Posts Tagged ‘Celebrity Intern’

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Thai Kitchen disappointment: not enough heat!


2010
07.08

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Posted in Home Cookin', Thai, stir fry | 1 Comment »

As a Thai food enthusiast, I have been checking out the wares of the grocery stores near my house every time Celebrity Intern and I venture forth on a food-gathering mission, hoping that some kind of spicy green chili paste will magically appear. While at Randalls the other day, joy of joys! We spotted a jar of Thai Kitchen’s Green Curry 10-Minute Simmer Sauce, and snatched it up. The ingredients looked right, and I told Celebrity Intern that I was sure I had tried their concentrated Green Curry Paste before and it had been just the right level of spiciness.

After sautéing up some chicken, letting it simmer in the simmer sauce for the allotted time, and having steamed some broccoli and cauliflower to complete the meal, I served it up with some fancy looking sprigs of cilantro on top:

A disappointment, brought to you by Thai Kitchen's Green Chili Simmer Sauce

Looks tasty, right? Well, it would’ve been, except for the fact that Thai Kitchen’s Green Curry 10-Minute Simmer Sauce is apparently totally lacking in green chili! WTF?! Although green chili is one of the ingredients listed on the bottle (under “green curry paste,” it is the primary ingredient), it tasted to us like there was nothing spicy in the jar at all. I don’t think I even tasted any garlic or lemongrass, so I fired off an email to Thai Kitchen inquiring therein.

The result? NADA. It’s been two weeks and not even a “thank you for your comments!” email in return. Therefore, I must strongly advise Thai-lovers out there to avoid this product. It is bland in the extreme and, frankly, we would have had a better tasting sauce if we’d just made a brown gravy to pour over our chicken.

In the meantime, we will keep on searching for the Thai spice mixtures of our dreams. Stay tuned when we finally hit up an Asian grocery!

Got any suggestions for products we can find locally that will kick our Thai meals up a notch? Any recommendations for spicy green chili would be greatly appreciated!

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Juan in a Million


2010
05.23

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Posted in Only In Austin, South, Tex-Mex, breakfast tacos, tacos | No Comments »

I’ve been meaning to post about Juan in a Million for a while now, as it was one of the original suggestions from our Foodie Banker, and Celebrity Intern and I hit the place hard fiending for some breakfast tacos on a lazy Sunday.

A word to the wise: Go early. I mean, like, buttcrack-o’-dawn early! (They open at 7 AM, daily.) Otherwise, you will regret the error of your foolish, foolish ways. Especially if you’re looking for parking. OY!

Now, aside from having the most awesomely punny name in town (and me having missed this weekend’s O. Henry Pun-Off, scandal!), Juan in a Million has reportedly The Best Breakfast Tacos in Austin. This has now officially been confirmed by my co-workers, who reguarly bring in a couple of the Don Juan tacos to share. At 3 bucks (and 60 cents) a pop, and with multiple tortillas supplied to divvy the booty from “El Taco Grande” up, they can squeeze 4 breakfast tacos out of one Don Juan, so that’s some mighty fine bang for your buck!

The Don Juan and its not-so-secret ingredients, revealed! (photo by Flickr user Mike Barish)

The Don Juan comes with “a secret combination of potato, egg, bacon and cheese,” but you can also try the fajitas (beef or chicken), beef or chicken tacos, carne guisada, or guacamole tacos for significantly less fat cash (i.e. $1.95 and up). Mix and match ‘em for maximum satisfaction.

I’ll admit that I was a silly billy and went for a lunchtime menu item, the chicken enchiladas, when we first stopped by Juan’s fab taco house, but having tasted the (not-so-)secret sauce, I’ve seen the error of my ways. Sure, enchiladas are always a good bet, but their breakfast tacos are truly divine. Grab ‘em to go and win the undying loyalty of your staff by sharing them around the office!

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Butter Chicken on the cheap!


2010
05.09

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Posted in Home Cookin', Indian, one-pot meals, stovetop | 2 Comments »

I’m a big fan of Indian cuisine, but I hate paying restaurant prices. It’s worse than hitting up your local sushi bar! I mean, seriously, $12 for a plate of chicken with spices (aka Butter Chicken)? I can make that shizzle at home—and better!

So I did, with the aid of Kitchens of India, an inexpeez ready-made spice packet for Butter Chicken found at my local H-E-B.

