Food Bender

I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but if you know me at all, you’ll understand that I’ve been making out with a turkey the past few days. Thanksgiving was a success of course. I planned on having a big post-turkey day blog offering, consisting of recipes, hits and misses, and other binge eating related adventures, however...

I blacked out.

Somewhere in between the mac and cheese and the corn bread.
The second helping of oneofeverything.
The failed attempt at a scotch tasting.

I woke up Sunday morning in a puddle of my own gravy, shirt soaked in cranberry sauce, surrounded by a graveyard of empty Celebration Ale’s, with vague memories of diving head first into a trough of....

Ok this is getting gross. Obviously I’m kidding but you get the idea. Lot’s of eating/drinking. I’m just going to catch everyone up with some pictures.














Coming soon:

New beer friend.
New recipe.
1st restaurant review.

That is all.

- Fat Kid

Speaking of Gross

I don’t know why I felt compelled to buy these, but at the time, cheeseburger flavored chips just... felt like a good idea? That is until I ate them.

These things are fucking gross. I mean who came up with this idea? It’s not like they necessarily taste really bad, but I’m just completely weirded out by the fact that I’m eating tortilla chips that taste exactly like a cheeseburger. You even get a hint of char grilled flavor and pickle in there. This might sound kind of cool, but when you try it, it’s like Willy Wonka smoked crack and pursued a career in salty snacks.

They’re called “Late Night/All Nighter Cheeseburger,” so I’m assuming these were created for drunk people, by drunk people. Well I wasn’t drunk when I ate them, but even if I was, these would still suck, and I probably would have been much more upset for trying them.

Stick to real cheeseburgers.
Or real chips.

- Fat Kid

Adult Content



I've mentioned food porn before. As a joke. This is serious. Watch this video if you've got a few minutes to spare.

http://www.guysavoy.com/en/index.php (I couldn't embed it here, it's too big).

Oh and don't worry. This is a totally safe link. It's not going to open up to some fat chick pouring gravy all over herself. That's for my other blog.

Guy Savoy is a renowned French chef, with Michelen star restaurants in both Paris and Las Vegas. This mini-movie was put together to demonstrate a day in his Paris restaurant. If I have the chance/bank acount to eat here at some point in my lifetime, I will die a happy man, and probably on that very day.

Stop drooling.

- Fat Kid

Beer Friends #1

I don’t drink beer during the week. Well at least I try not to. 10-hour work days, 3 hour night classes, or the combination of both generally drive me to break this rule. Throw in the occasional Tuesday happy hour...well ok I probably drink a beer almost every day. What I’m trying to say, is that the arrival of the weekend presents me with a 3 day excuse to indulge in America’s favorite past-time; drinking. In other words, I quickly make up for the “lack” of beer drinking having taken place throughout the work-week.


I have several standard go-to beers, also known as my beer-friends. Beers that I know and love, beers that will never let me down, beers that have the ability to both improve my mood and embarrass the shit out of me when we hang out too much. I always enjoy meeting new beer-friends, so maybe I’ll challenge myself to make a new one every weekend/Sunday afternoon.



Good idea?
Check.
Setting realistic/attainable goals for myself?
Check.
Accomplish said goals over this past weekend?
Double check.


Allow me to share. As mentioned in a earlier post, most of my beer-friends are hoppy. In the future I’ll try not to be so prejudiced, but I wasn’t thinking about that this weekend. So here we go.

Another annual release from Sierra Nevada, part of their Northern Hemisphere Harvest, the 2010 Wet Hop Ale and I were meant to be friends. The term “wet hop” refers to the fact that these hops are never dried out. They’re picked and shipped to their brewery the same day, allowing more of the hop’s natural oils and resins to remain intact as the brewing process begins.


Translation: You need to drink this.


We hit it off immediately. There’s a floral aroma, a slightly sweet citrus flavor up front, quickly replaced by the bitter, deep hop flavor, that has a unique richness and earthiness to it, probably as a result of the wet hop process. We have lots of hanging out to do, meaning, I’m going to drink several more of these before they go away. You get a 24oz bottle for 6 bucks. Do it.


Next.

Greenflash Brewing company is based out of Vista, California, producing some of my favorite beers around. Their West Coast IPA blows my mind. I would drink it all the time, but it’s fucking expensive. And most recently, they stopped selling their beers in 6-packs, re-releasing everything in the form of a $10.00 4-pack. Assholes. I mean I’m really going to have trouble shelling out that kind of money for 4 beers. That’s just annoying. Anyways, I’ve had their Imperial IPA on tap before and loved it, so I decided to throw down 10 bucks for this 22 ouncer.


