Tag Archives: culinary arts

Let’s Meet The Meat!!

Once again, Mark proves that ANYTHING can be grilled or smoked to perfection.  Pork and Chicken-palooza!  Dining at Mark’s, when the grill(s) and smoker are cranked, is what Summer is all about, baby!

I ate my face off this memorial day weekend!  Thanks Mark (and John for excellent sack o salad and chips n dips)!  You’s guysiz da bestist!

Mark's Meat (NOW SMOKED!)
Mark's Meat! MMM MMM Good (Now smoked for your pleasure!)

 

Lush Lagoon

This holiday weekend, why not try something different then the usual beer while celebrating our nation’s history by blowing pieces of it up with fireworks, and sipping on a cool “Lush Lagoon*.”

*WARNING: Do not attempt to put out drunken firework induced fires with “Lush Lagoon.” Dosing the flames with “Lush Lagoon” may result in death or injury. Ingestion of “Lush Lagoon” may result in death or injury.

Everybody Pooooops! Sommmmmetiiiiiiiimes… (SIC of R.E.M.)

NOTE:  Nursey people (like Liz or Kay), any medical advice you may have is definitely welcome as (like most) I’m an American with no health insurance, and it’s too damned cold now to stand outside the clinic in a line with the homeless and unwed/raped mothers at 7AM with a fever.  And if this grosses anyone out, I’m sorry, but the revenge note at the bottom was fun and the chart gave me a laugh because Type 1 looks like bunny poop! (Also, I THINK Bristol has nothing to do with Bristol Palin… OR DOES IT?)

If you have had a meal at the Wendy’s located here, you may need this helpful chart below.  I have been suffering from my visit last Friday and it has been very painful.  I’ve lost my appetite, and been feverish for 5 days now.

Seems Type 7 is my fate.  I’ll let you know when my kidneys and liver fail (unless my unpaid cell phone dies first!)  HA!

Here’s the message I left on their website:

I ordered a double with cheese, hold the lettuce tomato and onion medium sized meal. (I incorrectly received a double without cheese), and an order of Asian chicken wings.

Upon my return home about an hour or two later I exhibited a high fever. I have had diarrhea for 5 days now. You need to check the cleanliness of your restaurant, the food handlers, or the quality of your food before you kill someone. This is not the first time I have been made ill by this particular Wendy’s. Clean your surfaces or wash your hands.

Cemego’s Ghetto Kitchen: Chicken Catalina for The Poor & Talentless

Chicken Catalina!! Yummo!

A confession: My only exposure to the food services industry was working as a busboy at a Bonanza steak house in the mall while I was in high school. One of my favorite dishes was their chicken catalina. I love catalina dressing. This is a cheap and easy way to do chicken. I tried to cook for the first time in a while and I made it with this quicky recipe. Thanks go to:

1. My complete and total lack of talent and cash.
2. Denise for advice and laughs.
3. Liz for leaving some of her cookwear behind (Thanks for the big wok with a handle!)

Here’s the recipe:

2 chicken breasts, boned and split (get the cheap boneless one’s on sale at the Ac-A-Me! 1 pound will do fine for 2 people. If you are a hungry fat ass’d couple, get 1.5 pound for 2 people.)

1/2 pkg. dry onion soup mix (I buy the generic)

6 oz. Catalina salad dressing (Or as much as you can stand. The more the better for my taste. Makes more juice!)

Put chicken in a casserole dish (one of them glass pyrex jobs) which has been sprayed with Pam (or just put some olive oil on a paper towel and rub down the casserole dish).

Good Old Standby

Sprinkle chicken breasts with 1/2 package dry onion soup mix.

Pour 6 ounces Catalina salad dressing over chicken.

Best if you let this sit for a while to marinate! Makes the chicken taste more Catalina’y. I also chop a handful of nasty stinky white onions into the dish. This makes it more onion’y and clears the sinuses a bit.

Cover (with aluminum “ferrl”) and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes. Good served with rice (the cheap stuff).

Yummo on yer cheap ass’d budget! Note: The catalina juice in the casserole dish is great to yum up the rice a bit!

Confessions of a Cranky Navy Messcook

AH! THE CULINARY ARTS.

It’s getting to the point where I find myself getting irritated just looking at the want ads. Those damnable job posts dripping with that trendy, grandiose culinary hip-speak:

“…passionate foodservice professionals…”

“…exciting position where you can explore your love for food…”

“…bright new star, chef “X”, seeks creative foodies for upscale new bistro…”

“… Dynamic new fusion themed restaurant seeks expressive and innovative culinary craftsmen”

And the most abhorrent mantra of all:

“…Culinary degree preferred…”

Passionate? Exciting? Dynamic? Feh! What occupation are they speaking of?

