Alright, Friends…who’s in?

Instead, Wench (which we call her lovingly, of course) has made my day week month year by sending out an email in search of help with her wedding reception playlist.

ZOMG!

As you may or may not know, music is one of my most favorite things in the entire universe, along with sports, British people, being a spaz, vomiting at inappropriate times and being easily distracted. Anyway, when we were in college, everyone in our group/house had an important role in our academic partying success. Wench was “The Regulator” and also brought the people to our parties, Twin did the makeups (fortunately for me), Bunkmate played bartender, Curly did hair and I was CD/playlist guru.

Making the perfect playlist was my favorite part of throwing a party. Well, other than the drinking. And maybe the dancing on the coffee table? But I digress.

One of my greatest moments in college came when I put “Jump On It” and “Beat It” in the middle of our Christmas party playlist, creating an epic ugly sweater dance party which led into a brother v. brother MJ dance off. Degree? Oh yeah, I got one of those too.

But anyway, this new task of creating a list of songs for Wench to give to the DJ for the SIX HOUR reception had become my new obsession. I’ve purchased a notebook and plan to keep it with me at all times. Fortunately for Wench, her fiance Double D and the rest of the wedding guests, I plan to put all of the energy I usually waste on that thing called a real job into creating the best list of wedding reception music ever.

Maybe it’s wrong but I’ve already got two mini-notebook pages filled. I bought the notebook today at 3 p.m. I think Wench is just preying on what I think might be some sort of music-induced illness. Either way, I’m gladly accepting suggestions, lest I forget something as awesome as “This is How We Do It” or the musical/dance genius that is “Soulja Boy.” I’ll pick whatever songs it takes to get everyone to get down, and possibly for Wench’s “nightmare” of Double D turning the reception into a Pants Off, Dance Off affair.

My new best friend. Best job ever.

Playing DJ is the best. What would you guys want to hear at a bad ass wedding reception?

Don’t worry, the Baja Men are already on the list.

Living in Chicago, one of the most expensive and desired commodities is space. It’s not as expensive as it is in Manhattan, but it’s close enough for me to not want to live in New York. Parking spaces are one of the most expensive commodities in the entire city. Take the recent hikes in metered parking prices and the cost of a deeded space in Chicago, $30,000 in a nice condo building [that's only if the building management doesn't lease spaces at an inflated rate].

The North Side of Chicago is the worst place to be in need of a parking space. You can drive around for 30 minutes before conceding to the inevitable [you're going to have to walk half a mile or more from where you parked]. There is an abundance of parking lots that are empty each and every night during off-peak hours that threaten towing to unauthorized vehicles. So, why not authorize people, just for the night?

The weekend visitors and commuters that want nothing more than to get in their home without playing Where’s Waldo [Parking Edition] at the end of the day would gratefully pay a small fee to park in said lots until the morning. An even happier group, towing companies would be obliged to take any late starters out of the lot when regular business hours resume. A cheap gate and pay stations would allow the business owners to make money while they slept and towing companies to get it when they wake up.

Today is a new day: it’s launch day. Stay tuned, because the adventures of Rooms & Rooms have only begun.

———
@zarahcochran

And yes, awesomer is now a word. Deal with it.

But since I’m a nice person and I love you peoples, I thought really hard and came up let LiLu come up with one tiny, practically insignificant, yet totally amazing resolution that I am determined to stick to…

New comment on your post #3294 “Ringing in the New Year, Riot-Wine Style“
Author: Cheddar
Comment: I am inspired…I’m putting on my long johns and gettin’ down, Charlie style. Or maybe my dress. We’ll see where the night takes me.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:28 PM, LiLu wrote: Just so long as you’re not wearing REAL pants. Pants are for suckers.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Cheddar wrote: And I think I just figured out my New Year’s resolution: Pants are for suckers. Cheddar out.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:36 PM, LiLu wrote: You’re smarter than Jesus. (Don’t tell him I said that. Despite popular belief, dude holds grudges.)

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Cheddar wrote: You definitely have to watch out for that guy. I hear he’s into that whole “eye for an eye” deal.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:40 PM, LiLu wrote: Medieval shit and all that. I like my thumbs where they are, thanks.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Cheddar wrote: LiLu Four Fingers just doesn’t have the right ring to it.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:43 PM, LiLu wrote: Not unless Scorsese’s offering me a part. Then I’m cool with it.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Cheddar wrote: True story. I guess if Jesus finds out we could just maybe kiss his ring and make everything better?

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:50 PM, LiLu wrote: On this, the day of his daughter’s wedding. Excellent.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Cheddar wrote: Well done us.

And this, kids, is why I blog. We are some of the coolest people I know.