THE METHOD:

In a pan, we combined approximately 1 lb. of boneless chicken breasts, cut into small chunks, with 3 T butter (slightly more, due to Celebrity Intern’s heavy hand!), plus the contents of the Kitchens of India Butter Chicken Curry Paste packet. We mixed it up and simmered for 20 minutes under a lid. We then simmered on high for another 5 minutes, before removing from heat, covering, and letting sit for another 3 minutes. We also combined a packet of Tasty (i.e. NASTY) Bite Chunky Chickpeas, supposedly with garlic, ginger and “aromatic spices,” which I had lying in wait after a run-in with their doubly-nasty chickpea & lentil combo (a word to the wise: avoid this product at all costs and just buy yourself a can of plain chickpeas instead!). After fine-chopping some freshly-washed cilantro, we plated it up and got this:

(Photos by Celebrity Intern, who complained about the lack of natural sunlight.)

Superb! Stupendous! Only $8 for dinner for two!

Seriously, yo. Stop overpaying for Indian cuisine, and make it yo’damn-self. It’s delish, it’s inexpensive, and it’s easy to do.

Suggested wine pairings:

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Cooking apps: How To Cook Everything On The Go


2010
05.02

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Posted in American, Cooking The Books, Home Cookin', iPod/iPhone apps | 1 Comment »

Here at Shoestring Austin, we like to blend deliciousness with cheapness. In our quest for delicious, cheap food, we have naturally downloaded many a free cooking app from the iTunes store. Unfortunately, as with many things in life, when it comes to free cooking apps, you get what you pay for.

Enter Mark Bittman, aka “The Minimalist.” New York Times food writer Bittman is all about cooking inexpensive, minimally time-consuming recipes with good, fresh ingredients, and has written several excellent books on the subject, including the brashly titled How To Cook Everything. And now, there’s an app for that: How To Cook Everything On The Go. (Click on the link or image below to download from the iTunes store for the iPhone or iPod Touch.)

For just a buck ninety-nine ($1.99), Bitty will literally teach you how to cook everything, without having to connect to the Internet. It’s a great self-contained app that offers easy access to a wide variety of recipes, kitchen basics, ideas for quick dinners and even lists compiled by Bittman like “Top 102 Essential Recipes,” “10 Soups to Eat Hot or Cold,” “16 Sauces for Any Simply Cooked Tofu,” and “15 Meat Dishes That Are As Good or Better The Next Day.”

With Bittman’s cooking methodology, it’s all about getting good, fresh ingredients and not screwing them up. His recipes are simple (or minimalist) mainly because he will teach you how to mix and match recipe ideas with whatever you’ve got in your cupboards, how to keep the right ingredients stocked at all times, and how to quickly and easily prepare straightforward meals. Most recipes offer a “variations” tab that will show you how to change up your old favorites, to keep things interesting, and they’re often cross-linked to accompanying dishes that pair well.

Truly, a great app to invest in, and at $1.99 it’s well worth the price.

One of the recipes I’ve recently tried from the app is the Radish Salsa, which offers a unique take on an old favorite. While Bittman doesn’t include tomatoes in his recipe, Celebrity Intern saw yellow tomatoes on sale at the grocery store and couldn’t pass up a deal, so we tossed in a few for the following colorful and tasty results:

Photo (and yellow tomatoes) by Celebrity Intern

Looks great, tastes great, and can be served up solo or stuffed into the taco of your choice. Yum!

Ingredients for this salsa include: chopped radishes, English cucumber (the long skinny kind), red onion, scallions, garlic, jalapeños or serrano chiles, lemon juice cilantro and salt and pepper. Toss in a few tomatoes (red or yellow) if you like, or download the app to check out Bittman’s unique Thai-inspired variations on the theme.

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Bleu Cheese Bacon Burger, Julia & Ming-Style


2010
03.07

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Posted in American, By Cuisine, Drinks, Food Type, Home Cookin', burgers, wine | 3 Comments »

People of Earth: hear me now, believe me later! If you love burgers, this recipe is gonna rock your world. I wouldn’t have even thought it was possible to improve upon the delicious and dead-simple cheeseburger we all know and love, but it is—and it’s not even crazy expeez, either! These are the tips (which we originally learned from watching episodes of Simply Ming and Julia Child on PBS) that will help you achieve godliness on the stove. Please note: today’s recipe is brought to you by the mad cooking skillz of Celebrity Intern, who taught me everything I know about burgers.

