Infographic: How People Grill Around the World

From the good people at PersonalCreations.com, here's something to read or mention to people at the next BBQ you host or attend this summer:

The Vulgar Chef vs. Thug Kitchen

Two popular cookbooks, "The Eat Like Shit Cookbook" from the Vulgar Chef (aka Kyle Marcoux), and the Thug Kitchen's "Eat Like You Give a F*ck" both share the same gimmick - edgy profanity.  Without the attitude and the curse words sprinkled throughout each publication, there is nothing that separates these publications from all the other cookbooks already out on the market. The Vulgar Chef uses the same Mornay cheese sauce that my favourite cookbook uses for macaroni and cheese; the basic vinaigrette recipe from the Thug Kitchen is no better than the one in everyone's favourite cookbook. Does that make the recipes in these books any less appealing? Not at all. "Eat Like You Give a F*ck" has a lot of great vegetarian foods inside and depending on how long you can tolerate the hardcore shtick, it would make a great source for those times a meatless dish is required. Meat lovers and food porn fans can't get enough of Marcoux's creations, as his food mashups are inspired. He was even featured on "FrankenFood". With that in mind, here are two recipes from each of these cookbooks that caught my eye, cleaned up for the easily offended.

Thug Kitchen's Carrot Cake Cookies

Ingredients

192 g flour (whole wheat pastry or white)
64 g packed light brown sugar
58.5 g chopped walnuts
58.5 g raisins or chopped candied ginger (optional)
5 g baking powder
2.5 g salt
2.5 g ground cinnamon
2.5 g ground ginger
2 medium-sized carrots, shredded
118 mL milk (regular, almond, nondairy, whatever)
59 mL olive or grapeseed oil

1. Preheat oven to 190 ℃. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and ground ginger until you no longer see lumps. In a separate bowl, mix the shredded carrots, milk, and oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir until there are only a few dry spots. Fold in the nuts and raisins (or chopped candied ginger) and stir until there aren't any dry spots.
3. Spoon the dough onto the baking sheet for about 18 to 22 minutes, until the bottoms are golden brown.

The Vulgar Chef's Drunk as Fuck Mussels with Smokey Ass Garlic Onion Butter

Ingredients

900 - 1360 g mussels, cleaned and debearded
64 g chopped red onion
60 g fresh chopped garlic
32 g corn kernels (can or off the cob)
32 g thinly sliced fresh or pickled jalapeño
32 g chopped fresh basil
237 mL bourbon or white wine
1 chopped medium-sized tomato
butter (half a stick)
olive oil
cooked and chopped bacon
crumbled blue cheese
salt and pepper to taste

1. Run the mussels under cold water, and rinse or scrub any debris on the shell. Yank the beard (the thin, sticky membranes hanging out of the shell) out. If you spot any gaping mussels, check for signs of life by picking them and squeezing them a few times or knocking them with another mussel. The mussel should slowly close itself back up. If it doesn't, toss it in the trash. Soak the remaining mussels in a bowl of cold water for 30 minutes.
2. Heat 14g of butter and 14 g of olive oil in a large pot at medium heat. Add the garlic, jalapeño, basil, onion and let cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Toss in the mussels and give everything a good stirring. Throw in the bourbon, tomato, and corn and cook until the mussels open up.
3. Melt the remaining butter. Once the mussels open up, throw in butter and give everything one final mix. Serve in a bowl, and top with the blue cheese and the bacon.

The Truth About Beer Can Chicken

The Victoria Day weekend is usually when the first big BBQ of the year happens. Along with hamburgers, hot dogs, planked salmon, and grilled vegetables, a popular food at these cookouts is beer can chicken. Perched on your favourite can of beer, and covered with an herb rub, the chicken is cooked on the grill, giving it a nice roast on the outside, with the inside bathed by the steam of the beer, keeping the meat moist. Or so we are told. Not only are there better ways to cook a chicken on the grill, the entire concept of beer can chicken is little more than a waste of beer. And nobody wants to do that on a long weekend.