The Foodservice Industry rarely lends itself to such grandiose adjectives. It’s food, just food! Overstating its importance is like saying with a straight face that

“…John the Baptist spent his days in Biblical wilderness eating an exciting and dynamic mélange of Free-Range Locust, infused with hand-crafted wild honey, produced by local agricultural artisans…”

This is a wholly unromantic occupation. Its practitioners are not expected to broker a lasting peace in the Middle East, or to argue a case before the Supreme Court or put someone’s heart back together in surgery. This is a profession where you are expected to go in and work hard, whilst everyone else is off.

You spend your evenings, holidays and weekends sweating by a stove, an oven, a fryer or a grill feeding very, very picky people. You come home dog tired, smelling bad, covered in food wondering if you’ll hear the alarm to get up and do it all over again the next day.

Quite often you find yourself burned, cut, scarred or hurt in one way or another. Pay is questionable at best, thanks to a recent influx of cheap labor from south of the border. Most benefits like Medical, Dental or 401k are non-existent.

Egoistic chefs, impatient managers, inept servers and thankless owners demand meals from you like you’re some soulless, food-producing automaton. All societal pretension towards the trade aside, the guy in the paper hat at Burger King, technically, qualifies as a ‘passionate foodservice professional”.

No. Passionate, exciting and dynamic are not adjectives you can use with a great level of honesty to describe the culinary arts.

And this premium now being placed on the notion of the culinary degree only adds to the mix. It is loathsome to me that recent trends in the culture have hyperbolized the qualifications for such an inherently unremarkable, blue-collar profession. The perceived grandeur of cooking has been enlarged beyond the bounds of reason.

I learned to cook in the Navy. I took pride in making a tasty 80 gallon pot of chili or being able to help bake fresh bread for 6,000 plus guys every morning. Food was the backbone of morale out at sea, so it damn-well had to be good. It was an honest and unfeigned trade.

This cooking of course was at a time in my life well before the masses were touched by Martha Stewart Inc. or the Food Network. It was a time before Emeril LaGasse or Wolfgang Puck. And things like hamachi sashimi or wasabi aioli were still just a glimmer in Iron Chef Morimoto’s eye.

In the old days, before Starbucks, coffee was coffee. In most places, .50 or .75 got you a bottomless cup. You didn’t have to worry about repeating a bunch of sissified, corporate-invented, pseudo-hip, euro sounding predicates to “The Barista” whilst in line. Same thing applies to ‘The Culinary Arts’. Cooking was like laying bricks or swinging a hammer; it was honest and without pretension. But unlike our brothers who schlep mortar or pound nails, the culinary arts are now obliged to observe the capricious dictate of our inane pop culture.

What am I supposed to like? What’s good? What’s hip? Whatever! Who cares? Ask the ‘Barista’. Ask Craig LeBan. Ask the asshole who runs ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on TV. Ask Rachel Ray.

Yeah. Go ask Rachel Ray.

I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the occasional serving of the now ubiquitous truffle-infused mashed potatoes or a nice Crispy Long Island Duck Confit. After my stint in the service I’ve spent years learning to do the dance in civilian restaurants, and I do it well. I’ve learned that trends in food come and go. My life experience nowadays points me towards my own personal culinary trend: a feeling which borders on disgust, fluctuating somewhere between professional incredulity and pure crankiness.

I remonstrate the cause of that crankiness: that arrogant, awkward and inexperienced sub-section invading my profession who feel that simply by paying the tuition and attending food programs either at a Johnson and Wales, a Culinary Institute of America or the latest slap-dash Community College culinary arts program will somehow inspire awe amongst an experienced staff and pardon their professional fecklessness in a real working kitchen..

After all, what good really is some clown who pays the $50,000 to complete what in essence is a glorified trade-school? At best, he or she may know the fancy French name for every pot and pan in the kitchen but may have no idea how to bang food out in a smart, efficient fashion on a busy Saturday night.

Whilst the newbie is ensuring his basil is chopped in a fine “chiffonade” and his “Yukon Gold Garlic and Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes” are worthy of the “Legionne d’Honneur”, management relies on the uncredentialled veteran hump to get the food out. Especially on a busy night of culinary combat. If only there was combat pay.

Well can the day be far off when we see those aforementioned honorable tradesmen, the Masons and the Carpenters, clamoring to lay down big bucks to get into their own versions of some highly specialized schools? Can the “Cordon Bleu” School of Bricklaying and Mortar Mixing or the “Paul Bocuse” Institute for Advanced Drywall Hanging Technique be far off?

I should just continue to quietly accept all this, even though the Navy too has changed with the times. Former Mess Management Specialists are now being called “Culinary Specialist”. Trés chic!

It’s only a matter of time before Destroyers and Battleships will be serving heaping helpings of “Pan Seared Diver Scallops with Saffron and Sweet Corn Essence”…

I’m done thinking about it. I’m going for a friggin’ cup of coffee.
How the Hell does that go again?
Grande, Mocha, skinny, light on the foam. (Sigh)