The Bloated Belly

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

On magazines in the new age, and blue cheese butter

By The Hack

It's been recorded at least once or twice in this electronic logbook how busy The Hack has become. It's true. Yet he keeps thinking about The Bloated Belly and its subdued anarchy, and misses it.

But the day job calls, and The Hack answers, because, y'know, that's where the paycheck is. But that very same day job has given The Hack a storyline on which to report in The Bloated Belly. See, this year The Hack's employer allowed him to start a publication that is very much up his alley. It's called Harvest Foodservice Journal, a newsletter that focuses on sustainability issues in the foodservice industry.

Not only is the topic important to The Hack, but also he finds it fascinating to launch a publication amidst a rapidly changing media-delivery landscape. Among the most obvious issues publishing companies are facing is, how do you make money? David Carr in The New York Times has been addressing that issue for the last several years, and did so again today.

The Hack elected to start Harvest as a digital edition—largely because it's cheap to get off the ground, and his employer was willing to humor him (wisely) only so much until some sort of revenue stream could be discovered. So, it would please The Hack if you would download a copy of Harvest Foodservice Journal, and take a look. Comments, are, of course, welcome.

Does that mean cooking segments are done with? No. The Hack remains busy at his stove, and can't help but share items like his blue cheese butter, that kicked serious ass with steak, salmon, trout, and bread, of course. (2T (or more) of good blue cheese for  1/2 cup of unsalted butter, both softened and well incorporated, adjust taste with Kosher salt if needed, that will depend on your cheese.) So, keep checking in.

Trout and braised cabbage. It's good, really!

By The Hack

“What’s that smell?”

That was the query delivered to the Hack from his Significantly Better Half on Sunday night. She was painting the dining room, but could still pick up the distinctive odor of braising cabbage.

What can anyone say about cooking cabbage? The Hack’s olfactory apparatus, as forgiving as it may be, can detect the hint of sweatsocks in braised cabbage. He understands people’s apprehensions. But, is there a more savory braised leafy vegetable? No. There is not.

The Hack found himself with time on his hands, which he spent at the stove, after a busy couple months for himself and his Significantly Better Half. February was one of those time frames that accumulated mounds of lousy news as tall as the snow pile in the St. Paul Sears parking lot (it was taller than the streetlamps during that month) on the personal front. But, given the context of global events, the Hack and his Significantly Better Half could still look at their house, their good friends, their year-old pup, 19-year-old cat, and be thankful.

So, there the Hack was. Standing there, hunks of red and green cabbage steaming in a pan with shallots and olive oil, while he divvied up a two-pound slab of trout from Todd Thomas at the St. Paul Farmers Market. (The Hack isn’t sure what’s dumber: The Hack himself, for not remembering the name of Thomas’ company, from which he’s bought fish for years, or the St. Paul Farmer’s Market website for not having that information.)

He wandered down to the market on Saturday, after a workout in the morning. After picking up his slab of trout (and a dozen eggs from the comediennes at Bar 5), he strolled into the market at the Heartland Restaurant & Farm Direct Market, and saw some red and green cabbages piled up, about the size of softballs. He bought one of each (along with a couple chocolate croissants, chocolate chip cookies, and a cup of black bean chili).

Saturday was busy. But Sunday evening: Again, a mostly relaxing day led to the query from the Significantly Better Half: “What’s that smell?”

“It’s good for your boobs,” the Hack answered, truthfully. Just look at the breast cancer stats for Polish women. They eat a lot of cabbage. Science says those women don’t have that problem in their boobies so much, because of all the cabbage in their diet. It’s true.

The cabbage stewed and shriveled. The Hack salted and peppered his trout trout cuts, about 5-6 ounces each. The cabbage finished up, he pulled it from the heat—still firm, but obviously cooked.