Worth it? Yes. We are now friends. He threw me around a bit though at 9.4% abv. You can definitely taste the high alcohol, but it’s still surprisingly balanced. It’s basically their West Coast IPA on steroids. It smells like marijuana, tastes like a hop factory (with a little grapefruit), feels prickly and dry, and will knock you on your ass if you play around with it.


I drank it with my other good friend blockofcheese and went to sleep.


If I had to choose between the two, I’d go with the Wet Hop Ale. More bang for your buck.

Until next weekend.


Cheers Fatties.


- Fat Kid

Fat Kid Basics, Session #2: Whole Roasted Chicken and Pan Gravy

Chicken bores me. When I’m standing at the butcher counter, breathing heavily in a hungry daze and fogging up the glass shield that stands between me and all my favorite dead-and-ready-to-eat friends, I don’t so much as glance at the poultry section. I’m too distracted by the cowboy cut rib-eye, the sexy skirt steak, the sizeofmyface pork chop. Maybe it’s because of how I experienced the family chicken dinner growing up. Said dinners included the standard white chicken breast, placed in a zip-loc bag to take a sad bath in some generic Italian dressing, then put to death on a grill, never even having a chance to taste remotely good in the first place.


So much potential.
So much failure.
The Washington Redskins of Sunday dinner.


Maybe that’s why I never order chicken when I eat out. When I see the standard chicken dish on a menu, I skip right over it. Except for one time in recent memory, maybe a year ago, when I ordered the fried chicken at Trummer’s On Main (great restaurant). Anyways, once I started cooking, I began buying chicken on a regular basis, forging some kind of Fat Kid mission to figure out ways to inject excitement into this underachieving dinner-bird. I’ll be letting you know about some of my results, but quite recently, I discovered something that most have probably been enjoying for their entire lives. So let’s begin with the whole roasted chicken.


Simple? Yes. Boring. Ohhhh no no no. Especially when there’s gravy involved.
Swim-able gravy.

And it’s all so damn easy, that the method of roasting a chicken represents a technique everyone should be able to do and do well. So go to Whole Foods and buy one of their organic young chickens. They’re generally about 4 pounds, good for serving 3-4 people, or 1 Fat Kid. Don’t buy that raised-in-their-own-shit Perdue garbage. Here is the complete list of what you will need.


1 whole chicken
5 cloves of garlic
1 shallot
1 lemon
fresh thyme
fresh oregano
fresh parsley
1 cup of sliced mushrooms
1 cup of chicken stock
¼ cup white wine
1 tablespoon of whole grain mustard
extra virgin olive oil
butter
salt
pepper
dried oregano


Pre-heat the oven to 450. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and dried oregano to taste. I like my skin salty, so I let it snow on the chicken. Stuff the bird with half a lemon, half a shallot (peeled) some of the fresh thyme and oregano and few cloves of garlic. This helps some flavors permeate throughout. Place a couple pats of butter on top of the bird. This helps...well just do it because it tastes good.

I use my cast iron skillet for almost everything, so I place the bird in there, along with the other half of the lemon, shallot, remaining garlic cloves and herbs as well. I just rest them right there in the pan so that as the chicken cooks, these flavors melt into the pan, which will help with the gravy swimming pool I plan on making afterwards.

I’m also tying flavors together. See I do actually think about this shit.

Once you’ve done all that, throw it in the oven and let it roast at that temperature for 20 minutes, then lowering the heat to 350.


Insert meat thermometer.
No you’ve got time to kill, so go drink some beers.


Don’t drink so many beers that you forget to baste your friend, because he’s thirsty and he needs it. The general rule of thumb is 20 minutes per pound, so do the math. However, keep an eye on the meat thermometer, because once it hits 165, its doneski. I like to wait till it hits 160, then turn on the broiler and really get that skin on top nice and crispy. You’ll be happy you did this. Just watch it and make sure you don’t burn it, because then you’ve just wasted a bunch of time.

Pretty birrrrrd.

Take the bird and put it on a platter, covered in foil. It needs to rest for 10 minutes. Now it’s gravy time.


The skillet has so much fatty goodness in it right now it’s practically screaming “MAKE GRAVY OUT OF ME.” Remember the lemon, shallot, garlic, and herbs you put in there? Well take it all out, but hold onto that nicely caramelized lemon. You’ll need it. Put the skillet over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Let them get nice and soft, turn the heat to high and add the wine, scraping up any charred bits off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Once that’s cooked down a bit, add the chicken stock.