2010: The Year of the Pants Off, Dance Off. Or the year I get fired for not wearing pants. Or the year people call me easy for not wearing pants. Or the year I gain 400 pounds because I can’t go outside without pants on. Or all of the above. Whatever happens, the future looks bright.

I’m not going to lie, this is my new favorite picture. My life in one frame, haha. The Brooklyn Bridge and ice cream. Yes, please.

Yesterday I finally, finally was able to check out the New Amsterdam Market, a monthly market in the South Street Seaport where the Fulton Fish Market used to be. It’s butchers and bakers, farms and wineries, cheese and chocolate – all kinds of things – all local or locally sourced. And it’s amazing. Aaaamazing. And there’s lots of samples for you to try.

You’ll never guess what kind of flavor that ice cream is. It’s sweet potato pecan. I was a little apprehensive at first, but once I tried it, I was sold, sold, sold. It was from The Bent Spoon, an ice cream shop from Princeton, New Jersey. It had honey-candied chocolate pecans in it. Hello. I might have to buy myself a pint of whatever flavors they bring to the next market.

Before I tried the ice cream, I got myself a small lobster roll from Luke’s Lobster, which I have been hearing soo many wonderful things about. At their booth, they had a little chalkboard that told you exactly where today’s catch was from (in Maine, by the way). Luke’s had the longest line, well-deserved. I only got the “snack” portion of the lobster roll, but it probably wouldn’t have killed me to get a whole one, $14 or not.

This lobster roll is hands-down the best thing I’ve had in a month (okay, maybe besides Gotham Bar & Grill). They have a place on E. 7th street that I am going to visit immediately.

And here’s some other things you’d find at the New Amsterdam Market:

Produce.

People.

Cheese!

Oysters!

The next Market is Dec. 20th and you can bet your booty I’m gonna be there.

Well, probably not really.

Also, I bought these earrings last week and they just came in the mail.  I think they’re the cutest things ever.  They’re very witty and they make me happy.  I think that’s what truly matters!

I’m trying so hard to plan a trip to Portland soon but it’s just not happening.  I think I finally settled on a month – now it’s just a matter of coordinating with friends, looking at plane ticket prices, trying to get time off work… you know, logistics. Luckily, logistics is what I do on a daily basis so it shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Right. That’s why I’ve been trying to plan this trip since April!

Well, as Nike says, JUST DO IT.  Ok then.

Well, probably not really.

Also, I bought these earrings last week and they just came in the mail.  I think they’re the cutest things ever.  They’re very witty and they make me happy.  I think that’s what truly matters!

I’m trying so hard to plan a trip to Portland soon but it’s just not happening.  I think I finally settled on a month – now it’s just a matter of coordinating with friends, looking at plane ticket prices, trying to get time off work… you know, logistics. Luckily, logistics is what I do on a daily basis so it shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Right. That’s why I’ve been trying to plan this trip since April!

Well, as Nike says, JUST DO IT.  Ok then.

“Tropical” “fruit” gels, served with Vice-Grip pliers.

The pliers serve a couple purposes in this dish.  First, they make the dish more profitable.  As we all know, diners that go for avant-garde cuisine are essentially husks with wallets, devoid of independent thought or personal taste.  These kinds of people can be easily made to pay large sums of money for food that fits into a few simple categories.  One is food that is confusing, which I covered to some extent in my article on plating.  Another is food that is perceived as “fun”.  This dish evokes the same visceral emotions as a plate of steamed crab legs waiting to be cracked, but without the annoyance of being able to associate your food with the animal from which it came.  People see this and they know that good times are ahead, and rich people know that the best times are the ones you pay the most for.  If you believe that the best things in life are free, for your next meal go rummage through the dumpster behind McDonalds and let me know what a great dining experience you had.

The other purpose of the pliers is a bit more functional.  Allow me to blow your fucking mind:

Each toothsome morsel is bursting with a flavorful “juice”.  These jewels require a high-level mastery of several hydrocolloids, which I will go into greater detail about in a later post; I’m assuming most readers are still in too fragile of a mental state from the pictures to handle something as epic as carrageenan.

Dark against light, salty against sweet, crunchy against chewy…to master the contrasting of flavors, textures, and colors is essential for any chef, especially one who practices the dark arts of “Molecular” “Gastronomy”.

