The Finer Points of Microwave Cuisine

Goodness! Has it been really been two weeks since I posted on this blog? That is horrendous. If it weren't for the fact that nobody actually reads this blog, I would start worrying about losing my readers. I think I need to throw up something quick and easy just so I don't forget that I actually have a blog that I need to update. Hey, did I say quick and easy? Why, that has a great deal to do with the subject of this blog post! What a thoughtful and clever writer I am! Kind of makes me wonder why nobody reads this.

Judging from my latest trip to the grocery store, it would appear that the frozen dinner industry is alive and well, pumping out microwave dishes for people short on time and money. As a grad student, I am short on both, so I am not too proud to say that I partake in frozen dinners from time to time. For the most part these dishes are severely lacking when it comes to quality, but surprisingly enough it is possible to pick out a good frozen dinner. After many hits and a staggering number of misses, I have come up with a few basic rules to help guide frozen food selection to ensure picking a good product.
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1. Don't Forget That It's Frozen
That picture on the box? Guess what, that ain't what you're buying. Funny how that works. Great advances have been made in the world of frozen dinner technology, but these people aren't miracle workers--so don't be fooled by grandiose claims of seared beef and gourmet vegetable medleys. In the end, this is a frozen dinner, and simplicity will rule the day. Things like macaroni and cheese or pasta with marinara sauce are old standbys that are usually your safest bet.

2. Noodles Are Your Friend
For some reason, pasta does very well in frozen dinners. Spaghetti, Beef Stroganoff, Fettucine Alfredo, all of these are safe bets in a frozen dinner. The same cannot be said for rice, though one would think that the same logic would apply. However, it does not, and rice tends to be hit-or-miss. When shopping for frozen dinners be on the lookout for dishes that feature some kind of noodles. If you are daring and in the mood for a crap-shoot, you can try rice.

3. Beef: Only When Absolutely Necessary
Typically meat does not do well in frozen dinners: chicken is rubbery and usually chopped into little bits, and meat usually doesn't even taste like meat at all. Perfect example: the Salisbury steak, one of the Old Standbys of the frozen dinner world. Salisbury steak may have earned respect for its longevity, but discerning palates deserve better. Though far from acceptable, chicken does have the leg up on beef when it comes to quality. This is why I suggest that if you are planning on buying something with a little bit of meat, go with chicken. Beef should be reserved only in the most dire situations when you must have your hunger for cow satiated.

4. Stay Away From Potatoes
Have you ever tried reheating old french fries? That little experiment never ends well. When buying frozen dinners you should keep this in mind, because that is essentially what you are trying to do if you buy a frozen dinner that has some sort of potato item included. Its hard for me to make this a rule since I am such a fan of potatoes; they are a versatile side dish that go well with most meals. However, they just don't reheat very well, and at best you are left with something that is "edible."

5. Dessert Should Not Be Frozen
Banquet is infamous for including certain desserts with their meals. The inclusion of a small brownie in their fried chicken dinner makes the dish as a whole more appetizing, but just like potatoes, cake-y dessert items like brownies and cupcakes should not be frozen and then reheated. What you are expecting is a warm, soft brownie, but instead what you inevitably get is a mouthful of dry chocolate flavored sponge. Not sponge cake. Sponge. So avoid the desserts whenever possible, since it raises the price point of the meals and ultimately gets tossed into the garbage.
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Consider those five rules, and the next time you are out looking for a good frozen dinner, hopefully you'll pick something that won't disappoint. There is one more rule that I left off, but it is no less important: if you can get something besides a frozen dinner, by all means, do. Frozen dinners are good only for their price and for their reliability as a time-saver. If you have the money to afford real food and the time to cook it, why buy a frozen dinner and cheat yourself out of the real thing?

A What Looks Good? Food Tour: New York City

The need to satisfy some of the demands of my non-foodie "academic" life made it necessary to visit New York City last week to do some research at the New-York Historical Society. It also gave me a chance to sample some of the good eats the city has to offer, and there are a lot of them. Beyond hot dogs and pizza--the two highest profile New York foods--New York has the most diverse and delicious food selection in the world. Overall, I'm very happy with the selection of meals I had while in New York, it represents a pretty good cross section of what I like to eat and what I like best about food. On this list you'll see high brow and low brow restaurants, along with some touristy stops and some hidden treasures that are not as well known.


