Bon Appetit!

I love Cafe Mac.

That's been my mantra alllll week, and I can't seem to stop saying it.


This week's highlight was turkey pot pie.



A perfect combination of vegetables, meat, and crust, the pot pie is probably one of the top reasons America is a great country.

I'm a crust person, so the kind of pot pie that chefs like Ina Garten make where it's just some dough laid across the top of a mini souffle dish - those really don't work for me. The crust should encapsulate the pie.

Having said this, though, something happens to me when I enter Cafe Mac; something that makes the top-sheet kind of pot pie OK.
In fact, Cafe Mac's pot pie isn't really a pot pie at all. for one, it's not crust surrounding innards, and for two, it's not crust. No, Bon Appetit uses a phyllo number. I feel like I should be against this, but I can't be. As I wait in line at the Iron Grill, my mouth waters in anticipation of the perfectly light topping, which contrasts nicely with the tasty and thick gravy in which the turkey, peas, carrots, and onions? are complacently suspended.
I won't say that I've moved beyond a true pie crust preference, but my horizons have certainly been expanded.



How do you feel about alternative pot pie crusts?

What other fillings could we put in a pot pie besides meat and veggies?

Do you think frozen pot pies are good?

Have you ever had the pot pie at Bosten Market?



I don't have a lot more to say about pot pies, but I do have a sort of tutorial-esque video for you about Cafe Mac. I would like to introduce you all to the most wonderful aspect of Macalester College. Please watch this. (*scroll down to 'student life' and then click on the first one (fittingly) 'cafe mac'*)



-Lillie

Pork Bung?

Pork Bung!

Once a week or so I'm sent over to Chinatown to pick up dumpling wrappers or toothpicks or some other product for which newly arrived Chinese peasants do not have the vocabulary and toward which they cannot lead me. I often get lost.

Which is good. It's almost like I'm studying abroad in East Asia for like twelve minutes. Seriously, the only products I recognize are Coke and Diet Coke and Fanta and Sasparilla (spelled Sarsparilla in Chinatown, which made me wary of drinking it). That's it. And chicken, I guess. But I think their chickens have more parts than ours.

So as I'm walking out of the market yesterday I spot a steamy little pile in the hot food case called "Pork Bung." This immediately made me laugh out loud because I'm dumb and crass and immature. I figured, though, that it was too good to be true. "This must be an ancient Chinese way of saying 'chop,'" I figured. I thought that Mike Judge had created the term "bung" or the more emphatic "bung bung" for use on his 90's slacker cartoon Beavis and Butthead.

Wrrrrowwwwwwwwng!

Pork Bung defined: the large end of the digestive tract of the hog. Also referred to as "pig bung" and "hog bung."

When you google "pork bung" you get many versions of the exact same post that I'm making right now. All posters are spurred to post by seeing this product at an Asian grocery. All posters use self-deprecating humor about their childishness, with a surprising number jokingly referring to themselves as being, specifically, fourteen. I feel unoriginal. Nonetheless, I will link to my favorite of the finds on this GoogAdventure.

Recipe, courtesy of The Poop Report, using pork bungs:

Braunschweiger Liver Sausage

50 lbs. fresh pork liver

50 lbs. fresh pork jowls or fat pork trimmings.

Grind livers and pork trimmings through 1/8-inch plate of the grinder. Chop in the silent cutter after adding the spices. 2 lbs. cereal, if wanted

6 oz. pepper

2 oz. nutmeg

2 oz. marjoram

2 lbs. salt.

Chop fine 3 lbs. onions.

Then add pork and chop very fine. Stuff in large hog bungs about 25 inches long. Cook l/-2 hours at 160° F. Chill in cold water and hang in the cooler. Smoke if desired in cool smoke until casings are dry.

Gonna try this tonight! Let y'all know how it goes!

The Smells of My Youth

Yesterday Jessie (my sister) and I went out to lunch at a sweet little cafe in St. Paul called Trotter's. [In fact, we sat in the chairs you see in the website's picture.] It's on a really adorable block with a toy store (in my head it's a toy train store - Jessie? confirmation?), probably an antiques store, maybe a travel agency (a cute one), and an ice cream store called Izzy's, which is bomb in the sweetest way possible.

Anyway, Trotters is sort of a sandwich/soup shop bakery with some fun flavor combinations and really good iced tea. [maybemama, take note.] When we walked in yesterday, the smell inside brought me back to the happy days of my youth.
Those were the days when me and my cousins would eat dinner at my grandma and grandpa's (Bamma and Grampa) every Thursday and the families would get together there on Sundays to eat. Thursdays were macaroni and applesauce, and I'm not knocking that, because I really really really like macaroni and applesauce, but Sundays were the real treat.

As I remember it, Bamma would make this one stew every Sunday. I know that's not true, but let that serve as a statement to how greatly the scents and flavors impacted me. It was a stew with beef and bacon, and it was rich and hearty, and we would eat it out of these cobalt aluminum bowls with white speckles. I think it tasted similar to bouef bourguignon, but I know exactly how it smelled.
We would walk into their house and the permeating, slow smell of bacon and saltiness and braised things would sneak into our nostrils and incite hunger immediately. I would know that everything for those next few hours would be fine and that we would play and eat at the kids table and that the bowls would be the same and that we'd use the heavy silver spoons like always and that maybe we'd watch Harriet the Spy later on.
I know I liked the stew (I've always called it Hunter's Stew), but the smell was really the most important part, and the scent memory that it has imparted.

And that's what I smelled and felt when I walked in to Trotter's yesterday. I smelled Sundays and Bamma and cousins.


Are there any smells that so strongly transport you back to your youth?


-Lillie

Bon Appetit! Not just for Julia anymore.

Julia Child famously called out "Bon Appetit" after concocting one of her French dishes. Her joyous command inspires us all as we watch her show, but it has another meaning for me and the other 1800 students that attend Macalester College: our food service here is Bon Appetit, and the food at Cafe Mac is soooooooooo good. I can't get over it. I want to be a grown up and get off the meal plan and like, have my own food in my fancy shmancy dorm room (or, to complete the grown up image, my very own place), but I can't imagine not reveling in the plentiful and tasteful cafeteria here.

There are stations for all different types of cuisines and the salad bar is simply inspiring.
I like to mix stations. Sometimes making a noodle dish is the best way to do this. I take noodles from the salad bar, go over to the burrito station and get some shredded chicken or pork, go to the "IRON GRILL" and get some steamed broccoli, dob some cottage cheese on it, and mix in some beans from the salad bar or maybe even chili if it's good that day (what am I saying? it's allllways good!), and then microwave it. [There's a microwave. Rockin.] Sometimes it feels like I'm making my very own hot dish!
Some favor the curry bar, but as I find myself unable to tap into the glories of curry, I stay away from that station in the cafeteria until it's morphed, once monthly, into the jewel in the crown of Cafe Mac: the a la mode bar. I'll tell you about that when it happens.