Reduce. Cook down to half and finish it off with the mustard and a couple of pats of cold butter. Stir it around and let the gravy thicken up a bit, throwing in some chopped parsley and squeezing in that other half of lemon juice to finish it off. The lemon takes on a rich, deeper flavor after sitting in the skillet and roasting with the chicken for so long, which is why I told you to hang on to it. You’re welcome.

Carve the chicken up, serve with mashed potatoes, and pour that gravy all over the place.
Dive in.

The skin is the best part. Wrap me up it in. Edible chicken-skin blanket.
I always go for the drum stick. You bite into that really plump part, you hear a slight crackle from the salty skin, followed by the warm, juicy meat underneath that pulls away from the bone as if it wants to simply fall into your mouth. This is not that skinless, boneless chicken breast you’re probably so used to having. This chicken tastes different. This is how chicken is supposed to taste. I mean it still tastes like chicken, but with an added flavor magnifying glass that brings out everything you’ve missed when the skin and bones are removed.


Oh yeah, and there’s gravy.


Buttery. Homey. Like something your Grandma would make, but a little better. There’s a slight sweetness from the caramelized lemon. The mushrooms are soft, but with enough of a bite as they bring some earth to whole thing, while the mustard adds a bright tangy flavor against the richness of the stock and pan drippings. It all comes together with the hint of that white wine you added, slightly creeping up in the background.


Pour this in a glass and I’ll fucking drink it.


The gravy is also great over the mashed potatoes (sorry I don’t have the recipe for that, this post is already long as shit as it is).


This is a great Sunday dinner. Eat it while you’re watching football. But not during the Skins game, because that would just ruin everything.


So try this recipe out Fatties.


-Fat Kid

Everyone Is Fat On Thanksgiving

It's true. Think about it. For one day out of the year, Americans sit around the dinner table with friends, family, and welcome/unwelcome guests, to actively participate in the most glorious display of socially acceptable binge-eating only rivaled by  Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, a Saturday night at the Golden Corral, or a Sunday afternoon/evening on...my couch.

Seriously though. Think about it; have you ever actually taken a look around the room after a traditional Thanksgiving dinner? Everyone's rolling around, groaning and grasping their enlarged bellies in pain as a result of the unnatural food consumption having taken place over the course of 3 hours. And you know what? IT'S SO AWESOME.

As the years have gone by, us Americans have continued to improve upon our getting-fat skills by taking traditions like roasting a turkey, and shoving the whole fucking thing in a deep fryer, because let's be honest, things were getting just a little too healthy around here.

Hey wait...I'm not disagreeing with the whole deep frying trend. No no no. Im just bitter because I don't own a deep fryer and will subsequently have to resort to the super healthy method of slowly roasting a toddler-sized turkey all day, while basting it with a log of butter, and making gravy out of the fatty drippings collected in the bottom of the pan. It's probably better that I don't own a deep fryer, as suddely, all traditional side dishes and pies would get thrown in there at once, cramming a whole fucking harvest festival into one giant, extra crispy cornucopia of Thanksgiving flavor.

Ok that would be gross, but you get the point.

Anyways, I'm always interested to hear about other people's menus and traditions, so let me know. Here's what I'll be doing:

• Sage brined turkey, roasted (Won't be stuffing the bird with the actual stuffing, but definitely with fresh herbs, lemon, and was thinking bacon. The bacon fat will slowly render out, along with the bird's, drippings into the pan, which will go towards the gravy).
• Pan gravy
• Oyster dressing with wild rice and bacon
• Mashed potatoes, with parmesan, basil
• Risotto with sweet corn and chorizo
• Mac and cheese, with cheddar, gruyere, and maybe ham?
• Roasted cranberry sauce with jalepeno and orange
• Skillet corn bread, with honey/jalepeno compound butter
• Some kind of veg (need ideas)
• Some kind of pies for dessert

There will be epic leftovers. I'll include some recipies, the ones that are mine anyways, sometime after I recover from the coma. What are you all doing?

Peace fatties

- Fat Kid

Fat Kid Basics, Session #1: Drunken Rib-Eye

From time-to-time, for those interested, I’ll provide step-by-step tutorials on how to cook and eat like a true Fat Kid. If you’re looking for ways to shrink that waistline via fresh ideas on portion control, healthy meal alternatives, or some form of vegetarian horse shit, I apologize. This site is not for you. Us Fat Kids prefer food that tastes good, and taking that into consideration, we employ various methods of flavor enhancement that certainly won’t help lower your cholesterol.