Serendipity 3 - 225 E. 60th Street
The most memorable thing I had while in New York was Serendipity 3's Frozen Hot Chocolate, a wonderful concoction for those addicted to chocolate and who prefer their ice cream when it's nice and melted. I can't say that I actually know how the Frozen Hot Chocolate is made, but if I had to guess, I would say that it is half a cup of hot chocolate, with a hefty scoop of chocolate ice cream thrown in. By the time this lovely little dessert gets to your table, the ice cream has melted just enough to give it a unique texty: thicker than hot chocolate, thinner than a milkshake. Add on the usual chocolate beverage toppings--whipped cream and chocolate shavings--and you've got a dessert that is deceptively simple, yet is truly a delicious innovation. Also, I referred to the Frozen Hot Chocolate as a "lovely little dessert," but there is nothing "little" about it: it is served in a coffee cup the size of a cereal bowl, filled to the top with frozen hot chocolate. It was so big that even I, an accomplished chocoholic, was unable to finish one by myself.

Dylan's Candy Bar - 1011 3rd Avenue
Another dessert entry, from the candy shop one block down from Serendipity. Besides having a trendy name (Candy bar...get it?), Dylan's has an amazing selection of candy that includes old standards like jelly beans and gummi worms, and more unique novelty style candies such as Wonka bars and strangely colored M&Ms (gray?). Occupying two floors, Dylan's also has the space to feature an amazing variety of the candy available, such as the wall containing over 20 different types of jelly beans, all of which can be consumed by the pound. For those not interested in purchasing small bags of candy, there is also an assortment of ice cream drinks and shakes that can be ordered. These aren't as good as the candy, but they are a welcome addition to the Dylan's Candy Bar menu.

Gray's Papaya - 402 Sixth Avenue at 8th Street
If you're watching a movie set in New York, and the need arises to establish some New Yorkiness, usually Gray's Papaya gets mentioned. However, beyond the mention, there is little discussion of the hot dogs Gray's Papaya actually serves. They are, like a lot of the food I ate in New York, deceptively simple. Just a hot dog and sauerkraut, right? But the full taste of the Gray's Papaya dog--the taste that seems to come only with all-beef dogs, the taste the supermarket variety has yet to adequately replicate--makes you feel happy, guilty, and satisfied all at once. The dogs go best with one of the signature tropical drinks served at Gray's Papaya--I had Coconut Champagne--the subtly sweet taste compliments the sharp taste of the hot dogs.

Le Parker Meridien's "Burger Joint" - 118 W. 57th Street
This place is so laid back, it doesn't have an actual name, just "burger joint." It is secretly located in Le Parker Merdien Hotel, near Carnegie Hall and the Russian Tea Room, a small unpretentious nook in a sea of money, power and prestige. Burgers, fries and brownies are the only things on the menu, and the cheeseburger, available for a relatively plebian-friendly $6.50, is cooked to order and topped with the usual: tomato, lettuce, onions and pickle. The burgers have a simple look and a delicious taste, almost like a homemade burger from your grill at home would taste like, if you weren't such a terrible cook. It is worth noting that this no-frills establishment still caters to the Parker Meridian clientele, meaning that this place is known to the rich and the famous. In fact, during my meal at the burger joint, former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher came in and ordered a cheeseburger, which he ate at a table rather than take back to his room. And if its good enough for Bill Cowher, then it should be good enough for you.

Da Gennaro - 129 Mulberry Street
Little Italy suffers from an overabundance of Italian restaurants. All along Mulberry Street, overbearing maitre d's make their pitch for you to eat in their overpriced restaurant rather than the overpriced restaurant across the street. Because Little Italy survives only as a commercial district (surrounded on all sides by an ever-encroaching Chinatown) the small hole-in-the-wall eateries have been pushed out in favor of fancy gourmet Italian restaurants. These places are a dime a dozen, but Da Gennaro stuck for my brother and I, since our last name is...wait for it...De Gennaro. What are the odds? Pretty good, as it turns out--Da/Di/De Gennaro is far from uncommon--just check the phone book in Hoboken. Nonetheless, this was the first Italian restaurant that shared our surname, so that was cause enough to try their food. I ordered chicken marsala which was good enough, though I did not find it particularly noteworthy. Overall I was underwhelmed by the entire Little Italy experience; it is surviving only on the strength of its history and that of its cuisine, which even now seems overly commercialized. For a more authentic Little Italy dining experience, I recommend the North End in Boston, where it is still possible to find small family-run restaurants, the kind where the menu is full of pleasant surprises.

