisingly, New D wins. Compared to Pizza Hut or mall pizza it does pretty well. But we're still in the range of pizza I'd never eat.

On the other hand, New D v Any Other Pizza You Might Actually Enjoy Eating is not such a cert. In fact, it's an obvious failure. Still crap. I don't even know why I spent so many words on this build up. It's sommat like 6 bucks for a large pizza. How can that every be good?

*Is this just a Lucent term, or do people know this?

Finally made it to Retro Dogz

Despite the Z in the name, I've been wanting to try Retro Dogz ever since the Bremeloger mentioned it way back in september. And despite walking right by it every day on my way home it's taken me a full three months to manage a visit. I had to take time off (I know, boo-freakin-hoo, right).

Rakka has been making chicago dogs for me ever since I've known her, but we can't get the proper ingredients. So when I walked in the first thing I notice is the honking great chicago dogs sign by the counter I got very excited.

Chicago Dog (veggie)

I'm sorry to say, that this was much better than Rakka's chicago dogs. It's not that she does anything wrong, but honestly when was the last time you saw nuclear relish in a Seattle area grocery store? Never, that's when. Retro Dogz get's it from somewhere and it's worth it. Combined with a bunch of other subtly more appropriate ingredients they achieve a balance that's both quite pleasing and impossible to match at home. It's not quite perfect a chicago dog (no grilled onions, no sesame seeds on the bun, not enough cucumber) says Rakka, but still good.

Everything being equal, I wish they were open more. I'd like to go back. Oh, hey, they have other stuff too. Check out the menu.

menu

[where: 701 Pacific Ave, Bremerton, WA 98337]

imma sharpen my own damn knives

Author's Note: Normally I keep it pretty clean here, despite the fact that I'm a serious vulgarian. But it's been a long week. So watch out.

Ok, the background. We made turkey for thanksgiving, and it came out really well. It was really easy, and it fed us 3 meals a day for four days. Oh, and it was twelve dollars. Such tasty value for money is hard for us to pass up. So we're going to do it all the time. And this brings me to knives. Carving all these turkeys will require sharp knives.

a whetstone, you know
for sharpening shit

Watching cooking tv for years has given me a weird perspective on knife sharpening. The message comes through loud and clear: "oooooh, this is soooo hard and you are soooo dumb. you're gonna fuck it up so don't even try." I actually thought today that I should buy a $150 automatic knife sharpener so I could cut up my $11 turkey with my $20 knife. You know what? Fuck that.

America's Test Kitchen can keep their fucking $150 gadget that'll break down in a year. Alton Brown can show off his professionally sharpened knives all the fuck he wants. This is the same mentality that insists on $100 underpants before you can take a goddamn walk in the woods. I'm mad as hell at this gearhead mentality and I'm not going to take it anymore!



You know what, my grandfather sharpened his knives himself, and they were sharp as razors all the time. If he could learn it, I can learn it. And I fucking will. I don't care if I wear my knife down to a nub before I get it right. And the whetstone won't wear out after one goddamn year either.

food drops

drop candy!
Originally uploaded by Rakka

Rakka got a whole pile of food drops in the mail (from Chotda). I took part in the great food drop taste test. I'll summarize, but you should follow that link for the in depth review.

Right. So, food drops are sugar candies that come in flavors of regional Japanese foods. We're talking beer, octopus balls, udon... you get the idea. We tried 8 kinds. How was it? The short answer is: most of these foods were not meant to be sweet; not, at, all.