Photo by Joanna O'Leary

Where's the beef? Who the f*ck cares? Camel rocks!

I was intent on ordering the antelope.

Sammy's Wild Game Grill offers a variety of exotic meatstuffs, but I wanted to try something really, well, wild. The last time I remember seeing the word "antelope" on the menu was eight-odd years ago at Jiko in Walt Disney World. But at the time I went for something tamer because I was a cranky, unadventurous tweenager.

I didn't anticipate, however, that Sammy's would be offering a special that would make antelope seem pedestrian and render my interest in it obsolete. "Camel $11.95" read the blackboard list of seasonal meats.

Well, yes, yes, I will have dromedary for dinner.

More »

Photo by SeabrookeLeckie.com.

Stop your yapping and get in the pot.

Even though I grew up in central Pennsylvania and have a spot for Punxsutawney Phil, I still get annoyed that we give credence to meteorological predictions made by buck-toothed rodents.

When I lived in Massachusetts, I used to get downright angry at these woodchuck forecasts, especially when they involved many more days of snow, ice, and freezing rain. (Note: This year for once Phil seems hopeful.) More often than not, these pronouncements of six more weeks of winter become weird self-fulfilling prophecies in which people bleakly resign ourselves to remain in grouchy winter mode even if four out of seven days of the week the sun is shining brightly.

Well, if you're like me (and the Addams family), perhaps you'll get some vindictive pleasure in being able to feast on those who would subdue you. Because as it turns out groundhog can be mighty tasty:

More »

Photo by Broken Sphere

Smell like this.

I was scrolling through Twitter last night when three words struck terror in my heart: Pizza Hut Perfume.

I'm not sure if this offends me more as a pizza lover or a perfume lover, but I am definitely offended. Look, I love the smell of pizza (though not, particularly, Pizza Hut), and I love a good gourmand perfume (gourmand perfumes are essentially comprised of "edible" notes, vanilla being the most common). But frankly, this is just madness. I want to smell pizza, not smell like pizza.

If this gimmick sounds like a joke, that's because it started out as one. The Canadian social media Grip Limited handles Pizza Hut's social media, and last summer they asked fans to name a hypothetical perfume that smelled like fresh pizza. The response was such that the marketing team for Pizza Hut hired a specialist -- an aromachologist, as they are known -- "to design a limited-edition scent."

AND THEN THEY MADE IT. And they are shipping bottles to the Facebook fans who "won" free samples this week.

More »

Photo by Nicholas L. Hall

Basic ingredients for vadouvan, minus about a million shallots.

I wasn't joking when I mentioned that I had become somewhat obsessed with vadouvan. It's an easy trap to fall into, so beguiling is the heady array of flavors and aromas running through the stuff. It's one of those flavors that are immediately arresting and gratifyingly delicious, but also has such a wealth of nuance as to make it eternally interesting.

Based around deeply roasted members of the onion family, augmented with an array of warm, earthy and pungent spices, there's a lot going on in vadouvan. It manages to smell and taste both deeply exotic and utterly comforting. It's also relatively easy to make, though a significant time investment is involved. Here, in basic format, is how it's done.

The first step is to BUY ALL THE ALLIUMS. While that may be a slight exaggeration, you do need an awful lot of onions, shallots and garlic for your vadouvan. I usually just estimate, but I'd say I'm using about a 2-1 ratio of onions to shallots, with probably half as much garlic as shallot. Peel it, chop it, weep.

After you get all your onions chopped (doesn't have to be too fine, especially if you plan on grinding it down to a paste later), sweat them in a bit of olive oil until they just begin to brown. Next, you need to turn your attention to spices. A blend of cumin, cardamom, mustard seed, fenugreek, turmeric, nutmeg, crushed red pepper and cloves is a good starting point, with that order determining relative ratios, sort of. I don't measure anything, usually just eyeballing and guessing. It makes each batch come out a bit differently, but I'm okay with that. If you can find them (it's not that tough, really), vadouvan really ought to have sliced curry leaves in it as well.

Start with maybe a tablespoon or so of the first few ingredients, dwindling down to a spare pinch once you're to the cloves. It shouldn't taste like dessert, after all. If you find yourself in need of more specific measurements, there are plenty of those available, a couple of which I combined for my basic formula. I like using them as reference rather than rule, taking the liberty to alter ratios to suit my taste. For example, I love fenugreek, so I tend to up the ratio of that ingredient. My kids don't do very well with spicy foods, so I tend to downplay the crushed red pepper. I've thought about going off-formula, too, tinkering with additions of other spices. I think sumac, for example, might add an interesting element.

More »

jamiepatra

Kick off the first week of October with a bowl of chili.

Every region has its own rendition of chili. New Mexico has green chili (interesting), Cincinnati has spaghetti with chili (still don't understand) and Texas puts meat in its chili (definitely the best).

I always love classic chili with beef or sirloin (I'm a Texas girl, what can I say?), but sometimes I am up for a twist. Everyone has his own secret ingredients that make his chili something special. So, here's my top five list of unusual ingredients you should consider putting in your chili, in honor of National Chili Week.

More »

Photo by Nicholas L. Hall

Does not taste like halitosis.