And that brings me to my purpose for all this blathering about (and tempting you with) all these cafeteria delights: the induction of my first weekly feature (and the fourth colon so far today): Bon Appetit?/!
Check back next week for the first installment, and get ready to be blown away!


Lillie

College and my promise

I'm so sorry. I have eaten many exciting things lately, but I've been all caught up getting back into school, so I haven't told you about them. I'll write tomorrow. I WILL! Come on, believe me.
Here's a teaser: I am widely known and revered for my concoctions in Cafe Mac (Macalester's "caf"), making my college's high-end food service food even better.

Anyway, I need to sleep a little. Except that I'm listening to this awesome mashup of UNK vs. LCD Soundsystem...not the best music to lull me into dreamland.

I promise to write tomorrow.

Camping: Recap

On Saturday night I was the happiest boy in the Catskills. What I considered to be the smoothest, speckliest, sweetest brook trout on the famed Beaverkill river jumped onto my little caddisfly imitation and gave himself over to me. I shouted "dinner!" and Willie was already making a fire next to the bridge.

I felt sad for the fish because I really cared about him and I felt like he would probably have a pretty nice life where he was living. It was a secluded spot, nobody there to bother him, lots of rocks to get shelter from the current and bugs to eat and all. But I also feel like seeing where your formerly living food comes from is a rare treat and should be savored and appreciated. I gutted him next to the river and I cut his head off and rinsed him off so he was nice and smooth and clean cut. Then I pulled some long grasses from the riverside and wet them in the really very cold river water and tucked him in my bag covered with the grasses to keep him cold.

I kept on fishing for awhile and caught some of his smaller kin. Brook trout of all sizes are rewarding to catch because they have the most intricately cool patterns stamped on them. Their coloring is really dramatic. It's cool to me that something that looks like it was designed purely for beauty can be so functional as a camouflage. Bill "Big Willie" Bradley has some pictures of the fish and I'll try to post them at a later date. I also noticed that its flesh changed from, when I first opened it, a kind of deep translucent orange, on the darker side like towards maroon, to the more pinkish lighter orange you see in salmon flesh. Thought it was cool to see.

We cooked him over the fire then. I left the tail on and opened him up and splashed some olive oil and salt and pepper and some lemon juice on him and wrapped him in foil. Then I put him directly on the fire. Not more than four minutes, i don't think. I took him off and checked him out and he looked just perfect - skin still a marvel to look at. I pulled the spine out carefully and almost all of the little bones came out cleanly. Then Willie and I ate with our hands. Like I said, this made me the happiest.

All I needed was some dessert. Maybe Lillie will tell about her famous campfire cobblers and crisps?...

Camping, y'all.

Going camping, y'all.








What should I cook?
Do you like to cook over fires?
Do you carry on your parents' cooking traditions from your childhood camping trips?
Do you feel more authentic when you cook over a wood fire than when you cook on a stove/gas grill/microwave?
Do you eat cereal in the morning when you camp?
Do you like to drink coffee when you camp?
Do you feel that it's a pleasure or a hassle to have to build a fire in order to eat cooked food?
Have you ever made up elaborate lies about your method of cooking trout over the fire to avoid admitting that you've never really caught a trout large enough to cook/eat?
Have you ever made s'mores with peanut butter cups?

Love to camp.

The Beets

BEETS
Season: year-round
Taste: sweet
Function: heating
Weight: medium
Volume: moderate
Techniques: bake, boil, carpaccio, chips, roast, soup, steam


Beets don't exactly scream summer. Or fun, really. I was reintroduced to them recently though and I really really liked them. They were roasted in a pocket of parchment paper with hazelnuts and maybe some dill. After being taken out of the oven, the pocket is opened just enough to drop in a big dollop of creme fraiche (aka sour cream). You open up the packet and the beets are this really deep purply red and they're sweet! and the cream adds creaminess and the nuts nuttiness.

I guess when I was 5 and my grandma's presence at the table necessitated the inclusion of beets on the menu for the night, I hadn't appreciated the complex sweetness of the beet. It's a not cloying sweetness that makes the beet a natural addition to savory dishes. It can be eaten hot from the oven in the fall or winter or served chilled as something refreshing in the summer. The fact that it's a root vegetable makes it pretty much the same in terms of freshness all year round.

Pot pie with beets, apples, walnuts, tarragon, and some kind of creaminess (creme fraiche would probly be the mildest. or you could use goat cheese or sour cream or brie!)
Don't know exactly the steps to making pot pie, but I suppose we'd have to make a nice flaky pie crust first. It'd be good i think to roast the beets and nuts and apples ( i think you could use pears instead if you wanted) a little first and bake the bottom crust a bit first, then put it all together. I think this sounds pretty good as an autumn dinner.

Do you like beets?
Did/do your grandparents eat beets?
Do you think beets could be the new "it" ingredient that every cosmopolitan restaurant has to have on its menu?
Do you prefer beets in the winter or summer? Or the fall or spring?
Are you like Lillie and refuse to eat beets?
Did you watch Doug?

Saturday dinner in Lake Wobegon

Saturday nights at my house in the kitchen are when I feel most at home. We listen to A Prairie Home Companion on 91.7 WUOM, and I sit at the table while my mom cooks up the best meal of the week. She spends the most time on Saturday meals, and they're always homemade splendor. Garrison Keillor's nose-breathing soothes us, while Fred Newman's or Tom Keith's sound effects make us happy, and we always sing along to the Powder Milk Biscuits song. Especially in the winter, the radio show and dinner being cooked make the kitchen the warmest place to me.



Tonight is a cool night for August, and though we had quite a summery meal of gazpacho, peaches, and corn on the cob (the trinity of summer food, my mom said, of corn, peaches, and tomatoes), I still appreciated the way A Prairie Home Companion made me feel cozy and comfortable, and the Catchup Advisory Board reminded me that things are usually simpler than I am concerned they are.

Hope you all had a filling and comfy Saturday dinner.

Blue cheese and figs? Not in cookies.

Blue cheese sounds sophisticated and tempting and delicious, so when I saw a recipe for blue cheese shortbread cookies with fig preserves on a blog yesterday, I knew that it was the right choice for me. So today, awaking to a rainy day, I drove over to the Produce Station here in Ann Arbor (taking a brief detour to make a clutch purchase of a pair of 1990's Eddie Bauer light wash blue jeans at the good ol' SalvArm) and bought a pint of fresh figs and a little wedge of the mildest blue cheese I could find.