Tossed about two tablespoons of butter in a non-stick pan, heated ‘er up over medium heat. The butter just started to brown when he dropped in the trout, skin side down to start. Tossed some diced shallot and a chopped tomato in a small saute pan heated with some olive oil. Let 'em sweat a bit. Then tossed in a diced tomato, a Bushel Boy greenhouse dealie. He flipped the trout after three minutes—no more than that, and let ‘em go about three minutes more. Meanwhile, heated up another tablespoon or two of butter in a sauce pan, when melted, threw in a couple pinches or dried thyme (that’s all he had on hand). Stirred the tomatoes stewing in the sauté pan.

Spooned some cabbage on the plate. Set the trout next to it. Drizzled thyme butter on the trout slab, spooned stewed tomatoes on top. There it was. One of the last cold weather meals of the season.

 Recipe:

•    ½ head small green cabbage
•    1/4 head small red cabbage
•    2 tablespoons olive oil, or therabouts
•    2 shallots, chopped
•    Salt and freshly ground pepper

For this cabbage mixture, use your noggin'. You might not have small heads of cabbage. Adjust. Don't be dumb.

Trim the cabbage chunks, removing the stem and heart, slice it somewhat finely.
mix together in a bowl. In a wide saucepan over medium heat, warm the
olive oil. Add the shallots and the cabbage, season with salt and pepper,
and stir. Cover and braise for about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, and
set aside to cool.

•    2 rainbow trout fillets, about 6 ounces each
•    Salt and pepper to taste
•    2 tablespoons butter
•    fresh or dried thyme

Season both sides of the trout fillets with salt and pepper. Heat the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When it's just turing brown, add the fillets, skin-side down. Sauté about 3 minutes, depending on thickness.

Meanwhile, toss another bit of diced shallot (or garlic) in a saute pan with olive oil. Let them sweat a bit, then add the chopped tomato—a medium size one is plenty for two fish filets. A little salt. Don't let 'em go too long, or you have mush.

Flip and brown the other side of the trout for about 3 more minutes, tops.

While that's happening, melt another two tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan. Throw in a couple pinches of dried thyme, or fresh if you've got it.

Plate:
Place a lump of cabbage on a plate. Set the filet next to it, skin-side down, on individual serving plate alongside a lunmp of the  Sprinkle each with the fresh dill. Drizzle a little of the thyme butter over each serving. Serve immediately.

Non sequitor: Dave Brubek

Because it's cool. —The Hack

 

Faces Mears Park: Croque madame, if you dare.

Seeing David Fhima as one of the 12 hottie calendar boys and girls in last week’s PiPress “Eat” section (um, this is one of those instances when I am really glad I’m employed by an industry publication) reminded me that I forgot to post a photo from a recent lunch I had at Faces Mears Park with Dan “Klecko” McGleno, the Saint Agnes Baking Co. honcho and bon vivant. ...

...Read the rest at The Hack's day-job blog, here.

For the love of (gluten-free) dumplings

A-hem. Please welcome the latest contributor to the Bloated Belly, the lovely Sandy K. She is the one-and-only Sandy Krzyzanowski, the owner (and uber-certified instructor) of Better Day Yoga, based in Brooklyn Park but with classes in multiple locations. She can’t consume gluten, and therefore can’t drink beer, but nevertheless qualifies as a Bloated Belly contributor because she can still drink lots of wine.—The Hack

 

By Sandy K.

I’ve always wanted to be one of those cooks that could cook chicken soup from scratch, but it was the memory of my mom’s homemade dumplings that drove me to try the Chicken Noodle Soup with Dumplings recipe (Those recipes are below). Truth be told, that recipe alone would have tempted me to buy the 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes book by Carol Fenster. I was quite flattered when my friend, Mike Mitchelson, asked me to review the book and do a blog on my efforts. I immediately said yes and then realized that would mean I’d actually have to cook—I’m sure my husband paid him to ask! 

My husband and I have been gluten-free for several years—at least eight years, perhaps nine. In all that time, we’ve never really found a gluten-free dumpling that made the cut. 

