Brian @ Wongside

Ever see those people at Farmer’s Markets or Carnivals cooking up huge batches of Kettle Corn in those large iron cauldrons?  Those guys are more than happy to charge you some ridiculous amount of money for what essentially amounts to pennies’ worth of ingredients.

Here’s how to make your own:

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup popcorn kernels
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 pinches of salt (more if you like your kettle corn more salty)

Directions:

1. In a large pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat.
2. Add three kernels of popcorn.  Cover with a splatter guard.
3. When they pop, add the rest of the popcorn.
4. When the first kernels pop, add the sugar and salt.
5. Shake vigorously until popping stops.

I found this fantastic recipe for Pepperoni Pizza Monkey Bread, and decided to make it my own.  Charlene has really been craving pizza lately, so I figured this might be a decent answer to her hunger pangs.  The biggest difference between the recipe above and mine is that I didn’t use pepperoni–Charlene prefers mushrooms, and I got my dough from Trader Joe’s.  To make preparation easier, I also used string cheese, and cut it into small pieces, rather than getting a big block of mozzarella.

Here’s what they looked like up close:

I went to Costco today and bought over eighty pounds of meat for a friend’s wedding.  About 56 lbs of tri-tip, and 26 lbs of chicken.  Sorry, there’s no pictures of the chicken, but they would have been boring anyways.

56 pounds of tri-tip is by far the most tri-tip I’ve ever bought.  I look forward to breaking that personal record one day.  Here’s what 56 lbs of tri-tip looks like:

Four 15 pound-ish cryovac bags with tri-tip inside…mmm

Four 15 pound-ish cryovac bags with tri-tip inside...mmm

If you’ve ever had real Chinese food, like at a Chinese wedding banquet, you’ve probably seen the Cantonese Green Onion/Scallion and Ginger sauce served with a boiled or roasted chicken.

I set out on a quest to duplicate it.

I started out with the general knowledge that it was scallions, oil, and salt.  Honestly, I didn’t realize there was any ginger in there at first, but my sister-in-law confirmed it to be so.  Additionally, my mother-in-law mentioned that everything was raw, no cooking involved here, so that does make it slightly tenuous to eat, especially for people with weakened immune systems because of the possibility of getting E. Coli.

After a fair amount of trial and error, here’s what I came up with:

Ingredients:
2 bunches of scallions
1 Tbsp minced ginger (you can get the pre-minced stuff in the jar, or mince your own fresh)
1.5-2 tsp salt
1/2 C Grapeseed oil

1. Rough chop the scallions into 1/2″ pieces or so.  This doesn’t have to be perfect.
2. Throw everything into a chopper or blender.  (I use the chopper accessory on my Cuisinart Stick Blender)
3. Ta-da!  You’re done.

The most common application I’ve seen is with boiled chicken.  But it seems to go with chicken in general–fried, boiled, broiled, grilled, etc.  I have yet to try it with beef, but I’m guessing it has to be good.

Sorry, no photo of the mixture.  Next time I make it, I’ll add one.

Here’s what’s on the menu for Thanksgiving at the Wong Household:
Garlic Prime Rib
Roasted Cauliflower
Mein Bow Doys (Potato Rolls)
Fluffy Mashed Potatoes

I thought this was an appropriate follow up article to my previous post from a few months ago, Costco:Love/Hate

It’s a list of things you should and should not buy at Costco.

Items not to buy:

1. Designer Clothes
2. Imported Shrimp
3. Sheets and Towels
4. 12-Pound crates of navel oranges

Things to buy:

• Chocolate truffles
• Eyeglasses
• Laptops
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil

In my opinion, they left out the item at Costco which is near and dear to my heart: Prime Grade Beef. The price has gone up a few bucks since that article.  It may be due to the proximity of the Holiday Season with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. But it’s still a steal compared to what you’d get at Safeway or Whole Foods.

Last weekend when we were at my parent’s place in Sacramento (yeah, they moved from Bakersfield to Sac back in August), my mom introduced me to a recipe for chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, which are my favorite kind of cookies ever! I have no idea why this kind are so hard to come by. People make chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal raisin (yuck!) cookies all the time, but hardly ever will you find a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie.

This particular recipe is called “Jack’s Chocolate Chip Cookies“. Frankly, I don’t know Jack…er…I mean, I have no idea who Jack is.  But the problem is that Jack obviously didn’t have an allergy to walnuts, whereas I do. So with that, I present to you, “Brian’s Chocolate Chip Cookies”.