Now, in my defense, I knew that the recipe was somewhat strange. But what about this from a fellow blogger: "what an addictive, odd little cookie". Right? Sounds good. The pictures were enticing as well.

But no, no no no.
No, I say, NO!

Blue cheese made my house smell bad today.
My mom thinks it smells good. She's old.

On the taste, my sister agrees with me: "That's not bad..." *swallows* "Oh. Yeah it is. The aftertaste is horrible!" "Bad," she says, "Cheesy."

And the fig jam as well. I recommend not making your own fig preserves. I say this with full confidence. I followed the recipe perfectly, and it smelled like vegetables. I did everything right, and it was runny... similar to beef broth.


Anyway, if this post hasn't completely turned you off from shortbread cookies, I highly recommend you try my mom's recipe for it. You can find it here.

so...I will come to you tomorrow with a culinary victory. But I leave you with this warning: think twice before blindly devoting your day, your kitchen, and your beloved ingredients to the whimsy of a blogger.

Goodnight.
-Lillie

Older is Better

I like things that get better as they age. Case in point: George Clooney. (Perhaps I just have old taste? Case in point: Kevin Spacey?)
Not just actors, though, also food. Soup, for example. And, as I experienced today, beef burgundy (or, bouef bourguignon, as Julie and Julia would say).

I toiled all day this past Sunday, chopping and browning and simmering and reducing, all in the name of creating the perfect French bouef bourguignon. Now I know many of you have just been beaten over the head with this dish (if you've been wise/nostalgic enough to see the movie that inspired the rebirth of this blog), but I really can't go on without telling you about my day and my dish. Actually, I'll just give you some photos that I took while working:













Browned beef and butter with carrots and onions. In a sauce of potent red wine, my favorite part.


First, we brown the onions...












Then add a bouquet of herbs (or sprigs, if you're uncultured, like me) and cook until tender.















Though the lighting isn't great, the richness of the 'broth' and the tenderness of the beef is, I hope, quite evident. We served it with new potatoes and cut them up in the stew - they soaked up the juices beautifully.

To top it all off, I continue to enjoy it, four days after cooking!

I used Julia's recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and as she specifies, I didn't cut any corners, or make any substitutions (even adding more butter at times than she called for, for better browning - don't tell my parents, for whom I made the dish). Try it, when you've got a good day to enjoy cooking.


-Lillie

Summer = Corn

I'ma try to keep going with this flavor combination thing by spotlighting a specific ingredient and thinking out loud about how we can use it in fun/interesting/seasonally 'relevant' ways. Today, kiddies, we'll be talking about corn.

CORN

Season: summer

Taste: sweet

Function: heating (?)

Weight: medium

Volume: moderate

Techniques: boil, grill, roast, saute, steam

This is what The Flavor Bible has to say about corn. I don't know about corn's function being heating. Heating ingredients are things like chiles, mustard seed, horseradish, peppercorns, etc. I'm not sure corn fits in that group. But that's unimportant.

Going down the list of compatible flavors I see a lot of familiar flavor combinations - butter, bell peppers, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes, blah blah. And I just stumbled across one that is less obvious and way more fun - maple syrup! I like maple syrup on everything, a holdover from my days as a chubby youth. Most of the stuff on the list is widely available this time of year and is at the peak of its goodness, so it's really easy to create fresh combinations just by browsing around the greenmarket (if you're a 'cosmopolitan white person') or your supermarket or even your sustainable yardgarden (if you're a provincial white person).

Belgian waffles with corn, bacon (or pancetta), and real maple syrup.

Make up some homemade belgian waffles. Dice some bacon or pancetta in a pretty large dice - the closer to the size of the corn kernels, the better. Slice the kernels off some ears of sweet corn. Saute the bacon for a few minutes first on pretty high heat, then throw in the corn. You could either use the fat from the bacon as your fat for sauteing, or you could drain that and use butter. I think I'd use butter, since that is nice on waffles and with maple syrup. Either way, just saute really briefly until the corn is heated through. I like corn that's fresh and sweet to be barely cooked so that it retains a nice crunch and its natural sweetness.

Put this mixture, however much you want, on top of the waffles like you would a fruit compote. Drizzle real maple syrup over top and eat. I was thinking maybe some blueberries or some diced peaches might be good too to mix in with the corn and bacon. It all sounds kinda heavy for breakfast, but maybe a summertime breakfast for dinner, followed by a nap in some grass? What do you think, y'all?

I also saw dill on the compatible ingredients list, which sounds really nice to me. Lately I've been making this mixture of corn sliced from the cob, halved cherry tomatoes, and cut up asparagus with some salt and pepper and goat cheese for creaminess. I'll use it as kind of a side dish for fish or sometimes we just eat it alone cause it's goot. I think I'll add some dill next time.

What do you think?

Do you like corn?

Does your part of the world rely on corn heavily?

Is corn a part of any of your childhood memories?

Do you think it sounds bad to put corn on waffles?

Do you prefer corn that comes in the husk because it feels more authentic? I do.

Off to the greenmarket.

There's a new treat at the Birthday party.

Speaking of flavor combinations, how about cupcakes and cookies?
Generally we think of them as two separate celebratory foods (or if you're Noah (or me), you at least pretend to feel that way), and thus never a combo act. Today, however, I present them to you as exactly that: a package deal.

Cookie dough cupcakes.


No longer must we feel confined to the pesky cultural quota of one at a time.
No longer will we feel like fatties fatties no friends when we give in to the urge to take both a chocolatey cupcake and a chewy cookie.
No longer, because now we can disguise two as one. It's like Pert Plus 2 in 1 (shampoo and conditioner), but delicious, and underbaked!

Picture an uber-moist chocolate cupcake (facilitated by the pudding packet added to the dry ingredients)
filled
with
cookie dough.

The trick is to fill the pan with batter, and drop into each cupcake one frozen ball of cookie dough, then bake. It must be frozen; if not, the cookie dough will no longer be dough when the cupcakes are finished baking, and all magic will be lost. Baked away.


In fact, thinking about this, they yield great opportunity in the kitchen. I noted chocolate chip cookie dough, but why not use sugar cookie dough? Why not try it with my favorite chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough in a yellow cake cupcake? OH!

Noah creates classy and tasteful flavor combinations, but let's not forget the delectability of sweet-on-sweet action.

Cooking Music - Cass McCombs

I like to cook and eat and listen to music at the same time. Here's a song and video that I like a lot right now by a guy named Cass McCombs.



I have a stereo in the kitchen and I listen to this album loudly while I make things to eat. And to his older album, called Dropping the Writ. Anyway, the video could be considered a little slow for most of the time (his hair is sufficiently engaging for me) but the dancing comes in around 3 minutes in and it's pretty and brings a new rhythm to the music. I don't, generally, watch videos and cook at the same time.