OK, I wrote up a huge piece about this dish over the weekend and even though I hit “Publish”, I didnt’ stick around long enough to see that WordPress logged me out without notifying me.  Instead of trying to recreate that masterpiece of writing, let me just condense it to a few key points:

• “Chocolate” “cake” enveloped in pork gelatin-stabilized corn syrup foam, dusted with “coconut”
• Heavily salted fried corn kernels
• Kernels soaked in water for 3 days, evaporation during frying leaves enough air holes to allow for chewing without broken teeth
• Combination of salty, crunchy element with moist, sweet element takes dish to new heights, like how a horse plus a horn is a unicorn, but unicorns can fly and shit rainbows even though neither the horse nor the horn could do either of those things

Despite its name, the french fry is one of the most American foods on the planet.  It is fitting then that I, an American chef, should take the pomme frite to a whole new level.  What appears to be a simple corn chip is actually a crunchy mindfuck.  All of the rich flavors of french fries dipped in ketchup, condensed into a toothsome, uniform crisp (broken here to show texture, but originally a perfect rectangle).  I have been experimenting with an entire hamburger with fries condensed into a single crisp, but the combination of so many perfectly captured flavors has so far proven to be too much for the average person’s senses.  My theory is that the brain rejects the notion that so many flavors can be born of a single texture, and immediately induces vomiting and diarrhea.  Until the human mind has evolved to keep pace with my “Molecular” “Gastromancy”, we shall have to make do with these delicious “ketchup” “and” “fries” “crisps”.

After my recent success with reinventing offal cuts into a single, perfectly uniform ingredient, I still had the rest of a pig carcass to deal with.  Because “normie” cuts aren’t as chic at the moment, I was perplexed at first.  I made a list of nonsense combinations of cooking terms and pork cuts, but that didn’t get me anything but the attention of simpletons.

Then it hit me, why not standardize the flavor and texture of the larger cuts?  Perhaps by stripping them of all their former flavor and textural qualities, I could help inject some much needed interest back into the market.  I started with two of the most basic portions of the swine: the front and the back.  Shoulder and ham was run through the PacoJet to form a smooth paste.  The paste was then injected into containers and vacuum-sealed.  A few minutes in the hydrostatic cooker, and the result is a wonderfully indistinct mass of pig meats.  The resulting block can then be eaten as-is:

Or with some of last week’s delicious aerated “cornions”:

After several failed attempts at using a vacuum pump to aerate onions, I had an epiphany (I have them on average twice per week):  why not just make onions?  And what better to make an onion from than corn?!?

In my experiments with Activa and various other transglutaminases, I have had somewhat of an epiphany.  If meats are inherently imperfect (riddled with connective tissue, variable texture and flavor, etc.), why not create new primal cuts in the perfect, unerring vision of the Molecular Gastronomist.  Here I have done just that.

Offal and lesser-used cuts are currently very vogue now, but if a duck breast or pork shoulder is less than perfect in texture, then trotters and snouts and lips are practically abominations.  So naturally I separated the meat (here I’m using beef, pork, and mechanically separated chicken because nature has yet to create a perfect tasting animal) from any sinew, skin, or gristle.  I seasoned the meat liberally with potassium lactate, partially hydrolyzed beef stock, sodium phosphates, sodium diacetate, and extractives of paprika, then cooked it sous-vide until it has lost any and all uniqueness.  I then bound the meat together using Activa and some other chemicals that are totally flavorless (as long as the price is high enough).

The result is a tubular piece of meat with a smooth, uniform texture and delicious taste.  The shape is not unlike a sausage, but without the annoyance of a casing or resistance.  The new meat can be eaten as-is, or cooked as one would any natural protein product to enhance flavour, although the texture will remain largely unchanged.  Note that when heated, the “meat” has the tendency to expand, a property that could be taken advantage of for a pleasing table-side performance (read: added value with essentially no added overhead cost).

This is a quick amuse-bouche I whipped up using a brunoise of “meat” “cylinder”, shichimi togarashi, dehydrated bay leaf, and a base of undulating egg and corn-syrup foam.  The technique for creating the undulating foam is quite dangerous, and therefore I will not be expanding on it here, at least until such a time as I can find a method to create it using less plutonium.

Here we see what can be achieved when we regard what some call “rules” as mere boundaries to be pushed or even broken.  A sheet of “tropical fruit” (pears, citric acid, corn syrup, red 40, yellow 5 &6, blue 1) stabilized with pectin and acetylated mono and diglycerides is suspended over sago palm needles, steadied by a cylindre of modified corn products.

The dish toys with the diner’s expectations by doing away with the old notion of “no inedible garnishes” and going one step further: the poisonous garnish.  Once the “fruit” “sheet” is consumed, the “corn” cylinder beckons with it’s sweet scent and supple, toothsome texture, but the diner is taunted by potentially toxic levels of cycasin and Beta-methylamino L-alanine.

Here is another play on the “fruit” “sheet”, this time served in the form of noodles (toothsome noodles), except that they’re made of fruit…and chemicals.

Gratuitous texture shot.