To be fair, there is a reason people love the taste of beer can chicken, it does a lot of things right. The chicken is exposed to convection heat so it can crisp the skin on all sides, and because the legs aren't tied together, the dark meat can be exposed to more heat and finish a bit hotter than the thicker breasts. But the cooking method used leaves a lot to be desired. The can prevents the chicken from cooking on the inside. With a metal can shoved up its butt, warm air cannot enter the cavity of the chicken from below, and only a small amount can enter from above through the neck cavity. All the heat must enter the meat from the outside. Because meat doesn't heat evenly, it progresses inward from the part in contact with air, making the outer parts warmer than the inner parts. By the time the meat nearest the cavity hits 74°C, the outer layers are in the 82 to 88°C range. That may darken and crisp the skin a bit more, but it makes the outer layers drier.

And contrary to what the recipe being used says, the beer doesn't add moisture or flavour to the chicken. Because beer is about 90% flavorless water, and 5% flavorless alcohol, all the flavour compounds are at most 3.5% of the weight. In a 355 mL can of beer, that's about 1 teaspoon of stuff with flavour; even if you add herbs and spices to the beer, their flavour compounds don't dissolve in water. Finally, there are the safety factors. If you forget to open the can, it can explode; hot fat from the drip pan may burn you; the drip pan might catch on fire, burning the bird; removing the bird from the can is a pain, because the can usually sticks to the chicken during cooking; the ink on the outside of the beer can (and the widget in that can of Guinness) probably isn't food grade and may seep into your food. There's enough here to make you reconsider even lighting your grill, but if you're like me, you're still going to make and eat beer can chicken. Because you like cooking it this way, and you like how it tastes when you do so. Sometime in the future, I'll try grilling a butterflied chicken (removing the backbone, flattening it, cooking it skin up on the indirect side, and then flipping it skin down on the direct side for a few minutes), or adding a rotisserie attachment to my BBQ. Until then, here's the recipe I use for beer can chicken:

Ingredients

1 1.81 kg. whole fryer
1 355 mL can of beer
240 g butter
30 g. garlic salt
30 g. paprika
salt and pepper

1. Preheat your BBQ for low heat.
2. In a small pot on the stove, melt the butter. Add the garlic salt, the paprika, and salt and pepper, to taste. Mix together, and let simmer at low heat.
3. Open the beer and drink half of it. Check to see if the neck and giblets have been removed from the cavity of the chicken, remove them if you find them. Baste the chicken with the melted seasoned butter. Either pour the remaining butter in the beer can or save it for further basting as it cooks; the choice is yours.
4. Position the chicken in the way your beer can apparatus recommends you to; if push comes to shove, lower the chicken on to the open can, so that the chicken is sitting upright, with the can in its cavity, and place the chicken on the grill, using the legs and beer can as a tripod to support the chicken on the grill and keep it stable. Cover the grill and let the meat cook for about 45 minutes.
5. Check the chicken every 15 minutes or so, until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 74° C.
6. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes. Carefully lift the chicken off of the can. If it gets stuck, lay the chicken on its side, and pull out the can with tongs.

Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science - Fermentation

As I posted way back when, I enrolled in an on-line course about the relationship between science and cooking. Here's what went on during Week 10.