Flavor Combinations

First, before you read any of this, you ought to open a new tab in yer browser and go to the myspace page for a musical entity called Ducktails. I'm listening to it right now and it's really soothing for me and I'd like for you all to feel this way too. They (he) are relevant because they were reviewed on peefork today, so...

A few months ago I started working at a restaurant that specializes in lobster and new england seafood in general. Everyone who works there really likes food a lot and like experiments with food and ingredients and all of that. There's a guy who waits tables there with me, we'll call him "El Flaco", who seems to be in the avante-garde of the food experimentation culture at the restaurant. He knows lots about food and can discuss in depth the definition and history of the torchon as a method of preparing foie gras or why the John Dory (a fish, for you less 'cosmopolitan' readers in our flock) is called the John Dory. He's not obnoxious about it though, and he likes that song where Paul Wall says "I got tha innanet goin' nutz," so I find his culinary elitism not just palatable but informative and quite fun.

One day El Flaco came in with a special meal for us for our staff meal. It was a lobster bread pudding that he had put together for a family gathering in New Jersey the weekend before, and had set aside a batch to bring in for his friends at the lobstah bahhhh. It was very good, the bread pudding was. Savory and moist and stuff. But the part that really stuck with me was that he had made a sauce of lobster stock, vanilla bean, and tarragon to accent it. It was a sweet sauce, and a bit savory as well, and complemented the bread pudding really well. I thought this a novel meeting of culinary strangers. But, alas,I am from the midwest. And I am vulgar and low brow and not relevant, so of course I thought that. As The Skinny One pointed out to me, lobster and vanilla are a classic flavor combination. Like blueberries and mint or tomatoes and basil or chocolate and raspberries or (as pictured) watermelon and pork belly.

So I've gotten real interested in this whole idea of classic flavor combinations. I think it will allow me to take my cooking, and my general food snobbery, to a whole new level. I got this book called The Flavor Bible that is basically a huge index of most every ingredient you can think of, and for each one a comprehensive list of ingredients and flavors that it pairs well with. Pretty cool. Very exciting for someone who always messes up set recipes. I'm looking forward to experimenting with it and bringing up what I learn from it in conversations to make people think I'm cultured.

Off to eat.

RIP KRIS

Y'all. Feelin' kinda hopeless tonight. Feel like I might be the next Chris Farley.

I remember where I was when I found out Chris Farley died. I was frenziedly binge eating sugar cookie dough against my mom's wishes while she was in the other room, and against my best interest as a chubby thirteen year old boy striving for social status and relevance in my junior high. I heard it on the kitchen radio. The result, they said, of an overdose of cocaine and morphine. They could have left it there, but they did not. They said his death was the unglamorous end of a long downward spiral that included a serious cocaine addiction, naturally, but that also involved a lifelong battle with a food addiction.

A food addiction? "Doesn't everyone really really love to eat as much as possible all the time of everything ever?" i thought to myself. I'd never heard of such a thing and it seemed absurd to me that it had been given what seemed like a semi-scientific title. This was just human nature. And then my chubby little brain made one more unconscious turn of thought and I realized it. This was not normal. I was a compulsive overeater. I ate uncontrollably on a more-than-daily basis. I was Chris Farley and Chris Farley was me, more or less except for a few differences.

This realization would have ruined me and what little self-confidence I had left after middle school if I had allowed it to. Instead, I did what I do with all memories and realizations that make me uncomfortable with myself - I put it really very far back away in my head and never thought about it ever. And I joined a football team, the one group of people among which fatness can be a virtue.

Lately, though, I been feelin' like a lil' fatty. There are these chocolate chips that I can't stop eating until I'm completely asleep. I will, seriously, get out of bed when I'm teetering on the edge of a good sleep so that I can go to the freezer and eat yet another handful of Ghirardelli milk chococheeps. (Full disclosure: these are best chocolate chips evahhhhhhhhhh! Cook's Illustrated says so too.) Sometimes i'll eat a whole box of cereal in one sitting, simultaneously reading recipes and taste tests in cooking magazines and, when I'm being particularly weird, pretending I'm the host of a cooking show and that the cereal is the sophisticated yet simple fusion dish I'm preparing for that day's show. I graze a lot. Usually by the time I finish cooking dinner I'm completely full already from eating tub upon tub of hummus. I eat off of people's plates at work when they don't finish everything. To sum it up, the fact that I'm always full or overfull or really uncomfortably way full is troubling to me, and has brought back memories of Chris and his bloated end.

WEEEEKEEEE entree:
"An individual suffering from compulsive overeating disorder engages in frequent episodes of uncontrolled eating, or bingeing, during which they may feel frenzied or out of control, often consuming food past the point of being comfortably full."
"In addition to binge eating, compulsive overeaters can also engage in grazing behavior, during which they return to pick at food throughout the day."
"Eating much more rapidly than normal."

Now that I've advanced in the world and become a food runner at a relevant seafood restaurant in the SoHo/NoLita restaurant scene, I make vast quantities of money. This makes me want to go out to restaurants that make 'Best of' lists and other restaurants that are more authentic because they're only known to be special by 'foodies' who 'live in the city' and are rated 'elite 09' on yelp.com. Then I go to these restaurants and I order as much food as I think I can possibly eat And then I look for somewhere to sit or lie down because I like to digest horizontally when I'm that full. Ohhhhhhhhhhh the duality of man. This makes me happy. This makes me miserable. I want to write the fat version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

RIP Chris. (wouldn't him dying from a mix of coke and morphine on the 60-somethingeth floor of the John Hancock building at a young age have been way more glamorous had he not been obese?) I will not graze. I will ride my bike on my way to binge eating at 'bloggable' restaurants in a dual effort to preemptively burn calories and to better my personal brand. Can I beat this disease? Is this just another term for the age-old "fatty fatty no friends?" Do I want to beat this? Am I making all of this up because I like self-deprecating humor? Even I don't know.

"Better than Cheddar": Goat Cheese

Above is a delicious lunch that Noah and I dined on early this July. The dish in the front was mine: potatoes, sausage and an egg, with goat cheese and pickled red onion on the top, baked until the potatoes were tender and the cheese had melted and shmoozed throughout the dish.

The egg was a delicate over medium, the sausage was sausagy, the potatoes were nice, but really, really, what made the dish was the goat cheese.
Goat cheese?
Goat cheese.