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a stand mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until smooth. Add the eggs , milk, and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, stir into the creamed mixture. Stir in the rolled oats and chocolate chips.
3. Make golf ball sized portions, and place 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat silicone baking mat. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies on wire racks.

As a follow up to my post on Whole Foods and organic food yesterday as well as my article in the Wall Street Journal, I bring you this anecdote:

After my interview with Katy McLaughlin from the WSJ, I was curious as to whether I could find Prime Beef at other establishments. The first place that came to mind was Whole Foods Market. They’re known for their expensive, locally grown, organic food. I figured if I could find an expensive cut of meet like Prime anywhere, it would be there.

So that Saturday I went to Whole Foods and I talked to the butcher. I don’t know if they keep their “second string” butchers on duty on Saturdays, or what was going on, but this guy and his compatriot did not know their meat.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello, I was wondering what grade your meat is.

Butcher 1: What grade?

Me: Yeah, like the USDA grade?

Butcher 1: What do you mean?

Me: Like, Select, Choice, Prime?

Butcher 1: Select Choice or Prime? Hmm…not sure. (Notice he thought “Select Choice” was one kind of meat, not two.)

*Calls to other butcher

Butcher 1: Hey, what USDA grade is our beef? Select Choice or Prime?

*Butcher 2 walks over.

Butcher 2: Well, you have to look at it.

Me: You have to look at it?  What do you mean?

Butcher 2: Well, it’s all based on marbling, so you just have to look at it.

*He picks up a piece of Ribeye (my favorite).

Butcher 2: See, this looks like a piece of Choice. Look at all that marbling.

Me: Oh…uh-huh. (What the heck is he talking about?)

*Butcher 2 picks up another piece of meat.

Butcher 2: And see, this piece looks more like Select.

Me: Got it. Do you ever get Prime?

Butcher 2: Yeah, it depends on what is shipped to us.

*Points to another piece of meat.

Butcher 2: But this piece looks like Prime.

Me: Oh really?

Butcher 2: Yeah. See, we usually only carry Select, Choice and Prime.

Me: Ahh…I see. So if it’s not here, can I special order it?

Butcher 2: Yeah, of course!

Me: OK. Thanks for your time. Bye

I walked away shaking my head. In case you don’t know why, I’d suggest reading my prior post from when I found the Prime beef. It details all the differences.  First of all, I can’t believe the first butcher didn’t know what USDA meat grades were. Unless he’s not from here, which I’d say is highly unlikely, he really can’t call himself a butcher if he doesn’t know about USDA grades.

Second, one can’t just “tell” what USDA grade a piece of meat is. It’s professionally graded by official USDA meat graders. Their job is to look at a beef carcass and determine what grade the entire cow is. It’s not on a steak by steak basis. The entire animal is graded.

Third, unless you’re a maker of processed meat, the only grades of meat available to you are Select, Choice and Prime. Below that, you have Utility, Cutter, and Canner. As this USDA page indicates:

Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades are seldom, if ever, sold at retail but are used instead to make ground beef and processed products.

In other words, it’s inane to claim that you usually have Select, Choice, and Prime if you’re a (theoretically) upscale butcher like Whole Foods. That would be like a geometry teacher claiming “We only cover polygons with more than 3 sides in this class.” Of course you do! Because if a “shape” had less than 3 sides, it wouldn’t be a polygon. Ridiculous!

In any case, I hope you get two takeaways from this:

1. A good laugh. It was pretty funny to me.
2. A lesson that you need to have a good butcher, and a good relationship with said butcher. Beware of butchers who will sell you a $25 ribeye or a $35 filet mignon and have no idea what grade it is.

All you Whole Paycheck Whole Foods  and organic junkies take note: organic food is no better for you than ordinary food. People are spending $48 billion a year to buy organic food that provides no significant difference in nutritional value from any other food. (I’ll refrain from claiming that they’re wasting $48 billion a year because if they didn’t buy organic, they’d still have to spend money on regular food. But given that organic food can cost double what non-organic would, I think it’s fair to say that at least $24 billion is wasted.)

Anyways, I’ve never been a huge believer in buying organic. I’m a pretty thrifty consumer, so I’ll pretty much buy whatever gives me the best value. Usually, that’s not organic food. Historically, if there was an organic piece of food that was on sale for the same price as regular food, I’d buy the organic because of the perceived health benefits (everyone told me it was better), but with this report, I might not even do that any more but for the fact that I know I’d be getting something on the cheap.

This is a good reason not to eat ground beef for a while. There’s been an outbreak of salmonella in Colorado related to ground beef. Apparently, 825,769 lbs were recalled. Yay for steak!