We’re not trying to cause heart attacks here, but we’re also not that worried about it.

So if you’re ever cooking for friends, family, or nervously attempting to impress that cute Georgetown nursing student you just met with your Uncle Ralph’s 30-minute Manwich casserole, take some advice from me. My calorie laden culinary adventures generally result in smiley-faced-belt-loosening food comas. In other words, if you follow my directions, your food will taste really fucking good.

So let’s get fat.

I’m going to do a drunken rib-eye (shocker). Keeping with the recent theme of my excessive and kind-of-weird love for Celebration Ale, I’m going to marinate a steak using that exact beer, because...that just sounds like a great idea. Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 bone-in rib-eye steak
• canola oil
• kosher salt
• pepper
• butter (for basting)
• Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (for marinating...and drinking)
• garlic

Rib-eyes contain copious amounts of marbled fatty goodness, so obviously it’s my go-to. Place it in a small baking dish with a couple of smashed garlic cloves and pour 1 beer over it. This was not easy for me to do, but I kept the end product in mind. 

What an asshole. Showing off under his frothy beer blanket as he prepares for a 4 hour booze nap. Naturally I’m beyond jealous.

Place it in the fridge, covered with plastic. I would actually recommend leaving it in for at least 12 hours, but more about that later. I left it in for 4, because....well I was hungry.

After you pull the steak out of the fridge, you’re going to need to let it come to room temperature, while also getting some of the excess moisture out so you can achieve a big, crusty sear on this bad boy. Set the steak on a plate and let it sit, for around 30 minutes, while occasionally patting it with paper towel to dry it off a bit. I generally just lightly wrap the steak with paper towel, as it will slowly pull that moisture out.

While the steak is coming to room temp, drink a few beers.

Another thing you could do as the steak warms up is pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. To cook the steak, I use a cast iron skillet because IT’S A FUCKING MONSTER. If you’re searing meat, I can’t think of using anything else. If you don’t own one, you need to use an all-clad pan. Non-stick pans won’t cut it.

Place the skillet in the oven as it’s pre-heating. This obviously aids in the process of ensuring that your pan is smoking hot. When the oven is pre-heated and your steak is at room temp, it’s time to get this party started. 

Generously season each side of the steak with salt and pepper. Put an oven mitt on (because the pan is hot as shit...duh) and place the pan on the burner, setting it to high. Add some oil to the pan (about 1 tbs.) and coat the bottom of the pan. You’ll know the pan is hot enough when it starts shooting smoke everywhere. Turn on your overhead fan, because your smoke alarm is most-likely going to go off.

If you’ve followed my directions and had a few beers at this point, the high-pitched shrill of the smoke alarm shouldn’t really bother you.

Now that the pan is hot enough, place the steak in the pan, leaving it put for 2 minutes. Don’t touch it. Just let it sit there and get happy. After two minutes, you can flip it and it should look like this.




Once again, let it sit for 2 minutes. In the last 30 seconds or so, add the butter to the area of the pan that’s closest to you (2 tbs. should work). As soon as you put the butter in there, tilt the pan towards you and start spooning the butter, as it instantly melts, all over the steak. Butter burns really quickly, so you need keep it moving around pretty fast so that it doesn’t burn, which would impart a bitter flavor to your new best friend.

Baste that shit like a fucking food ninja.

Stop drooling and place the entire pan in the oven. Your preference for rareness determines how long you keep the steak in the oven. I like mine medium rare, so I keep it in there no longer than 4 minutes. If you like it rare, you skip the oven step altogether.

Pull the pan out of the oven and place the steak on a clean plate, as it needs to rest for about 3-5 minutes. If you cut into it right away, all the juices are going to run out and you’ll look like a fucking clown. The juices need to re-distribute back into the meat. Be patient.

Side dishes for a steak like this are an afterthought, but that’s just me. Potatoes would have been obvious, but they fill me up too much. I just threw together a salad, with baby romaine, tossed in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pine nuts, topped off with some aged white cheddar that I paid way too much money for.

Once the steak has rested, you’ve got food-porn. 

Your steak knife will glide through this thing like a spoon through jell-o. There’s a rich, buttery crust on the outside announcing itself with a subtle crunch, answered by a juicy inside that pours into your mouth with each individual chewing motion. Every once in a while, your fork finds a small pocket of charred fat, practically melting into the blood-red meat, that provides a pleasant unhealthy surprise, further complimenting the slightly guilty perfection being experienced. I only use a knife and fork because it’s what I’m supposed to do, otherwise I’d just pick it up by the bone and go at it like a damn caveman, or maybe tilt my head to one side, fold it up like a slice of NY pizza and eat it standing up.