Prior to this summer, my summer of goat cheese (I'm willing to label it as such), I believed goat cheese was a boring cheese, with a taste similar to the blandness of ricotta - only useful as a filler - and with a texture creamy but not the same as, and therefore inferior to, brie.
But I have learned:

• Goat cheese is creamy, not smushy, and spreads beautifully.
• Goat cheese is not oddly grainy and incredibly unappetizing (like ricotta).
• Goat cheese has a flavor - ! - that is refined and versatile.
• Goat cheese's tartness is due to more saturated fatty acids (all with the same root, "capr-", which comes from the Latin for goat) than we find in cow's milk cheeses, with their gentler flavors.
  

In essence, I have learned the unsurpassed functional richness of the cheese of the goat.


My taste buds having been opened to the new genre of dairy, I began exploring the many applications of goat cheese, both sweet and savory:

1. On pizza: Goat cheese with pancetta and eggs, on a crust? Why, yes! In fact, the creamy tenderness of the goat cheese was a welcome change from the normal pizza cheese (whether it be mozzarella or the usual melted mixture), as it didn't come off with one bite, but covered evenly the whole pizza.
2. With fruit: The tartness of goat cheese contrasts with the juiciness of fruit (oranges, for example), extending the taste experience by adding tart to sweet. And when you add basil to the orange slice topped with a dollop of goat cheese, and drizzle the morsel with rosemary and garlic infused olive oil (as Noah did in a sparkling original creation), well then you've got many flavors jovially packed into one texture-frenzy of a bite!
3. With vegetables: Raw sweet corn cut from the ear, chopped asparagus, and halved cherry tomatoes, warmed slightly in a skillet, topped with goat cheese, drizzled with a balsamic reduction, and left to melt into a creamy, crunchy, fresh salad.

The cheese works with textures similar (eggs) and opposing (raw asparagus), and it's tartness complements sweet, sour, and savory beautifully.

Falling quickly for the cheese, I ate it as much as possible. I searched for it on menus, breakfast lunch and dinner. I stealthily kept a bag of milk chocolate chips in the freezer while in New York, pairing a chip with a bit of goat cheese when no one was looking, savoring the simultaneous melting and melding of the flavors. I began recommending unwise pairings: goat cheese with leftover filling from chicken dumplings? not so much...

Regardless of my novice flavor faux pas, I write today to extol the virtues of the adaptable, dependable, charming goat.
The goat, though strange and stinky, creates adorable babies and unbeatable cheese. I lift my glass and cheer, "To the Goat!"


-Lillie

Renewed hope for the food blog

Today, after watching "Julie and Julia" for the second time, I realized that The Plate Lickers cannot lie dormant any longer. It is time to revive the finger-lickin, plate-loadin, drip-droolin, tummy-achin fun of this blog.

Now, having just spent seven weeks in the gustatory heaven of New York City, and emptying both mine and Noah's bank accounts on delicious food, perhaps then was the time to start writing again...now it'll all be catch-up. Well, I'm willing to play a little catch-up. I'm not going to just forget about all the wonderful things that I ate (and prepared, oh yes, I baked) there. No, no, I'm going to tell you all ALL about it.

I'm not embarking upon some great journey like Julie did, taking on the cookbook of cookbooks, but I am taking on my laziness and inability to stick with something, especially something as truly enjoyable and rewarding as writing about food and eating.

I hope you all enjoy reading and learning about and exploring the world of food with me. Take Two.


Noah, where you at?



-Lillie

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This.

Happy March!

It's time for me to share my pride and joy, my definition, my heaven, my one true love. (Sorry, Noah.) This is it. The high point of the blog. Everything will go downhill from here.


Lillie's Scones
originally cast as "simple scones", I've gone ahead and been self-righteous and named these treasures after another treasure: me.

Ingredients:
2 c. flour
1/3 c. sugar, plus more for sprinklin'
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 stick butter (salted. go for it), cold
1/2 c. dried cherries (also: cinnamon/chocolate? chips, currants, raisins (in decending order of preference))
1/2 c. sour cream (if in a pinch, you can use yogurt or buttermilk, or even milk with lemon juice)
1 egg

Mandatos:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients, then cut the butter into them, using a pastry cutter, a fork, or your hands if you're a G. Stir in your additives. It's important to add the additives now because the coating of the dry ingredients gives them a buffer against sinking in the batter once it goes into the oven. You know those cookies with the chips all at the bottom, all caramelized and burned? Those chips were not added at the right point. That point is now.
Whisk the egg and the sour cream together in a bowl, then add to the rest of the ingredients, stirring with a fork. The fork just works better than a spoon.
Work the dough into a big ball, and place it on a floured surface (since I am lazy and don't like to clean our fancy bread cutting board that is good for this purpose, I've really taken to using wax paper for rolling dough out. Just stick the paper to the counter top with tape, or even just wet the counter before you put the wax paper down. Don't skip out of the flour, though). Pat the dough into a disk, about an inch thick, maybe 7 inches across. Sprinkle the dough with sugar. Cut the dough into 8 triangles and place them on a cookie sheet with some space between them.
Bake for 10-12 minutes. They can have a little color on the tops, a bit golden on the bottom edges, but don't let them get brown all over - under-baked is better in this situation than over-baked.
Serve them whenever and wherever. They're freakin delicious right out of the oven, sliced in half, with a little overtly unnecessary butter melted on it. They're also good the next day, and really, for up to 4 days after. They taste good even when cookies would start to not be good; they are better than cookies.

As a note, you can use an egg wash on the dough before sprinkling sugar on it. Probably cut the triangles and put them on the baking sheet before doing this business, though, because things might get messy otherwise. For a simple egg wash, just beat one egg; brush that onto the dough, then sprinkle the sugar onto it. It makes things glisteningly appealing.



So that's that. That is really that. I can't even tell you. I can and have told you.
Oh oh oh oh oh.



-Lillie

The Queen of Nashville: Monell

All I can think about is spring break. And that means Nashville, Tennessee. And that means Monell's.


During water aerobics yesterday, while lifting foam weights over my head and hopping on one foot in the shallow end, I was telling some friends (under the age of sixty!) about Monell's. I told them that it is the best restaurant I have ever been to. Immediately upon saying this, I realized it was true.
At most restaurants, I experience one of two predicaments:

1. I drive myself into a rut: so in love with one dish, I am unable to try anything new. This is the case at Coffee News (the subject of a previous post), and though I'm perfectly happy getting the same sandwich every time I go there, I recognize how much I might be missing.
2. (actually, this is an offshoot of #1, but not really) I only like a few items on the menu. This, of course, is a global issue, but that doesn't make it any better for sufferers.

At Monell's, though, I experience neither.
I do not experience #1 because I have no choice but try everything, and I do not experience #2 because everything is good.



Now, let me introduce to my Top Restaurant:


MONELL'S!