So I start out with high hopes gathering all my measuring utensils first and donning my mom’s old apron hoping to channel her expertise. The utensils are buried in a drawer, so it took me a bit. Yes—it’s been a loooong time since I ventured to make anything from scratch! So I’m the true test of whether the recipe is fool-proof! (Did I mention that while I’m un-naturally blonde, I’m also very naturally and very proud to be Polish? We Poles can make comfort food like no other, thank you very much, so no jabbing at my last name!)

I’m totally not trying to be funny when I ask my husband (who is nervously eyeing me in the kitchen since that truly is his domain), what exactly is a whisker? I mean I’ve heard of an egg beater…is that the same thing as this “do-hickey”? Um…yes. He’s very patient.

Carol’s “Sorghum Blend” flour calls for “whisking the flour a few times to aerate or fluff it up”. “Is that the same as sifting the flour?” I ask my husband again. Well, what does she say to do?  Whisk or sift? Okay, okay….I’ll use the whisk! I’m taking this perhaps way to seriously, but I don’t want to “get up to 20 percent more flour” in my measure if I do it wrong!

I swear this is before the wine. As I’m reviewing the ingredients for Carol’s Sorghum Blend, I come to the “1 cup tapioca flour”. I can’t help but wonder why “tapioca” rings a funny bell with me. So I ask my husband, since the longer we are together the more our memory banks are the same. He immediately reminds me it’s from “Who’s Line is it Anyway”, and we both burst out with “Tapiooooca!”  (Check out the original here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpyhwuzFJY.) This cooking thing is becoming fun!

I wonder out loud what a “large soup pot” is—size does matter in this instance I’m thinking—and then I realize that if it fits the four inches of water, I’m probably good to go. This may have been my first mistake. We don’t have a pot easily available that fits a full four inches of water so I choose the biggest one we have. It holds, perhaps, three inches. Good enough?  My husband thought so, and that was good enough for me to continue. 

Just to give you an idea how long it’s been since I’ve had to measure any baking powder, the container’s built-in product skimmer really amazed me.  It wasn’t just the cardboard edge of the box like I’d remembered. Seriously, no wine yet. Before you think I’m making this all up, keep in mind that it’s my nature to be amazed easily. What’s that John Powell saying?  “Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.”

Going back to the ingredient list, it says “salt”. We rarely use salt. So for a moment when I can’t find it in the cupboard, I’m thinking perhaps I’ll need to steal my stash from the bathroom—I shower using sea salt sometimes, but that’s another story. No—this isn’t near as fun as “Blanche” from “Golden Girls” needing to go to the bedroom for whipped cream, but the thought makes me giggle a bit as I find our “regular” salt in the cupboard.

“Buttermilk”—yes, I have a story for that too! My Dad used to love buttermilk, but as a child, I didn’t. He would offer me a quarter if I drank a cup.  So as I was adding the buttermilk into my recipe, I couldn’t help but think of the quarters I earned. Carol has a homemade buttermilk recipe I could have tried, but I put that down on my to-do list for another day. I figure if this doesn’t turn out, I want the list of possible reasons why to be as small as possible!

Possible mistake number two was not having room temperature butter. Easily fixable, I thought. It was after I put the metal container containing the butter stick into the microwave that I asked my husband to uncork the wine. I think it was the 50% power that saved us from being blown up. (This wasn’t as bad as microwaving our contact lens containers many years ago….so I consider ourselves lucky.)

I start to mix in the butter with the egg mixture and the butter is clumping a bit so I’m left wondering if it’s really achieved room temperature. I keep mixing. That leads me to another conundrum. I remember from my outdated history of using flour that I often got my hands into the mixture. So I’m wondering if I should be using my hands, a fork, or a spoon? Yes, I’m a bit detail-oriented. I stick with a spoon to start and revert to a fork until I get to the desired stiffness. My husband nods his approval. 