White Castle - 525 8th Avenue
As a native Californian, I have never had the opportunity to partake in the mini-burgers offered by White Castle (though I have eaten at its Southern counterpart, Krystal's), and our trip to New York made this a real possibility. It may seem odd to include White Castle on a list of must-have food while in a city as gastronomically diverse as New York, but you have to consider what it means to be denied a food item as iconic as the White Castle burger. Even though its mediocrity is legendary, we felt compelled to see for ourselves what the big deal was. Five burgers later, we had an idea as to why White Castle continues to persist in the face of the big chains: there is something wonderful about ordering a shitload of little, cheap burgers and eating to your heart's content. It is purely a matter of quantity, with just enough quality that you don't mind ordering a greasy sackful. With that said, now that I've finally eaten White Castle I won't be bending over backwards to eat it again.

Mama's Pizzeria - 108th and Amsterdam
This was actually the last meal I had in New York, which I suppose seems like a pre-planned move, but honestly my brother and I just needed a place to eat quickly before we caught a cab to LaGuardia. Mama's Pizzeria is, obviously, a pizza place, one of the hundreds of New York-style pizza purveyors in the city. When you are faced with the task of eating such a prolific food item, it is best to stay away from the usual "best" restaurants that people tend to talk about. That means when asking "Which is the best place to eat pizza in New York?" the answer is not "Famous Ray's." It's not "Famous Original Ray's." It's not "Sbarro" (good Lord, is it not Sbarro). No, the best answer to that question is usually to point your finger somewhere down the street and say "That one." That's precisely what my brother and I did in New York, and we were both happy with our selection.

Overall, the food in New York was fantastic, and I was barely able to scratch the surface of what the city had to offer. The quality of the food is so high and the selection so diverse that I imagine it would be difficult to go there and not be satisfied with what you eat. Overall, New York is a can't-miss city, one of the reasons for which is the food you'll eat when you go there.

Orson Welles: Great Actor, Great Director, Great Eater

The What Looks Good? Hall of Fame is dedicated to the celebration of the best and brightest food dishes the culinary world has to offer, yet I have made the decision to open up non-food entities to nomination and induction. The Hall of Fame should be as much a celebration of eating as it is a celebration of that which is eaten, and with that in mind I am creating a Hall of Fame Eater category. Inductees must be wholly committed to the art of eating, so much so that it defines a large part of who they are as people. Also, these people will more than likely all be very, very fat--though that is far from a strict criteria, the Hall of Fame allows eaters of all shapes and sizes. These eaters will be individuals committed to acts of consumption that go above and beyond normal human gastronomic limits. With that in mind, I can think of no better inaugural inductee than one of the greatest eaters--and one of the greatest actor/directors--of all time: Mr. Orson Welles.

Welles' size in the later years of his life show us that he was committed to eating, but how committed he was, most people do not know. In fact, he worked with great diligence to attain his later size, eating amounts most people can scarcely imagine. One of his greatest feats was accomplished while filming Citizen Kane, where it is said that he regularly ate a dinner that consisted of two steaks, each with a baked potato, a whole pineapple, triple pistachio ice cream, and a bottle of scotch. On many occasions I've thought about attempting to copy this feat, but I quickly change my mind whenever I really think about how much food that is. That act alone is enough to seal his place in the What Looks Good? Hall of Fame, and it is just one of the many reasons why he is one of my idols.

Welles' love for food has been captured most accurately in the brilliant-but-cancelled Jon Lovitz animated show, The Critic, which blends together his love for food with his famous fussiness, once captured in an outtake of a radio commercial about frozen peas. Here are a few wonderful Welles lines from the show:

Spoken while exiting a frozen peas commercial:
"Oh, what luck--there's a french fry stuck in my beard."
After quitting a fish stick commercial and taking "a few for the road":
"Mmm...yes...oh, yes...they're even better raw!"

Welles is famous for other things, of course: Citizen Kane, the War of the Worlds broadcast, interviewing Mike Douglas on his own show. But since this is a forum only for food discussion, I will limit my praise for the man to his digestive prowess. Here's to you, Orson Welles, one of the greatest eaters in modern history and a fitting inductee to the Hall of Fame.

Æbleskiver

Danish cuisine is one of the oft-overlooked areas of the food world. This is not without reason: Denmark is relatively small compared to its other European counterparts (too small to stand up to the French culinary giant) and its Nordic-influenced foods are too heavy and fatty to be embraced by the carb-watching citizens of the United States. However, a few dishes have made their way over the pond and have enjoyed success as cult dishes with small but loyal eaterships.

One such dish is the æbleskiver, a pastry-like item that is traditionally eaten as a dessert during Christmas when served in Denmark, but which has morphed into a year-round breakfast item when served in the United States. The æbleskiver is traditionally served topped with powdered sugar and jam, and fits in well at the breakfast table thanks to its remarkable similarity in taste and texture to the pancake.

