It Is Your Fault

A fellow culinary adventurer, Dan, and I frequently head to the San Gabriel Valley for Chinese food. But it’s almost impossible to have an entire meal without encountering cilantro, which Dan cannot tolerate in any capacity. Even when we ask for its omission in dishes, about half of the time, it manages to appear on our plates. Dan cannot even stand to have cilantro-laced dishes near him at the table, his revulsion is so great. I understand. As a child, I thought that cilantro was the plant from where Ajax cleanser was derived. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to appreciate its herbaceous glory.

I suspect this has been Photoshopped
Yesterday, Harold McGee explored the biochemical explanations of why people hate Coriandrum sativum to the level that has inspired websites like bancilantro.com and Facebook groups like “I Hate Cilantro.”

Dan believes his intolerance is due to a genetic predisposition, which seems to fit with most people’s love-it-or-hate-it attitude towards cilantro, but McGee says that there isn’t a wealth of data yet that support this claim. He goes on to explain how the herb's soapy aroma could trigger a brain response that perceives it as a threat. “We react strongly and throw the offending ingredient on the floor where it belongs.”

Researcher Jay Gottfried on a cilantro high
He cites the work of Jay Gottfried, a Northwestern University smell-ologist and ex-cilantro hater. Through frequent exposure with good food, he found, “I began to like cilantro. It can still remind me of soap, but it’s not threatening anymore…”
Get excited, Dan!
So, despite the article’s headline, it is your fault, Dan. You need to expose yourself to more and more cilantro until you love it. Jeffrey Steingarten did that with all the foods he disliked to become a food writer. Initially, I couldn’t stand beer, but after repeated and multiple exposures, I developed a grudging tolerance for the sudsy stuff. To this day, I regularly ingest pints of ale and lager, stout and pilsner, hoping to my tolerance will evolve into love. So, Dan: if I continue to work on my beer issues, will you work on your cilantro issues?

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

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Everybody’s been talking about the new KFC Double Down, the sandwich that epitomizes American deep-fried decadence. In lieu of bread, the sandwich uses two pieces of battered or grilled chicken breasts to hold together two slices of bacon, two slices of cheese and a mayonnaise-based sauce. Stephen Colbert called the concoction, “The warped creation of a syphilitic brain,” but then one bite later said, “Call me crazy but this is good.” It’s been getting huge press and I’m sure sales among carnivorous stoners have been brisk but how obscene is it really?

Fast food tester: my dream job
Consumer Reports said it was salty and with 1380 mg of sodium (half of your recommended daily intake), it is. But surprisingly – for the fast food world – it’s not off-the-charts fattening. It has the same number of calories as a Big Mac (540) and about the same amount of fat (32 grams vs. the Big Mac’s 29).
Leftover prop from a David Cronenberg film 
There’s a worse culprit I learned of thanks to snippets.com. The Claim Jumper franchise, whose 45 restaurants are scattered throughout the West Coast and some of the Midwest, offers Beef Back Ribs on their menu that pack in a stunning 4,301 calories and 7,623 mg of sodium. That’s without sides.
In-N-Out's chef d'oeuvre - 4x4 animal style (a mere 1,050 calories)
Even on the road trip where I ate an In-N-Out 4x4 and a Double Double (essentially 6 patties, 6 slices of cheese), I didn’t reach half the caloric value of those ribs. They must be awesome! (Yelp members have informed me that, in fact, they range from “good” and “better than average” to “underdone” and “dry…been on the desert floor for years”)
This is more fattening than the 4x4
But there are other items on the Claim Jumper menu if ribs aren’t your jam. There are 19 items that contain over 2,000 calories and 57 that have over 1,000. Feeling peckish? Just have the blue cheese wedge salad and the seared ahi appetizer. That’s 1,114 calories in the salad plus 562 for the app. The tuna has more calories than a KFC Double Down.
This + 400 calories = Claim Jumper appetizer
So the question is, would I go to the Claim Jumper? Would I have a Double Down? Nah. For me, there is no novelty in eating thousands of calories in one sitting. I do plenty of that at home.