We walk down 6th Street. It's dark out, and the neighborhood is quiet. An old brick house, warmly lit from the inside. Two rooms, two huge tables. Murals on the walls. Laughter, folks sit together at the tables, sharing food, needing no reason besides this shared experience to feel completely at ease.
Family-style southern fare covers the table, constantly refilled, increased, and compounded. Biscuits, chicken, potatoes, macaroni and cheese, strawberry shortcake.
I've never come across something that I didn't want to finish (read: didn't finish) at Monell's.



A visit to Monell's is the sole reason I insisted on planning a spring break trip down south last year, and the reason I insist on doing the same trip this year.

I cain't wait!

-Lillie

Valentine's day gifts: the Good and the Ugly

Being in college isn't easy.



It's difficult to find a place to bake.


I am fortunate to have a kitchen nearby, because the unequipped room that holds only an oven doesn't quite cut it when you're trying to mix up a little somethin somethin for your valentine.

That little somethin? Cut outs! They cut it!

Unoriginal? Yes.
But cute? Of Course.


Now I'll be honest: cut out heart cookies proliferate around Valentine's Day, and aren't all that exciting or attractive because like so many things, we've all been there and done that.
I believe, though, that everything can be great if done well and with a twist, even if it's not a brand new idea.



Here are two recipes for cut outs that break from the norm.

The first is a simple shortbread dough, the second an oatmeal dough. Both are different from the usual sugar cookie. AND, both are homemade. BINGO!
Frost them with homemade frosting. It tastes good. It's an arm workout. It's made of sugar and butter and vanilla and milk and that's all. Here's the recipe.

I think a little bit of muscle and oddity is enough to make creating something for your lover/loved worthwhile this Valentine's day.


There are lots of bad gifts you could give (or you could go the route of no gift), but consider this simple testament to your affection.
Cookies say lots of nice things: "I love you no matter what size you are!" "I made this for you because I love you." "These were cheaper than jewelery!" etc.


Valentine's day isn't cheesy, it's wonderful!

-Lillie

Sit down, Pillsbury!

My grandma's cutouts are always my favorite Christmas cookie. So much so that she's begun calling them 'Lillie's cookies'; and this Christmas, though she was very sick, she traveled all the way to Michigan just to deliver them to me. A little much, but I can't say I didn't eat...all of them.

She makes cutouts not with sugar cookie dough, but with shortbread dough. It makes for a flakier, butterier cookie, which contrasts well with the smoothness of the frosting.
They probably translate well to Valentine's day cookies, too.


Shortbread Cutouts

3/4 c. butter
1/4 c. sugar (both granulated and powdered work well here. Let me get back to you about differences?)
2 c. flour

Cream butter and sugar. Add flour. Refrigerate. Roll out to 1/4-inch thick, cut out. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or just until set, at 350 degrees.
Let cool, and frost with:


Frosting

I don't have the specifics here, but this is whatchu need:

-butter: cold, but not very cold. A stick will do for a batch of cookies.
-powdered sugar: more than you would think - just have about 2 cups on hand if you're making a bunch of frosting.
-vanilla: key. Just a little drop'll do ya.
-milk: only really necessary for spreadability, here. Smooths things out nicely, but not crucial. Add only the teensiest bit. It gets out of hand quickly.

and this is whatchu do:

-mix butter and p. sugar. Do this by smoothing butter into sugar (vice versa?); use a spoon and press the butter against the side of the bowl you're working with. It takes a minute to start mixing, but you'll see results and be happy. Once they're smoothly mixed, taste it. Does it taste buttery still? Add more sugar. With the right taste, add a bit of vanilla, and milk if you wanna.
Badabing Badaboom!
Refrigerate this stuff. Let it come almost to room temp before you frost anything, though.



Add a little pink food coloring to the frosting, and frost these puppies, my personal favorite Valentine's day cook-cooks:


Oatmeal Cutouts

2/3 c. shortening
3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 T milk (I used water when I made them at the dorm. it worked. Mom? Is this okay?)
1 t. vanilla
1 3/4 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
3/4 c. oats

Cream shortening and sugar. Blend in egg, milk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to the mixture. Stir in oats. Chill several hours.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out to about 1/4 inch, and cut out (hearts, preferably). Bake for 10 minutes, or until just golden on the edges. Let cool, then frost.
Makes 3 dizzle.


-Lillie

Mission: Lox - The Roundup

Sorry, dedicated plate lickers, Ming and Ting have been working a lot! since their smoked fish adventure and have not made time to report back. So here it is. The final, non-authoritative word on lox is in.

First off, I've eaten enough lox that I'm not sure, at this juncture, whether it will be appetizing to me again ever. Will this be a pattern in these research missions, that they will ruin my desire to eat these foods again? Is that irony? Do any of you know how to define irony? I do, in fact, think my relationship with lox will have a future. Today at the sto' (the colloquial term among us hip white people for Whole Foods) I examined a whole gutted rainbow trout for several minutes before I decided that eating only that for dinner would make my apartment and my person smell bad, and that I had no ideas for what to pair it with. After that I left and then I ate some frozen vegetables for dinner. Sweatshops don't pay well.

I digress. What was I talking about? Lox! Barney Greengrass! So I hop off the ol' 1 train and work my way through the labyrinth of Maclaren strollers and these people that is the the Upper West Side, all the while Karen Oh orgasmically screams into my little pink ears that I "look like shit!" and that I wasn't invited. I was feeling real low. And then, like a beacon, I see this through my misty midwestern eyes. A real classic-looking place, right? A serious New York establishment. The kind of place where everything is so good, it doesn't even have to look good.

Now came the moment of truth. Could I ask the guy behind the counter to be my teacher? And of equal importance, would I have the proverbial huevos to ask him for some free samples? Would he beat or banish me if I made a mistake or asked a stupid question? My fantasies aside, the smoked fish man was a wonderfully helpful smoked fish man. I told him "I wanna know about lox" and he was more than happy to help me learn. He told me that their Eastern lox is the most popular. It's brined in water, sugar, salt, and some type of alcohol. Then it's cold-smoked. He told me that it's farm-raised. He offered samples and I took those samples. He also let me try a sample of the Gravlox, the only of their salty delicacies that is made in-house. The Gravlox is never smoked. It is cured, like the regular lox, except with the addition of a LOT of dill and white peppercorns. Awesome stuff.

Then I walked right down the street to Murray's Sturgeon Shop. This was where my most important discovery was made. The man behind the counter decided he couldn't answer broad prompts like "tell me about lox." I told him I didn't know anything about lox so I couldn't ask specific questions. He shrugged his shoulders and left the counter. Then another man came out. He didn't really speak any words to me, but his generosity and his silent pedagogy shone through nonetheless. Through this old-world oracle I learned the answer to my final lox question - who does it best?