The biggest thing the æbleskiver has going for it and the one thing that makes it a total departure from the pancake is its very odd shape. As you'll notice from the photo above, the æbleskiver is round. It is cooked in a cast iron pan with seven half-rounded depressions, sort of like a muffin pan that is deeper and more rounded. Since the word "æbleskiver" is foreign, hard to spell, and strange to pronounce, some have taken to describing these by their Americanized
name, "Pancake Balls." It is worth noting that I find this lazy, xenophobic, and a little bit retarded.

The æbleskiver is round because of the pan it is cooked in, which when used properly leaves a nice crisp exterior shell that protects a soft bread interior. It is possible to make a softer æbleskiver by cooking it for a shorter period of time, and some may prefer this rendition, but personally speaking I enjoy a well-made æbleskiver with just a bit of crunch before getting to the soft part. Traditionally these are enjoyed with powdered sugar and jam, but the comparisons to the pancake have led some to try these with a little bit (or a whole lot) of maple syrup. While both versions have their merits, American eaters more accustomed to the pancake will find that maple syrup is a perfect addition.

The one problem with the æbleskiver is availability. Since this is a Danish treat--and as I mentioned before, Danish food is hard to come by in the states--you have to go pretty far out of your way to find them. My only experience with the æbleskiver has been in Solvang, California, a "Danish" town/strip mall which boasts wonderful Danish cuisine and the finest novelty t-shirt and magnet stores, all housed in German architecture-inspired buildings. If you do not live in Southern California and are feeling intrepid, you can purchase an æbleskiver pan online, and teach yourself the fine art of æbleskiver-making. It takes some practice, but in the end the process is much easier than it looks. I recommend purchase of the pan 1) because they are so easy to make and 2) because the limited amount of Danish breakfast restaurants means this is your only option for regular æbleskiver enjoyment. This post does not do very much to illuminate the process of making æbleskivers, but for those who have never heard of or tasted these, hopefully it will make you more likely to try them if you are ever in a restaurant that offers them.

Great Food Moments in Film -- The Godfather

There is a rule about eating in films, which is: don't. It just doesn't photograph well, and nobody wants to listen to actors deliver lines while their mouths are full. However, from time to time great culinary moments do surface in popular cinema, and I will periodically be looking at some of these scenes in "Great Food Moments in Film."
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"Hey, come over here, kid, learn somethin'. You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday." -- Peter Clemenza, The Godfather

It is not often that major motion pictures are entertaining while also being educational. For instance, I loved 3:10 to Yuma but I didn't really take anything away from it beyond a renewed appreciation of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Thank goodness for The Godfather, which combines great drama with some important basic life lessons (two shots in the head a piece, please), one of which is the recipe to a good spaghetti sauce.

The scene in question comes between the first and second acts of the film, after one of the many cases of 'conflict resolution' seen in the film ("How's Paulie?" "Oh, Paulie, won't see him no more.") In this scene, Michael Corleone, still considered "a civilian," learns how to cook meat sauce from caporegime Peter Clemenza. This is the first of Michael's many initiations into the family after being seen as an outsider, and the act of learning how to make sauce is full of symbolism as an entrance into the Italian inner circle. Sauce is a thing of great importance to Italians, and a few of us--including myself--have very special family recipes that we are very particular about. To quote Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis, "While there are a lot of things I like to try from other people, tomato sauce is not one of them." My recipe came from my grandmother, which she in turn learned from her mother, so my family recipe is more or less about 100 years old. I imagine that the case is no different for Clemenza. He prepares his sauce with the familiarity of someone who has been doing it for years, and his recitation of the entire cooking process--which takes all of 24 seconds--is nothing but cook shorthand that has been boiled down from years of repetition. Clemenza makes it look simple, and for the most part, making sauce isn't brain surgery, but one of the reasons why it looks so simple is because it has been prepared so many times.

Apparently this recipe for sauce, which does not appear in the book, was a concoction of director Francis Ford Coppola. Save for a few things I do differently, his recipe reminds me a lot of mine--for instance, we both use brown sugar in our sauce--and if you listen intently and take a few notes, you should be able to follow this recipe and come up with a decent sauce. Reproduced below is the entire recipe, as delivered by Clemenza:

"You start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, some tomato paste. You fry it, you make sure it doesn't stick. When you got it to a boil, you shove in all your sausage and your meatballs. Add a little bit of wine, and a little bit of sugar, and that's my trick."

