From JUNK – PIZZA comes quite possibly one of the greatest pizza related creations of all time… A calzone stuffed with pizza rolls, AKA the Egg Sac. I have no words or sarcastic remarks, only that these images made me cry a little bit.  Don’t worry, they were happy tears.

They even offer you a picture tutorial on how to make your own, and why wouldn’t you?

When I first started cooking and really getting into food, my go to resource was Alton Brown’s Good Eats.  If you’re a regular reader, you know we’re all fans of the show and see it as one of the better resources for food information available.  No where else, especially on TV, can you learn more about food in such a short amount of time.  I think the best part about the show is that he takes a simple concept, such as an omelette, and provides you with way too much information.  So much that on every episode you usually pick up at least 5 or 6 things that you didn’t know before.  It was this show that inspired me to look more into concepts related to food, exceeding normal techniques such as following recipes.  I became interested in history and science of all things food.

This being said, I want to welcome you to a new segment of Epic Portions called Everything you Ever Wanted to Know.  Every week I will provide you with way too much information about a certain food item that I like.  It’s as simple as that.  This week, we look into Crab Rangoon.  Why?  Because I ate crab Rangoon yesterday and they were delicious.

The Basics

If you’re not familiar with the deliciousness that is crab rangoon, they are deep-fried dumplings that are stuffed with a combination or cream cheese, flaked crab meat, and usually seasonings.  Seasonings vary to include garlic, steak sauce, soy sauce, season salt, and onion powder.   In most recipes the ingredients are mixed together and then placed by spoonfuls onto prepared wonton wrappers.  The wonton wrappers are then folded into several different shapes and deep fried in vegetable oil until they are golden brown.  It’s then served with a plum sauce, sweet and sour cause, or mustard for dipping.

There are variations of the crab rangoon recipe that include omitting the crab meat and using only seasoned cream cheese, which makes the dish suitable for those with shellfish allergies, and baking the stuffed wonton instead of deep frying, which omits the grease.  Usually, the baked version of crab rangoon utilizes a muffin pan to stabilize the wonton while baking.

Crab rangoon is usually served as an appetizer of American Chinese cuisine.

The History

It’s not exactly known what culinary genius cooked the first “Asian style” crab rangoon but cheese, especially of the cream cheese variety,  is basically nonexistent in Southeast Asian and Chinese cuisine.  The credit is usually given to Victor Bergeron, founder of the Trader Vic’s tiki restaurant chain, where crab rangoon first appeared on their menu in the 1950s, and was listed on the menu as an old Burmese recipe.  But once again, when was the last time you saw any kind of cheese in Asian cuisine?  He is also credited with the invention of the Mai Tai tropical drink, and with the pupuu platter of appetizers.  Although the cocktails were always the biggest attraction, tiki restaurants such as Trader Vic’s were also known for their unique, Asian-inspired fare, invented to approximate traditional cuisine on Polynesian islands.

Others argue that crab rangoon was invented for the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, held in 1904. Countless modern dishes have been introduced at World’s Fairs over the past two centuries, although little evidence exists that something comparable to today’s crab rangoon was served there in 1904.

It is worth noting that the city of Rangoon, which is actually known as Yangon, was the capitol of Burma until 2000 and still remains its largest city.  The word “Rangoon” most likely comes from the British imitation of the pronunciation of “Yangon”.  The British seized Yangon in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852 and transformed it into the commercial and political hub of British Burma.  It was under heavy British influence until 1948 when the country regained independence from the British Empire.

Yangon remains the site of extreme Burmese nationalism, with many colonial names of streets and parks changed to more nationalistic Burmese names.  To this day, Western history books have ignored these changes.  It is highly unlikely that anything food named “Rangoon” is served there.  Unless, perhaps, they changed its name to Crab Yangon, tortured it a bit (it is, of course, boiled in oil), and then slapped a uniform on it after it had been sufficiently “retrained.”  Nope, Crab Rangoon is a more than likely a uniquely American concoction– one that takes a little bit of this culture (wontons are Chinese), and a little bit of that one.

Appearance

The construction of ingredients is simple, but the folding of the wonton wrapper offers you a chance to practice some food oragami.  Aside from wee variations in the ratio of crab to cheese in the filling, the biggest difference from restaurant to restaurant is the way the crab rangoon’s wrapper is folded.  I am sure there are countless other ways to fold the the wrapper, but the following are the free most accepted techniques.

• The Four Corners Method – In the ‘four-corners’ method, the cook places a small dollop of filling in the wonton’s center, then pinches it each corner and gathers in the middle.  With this method, you get more crunch and a little less filling and soft wonton.  If you’re doing this at home, be careful not to over fry. It can turn the wonton hard and ruin the fun.

• The “Clutch Purse” Method – The ‘clutch purse’ method goes the other way on the crunch/soft scale. With this method, the wonton gets a larger dollop of cream-cheese filling. The wonton itself is also pinched closed near the edge in a straight line, so that the finished rangoon looks like a lady’s handbag.