The Scotties!!! Yes, Dr. William MacDougal and his feral countrymen know how to cure a fish. The difference? Smoke. "Scotch style" lox, as my maestro explained to me so succinctly in two words, has more smoke. It is cold-smoked for longer than the regular Eastern or Nova lox. That makes a lox that is just as silky in texture, but the saltiness is more in the background and the smoke comes to the front.

Some of you might be saying "NoNoNoah why don't you just go back to Michigan and eat some smoked fish with your backward yooper friends and leave the lox alone!" Well, noone's reading this, not many people know what yoopers are, and even fewer know of their affinity for smoked fish, so you probably aren't saying that. But either way, I am going to leave lox alone. I'm sick of it and this mission. I hope you learned something. Goodbye.

nobear.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

Food On A Stick.



I am a sell-out.
I guess I knew it and thought I could hide it from all the refined bloggers out there judging me. But now that I'm seriously writing my third consecutive blog post about fried food, there's no way I can pretend to be above eating anything fried.


I think I probably started on my downward spiral this August when I arrived in the Twin Cities. Feeling uncertain about my new surroundings, unable to really call anywhere home yet, a trip to the fried-food heaven was compulsory and centering.
And sure enough, upon setting foot on The Minnesota State Fairgrounds, smelling the thousands of trays of fat boiling away in greasy little tents, and laying eyes upon wrappers and picked-clean sticks strewn about the paths, I knew Minnesota was somewhere I could fit in.

The Minnesota State Fair is famous for (among other things) frying everything on a stick. Everything. Though revolting at first and second consideration, all concerns melt (like the inside of a fried Milky Way) when you bite into one.
Similarly, ambivalence toward a large bucket of soft little cookies all to yourself becomes foreign as you doublefist them into your mouth as you walk in excitement toward The Miracle of Life.
My first and best experience with food on a stick was probably the good old-fashioned corn dog. But this summer I tried the fried oreo, against my better judgment, and to my supreme joy.


The coolest thing about the Minnesota State Fair is that creativity, especially with flavor combinations, is an art form and appreciated by all. You might not see a candy bar dipped in batter and dropped tenderly into boiling fat as art, but like other forms of food art, it just takes an open mind and appetite to get excited about.

The state fair originally was held to encourage farming in the state, and though the official website may argue otherwise, the fried food is the focus now, and the foremost reason I plan to return to Macalester in the fall.


Fried. Good.

-Lillie

French...fries ?

I am not a fried-food kind of person, really.

I am also not really into French people or things or food or anything really.

And yet, here I am, defying both of these statements.



Today I went to one of my (and everyone else at Macalester's) favorite hangouts, Coffee News Cafe, on Grand Avenue. With a patchy staff, unabashedly liberal clientele, proximity, and awesome food, Coffee News has reason to be what it is to Macalester students. But incredible (though deceptive?) cake display aside, their real masterpiece comes as a side: garlic french fries: homemade golden delicious, delicate fries, sprinkled with minced garlic and served next to your favorite sandwich (sliced turkey panini - pears! honey mascarpone! bacon!).

If you're like me, you probably think the "french" before the "fry" is just a stupid American invention. But you and I are wrong! French actually refers to the way the little buggers are prepared:

french, to
1. To cut a vegetable or meat lengthwise into very thin strips. Beans and potatoes are two vegetables that are commonly "frenched."
2. To cut the meat away from the end of a rib or chop, so that part of the bone is exposed.

Cool, right?
Interesting, though, because there are so many different shapes of French fries these days: shoestring, curly, thick-cut, waffle...
Not to mention the different flavors available. [Including Trader Joe's chipotle ranch - not recommended, my friends.]



Ignoring the ongoing debate of which fast food fries are superior, I put forth the idea that perhaps the best fries come not from a red or blue plasticized corporation, but from the earthy yellow, too on-beat to be off-beat Coffee News in little St. Paul, Minnesota.


-Lillie

Mission: Lox - Ming and Ting's Excellent Adventure

"Ming and Ting decided to seek help from the Dragon who lived on the Blue Mountain. It was New Year's Eve, and time for gift-giving, and perhaps the Dragon might be in a generous mood!"

This tantalizing little teaser for the 1967 children's book, "The Dragon Liked Smoked Fish," is actually a spot-on description of my plans for the day. I'll be Ming and Ting, the help-seekers. The Dragon will (hopefully) be a 65+ year-old Eastern European Jewish man behind the counter of Barney Greengrass and Murray's Sturgeon Shop. New Year's Eve will be whatever the date is today. The gifts being given will be knowledge and lox. Blue Mountain will be the Upper West Side. You, my friends, will be the riveted little readers.

So here I go! This is my first bit of field work and I'm a bit anxious. Can I ask the questions that need to be asked? Can I get beyond my passive midwestern demeanor to take on the proverbial Dragon? Will I do right by you, my starving flock? We shall see.

And also, can I get through the pissy weather that is blanketing our fair city today? I took this photo from my fire escape this morning. Uy! Ay! Let's just pray I return bearing gifts.

re: Mission Lox

My bet for the best lox (though unimaginable in my mind) is on the Eastern Europeans. Scots never do anything best, and Swedes are too pale to accomplish anything (like me).

-Lillie

Mission:Lox - That Ain't Exactly Smoked, Kid

So... lox isn't what I thought it was. The words of my first post - about me having a major lack of knowledge - have come even truer than I previously thought. I knew, literally, one thing about lox. It is in fact salmon. It is not, however, smoked. Well, it kind of is. Why is this so complicated?!

So here it is. Lox is salmon - generally fillet - that is cured in a liquid brine. The brine seems to consist of water, salt, and sometimes sugar and "spices." Then it is cold-smoked. Cold-smoking basically means that the meat is exposed to smoke for a short period of time, to give it some flava, but is not exposed to the heat. This is why lox remains so silky and melty and sashimi-like. This reminds me, I need to explore my desire to eat raw beef. Steak tartar might be next?!?!

Alas, questions remain. As my ADD self-help book Finding Your Focus suggests, I'll make a list:


1. What are these mysterious spices? I understand, you know, when in the ingredients section on a food product it vaguely states that "spices" were included in the making of said product, that that is probably a way of protecting their original, centuries-old recipes. But venerable sources of information like Wikipedia should be a bit more transparent, I think. Also, an aside: Why does the Cuban restaurant I work at list "Cuban spices" as an ingredient? I believe the menu is aimed at what the Dominican woman inside of me would call "babosos."


2. How about the duration of the brine? Does the brine last for hours? days? weeks? You really never know with these Nordic and/or Eastern European Jewish folks.


3. And finally, who makes it best? It seems that the Scots, the Swedes and their fellow Nords, and the Ashkenazi Jujubes from Eastern Europe are the old masters. I'll see what I can dig up.