  1. Get good beef. What does this mean? Don’t buy the non-specified mystery meat; if they don’t tell you it’s ground round or ground chuck, you’re getting lips & assholes. Buy the good stuff: Angus beef (at least here in Texas) doesn’t cost that much more, and it’s so worth it.
  2. Baby your beef. Don’t handle the meat too much when you’re actually forming the burgers into patties. Pat it into a roughly rounded shape, but don’t try to make it perfect. The more you handle the meat, the more moisture you press out of it, and the more dry your burger will be.
  3. Searing-hot pan. Make sure your pan is hot and ready to go before you put your patties in. It should be hot enough that when you put in a pat of butter, the butter will melt but not turn brown before you put in the beef. (And yes, you are using butter to grease your pan. None of this Pam or margarine or olive oil horseshit. BUTTER!)
  4. Set it and forget it. Put in your patties and leave them be. Do not slide them around, press down on them, or otherwise meddle with the beef once it is in the pan. Let them brown for between 4 and 5 minutes before you flip them over. Do not mash them down once you’ve flipped them! Just let them do their thing. This is the secret to moist, delicious burgers.
  5. Use a thermometer. You’ll know your burgers are ready based on their inner temperature. Insert a meat thermometer and take your burgers off the heat when they’re around 130 degrees F. (Don’t worry; although most recipes will tell you to cook ground beef to 165 degrees, we’ve been eating these regularly with no ill effects, mostly since they’ll eventually get that hot even without the help of the stove. You may want to abstain, however, if you’re knocked-up—just to be on the safe side.)
  6. Cheese and cover. Put your bleu cheese on top of the burgers, which are still resting comfortably in the pan, and then cover the pan with a lid. Let the burgers sit, cheese slowly melting, for at least 5 minutes before plating them up. Use a good quality bleu cheese; we like the Salemville Amish Blue Cheese (available at Randall’s), which has been aged for 60 days. Delish!

Those are the basic steps to great burgers, even if you’re not big on the bleu cheese idea. But if you are, let us also recommend additional toppings (which you really MUST do) of bacon strips (easy to make in the microwave!), some romaine lettuce, and a bit of mashed avocado. Pure decadence, pure bliss.

Wine pairing: a delicious ($5) Chilean wine, the Frontera Carmenere, tastes fabulous with this bleu cheeseburger. Yum!

There should obviously be a tasty and succulent photo of our burgers here, but we were salivating too much to take pictures and gobbled them up before a photo shoot could be arranged! We’ll try to get one eventually, but no guarantees.

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Torchy’s Tacos


2010
02.19

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Posted in By Cuisine, By Location, Downtown, Food Type, Tex-Mex, tacos | 1 Comment »

Celebrity Intern didn’t want to go check out Torchy’s Tacos, originally, because he claims he can “make a mean taco, like the concentrated essence of 1,000 Mexican chefs.” (I must give him that he does cook up a mighty fine taco, even though he is handicapped by his non-Mexican heritage.) Despite, the truly horrible parking, I was starving to death after a long study session day of hunting down obscure noir films at the Fine Arts library, and insisted we go.

After several attempts at parking, involving much hand-waving and finger-lifting at various psychotic Austin drivers (seriously, the 2801 Guadalupe location is a nightmare at rush hour), we were able to leave the BBT safely behind and head inside.

The atmosphere sucked, but on the plus side, the music was loud enough to drown out the cacophony of several half-retarded UT students in Uggs.

We were delightfully surprised by the tacos themselves. We got them to go, as we couldn’t stomach the crowd and its relentless burnt-orange tides. Upon unwrapping, we found our tacos slathered in fresh cilantro—the mark of deliciousness.

Celebrity Intern and I ordered three tacos amongst us: the Baja Shrimp, the Democrat and the Beef Fajita Taco. After devouring my Democrat (shredded beef barbacoa, onion, queso fresco, avocado, cilantro, lime and green sauce), I demanded half of the shrimp taco. Celebrity Intern was loathe to let go, but I wrenched it from his paw and took a bite. Sublime, the fresh snap of the shrimp! The egg-roll reminiscence of the cooked cabbage! The perfect spiciness of the pickled onions and jalapenos! I think I had a mouthgasm.

Celebrity Intern remarked that his Beef Fajita had “glorious, charred strips of beef,” so much so that although he hates grilled peppers, he didn’t even notice their presence amongst the cheese and the pico.

We both wanted to go back for another round. Or five. Torchy’s, we salute you and your Damn Good Tacos.