• The Triangle Method – The triangle method consists of simply placing the ingredients into a triangle shaped wonton wrapper, placing another triangle shaped wonton wrapper on top of that, and folding so that the ingredients are contained.

How to Make Them

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. sea legs or any chunk artificial crab meat
• 2 (8 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese, softened
• 4 oz. seafood spread (optional)
• 1 bunch scallions, chopped (about 6 – green part too)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 pkg. wonton skins
• 1/4 tsp. onion powder
• oil for deep frying

Place crab meat, cream cheese, seafood spread, scallions, salt, onion powder and sugar into food processor and mix into a lumpy paste. If food processor is not available, chop crab and onions very fine and mix with softened cream cheese, salt, and sugar. Place teaspoonful of mixture in middle of a wonton skin. Moisten edges and and fold into which ever technique you find suitable. Make sure all edges are sealed. Deep fry until golden brown.  You can also bake these, but how much fun is that?

And More…

Celebrate National Crab Rangoon Day every February 13th

Make crab rangoon dip

Join the crab rangoon appreciation page on Facebook

For the last few years, I have been fascinated in finding a way to construct some sort of pizza cooking “apparatus”(?) for myself to use at home.  My dream is that one day I will be able to make my own dough, sauce, cheese blend, and whatever else I feel like adding.  No more ordering Dominos, as great as their on-line ordering system may be.  I guess you could say that I long for pizza freedom.  Unfortunately, I live in the third floor of an apartment complex so not very many options are available to me that don’t involve the possibility of burning down my apartment complex.  I guess I could go the easy route and just purchase a pizza stone, but that’s just too easy.

This dream really began when I found that Dan from Thefoodinmybeard had constructed a brick pizza oven in his back yard, which just happened to be in Bermuda.  This would be ideal, but once again I live in an apartment complex, and I’m sure McKinley Management wouldn’t be too happy to find an enormous brick pizza oven constructed in the middle of their property, even if I was feeding the residents delicious DIY style pizza.  Seriously though, check this thing out.  Who wouldn’t want one of these things in their back yard?

And the result, things like curry pizza.  Amazing.  Check out the entire brick oven pizza series on Thefoodinmybeard.com Great stuff.

Realizing that building my own pizza oven would not be possible for another year or so, I decided to search for other options.  I had a gas stove, shouldn’t that count for something?  I came across a couple guys who decided to line their oven with fire bricks to simulate the brick oven.  Kind of a pain in the ass, but it sounded like a good idea.  Unfortunately my roommates declared this a horrible idea and that was the end of it.  It never happened but if I get stuck in an apartment complex for another year, my roommates might just come home to delicious brick oven style pizza.  How could they be mad?  eHow also has pretty detailed instructions on how to complete this.

The solution that probably makes the most sense to me currently is constructing a FrankenWeber, which may or may not have been first developed by street vendor in San Francisco called The Pizza Hacker.  The basic concept is to contruct the Weber charcoal grill into a mini wood burning pizza oven.  With the heat covered by the hood, it is easy for the grill to reach temparatures of up to 1000F, which is perfect for Neapolitan style pizzas.  Oh, and did I mention it’s portable?

Watch the Pizza Hacker work.  He simply has a table with jars of his sauce, buffalo mozzarella and a basil plant.  After he has constructed the pizza, it goes into the oven for only about two minutes, and then is topped with olive oil and additional cheese.  This is cool stuff:

If the video didn’t do enough for you, or you simply ignored my request, here’s a great picture of probably the best pizza will you will ever see offered by a street vendor.

After learning about the Pizza Hacker, I took my quest to Google to find out if the man was the only one doing this.  I found a few people that have been constructing their own FrankenWebers out of throwaway Weber grills and making delicious wood oven style pizza at home in minutes.  I think this is the solution for my brick/wood oven style pizza dream.

From the Pizzamaking.com forums

To summarize, I leave you with quite possibly the most delicious looking, and sounding, pizza I have ever seen/heard of in my life.  On top of this pizza is Cured Wild Boar Belly, pickled hot peppers, Calabrian chilies, Dry Farmed Early Girl Tomato Sauce, Buff Mozz, Grana Padano, Angelo Garro’s Homemade Olive Oil, parsley, and smoked salt.  Baked for only 75 seconds by the Pizza Hacker in his FrankenWeber.

I’ll admit it, I visit The Food in my Beard daily hoping there’s a new recipe.  When there’s not, I usually cry uncontrollably for an hour before I’m ready to resume my day. Recently, my emotions were under control because he put up a recipe for Shepards Pie Burgers.  I am in love.  If pierogie burgers weren’t already enough to convince you that potatoes go great with burgers, hopefully this will.

Yeah, that’s right: Bacon S’mores.  Chocolate-covered candied bacon smothered in marshmallow in a graham cracker crust.

I can’t take credit for this idea, and actually I’m not sure I would want to.  A friend tweeted about The Complete Sale of Selma Lee posting about Chewbacca Bars, which they also call Chunky Chewies.  I immediately started telling my friends about them, calling them bacon s’mores, until someone pointed out the lack of graham. So of course,  I added graham! Below is my own recipe, which is extraordinarily similar to others’ recipes, except where I made some changes.