Now here’s where Carol’s recipe falls prey to my lifetime motto. “If a little is good, a lot is even better”. So when she says to “drop the dough by the tablespoonful”, I’m using a heaping tablespoonful. I either had them way too big, or maybe it was the lack of a full four inches of water in the pot, or perhaps it was the micro-waved butter. I kept the lid on for the required 20 minutes “without lifting the lid”, but they were nowhere near done. So I pulled each dumpling out onto a plate, cut them all in half, and covered them again. This time increasing the heat a bit (perhaps another mistake), and letting them simmer for another 30 minutes beyond the initial required 20. They still seemed a bit loosely textured on the outside by the time the soup was ready to be consumed, but at least they weren’t doughy inside. Perhaps it was fool’s play thinking I could create something equal to the memory of my mom’s excellent dumplings from at least 25 years ago. But I still enjoyed them; and seriously—they were actually pretty darned good the second time we warmed them up.  So all was not lost!

Getting back to the soup part of the recipe as the dumplings were cooking, I’m realizing that the chicken should have been cooked already! My husband to the rescue!  He quickly takes them outside to work his wonders with chicken breasts on the grill. (He uses olive oil on both sides, then tenderizes the chicken by poking it with a fork several times, and sears both sides on a hot grill approximately five minutes each side, then grills them another five minutes on each side—my mouth is watering.) I’m beginning to feel like I’m cheating by not having cooked the chicken myself—the way my mom used to do it—a whole chicken in a pot of water along with all the assorted spices.  Somehow using skinless chicken breasts on a grill seems to lack the “from scratch” definition.  Seriously though, I was about to boil the chicken breasts in water when my husband saved me from drying them out that way. Maybe next time I’ll try using a whole chicken the way good ole’ Mom did.

Starting the soup mixture in the “large, heavy saucepan” (there’s that “large” description again…chill, Sandy!); I discover we really don’t have any canola oil.  So I substitute olive oil as I hear that voice inside my head counting the mistakes aloud…mistake number four?  (Don’t you hear voices in your head? You’re just jealous the voices like me better.)  I end up using more than the one teaspoon it calls for as I’m trying to brown the celery and onion.  It was either that, or burn them like so many other failed attempts at cooking!  Not this time! 

Let me also say here that it just seems wrong it took three grocery stores to find both the white pepper and fresh parsley.  What’s the world coming to?  I remind myself I’m going to Google what the difference is between white and black pepper and why you’d choose one over the other. I can only recall that Mom’s reason for using it was to fool my future husband into thinking there was no pepper in her dishes since he couldn’t see it if it were white!  She wasn’t far off in her reasoning! According to what I found on Google, white is used mainly for aesthetic reasons so you don’t see the black flecks. There are some, however, who think white pepper has a milder taste.

If not for the fact that I had already diligently chopped all the required parsley from the soup ingredient list, I may have opted not to take the time for garnish had I known that’s what it was for.  No, I take that back—I’ve never had to take a picture of the done deal before!

I used Bionature brand pasta for the “gluten-free pasta of choice” called for in the recipe. I’m thinking the pasta made the broth thicker than a regular chicken soup would be and might opt to only add the home-made dumplings on the next try. Now that we’ve found out the second time around the dumplings taste better, I just might try my hand at it again—using teaspoonfuls of dough vs. tablespoonfuls just to be on the safe side. Oh, and the next time, I might uncork the wine a bit sooner!

Sandy K. is the one-and-only Sandy Krzyzanowski, the owner (and uber-certified instructor) of Better Day Yoga, based in Brooklyn Park but with classes in multiple locations. She can’t consume gluten, and therefore can’t drink beer, but nevertheless qualifies as a Bloated Belly contributor because she can still drink lots of wine.

 

Recommended meat.

By The Hack

Lookit. Ya, you're saying, "So, that's bacon, little bacon pieces, fryin' in a pan and sittin' on some paper towel."

Ya, the Hack says. But not just any bacon. LAMB bacon. So stick that in yer pipe and smoke it. Well, better to eat it. The Hack bought it from the folks at Bar 5 at the St. Paul Farmer's Market, the same folks from whom the Hack buys his Thanksgiving turkey. The lamb was cured up with a little Greek seasoning, and it was very, very good.