Kitchen Tools

Daniel Patterson puts his "tools" to work (with the help of an actual tool)

A few months ago I was listening to The Splendid Table, hosted by my new culinary nemesis, Lynn Rosetto Capser. Actually, the show is perfectly pleasant as is she, in a schweddy balls kind of way and they have some great guests. This episode was no exception as they had Daniel Patterson, whose Coi restaurant earned two Michelin stars. The show was fine until he was asked about his favorite kitchen tool. I listened eagerly while clutching my stack of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. Would it be an ergonomic melon baller? Maybe a microplane ginger grater? A Kevlar butchering glove? Something Silpat? Nay. His answer? “My hands.” That’s like Usain Bolt explaining that the secret to his speed is, “My feet.” I would get this kitchen tool if the motor were faster

My least favorite kitchen tool? Daniel Patterson. What a bunch of hippie bullshit. If there is a device out there that saves time, money and improves technique, I wanna know about it. I already got hands, Chef Patterson. Thanks for nothing. Bill Buford demonstrates the suplex

It reminds me of that book, Heat, in which Bill Buford basically tries to get in a pissing match with Mario Batali as he learns more and more obscure Italian culinary skills. At one point, he wants to master pasta making to get that unique “wood on wood” texture that he insists can only be found in handmade pasta rolled by old Italian women. He eventually seeks out Miriam Leonardi, a culinary legend whose pasta he describes as, “life changing,” to coax her to reveal her centuries-old hand rolling technique. She says, “What in the world are you talking about?... No one does that sort of thing anymore. They’re too busy. Modern life. I use a machine.” My machine in action

The pasta machine fits perfectly into my personal criteria of a kitchen tool. It saves me the hundreds of hours I would have to spend learning the dead art of rolling pasta by hand. And it makes a uniform product every time. I got mine at Ross Dress for Less for less than $50 and didn’t use it for a year because it was so intimidating. But now I use it all the time. It’s a snap. Braun, despite rumors, was not involved in World War II

To test this “snappiness,” I made some ravioli. I pulverized some dried porcini mushrooms in my 400 watt Braun Impressions Multiquick Handblender using the handy-dandy blender attachment. Did I mention that its motor has a whopping 400 watts? Seriously, if you don’t have one, get one. The result of three seconds of 400 watt pulsing

Then I pulsed some crimini and fresh shitake mushrooms in the same blender and mixed my mycological mélange with some ricotta and parmesan cheeses along with salt, pepper and a scraping of nutmeg (using my box grater – awesome kitchen tool #3, bitches!).

I put that aside and cracked some eggs in a well of flour to knead my dough and brought into an ugly ball. I didn’t need to work it much because the pasta machine does the kneading for you! My wrist looks morbidly obese

The more you roll it, the smoother it gets! And then you work it thinner and thinner until you can see light. Try doing that with your hands. Point for technology!

Then I brought out gadget #4, a ravioli press I got online for twelve bucks and change. The dimples actually hold a useful amount of filling

You lay the plastic nubby thing onto a pasta sheet which makes little wells in the metal rack part. You fill ‘em, top ‘em and roll ‘em out (I’m going to count rolling pin as a kitchen tool). Chef Boyardee would be proud

I had almost 6 dozen before I ran out of filling. Thanks, knife

I used the rest of the dough to make three double portions of pasta of varying widths and tossed it all in the freezer to be used at a later date. Total time used including prep and cleanup: an hour and a half. Had I used just my hands? Ha. Abondanza...

My hope is that this is more useful to someone stocking a kitchen than some celebrity chef saying, “Make sure you get a pair of hands in there!” As for Bill Buford, he could have saved himself weeks obsessing about la cucina autentica had he spoken to Miriam earlier. Her secret to great pasta? “What’s important is the eggs.” Amen.