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Portable Chef Blog: Tasty Licks

And Then You Cook It?

January 12, 2010 / Portable Chef / News / 5 Comments
This filet may be used as a flotation device

This filet may be used as a flotation device

“Whose bag is this?”

I had to have seen this coming.  It’s not every day the TSA sees aRead More

The 2009 Beef Draft, pt. 4: The Main Event

December 30, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / 8 Comments
Brisket me

More from the 2009 Beef Draft: (1) Predraft Camp (2) The Burger-off (3) Thoughts of Our Cow

–

The Fedex guy was bitter.

Six massive boxes up two flights of stairs will do that to a man.  But our cow had arrived.  W, a 578-pound steer, had been butchered, put into vacuum packs, frozen, and shipped from upstate New York to my East Village apartment.  And it was finally time to divide the spoils.Read More

When I Compost My Jalapeños, Am I Giving Worms a Burny Poo?

December 12, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / 2 Comments
Iris with one of her indentured servants

Iris with one of her indentured servants

Not exactly the most profound question I’d asked myself all year, or even all day; however, as I was bringing my load of organic, chemical-free, artisanal worm food over to the nice lady with spiky blond hair at the Union Square compost dropoff facility, the thought did occur to me. I’d just made a fantastic Oaxacan dish of ground beef, cabbage, cilantro, and a few hot peppers, and in my bag of vegetable scraps lurked a couple of morsels that’d pop a capsicum in your ass. Would the worms go for them? And if they did, would they be leaving a trail of fire?

I knew I couldn’t answer the questions myself. I immediately thought of Chris Patil, who wrote the Science Bug column in our college paper. There were lots of Science Bugs; the title was passed down every so often as Science Bugs left, kind of like actors playing James Bond, and Chris was Sean Connery. His explanation of why the moon appears smaller when it’s high in the sky than when it’s close to the horizon is the stuff of legend – equal parts informative and humorous, using, among other things, the child’s game where you look at someone else between your own thumb and index finger, held up near your eye, and say “SQUISH! SQUISH! I’M SQUISHING YOUR HEAD!” to demonstrate his point. And nearly twenty years later, I still remember why that happens with the moon. I knew he was the man for the job.

Read More

The 2009 Beef Draft, pt. 3: Thoughts of Our Cow

November 13, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / 1 Comment
Delicious.

Delicious.

This is the type of blog entry that I set out not to write.

The problem I have with many blogs is that they tend to be more for the writer than the reader. I’ve read too many whose authors use the forum work out their own issues, to describe their day, or to do a host of other things that have nothing to do with making the reader’s valuable time worthwhile.

That’s not what I want to do here. I aspire first and foremost to make this column an enjoyable and informative read for the people who choose to invest their time here. I want to be entertaining and educational, Fat Albert-style: Coming at you with cooking and fun. And if you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done. Hey, hey, hey! But I think this blog installment may develop a distinct “get some stuff off my chest” feel – if that’s how it reads I apologize in advance.

portable_chef_beef_draft-1

The Beef Draft is all about cooking and fun. But there is one particularly not fun part of the draft, and it would be unfair to gloss over it:

Today the steer we bought was slaughtered.
Read More

The 2009 Beef Draft, pt. 2: The Burger-off

November 3, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / No Comments
And in this corner, weighing one pound...

And in this corner, weighing one pound...

portable_chef_beef_draft-smIn part 1 of this column, we went over the raisons d’être for the Beef Draft, chief among them being: ensuring a steady supply of sustainably-raised beef, learning something about our food, and IT’S A GODDAMN BEEF DRAFT!

Two providers met the criteria for responsible raising of cattle, capability to deliver on a whole steer, and ease of sampling: Arcadian Farms and 8 O’Clock Ranch.

Next up: a battle to the death.
Read More

The 2009 Beef Draft, pt. 1: Predraft Camp

November 2, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / 1 Comment
Let’s do this thing

Let’s do this thing

Ever since I found out that my favorite steak place, Les Halles on Park Avenue South, gives its animals the full factory farm treatment (warning: that video is gnarly; furthermore, it’s narrated by Alec Baldwin, whose authoritative, gravitas-laden voice makes it very difficult to turn away), I’ve pretty much limited my beef consumption to that which I prepare at home.

And it was there that I started realizing my beef knowledge limitations.

I’m a burger-and-occasional-filet man.  I make a big batch of boeuf Bourguignon once a year or so (side note: Amy Adams’ mangled pronunciation of said dish in the crappy half of Julie & Julia continues to haunt my dreams).  But really, that’s about it.
Read More

Crack is wack: Breaking 100 eggs, Crossfit-style

October 15, 2009 / Portable Chef / News / 1 Comment
You can run, but you can’t hide

You can run, but you can’t hide

104, actually. But let’s back up for a minute.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of Crossfit, this crazy-intense exercise program.  Its trademark workouts comprise a whole mess of weightlifting, bodyweight exercises like pullups, and sprints – all done as quickly as possible while keeping good form, like this one.  One of the main reasons I like Crossfit is this timing element; it puts the element of sport into it, and takes the tedium out of things – you’re so busy racing the clock that boredom never figures into the equation.

I had always wanted to apply this balls-out methodology to other walks of life. So when I realized I’d be cracking 104 eggs for this party (80 for Cremini mushroom frittatas, 24 for pâte à choux with Gruyere and Parmesan), it seemed a natural opportunity to incorporate some Crossfit-style discipline into my cooking. I would break nearly nine dozen eggs for time.
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Is Dry-Curing this Filet Preparing Me for Fatherhood?

October 6, 2009 / Portable Chef / News, The Lazy Sybarite / 4 Comments

I think I’ll name her Gladys.

I think I’ll name her Gladys.

I’m not sure that it isn’t.

I’m cooking for a party on Thursday night, and one of the pièces de resistance is a dry-cured filet, diced up and served on potato crisps.

The simple but fascinating dry-curing process involves covering the filet completely in a mixture of sugar and salt (I used 2lbs. of kosher salt and 3-4 of sugar, plus a rosemary sprig I’d had left over) for three days.  The filet is practically buried in the sugar-salt combo, then the whole thing placed in the fridge.  And as time goes by, the salt and sugar draw the liquid out of the filet, like in that awesome coffee shot in Blue.

I’ll get more into curing at a later date, but in short: the curing process, which dates back to at least the Greeks, was developed solely to preserve meat in the days before refrigeration.  And it really works; it kills bacteria by drawing water out of meat and microbe both, rendering meat safe, even without cooking.  However, it had another, unintended side effect: it made things delicious.
Read More

Sites I Like

January 21, 2000 / Portable Chef / Sites I like / No Comments

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s lots of cool stuff on the internet.  Here are some of my favorites (including links to several Portable Chef suppliers)

Farms

8 O’Clock Ranch

Hoosic River Poultry

Whippoorwill Farms

Caw Caw Creek

Ronnybrook

Blogs (tasty writing, but not necessarily food-related)

26 weeks – the week-by-week adventures of a Brit in Manhattan, one letter of the alphabet at a time.

copasetica – cool writings from a skilled wordsmith

guerrillastylist – fashion blogging from the front lines

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