I don't like truffle oil, but I don't really care what it's made of. Don't get me wrong, I think it's vaguely misleading to pitch a $15 bottle of chemicals manufactured 100 yards off the Jersey Turnpike as a stand-in for a $6,000-a-pound European fungus, but I also think a reasonable amount of personal judgment can prevent a given diner from being bamboozled. In any event, my beef with 2,4-dithiapentane has little to do with its petrochemical provenance and everything to do with the fact that it's disgusting. Of course, that's almost entirely a matter of personal taste, as is the taste for actual truffles themselves.

For quite a few years, I wasn't entirely convinced I liked truffles. I think truffle oil has a lot to do with that. Through the simple application of a bit of common sense, I had immediate doubts about the true, direct connection between truffles and their oily cousins. The notion that any significant amount of such an expensive item had been used in the production of such an inexpensive one just seemed a bit far-fetched. Still, I always kind of assumed that they had more in common than not. Here, I'm referring less to composition than to effect.

I'd had truffled fries, truffled mac and cheese, truffle oil vinaigrette. I hated each one. I found the flavor and aroma to be overpowering and more than a bit off-putting. "If this is what truffles are like," I mused, "what is all the fuss about?" Where I'd heard truffles described as musky and earthy, I found my experience veering toward sharp and sulfurous. It reminded me a bit of old onions and overcooked broccoli.

Then I bought The French Laundry Cookbook. Thomas Keller's recipe for Purée of English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil and Parmesan Crisps made it onto my menu to close out my Shift Work Bites column, and I mentally debated the inclusion of white truffle oil. I should have left it out.

More »

Cream the avocado just like you would cream butter.

People have tried to re-create sweets with a multitude of ingredients to make them healthier. Prunes, applesauce, egg beaters, whole-wheat flour, oatmeal, etc., have all been used in baked items to replace the ingredients high in sugar and fat.

But would it have ever crossed your mind that an avocado could substitute for butter in a cookie recipe? And that it would actually taste good?

I don't know about you, but this is mind-boggling news to me. I've never used avocado as a sweet component in a dish. I've always been curious about how it would taste in a milkshake or gelato. Avocados have mild flavors, so it is easy to naturally sweeten an avocado.

Here is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that used avocado instead of butter.

More »

Illustration by Monica Fuentes

"You may have tried only 20 or so" of the items on the "100 things to eat before you die" list that's been making the rounds on Facebook, wrote The Sun earlier this week.

And while that may be true for a majority of typical eaters, I found that I'd eaten 92 out of the 100 items on the list -- many of which I didn't consider all that exotic or bizarre.

Indeed, the modern "foodie" -- as much as we may hate that description -- tends to have the kind of adventurous palate that comes from eating for sport, a joy of traveling, a compulsion to connect with other cultures and the sheer novelty of finding something new and interesting in this over-explored world.

More »

Library of Congress, Public Domain, from http://ushistoryimages.com

Abolitionist John Brown, convicted of treason, rides to the gallows sitting on his own coffin. His wife joined him in prison for their last meal together.

Sometimes, a story that seems like a lark becomes remarkably thought-provoking. When reader Christian Palmer suggested I do a story on the last meals of prisoners, it seemed like a "fun" thing to do. The more I looked into it though, the more I started thinking about life and death, and how those of us who are free have opportunities to celebrate our lives through the act of eating.

In many countries, prisoners sentenced to death are given an opportunity to make a final request for their last earthly pleasure: their last meal. Prisoners can thank inmate Lawrence Russell Brewer, who participated in the horrific murder of James Byrd, Jr., for the discontinuation of the practice in Texas in 2011. He ordered:

• Two chicken fried steaks smothered in gravy with sliced onions
• Triple meat bacon cheeseburger with fixings on the side
• Cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapenos
• Fried okra with ketchup
• One pound of barbecue with half a loaf of white bread
• Three fajitas with fixings
• "Meat Lovers" pizza
• Three root beers
• One pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream
• Peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts

When the feast arrived, he didn't eat a bite of it. After a formal complaint from Senator John Whitmire that the meal requests were inappropriate (since murder victims certainly did not get such a boon before their deaths), Brad Livingston, Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, declared the practice discontinued.

More »

Chuck Cook Photography

No, these weren't leftovers from a "special" party. We call it "The Feast of Shame."

No matter how well-educated one becomes about food, some cravings never go away. Some are born in childhood. My husband complained for years when Grape Tang was discontinued and gets bizarre cravings for the crime against nature called "circus peanuts." Supposedly, it's a candy; a mind-boggling, rubbery lab experiment gone awry that is orange, shaped like a peanut, and tastes like banana dipped briefly in nail polish remover.

Yet, this scathing assessment comes from someone who dips fries in the country gravy intended for my chicken fried steak and eats every bag of Cheetos® out of the variety packs at the office. Really, who am I to talk?

It's not just us foodies. The pros are as likely to love of junk food as we are. The first pre-opening party of a high-profile restaurant featured an elaborate tableau designed by the chef... of tortilla chips, salsa, gummy worms, cheese balls, Sriracha, Funyuns® and microwavable chicken strips.

Ironically, as I was researching this article, Sam Brown came out with his own guilty pleasures confession last week. Maybe memories of overstuffed Easter baskets brings back some sort of primal longing for the days we could live on nothing but sugar and fat (and not gain a pound).

Names have been withheld to protect the rest of the confessors (and because I don't want to be banned from their future parties).

More »