Judging from that, here is a very rudimentary recipe to follow:
1 32 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
Minced garlic
Butter
Olive Oil
Italian Seasoning
Basil
Parsley flakes
Meatballs
Italian Sausage
Wine
Brown sugar

1. In a large sauce pan, saute minced garlic in a combination of butter and olive oil
2. Add tomato puree and tomato sauce to the garlic, add water or tomato puree to adjust thickness
3. Add Italian seasoning, basil, and parsley flakes to sauce
4. Add sausage and meatballs, make sure that meat is completely submerged in sauce
5. Add to sauce one small glass of red wine, and a tablespoon of brown sugar

Good Luck.

EDIT: It is important to note that Clemenza delivers these lines while actually doing the steps in front of Michael. If you don't own The Godfather, it'll benefit you to watch the scene and follow his steps that way. And if you don't have a copy of The Godfather, what's the matter with you?

Appetizer

Before we kick things off, a few words about the creation of this blog and the hopes I have for it:

My previous blog, a random collection of recycled links, lame jokes and personal stories, has left me unsatisfied creatively. I started IN OTHER NEWS™ as an outlet for me while I had to deal with work and school, but for a long time I have considered updating it to be a chore. Being fed up with my current blog, I have decided to start a new one with a more focused topic. I decided to go with a topic that I felt passionately about, to ensure that I would be more active in posting and that I would see this as another outlet, a haven where I can talk at length about the things that interest me.

But what interests me? I only have a passing interest in most things, and I don't care enough to write about pop culture, comics, music, movies, television or school. I do care about one thing a lot though: food. I never realized how much I care about it though, since food is such a commonplace part of my day. After thinking about it further however, I've realized how much I love food. Any food. Fast food, fancy restaurant fare, fruits and vegetables, candy bars, microwave dinners, anything. Any food. Food is freaking great. It was my love affair with food that kept me overweight for so many years--totally worth it by the way, I ate many delicious things--but even now, as I am among the ranks of the thin, my relationship with food has not changed.

I don't want to be biased either one way or the other in my food reviews. I want to talk about good food, but I also want to talk about fast food and junk as well. Either way, I just hope it will be entertaining and that I have as good a time writing about food as I do eating food.

I owe debts of gratitude to Tom the Dog's You Know What I Like? and Jon Yorde's Love Me Some Pop, the first as a model for good writing and the second as a structural model for writing what you know. Ian Brill's Brill Building also deserves a shout-out since I am following his lead and abandoning my old blog (please come back, Ian). With any luck What Looks Good? will be as good as the aforementioned. Okay, that's enough personal stuff. Let's Eat! I'll be starting things off with the In-N-Out Double-Double, my favorite meal.

Ben & Jerry's -- Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream

My first post on the Double-Double was lunch, so here's a special post for dessert. I don't typically partake in fancy ice creams like Ben & Jerry's (too expensive) but I was moved to buy a pint of the special promotional flavor "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" after seeing the ice cream shamelessly and hilariously plugged on a nightly basis by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.

...I bought the next six pints of Americone Dream after eating my first pint. My goodness, what a wonderful creation. I didn't need any other convincing beyond my first few spoons full. I have since become hooked on what is now the only ice cream I buy. It appears that it is here to stay and is no threat of being placed in the flavor graveyard, and as long as it is among the ranks of the living I will be a happy customer.

Americone Dream is deceivingly simple: it is made up only of vanilla ice cream, caramel swirl and chocolate covered waffle cone bits. This last ingredient was a stroke of genius--after all, the best part of eating an ice cream cone is when you get to eat the cone and the ice cream together--but it is the caramel swirl that won my heart when I first tried this flavor. It is the x-factor that supports the flavor over the much bally-hooed waffle cone bits. The consistency of the caramel is very soft, gooey, and stretchy, not solid or the least bit chewy. Each pint has several small pockets filled with caramel that is rich enough to stand out among the vanilla and the waffle cone, but not so overpowering that it becomes a caramel-flavored ice cream. The softness of the ice cream, the gooeyness of the caramel and the crunchiness of the ice cream all compliment each other perfectly to create the perfect texture for someone who is looking for an ice cream with more going on than just one flavor. For optimal enjoyment, let the ice cream sit out for a few minutes so it gets a nice, soft texture.

A word to those single-flavor lovers however: if you are turned off by the "ice cream with X mixed in" formula that has made Cold Stone Creamery and Ben & Jerry's such huge hits, you may be happier with a pint of regular 'ol chocolate than with Americone Dream, which I could easily see traditionalists describing as "busy." If you are feeling daring however, do try this flavor and see how it suits you.
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Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, $1.88 @ Wal-Mart