There's a morsel for us to chew on, ey? I figure I'll go out tomorrow and try to get the best stuff in this city of lauded lox. From what I've seen on chowhound, it seems that either Barney Greengrass (fun name!) or Murray's Sturgeon Shop are the places to go, both reasonably easy to get to from my place up in Higgidy Harlem. I'll letcha know how it goes.



nono.

recipe 1: Berry Stuffed French Toast

A recipe for famished souls ready for a sweet overload.

-Lillie/Mama Wirstrom


Ingredients

for the syrup:

• 2 c. unsweetened raspberries
• 3/4 c. brown sugar
• 3 T. butter
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 1/2 t. vanilla

for the toast:

• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. sour cream
• 18 slices sourdough
• 1/2 c. raspberry preserves
• 1 t. vanilla
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 c. half & half
• 1/2 t. cinnamon

Process

for the syrup:
Combine all but vanilla in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

for the toast:
Beat cream cheese and sour cream. Spread on each slice of bread. Combine preserves and vanilla. Spread over cheese on 9 slices. Make sandwiches. Combine eggs, half & half, and cinnamon. Dip both sides of sandwiches and cook on a skillet or the likes. Cut diagonally and sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

Makes 9 filling servings.

re: Alo?

Like many of the best foods, inaugurations are filled with excitement. First times are often the best: first dances, first kisses, first time on a zip line, first ice cream cones. Though overshadowed perhaps by other recent inaugurations, the beginning of The Plate Lickers is a palatable little adventure nonetheless.

so Welcome!

As Noah said, we promise a curiosity-driven blog, tinted with both the hipster irony of our (my?) generation and the timeless American passion for edibles.
We'll share our culinary experiences, learn together, and write all about it. Though we're apart, our hearts and stomachs are one, connected by our first love of eating.

In keeping with the theme of beginnings, perhaps we as the Plate Lickers should set ourselves a goal or two. Challenges?

-Lillie

Please Dip Your Toast

To have lingered upon the delicate and variegated textures of french toast - a fried delicacy unmatched by any other breakfast competitor - four times in twice as many days is a gluttonous sin I was glad to commit while in New York City earlier this month. Like any pleasurable gustatory experience, there is a much to traverse in discovering what separates the standout from the sub-par, and though my arteries (with their infinite foresight) might have issued silent protests, my appetite and I were happy to oblige the lust.

I cannot continue with a study and report on french toast without divulging my deep allegiance to pancakes: it runs through me with the strength of a stream beneath a glacier. Or at least it used to. Save for the ardor that continues to course through me for one particular pancake from my hometown, the glacier seems to have receded, leaving only an esker of pancake passion.

Is it possible that french toast could've taken the spot of top breakfast choice?
Anything is possible in New York City.

Here is how it happened.
1. The Deluxe
On Broadway, between 112th and 113th.
Saturday brunch.
I arrive hungry, ready to indulge a foreign hankering for french toast as I have heard great things about this fancy diner's battered bread.
I am seated along the wall, and as I watch a plate of sensual banana pancakes float past me to another table, I feel apprehension. My plate arrives, though, and I forget about the bananas nearby, taken instead by the strawberry cream cheese spread between the thick slices of challah that is battered and fried and waiting. The crust is crisp, the inside soft, tender, almost custardy. Wonderfully balanced. There is not enough for me.

2. Good Enough To Eat
On Amsterdam, between 83rd and 84th.
This is my favorite breakfast place in the city so far, and though I did not find the all-star plate, I learned about two crucial characteristics of french toast:

• Custardiness is not squishiness. Custardiness is the most beautiful part of french toast. It's like the bread is getting a perm, and it becomes soft, losing all form inside it's crust.
• Formidabiliy. French toast often goes too far. Too custardy becomes squishy and lacks the formidability necessary. The surface area of the french toast cell wall to the pudding-like interior.

3. Fred's
On Amsterdam, at 83rd.
Sunday brunch.
The best french toast. The perfect balance of custardiness and formidability. Fred's uses awesome bread - another important find - which is sliced thick, has a vein of cinnamon filling running through it, and does not lose its shape or constitution when battered and fried. The inside is soft. Everything is perfect.
And they gave us free muffins.


French toast can be stuffed, which is incredibly raw. It is fried, which makes it accessible to everyone. It's made of bread, part of the food triangle, which needs no further explanation.

My foray into french toast culture was the best. I was reminded of a Christmas past when my mom made her own stuffed french toast for our nap-inducing breakfast. Here's the recipe. Make it.

-Lillie

Ready! Set! Eat!

Alo?

Alo!

Welcome to The Plate Lickers! Do not confuse us with "Plate Lickers." They're scurrilous. Unethical, really.

So this is my little friend Lillie and I's feeble attempt at joining the already bloated gastroblogosphere. We're doing this almost entirely for our own entertainment - to rescue us from the monotony, even despair, of everyday life - and I'm virtually certain that we will be this "blog"'s two solitary readers. We're not in it for the fame.

A second motivation (after idleness and depression) for doing this is because we are huge fat people. Lillie is fat. I'm super huge and fat. And do you know how we got this way? How we maintain this heft? We really like food. Lots of kinds of food. We like cheap food and common food. We like fresh-made food, local food. We like hole in the wall food, we like backcountry canned food, we like "hip" Soho fusion restaurant food. Food Food Food Food Eat Eat Eat (Chanting).

An anecdote. Just this morning, I'm walking down the street and I'm thinking I haven't had a Beef Baja Chalupa in quite awhile, I should get one really soon. I need to get one. And then ten minutes later, I decide to buy myself a sesame bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox. As I'm eating this bagel and pulling the smoked salmon apart into these perfect, fun-sized little strips, I think to myself - What if I could have the planet's best smoked salmon? It would make this my best day in a long time. The texture!

And this is when the questions arrive. They bombard me. Where would I get it? Sweden? I think they eat smoked fish. They may or may not have a native salmon population. To be totally honest with myself and with you, the reader(s), I'm not entirely sure where Sweden is. I think I could maybe point it out on a map, but I don't know what bodies of water surround it. Is it a country full of rivers? Are they the kind of rivers and larger bodies of water that are conducive to salmon? I think Love Is All mentions lox in a song. Maybe?

And herein lies the basis of what I think this blog ought to focus on. We are not knowledgeable people. We know very little about a lot of things. We don't know a ton about food. But we are curious, yes! We ask questions. We need to know. And that is what I, for one, endeavor to do. I propose that we pick a subject, a foodstuff, if you will, and we find out all we can about it. And we report back here. And this is how we will all learn.

Learning can be a wonderful escape. And when it involves eating, all the better.

Lil, whatcha thank grrrrrw?