I only wish that I left it in the marinade for a few more hours. I don’t think that 4 hours is enough time for the beer to really impart its flavors upon the meat, which is why I recommended leaving it in the fridge for at least 12 hours. There were hints of the beer’s flavor throughout, however it could have used a bit more. Just my opinion. However, the whole marinading process with this particular cut of meat is completely optional. The marinade simply serves as a bonus, as a bone-in rib-eye contains loads of flavor anyways.

One can easily achieve rib-eye steak zen with three simple things:

• salt
• pepper
• butter

It’s not like I’m writing the whole beer marinade thing off though. I’ll probably try it again next weekend. Second attempts serve as an excuse to buy more Celebration Ale. Anyways, give this a shot and let me know about your results.

- Keep it Fat people.

I Love Beer

All of it in general. However, I love a particular beer on a completely different level. In the early to mid weeks of November, breweries around the country release their annual holiday beers. More often than not, brew-masters jam pack these concoctions with flavors of orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander and other spice cupboard nonsense in an attempt to conjure nostalgic yule-tide cheer in the form of a 6-pack.

Now don’t get me wrong, in no way am I against this idea. First of all, I love Christmas. As the holiday season begins with Thanksgiving, the remaining weeks transform me from a cynical 26 year-old Grinch into a giddy 9-year-old boy via the accompanying traditions of tree decorating, unhealthy eating, considerably raised levels of alcohol consumption, and stop-motion Rudolph-the-red-nose-reindeer movies.

I become Ralphie Parker from A Christmas Story.



With that being said, the incorporation of Christmas specific flavors to my pint glass sounds like a no-brainer. In some cases, these beers are actually quite good. With one sip, I’m transported to a winter fucking wonderland, complete with chestnuts roasting, jingle bells jingling, and visions of passing out underneath the multi-colored glow of a fully trimmed and over-sized Colorado Blue Spruce.

At no other time of the year am I in this good of a mood when I’m hung over.

What changes this mood however, are said beers with over-the-top spice notes and overpowering chocolate malt sweetness, where the only thing missing is a peppermint curly straw and a gingerbread rimmed glass. I’ll drink one, but it will only make me yearn for something better. Something that, for me, represents the arrival of the most wonderful time of the year. Ladies and gentlemen, that something is none other than my favorite beer in the world:



I mean just look at the pretty red box. Slap a green bow on it and slide it under my tree and I’ll think that Santa delivered it personally. The picture on the label is so quaint and Christmasy, I’m convinced that it’s actually a picture of Santa’s house,  painted by sugar plum fairies or jolly little elves alike. It’s probably brewed by either Buddy the Elf, Bob Cratchit, or even Frosty the Snowman himself.

They’d serve this shit on the Polar Express.

If you’re a beer drinker and have never tasted Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, it’s time to fix that situation, and quickly. My outlandish praise for this beer remains somewhat biased however, due to the fact that I have an affinity for really hoppy beer. I want a beer to smack me in the face with big hoppy flavor, and at 6.8% ABV, that’s exactly what this one IPA in particular can do. Some IPA’s deliver nothing but hops, but this beer rounds out with some bright citrus flavors, followed by a long, dry and piney finish that truly knocks my fucking socks off. Pour me an olympic-sized pool of this stuff and watch me swim the 500 meter better than Michael Phelps.

Did I just go from talking about drinking beer to swimming in beer?

Yes. Yes I did.

Doggie paddling around through this stuff demonstrates an act of disrespect. If one were to swim in this beer, you would have to do it in one of two ways. Allow me to elaborate:

1. The backstroke would definitely be appropriate, as it’s quite relaxing, and one can gracefully glide backwards over little foamy beer waves while loudly singing “Joy to the World.”

2. The butterfly serves as the only other acceptable stroke for the completion of this activity. Why? Because one could triumphantly splash in and out of hoppy-beer-pool-glory, while even taking a giant gulp here and there, just because....

What the fuck am I talking about?

I recently found out that this beer contains a whopping 214 calories a pop, but if you’re a fat kid like myself, this is clearly a non-issue. So this Christmas season, while you’re sitting on the couch amongst the comforting bear hug of a slowly burning yule log, crack open one of these bad boys and brace yourself for the epic flavor rocket that blasts off in your mouth.

You might want to bring a bathing suit.