Epic Portions

Category: Funny

  • Dear Food Network, You Suck. Again.

    This week should have been a typical week.  Take my son to kindergarten.  Play with my daughter.  Make dinner for family.  Wrap dead fish in newspaper and mail to Food Network.

    Wait, ok, that last part is somewhat atypical.  While, like most people, I do mail the occasional dead fish to someone who has grieved me in some way, this would mark only the second time I have sent one to the Food Network.  I really don’t want to get into the first time, as there was some, shall we say, unpleasantness.  Let me just tell you that if you are going to send a dead fish to Sandra Lee, do not include your return address.  Amateur mistake.

    It wasn't me Sandra, I swear. It was Rahm Emmanuel!

    You see, every afternoon at 3:30 after I pick my son up from school, I like to turn on FN just to see what Tyler Florence is making.  Sometimes I turn it right off, but every now and then he has a great menu on his show, Tyler’s Ultimate.  One nice thing about FN (and believe me, other than Alton Brown, there probably is only one other nice thing) is that it is age appropriate programming.  The only time FN is inappropriate is for 12-14 year old males during Everyday Italian.

    So what did our clueless amigos at FN do?  They moved him to 11am (dead zone time) to occupy Michael Chiarello’s old time slot.  As a side note, I always liked Easy Entertaining, it was like spending part of the morning in Napa, and Mike is a pretty damn good chef. 

    You'd be this happy too if you lived in Napa, had a basket of wine and were leaving Food Network

    I know what you are saying.  Hardly reason to send a dead fish, right.  True.  Read on…

    Guess who is on at 3:30 now?  I won’t keep you in suspense, it is Anne Burrell.  You are either saying who the fuck is that, or throwing up in your mouth.  Who likes her?  Anyone?  Perhaps there is an Anne Burrell fan club out there ready to attack me like the Guy Fieri mafia.  I doubt it.  Her show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef  is, to put it simply, awful.  I know Tyler Florence isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement but at least he was watchable.

    It gets better.  What genius thought it was a good idea to put Anne on right after Guy’s Big Bite?  Not only are you cramming two of the worst personalities FN has to offer into the same hour, but are you oblivious to the fact that they look almost exactly alike?  I expect there will be a lot of confused soccer moms.  I’m tired of FN propping up utterly loathsome personalities.  From Guy Fieri, to Anne Burrell, to Alex Guarnaschelli, it just keeps getting worse and worse.

    Anne Burrell
    Guy Fieri, sans glasses

    As it stands now, aside from EPIE research, my FN viewing is down to Good Eats and sometimes Chopped.  The day Alton Brown leaves will be the end of the line for me and Food Network.

    So…they get a dead fish.  Oh yeah, and also because the show The Best Thing I Ever Ate is self-indulgent garbage. 

    The best part of this story is that I threw in a bottle of ancho chili powder along with the fish, hoping to entice Bobby Flay to be a big show off and try to cook it.  Joke is on him, I let that thing sit in the sun for three days; it has more bacteria in it than all of Tiger Woods’ mistresses combined.

    Come to think of it, I just thought of a helpful way to help El Tigre defeat his sex addiction problem.  Carry a picture of Anne Burrell around with you at ALL TIMES.  That’ll keep your driver in the bag.

    (OK, that was really mean, even for me.  If I ever meet Anne Burrell she has permission to punch me.)

  • Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Bacon S’mores.

    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.

  • Why, Guy?

    Guy Fieri, serious chef or buffoonish clown?

    The game show.  The continued existence of this worthless type of television program is exhibit A for evolution deniers.  And who can argue with them?  There was a time when the latest offering from Euripides, Shakespeare, or even Kubrick was there for medication of the masses.  Now, it only takes a quick perusal of network tv to find some worthless piece of dreck that kills more brain cells in an hour than a weekend in Amsterdam.

    Why write about game shows on a food website?  Perceptive question.  Please indulge me as to how we have arrived at this unfortunate place.  Last week, between watching the inspiring visage of Lindsey Vonn and the glorious competition known as Curling, I caught one of NBC’s ridiculous new show promos.  Was it Law and Order:  Restaurant Health Inspector?  A new sitcom about a mismatched pair of ex-cops (starring Don Johnson and Edward James Olmos) who open a pizzeria in Miami called Miami Slice?  No, it was much worse, my friends.  It was a game show called A Minute to Win it.  Apparently people without lives are called on to engage in an act of stupidity for one minute so they can win money.  What makes this so appalling?  The host is none other than our old friend, Guy Fieri.

    We’ve had some fun with Guy here at EP.  If you are a quasi-regular reader you probably know we don’t think very highly of Guy.  In our opinion he is a buffoonish cartoon character.  When he was nominated for an EPIE Award for worst male personality, there was a howl of indignation from a small but vocal minority.  He didn’t win, thanks to the general asshattery of Bobby Flay, but poor Guy shouldn’t get too complacent, there is always next year.

    What are you, Guy?  Are you a chef or a clown?  Was there a cooler version of you from 10 years ago, that if offered a time machine would travel into the future to kick your butt for even thinking about hosting a game show?  I have to say that all signs point to you being a clown.  And that is sad.  I didn’t care when you did commercials for TGI Fridays.  You want to make a little extra money before your 15 minutes expire, go for it, at least it was food related.  I won’t judge you for that.  But you can be damn sure that I will judge you for hosting a game show.

    You see, Guy puts forth a certain image.  He has a few tats, he has spikey hair, and he wears his sunglasses in an unorthodox manner.  I suppose one could say that if he wears a clown suit, why is it wrong for him to behave like one?  The answer is simple; there are chefs out there with spikey hair, tats and unorthodox sunglass wearing methods who aren’t clowns.  They have style, they have flava.  They deserve better than being compared to Guy the Game Show Host.  Now, thanks to Guy Fieri they will be seen as not being serious chefs, fodder for poorly paid food bloggers to expose in overlong rants.

    So again, why should we here at Epic Portions take Guy seriously if he doesn’t?  Beneath his exterior, I’m sure Guy fancies himself a serious chef.  Well guess what, by hosting a game show you no longer qualify as a serious chef, Guy.  Enjoy taking a big bite out of the raw cassava that is celebrity, it will poison you long after your game show and triple D days are over.

    To those who were upset with our EPIE nom for worst personality for Guy, I throw down the gauntlet to you.  Defend this.  Make yourself watch the game show (make it quick, it probably won’t last long) and defend him.  I bet he throws out the same tired one-liners he has been saying since he started.

    You are old and busted Guy, Adam Richman is the new hotness.  Someday you will have to head back to your restaurant to regain respectability.  But remember, your sous chef, line cooks, and dishwashers are laughing at you, not with you.