Not satisfied with the ergonomics of my previous “chicken” “bites”, I continued to evolve them over the weekend until I came up with a more ergonomically satisfactory version.  Here is a “nacho”-infused, easy-to-grasp version, served with a “dong” of tonkatsu and savory grape and mango gelée.  I served them on a stick I found in the back yard, because I can’t afford some guy to make a bunch of stainless steel trinkets for me to dangle my food off of.

As an added note, I’ve been so busy making “Molecular Gastronomics” all weekend, I forgot to cook real food and ended up with takeout Chinese for dinner!

I couldn’t resist the beautiful organic farm-raised grass-fed summa cum laude chickens at the farmer’s market last weekend, so I’ve been doing some other experiments in addition to my “chicken” “biscuits”.  I realized that once roast chicken was perfected, the natural progression would be to perfect fried chicken.  Fried chicken is a great American pastime, but once again the bones, sinew and other imperfect parts of a natural chicken carcass serve only to make a potentially delicious meal stomach-turning.

I have come to the conclusion that perfect fried chicken should not only be uniform in taste and texture, but should also be bite-sized.  This is important because without the bones you have no natural handle, so anything too big would not only be cumbersome, but probably structurally unstable, flopping about like an edible dildo (note to self: create and market edible dildo).

The basic process I’ve come up with is fairly simple.  Simply cook a chicken sous vide for 800 hours at 48.89 degrees Celsius (be sure to make the water a 10/100 bleach/water ratio to discourage fungal and bacterial growth).  The chicken can now be liquefied bones and all using the pacojet or a Blendtec blender.  Combine the chicken purée with modified corn starch, sodium phosphates, salt, and whey protein concentrate, then set it with a transglutaminase like Activa.

For the breading I use a modified version of my grandmother’s recipe, which includes wheat flour, water, bleached wheat flour, salt, modified corn starch, spices, sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate, dextrose, yellow corn flour, yeast, garlic powder, citric acid, spice extractives, and xanthan gum.  Just whisk all that together in a bowl and dredge the chicken bites in it.

For frying these, I highly suggest breaking into a KFC and stealing one of their pressure fryers.  I like to fry my “chicken” “bites” in seal blubber, for its neutral flavor and high smoke point.  Also, I hate seals.

After many failed attempts of getting the flavors of warm buttermilk biscuits into a roast chicken, I finally had an epiphany.  In my youth, the biscuit always served as a vessel for hot shreds of chicken plucked from the carcass (my mother unfortunately lacked both the equipment and knowledge necessary to form all food into uniformly-textured cubes).  I realized that although the food must take a different form, the ritual must remain the same, and so I decided that the most prudent approach would be a chicken flavored biscuit.

I began by cooking the bird sous-vide for 97 hours at 51 degrees Celsius, then deep-fried it for a few minutes to crisp the skin.  I then submerged the perfectly cooked bird in liquid nitrogen so that I could shatter it into small enough pieces to fit in a pacojet container.  Once the bird was pacotized bones and all, I spread it onto acetate sheets and put it in the dehydrator.  Once the puree was mostly dry, a few pulses in the food processor turned it into a fine powder, containing all the essence of a perfectly-roasted Sunday bird.

I knew I had to retain the ethereal crunch of perfectly roasted chicken skin, so I decided to make the biscuits thin enough to replicate that delicate texture.  After mixing the dough (wheat flour, baking powder, hydrolyzed corn and yeast protein, flavor extractives, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, monoglycerides, soy lecithin), I rolled it into thin sheets and ran them through the CNC machine to create an appealing shape that would maximize surface area.

I then ran the sheets through an old monochrome laser printer that I have modified and now call the “high-speed electrostatic flavor applicator”.  The process is fairly simple; the roast chicken powder is given a negative charge, and is thereby naturally attracted to the photoconductor unit.  The PCU applies the powder to the cut sheets of “biscuit” dough which are baked by the fuser assembly as they leave the machine.  The result?  All the flavors of childhood, represented in a delightfully uniform package.  Every bite is the same as the last, the holy grail of “molecular” ” ” “gastronomy” “.”

I am looking forward to using these at an upcoming collaboration with Grant Achatz.  We’re currently tossing around the idea of burning about 10lbs of the “biscuits” in a brazier in the center of the dining room a few hours prior to service to impregnate all the fabric in the restaurant with the aroma of chicken and chemicals.  We would then probably serve the “biscuits” inside some kind of wire mesh cage that the diners will have to reach into, symbolizing the struggle of picking meat from bones, without the annoyance of imperfect bites.

Popular Science has a great 5-minute DIY project today which I will be building tonight: a 5-minute beer chiller. I hope it doesn’t make me all frowny like the guy in the picture…wish me luck!

Insta-Cool Beer Chiller [Pop-Sci]