Upgrayedd!

Coming soon … new look, more content, focus … you know, all that professional-ish blog-type stuff.

Hang in there, super fans!

 

Comrade Snarky & Chef Assassin

When fruit meets Frank

When is an heirloom tomato not an heirloom tomato?

When it looks like Uncle Frank from Hellraiser. Hi, Frank!

Awesome and disgusting: the umami of our palates here at IAB, if you will.

Mmm, musculature!

’tis the season …

… for squash blossoms, that is! Huzzah! Chef Ass. is back in the kitchen, and we’ll be posting recipes and photos directly.

2 days late, but Happy National Tortellini Day!

On Hiatus

Hello, all. Just to let you know, there will be content to come. There has been and will still be some housekeeping going on.

In hopes of keeping the few of you around, I’m excited to tell you that when I do return I’ll be writing up my trip to Redding to make sausage with my family. I had a blast being elbow-deep in pork butt for two days straight!

Do please check back in a bit.

I could have been a star kid!

Back in 2007 while looking for employment I received a phone call from a charming lizard voiced twitch monkey named Mark; manager of Sante La Brea. A little shit shack just around the corner from The New Beverly Cinema with a concept of… well, I wouldn’t really call it a concept. I would call it a “concept” of healthy food but drastically missing the mark. To me healthy food, vegan, vegetarian or otherwise, should first come from a clean kitchen. That said I must take a break to vomit while I recollect the complete lack of care to maintain at least third world cleanliness…

So this sweaty (presumably tweaking, very presumably) guy Mark wanted me to come in and help fix the kitchen in this restaurant and make it all good! So, I spent an evening observing what was happening, what needed to be improved, watching the cooks and a complete overall operation to identify what the problems were, which was everything, and how to solve them. In a massive way I might add. After about two hours of this I then thought I’d make an example of what I thought was a healthy tasty dish. Wild Salmon (after I found a decent enough piece) with a blood orange and white wine reduction with fresh thyme and grilled asparagus. Simple and healthy. A much needed change for a “restaurant” with  197  menu items!

Who needs that much crap, and it was, to look at? My rule is always and always will be: two page menu, period. A few great items with the best ingredients are always nicer than a humongous menu that also had massive spelling errors. Seriously people, its called spell-check, look into it. Spelling errors on menus have always made me dubious of any restaurant. It shows care for the services being rendered and the food being served. Simple, but essential.

After that evening I was actually looking forward to taking the helms of this sinking chum and swill ship and make it a proper restaurant. After a few days Mark calls me back and is willing to offer me the job. He then informs me that he needs me to work on Monday and Thursday each week from 8 – 12…

Eight hours a week!?!

And yes, I was supposed to be the Executive Chef. I won’t even mention the pay. Hysterics come to mind. I told him that there was no way humanly possible for me to overhaul the restaurant with odd and very few hours as he had requested I do. An Executive Chef does 50 hours a week minimum and with everything that this place needed I told him I’d need at least 60 hours a week and full control over vendors and kitchen staff. After a few more days whilst he thought. He calls me about 5 times in one day sounding more like the way he would call his crank dealer than a prospective employee and practically begs me to work there for a few more bucks and a few more hours.

At this point I tell him nope, can’t do it and good luck trying to find a dolt to do the job.

That brings us to last February. I was at work and my phone rings. I check it and the number looks familiar but, as everyone does, lets it go to voice-mail. It does, I check it and guess who it was? Mark from Sante! He says he has an odd request. Apparently his restaurant is still doing poorly! He says that Gordon Ramsay is going to be putting Sante on Kitchen Nightmares and he doesn’t have anyone in the kitchen that speaks English and wanted to know if I wanted to do it (because I speak English) to be on T.V. Wow, I could care less about being on T.V., but, to be asked to help him like this and publicly destroy my reputation on T.V. Knowing how monetarily the restaurants benefit after being on Kitchen Nightmares I made a request. $5000.00. Needless to say I never heard back from Mark.

The pure incredulosity of him to even ask me to do this just to be on T.V. was a fucking joke. Me, take the blame for all of the shit that’s wrong with that place? Fuck that tenfold.

And I never did meet the owner Dean Hamoui, but I would have made my first suggestion to fire  Mark and bring in a professional

Needless to say, I wanted nothing to do with it. The video is on Hulu if you feel like being nauseated.

Cheers!

My sister, the hero

Gosh rachael ray is a pudgy thing!!

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Funny she should mention; about a year ago, Mme. Ray claimed that she’s a size 6 “thanks to stretch fabrics”.

Sure she is.

If she’s having a Chico’s kind of day …

Shenanigans on Esposito: “You people”

M-to-da-A is a terrible co-host; she’ll heedlessly talk over her guests’ solicited anecdotes or answer her own damn question. I’ve seen her interrupt a Rhode Island chief justice, her local butcher and Sara Moulton. I don’t remember how she treated future-adopted-grandfather, Jacques Pepin, but perhaps she too was stunned into silence as he guilelessly garnished a lovely scallop dish with Doritos. Bless.

If you’ve ever seen her show, you’ve seen that A) it’s sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation and B) she guest-hosted an episode with some tall man who’s shown warbling Dino – badly – in a wee clip during the opening credits.

That man is Ken Ciongoli. I do not like that man. Why?

Because fora first generation Italian-American, and the chairman of the NIAF, he is racial toward us Wops. Not once but twice during his episode does he say something to Mary Ann about “you people” – making pasta in X way or sauce in Y way, I can’t recall and it doesn’t matter. “YOU PEOPLE”?? Jesus, are we on Ellis Island circa 1850?

So shenanigans on cadaverous, bowl cut’d Ken, for being such a self-loathing Dago.

And additional shenanigans on them for using no egg wash – not even a daub of water – to seal their agnolotti. No way those didn’t disintegrate instantly in boiling water.

UPDATE: my timing sucks; according to Mme. Esposito’s blog Dr. Ciongoli passed away last week and now I feel a little like an asshole.

In memoriam, I will give this to the deceased doctor: he did run his finger along the inside of each eggshell so as to scoop out every last iota of albumin. Frugality: the hallmark of any Italian-American worth his salt (which he likely had to harvest himself, having been put to work in the mines with a work permit his own father fudged his age on. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. Ahem.)

I still say you gotta seal your agnolotti, though. No way that fork-crimping is cutting it.

Second time on the pass: Lamb Edition

Last night, I made lamb burgers, following this recipe.  Delicious! The meat mixture is surprisingly moist (yes, even considering the addition of milk-softened pita trimmings); I added an egg and refrigerated the mixture before cooking. There was still a lot of moisture, enough to prompt me to start the burgers in the oven and finish them in the grill pan, but after 20 minutes at 325°, I declared them done enough. The consistency is more like gyro meat and so I didn’t think it necessary to make the burgers look more like, well, burgers.

There’s a lot of meat mixture left over. What to do? First, make another “burger” for my lunch. While that was cooking, I got bored. I made mini meatballs:

I think I’ll be braising them in a lightly-minted tomato sauce, with a healthy splash of red wine.

Our first poll-sicle