• The star power is upped this week with guest lecturers Wylie Dufresne of wd~50 and David Chang of Momofuku making appearances. Ted Russin of The Culinary Institute of America also makes an appearance. 
• Harold McGee informs us that food fermentations are the work of living microbes; they're essentially invisibly small cooks that change foods for the better.
• Foods that owe their popularity to fermentation include dry cured sausages, pickles, breads, the vinegar in vinaigrette, cheeses, chocolates, wine and beer and ciders and the distilled beverages made from them. These are all thanks to bacteria and fungi like Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Leuconostoc mesenteroides.
• The most common food fermentations develop spontaneously. They're spontaneous because the microbes that are responsible are all over the place, in the air and in the soil and on surfaces of everything. And they thrive on the sugars in nutrient-rich materials like plant tissues and animal secretions like milk. 
• The second big group of food fermentations is produced by yeasts, usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but also others. They produce alcohols and carbon dioxide from fruit juices and other liquids that are rich in sugars. 
• There's a third group of fermentations is based on an Asian method for fermenting starchy foods, like the seeds of grains and legumes. Yeasts and lactic acid bacteria can't deal with starch directly. Sometime before the second century BC, Chinese brewers domesticated a species of mold, a kind of Aspergillus, which prepares starchy foods for the yeasts and the lactic acid bacteria by converting the starch into fermentable sugars. At the same time that it does that, the mold generates its own distinctive aromas. With the help of this Aspergillus, called koji in Japan, sake and other alcohols are made from rice in Asia. It's also how soy and tamari sauces and miso pastes are made. 
• We are told that the fermentation reactions in yeast, or in bacteria, are due to enzymes. An enzyme is a protein that is a type of catalyst; a catalyst is a molecule that increases the speed of a favourable reaction either by helping to break bonds, or by helping to make bonds form, without being used up.
• An example of a catalyst is baking soda or lye, which speeds up Maillard reactions that contribute to browning and flavour. 
• As magical as catalysts appear, they cannot make unfavorable reactions become favorable. 
• For more on fermentation, here's David Chang and one of his minions:
• In terms of the bond breaking, enzymes do this by either rearranging the molecule, or by affecting the atoms in the molecules in some way. In terms of making bonds form, enzymes do this by bonding to two molecules, or bringing them closer in proximity. The bond can then form more easily, because the molecules are positioned in a way that makes the bond happen more easily. Enzymes need to be very specially designed to fit the particular molecules they work on, so for each type of chemical reaction that an enzyme catalyzes, it is designed to help that reaction.
• The enzymes bromelain and papain are enzymes from pineapple and papaya. Because these are often found in meat tenderizers, they are used a lot in recipes because they break down the proteins in meats, making it tenderer.
• The browning of fruit or vegetables is also due to enzymes. Biting or cutting releases enzymes in special compartments of the cell, and they react with other compounds in the fruit or vegetable. 
• Thanks to one of Dufresne and Russin's collaborations, we can now glue one piece of meat or one protein to another, thanks to meat glue, an enzyme also known as transglutaminase.

In honour of the Hamburglar

At the beginning of February of this year, the chances of the Ottawa Senators making the playoffs were dead in the water. With their starting and backup goalies out with injuries, the team was forced to rely on an unknown call-up from the farm team. Fast forward to today - the Senators are playing their best hockey in months, and are playing the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs. This is in part due to the play of Ottawa's newest hockey hero, Andrew "Hamburglar" Hammond. In honour of his success, I thought it would be as good a time as any to celebrate the food he got his nickname from, the hamburger.

There are almost as many claims to the origin of the hamburger as they are toppings for a burger, and meats used to make the patty. As it turns out, people have been enjoying ground meat placed inside a sliced bun since the late 1800s. Whether the patty is thin or thick, square or round, you can get a hamburger pretty much anywhere. Burger purists will insist that a hamburger should only be ground beef and seasoned with salt and pepper. These people should be ignored, as a tasty burger can contain binders like eggs or breadcrumbs; be seasoned with onions, soy sauce, Thousand Island dressing, or Worcestershire sauce; and be made with ingredients such as ground lamb, bison, and salmon; or meat substitutes like tofu, or textured vegetable protein. Below is the recipe I use when I'm in the mood for some hamburgers - try and resist throwing your burger on the ice as part of a victory celebration. Go Sens Go!

Ingredients

570g ground beef (don't use lean ground beef, burgers need fat for flavour and moistness)
1 egg
breadcrumbs
onion soup mix
Worcestershire sauce
ketchup
salt and pepper

1. Combine in a bowl the ground beef with the egg, the contents of the onion soup package, a dusting of breadcrumbs, a few shakes from the Worcestershire bottle, and a few shakes/squirts from the ketchup bottle. Mix everything together with your hands. Add more breadcrumbs if you think your mixture needs it.
2. Form the meat into patties, and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper.
3. Whether you're cooking the burger using a grill, or pan-frying them, flip it only once. You're looking at about 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 minutes for medium, or 5 minutes for well-done.
4. Put the burger in either a bun (or in between some toast for a patty melt), and top with your choice of condiments, vegetables, and toppings.