Start with one pound of thick-cut, peppered bacon. Cut the uncooked slices into quarters or even sixths, and marinate the pieces for a few hours (in the fridge!) in equal parts balsamic vinegar and maple syrup (the real stuff, none of that Mrs Jemima gunk.) Coat with brown sugar and more pepper, and bake on a wire rack on a LINED baking sheet at 350F until delicious. I didn’t time it. If you are someone who can leave baking bacon well enough alone, good for you. I stuck my head in there to smell it every, oh, ten seconds, so it took a while to bake but it was easy to tell when it was done.

Here is some delicious, marinated bacon ready to bake:

And here is what happens if you don’t line your baking sheet with tinfoil.

SERIOUSLY, I have been soaking and scrubbing my baking sheet since Sunday and it hasn’t come clean yet.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you to line it.

When the bacon is done, remove it from the oven and move it to a plate to cool.  Melt about 2 1/2 cups chocolate – I used dark, but it’s up to you – in a double boiler, and when the bacon is sufficiently cool, dump it in and fold it in to coat. Really coat it. No wimpy half-coated pieces here. Place a greased wire rack on a large amount of newspaper in an area of your kitchen that you don’t much need to make other things, and dump the chocolate-covered bacon onto it to set. Let it set. Stop eating it, just let it set.

Meanwhile, take 2 of the 3 packets of graham crackers that come in a normal sized box, and make really fine crumbs out of them. I did this using freezer bags and a rolling pin and beating them into submission. You can also use a food processor, but the rolling pin method is actually quite fun! Place 1/2 of the crumbs into a glass 9×11″ baking dish, and set the other half aside.

Now, you make marshmallow. Yes, you make it from scratch, because homemade marshmallow is god’s gift to the world and about 427times better than store-bought. Really. I used Joy of Baking’s recipe and I used it verbatim*, because everyone warned me it was really gooey and kind of difficult. It is really gooey, but it actually cleans up pretty easily with just water, and it is not that difficult.

1 cup cold water
3/4 oz unflavored gelatin (usually comes in 1/4oz packets, 4 packets in a box)
2 cups white sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tspn salt (I use popcorn salt)
2 tspn vanilla extract

Put 1/2 cup cold water into a large, clean metal bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand until gelatin softens, about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, place the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup cold water into a saucepan. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and boil on high heat until the syrup reaches 240F, about 10 minutes.  With mixer running (it helps to have about three hands at this point) pour the hot syrup into the water-gelatin bowl. Add the vanilla. Gradually increase the speed of your mixer to high and beat the mixture until it turns into marshmallow cream. Try not to cut off your fingers with the mixer when you are sticking them into the bowl to taste it.  Be prepared to stand there for awhile – the recipe says 10 min, but mine took 15 min or more. It will grow, so be sure to use a big bowl.  It will also taste really good, like even better than you are expecting, so don’t eat it all with your fingers (if they’re still attached.)

NOW – chop the chocolate covered bacon into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Pour 1/2 of the marshmallow cream into your crumb-prepared baking dish, and put the chocolate-covered bacon on top. Add the remaining marshmallow and sprinkle the other half of the graham crumbs on top.  Allow to set for a few hours – I gave it four hours but sped it up a bit in the fridge, and it was fine.

It will look delicious and pretty like this:

… and it will be divisive.  My sister says chocolate-covered bacon is the most disgusting thing she can think of;  fair-goers across America think it’s a wonderful treat.  Everyone who tried a piece liked it, but only one went back for seconds. I thought it was good.  I think most things made with bacon and most things made with marshmallow are good.  Chocolate doesn’t hurt.

Will you like bacon s’mores?  Only one way to find out!

*verbatim? OK, so not really. I don’t really do verbatim. But I came pretty close this time… I doubled the recipe because I needed extra to make s’mores cakes for the vegetarians and the Muslim (blog post to come) and I also used a hand mixer instead of the recommended stand mixer, because I don’t own a stand mixer. But otherwise: totally verbatim.

One of my favorite food blogs is Grocery Eats, which isn’t updated all that often, but when it is it’s usually gold.  I’ve been on a White Castle kick the last few days, and was pumped to see that  MF Grocery’s most recent update was a Turducken with White Castle stuffing.  They’ve got the process documented and it’s looking ridiculous.  I demand you visit right away.

Normally my daily Serious Eats experience usually consists of scrolling down quickly, not seeing anything too interesting and then moving on elsewhere.  Lately, however, I’m becoming a fan of their Hamburger Today column.  Especially when it features things like it did this week.  J. Kenji Lopez-Alt decided to squeeze the juice out of two burgers, freeze it, surround it with two formed patties, and grill it.  The results look absolutely ridiculous, and by ridiculous I mean delicious.  He calls it the Flood Burger.

This will be made in my household very soon, and by very soon I mean TOMORROW.