And then look at this.

Like the label says, sausage with blueberries in the middle! Damn Good! Kudos to Prairie Pride Farm, nother producer at that same St. Paul Farmers Market. Up next: The Hack's T-day preparations, in pictures. (Apologies for cheap photo quality, The Hack was not using his professional rig, just an 8-year old 3 MP mini Canon dedicated to the kitchen.)

Turtle Bread revives the Belly

By The Hack

Yawn. Wha—? September 17 was the last post?

These have been busy times for the Hack. But he had not forgotten about the Belly. Nah, he never could. While he was traveling about for the Day Job and other projects, he managed to cultivate a couple other contributors, and reinvigorate his own self toward the cause.

So, while the Hack was out and about Saturday morning with the Missus, he had a dandy breakfast at Turtle Bread, the one on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a joint he had not visited in many moons.

  The missus and the Hack ate a couple apple fritter-ish pastries (the one pictured was already partly consumed) and shared a quiche lorraine (made percfectly, like a custard, not scrambled egg in texture) and the  omelette pictured below, filled with Italian sausage, black olives and a cheese of some sort. Nicely balanced and flavorful. Served with a hunk of good toasted bread and potatoes.

So, with a healthy breakfast, the Belly is recharged for another run. Thanks for sticking around. Up next: Turkey Day pics.

Wadi's World Street Kitchen food truck hits the streets

Serving everything from the taco to banh mi.

After three and a half years in business and numerous accolades and awards, brothers Saed and Sameh Wadi of Saffron Restaurant & Lounge are happy to announce their latest endeavor: World Street Kitchen (WSK), a mobile food truck. The cuisine served will be an exciting array of both traditional and new style street food from around the world. “I’m very passionate about world cuisine and it’s what I like to eat when I’m not cooking.” Chef Wadi says. “We are very lucky in the Twin Cities to have great ethnic restaurants and I’m excited to offer my take on international street food to the masses.”

The compact menu will change often with about 6-8 items ranging in price from $2.50-$6. Look out for the curried chicken banh mi, lamb barbacoa taco with cabbage, Middle Eastern spinach pie, and the salted caramel ice cream sandwich as regular staples on the menu.

The primary location will be on 5th Street and Nicollet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis for the next few months until the frigid weather hits, and will be serving lunch Monday-Friday. Next year, Wadi said, "St. Paul is on the radar."

WSK will also be available for private events and catering—that part of the business won't stop when the snow flies.

For scheduled location, menus, and catering inquires, check out the World Street Kitchen website (www.eatWSK.com), Twitter (www.Twitter.com/eatWSK1) and Facebook (www.Facebook.com/eatWSK1)

Village Farmer's Market, Chef Shack, etc.

By The Hack

Every day the Hack would read updates on The Chef Shack and other food trucks distributing their goodies at locations nowhere near where he worked, which is in an awkward spot in St. Anthony, sandwiched in a three-way (bringing it to a four-way?) between Northeast Minneapolis, New Brighton and Roseville.

But then he got a “Tweet” (yes, he's hip now) saying that Chef Shack would be in his neck of the woods! Like, a half mile away, in the parking lot of a strip mall he only know existed because Tea Source is there. See, every Monday afternoon, the Village Farmer’s Market sets up and, well, in come some food trucks. The Hack did not know about that. Despite working in the area for nearly five years. He likes to think he's aware of things. But, ya. Missed this.
 
The Hack climbed into his sheik Volvo wagon and drove down at about 4:30, and there was the Chef Shack truck, but also the Magic Bus Café and SHE Royal Deli, the mobile offshoot of SHE Royal Coffee on Hennepin Avenue (co-owner Samson Benti was in the truck).
 

So, thanks for the notice, Chef Shack folks. The Hack sampled the goat and summer squash curry tossed with a bit of the mango chutney, and deemed it tasty. He’ll swing by again for more samplings from all the vendors.