The Alton Brown Experience

The Mr. Wizard of the television cooking show world, Alton Brown, is bringing his "Edible Inevitable Tour" to Ottawa Sunday, and when my wife told me about it months ago, I immediately booked our tickets for it. I've been a fan of Brown's since I stumbled across the book version of his groundbreaking cooking show "Good Eats". For almost 250 episodes, the show explored the science and technique behind cooking, the history of different foods, and the advantages of different kinds of cooking equipment, all in way that was both informative and entertaining. His stage show, which Brown does as a way to recharge after his duties hosting "Cutthroat Kitchen", has been described as a mash-up of a talk show, a science experiment, a multimedia lecture, a concert (apparently there will be live music), and a stand-up comedy routine. Here's a sample of what to expect, so if it looks like something you'd like to do on a Sunday evening, check with the NAC for ticket information.

  

I Watched This So You Won't Have To: "Knife Fight"

Debuting earlier this year on Food Network Canada, "Knife Fight" is a show hosted by former "Top Chef" winner Ilan Hall that pits two chefs against each other in a competition where they must make at least two dishes in one hour using a combination of two or three secret ingredients, and whatever is in the pantry. This is done for bragging rights in front of a live audience and is critiqued by Hall and two rotating judges, usually a celebrity and someone in the food industry. I've been watching this show on and off these past months, here's what I thought about the episode shown on March 5th:

• At the start of the show, Hall tells the viewer this isn't your mother's cooking show. If someone's mom had a hand in creating "Chopped", she would beg to differ. 
• Some people may remember Hall's role in the infamous "Top Chef" head-shaving incident done to molecular gastronomy douchebag Marcel Vigneron, so this show already has that going for it.
• We're lead to believe this show takes place after-hours in Hall's restaurant The Gorbals.  Reality TV being what it is, I question the idea of any chef letting a TV crew and an audience into their place after a night's service to film an "after-hours warzone". But I'm cynical like that, and I've never worked in a kitchen, so what do I know? And how underground can these after-hours chef battles be when they take place in a restaurant as mainstream as The Gorbals?
• We're also lead to believe he's been hosting these cooking contests for years. I would have thought getting his restaurant off the ground would have taken up a majority of his time, but again, this is reality TV, and all I know about the restaurant business is what I see on television, and read about in books.
• The winner of the competition gets a cleaver with the word "I win" emblazoned on it, the loser gets a smaller cleaver with the word "I didn't win" on his. Something tells me getting television exposure for themselves and their restaurant(s) is the biggest prize of all.
• Giovanni Reda is the master of ceremonies - does a cooking show really need a master of ceremonies?
• If you heard this much noise at a restaurant, you'd walk out, and bitch about the place on Yelp. There's got to be an "Applause" sign flashing in the building somewhere. I find it hard to believe that people can get that excited watching people cook. 
• Tonight's combatants are Raphael Lunetta and Neal Fraser. I'm sure these chefs are as good as the reputations that proceed them, but I can't believe the mere mention of these chefs names can cause that much of a frenzy. 
• Fun facts about the chefs: Lunetta loves surfing so much he's known as the Surfing Chef. At Fraser's Fritzi Dog artisan hot dog restaurant, you can get a sausage made with roast turkey and duck, and a sous-vide carrot for your veggie dog.
• We laughed at the idea back in the late 90's, but Kramer from "Seinfeld" with his peanut butter and jelly sandwich restaurant idea truly was ahead of its time.
• Our judges this evening are James Beard Foundation Award-nominated chef Mark Peel, celebrated chef Michael Cimarusti, and noted actress, winemaker (who knew?), and food lover Drew Barrymore. 
• No celebrity timekeeper for this week's episode. It looks like Barrymore pulled rank as the show's executive producer to get on the judging panel. The other judges may have more knowledge about food, but neither of them were in "Charlie's Angels", thus warranting the additional screen time.  
• A forty-day dry-aged rib-eye, abalone (a large mollusk), and Pacific Ocean trout are the mandatory ingredients. Other than the abalone still being live, these items don't appear to be so weird that they would throw the chefs for a loop. That being said, Lunetta seemed intimidated by the amount of food he had to use, and the time he had to cook it in. Fraser, on the other hand, seemed to take everything in stride and rolled with the punches.
• The audience is said to be made up of their chefs' friends, family, and whatever celebrities happen to be in the area. Either these chefs know, or are related to the most photogenic people in L.A., or there was a casting call for people to attend this show. That would explain the woman in the bunny ears, and the hipster in the leather fedora, unless this is how west coast foodies usually dress.
• Mollusks are hard to shuck, no matter how big they are.
• Barrymore on her foodie cred: "I had my first octopus at six years old, I never turned back." Something else that she tasted for the first time at a young age was alcohol - hindsight being 20/20, she should have stuck with the octopus. (Too soon?)
• Not hearing a lot of questions about cooking from an audience allegedly made up of foodies, just a lot of hooting and hollering. The judges though are very interested in what's going on in the kitchen, so it's good to see they're taking their job seriously.
• First dish out from Fraser: sauteed abalone with shishito peppers with a green garlic purée. Raves from the judges, though Peel wasn't crazy about the abalone.
• Lunetta seems to be having trouble in the unfamiliar kitchen, he is soon heard saying he's "in the weeds". This admission seems to surprise Cimarusti.
• I wonder who feeds the audience and the cast because the only people I see eating are the judges. Lots of people in the crowd are drinking, so I guess it's an open bar.
• Second dish out from Fraser: Ocean trout on English peas with a white carrot purée and mushrooms. More raves from the judges and some concern about whether the Surfing Chef will be able to plate anything.
• Even though he's running behind, Lunetta takes the time to properly debone the fish he's preparing. He is though ignoring the judges, and focusing on his cooking.
• Having the chefs walk the dishes out to the judging area really adds to the drama given the time constraints they're under.
• Do chefs usually carry around special spice blends with them? Seems kind of convenient that Lunetta just happened to have the spice he would normally use on a rib-eye for this competition.
• Also convenient: that Barrymore's wine just happens to be available for Lunetta to use for his pan sauce.
• A woman famous for her substance abuse issues has her own brand of wine. Think about that for a minute.
• With two dishes out to the Surfing Chef's none, I think Fraser is the clear favourite to win the competition unless Lunetta blows the judges away with his creations.
• 10 minutes left in the cookoff, and neither chef has touched the rib-eye yet.
• Lunetta announces he will walk all his dishes out at once when they're finished. The judges are OK with this.
• Third dish out from Fraser: Côte de bœuf (a fancy way of describing a rib steak) served with cheese grits and a horseradish gremolata (a chopped herb condiment). Enjoyed by the judges, with the gremolata, in particular, getting raves.
• With the clock ticking down, and the crowd chanting his name, Lunetta finally brings out his food. He presents to the judges a sea trout and abalone with a guava and citrus emulsion, and a côte de bœuf with a pan sauce made with pink peppercorns, beef fat and bones, and wine.
• Barrymore on tasting Luntta's beef dish: "It's like Christmas in your mouth!" 
• Peel liked the beef as well, particularly the pan sauce, but thought the dish was too complex and ambitious. Cimarusti liked the Surfer Chef's fish so much, he jokingly planned to steal it for his own restaurant. 
• It must be hard to judge people you know and have worked with, and admire. You can see the judges have a lot of respect for the chefs in tonight's competition.
• Lunetta doesn't like his chances of winning this contest. That belief holds true with Fraser winning, as I expected. A good time was had by all, all hail the Hot Dog King.

Bottom line: Watching "Knife Fight" is like watching a CGI car crash directed by Michael Bay - you know what you're watching is fake, but you can't help but look at all the explosions. This show is food porn on speed. But interestingly enough, after seeing this episode, I wanted to head to my kitchen and cook something, which usually doesn't happen to me when I finish watching a cooking show. If you want to learn something about cooking, watch Hall's "Eat Like a Man" series of videos. But if you want to see celebrities and hipsters pretend to care about cooking, this is the show to watch. As guilty pleasures go, this show can't be beat.