A harsh lesson for the new year

via boingboing / Making Light

It Would Be Like Running A Hotdog Place Called "The Hotdog"...

Yeah, that's right.

It's a taco place called "El Taco".

You got a problem with that?



Now, it's pretty common knowledge that we don't really have Mexican food in the UK. Not the real stuff anyway, and if we did, we'd have no idea what to actually do with it.



Which is why it was with great trepidation that I walked into the cosy interior of the imaginatively named "El Taco" on Western Road in Brighton, and perused the menu.



Would they be able to deliver the goods? What if they gave me something great and I was too dumb to recognise it's worth? I swallowed my anxiety, mosied (moseyed?) up to the counter, and held faith in the fact that we were both from "Southern Climes"...



The produce looked fresh, and the guy was friendly. As I mentioned, El Taco is small, so it can be tough to get a seat, but the stools face out a large window at the busy intersection, and it's certainly a nice enough view while you eat.

They import authentic hot sauce too, which is definitely a big plus!



I sacked up and ordered the Chorizo Quesadilla, "spicy style".



I like the fact they served it on a paper plate, that was also on a china plate.
It was very unneccesary, but totally awesome in it's wanton-ness.

I was also stoked to see the Mexican flag proudly displayed in the arrangement of my meal.



GREEN GUACAMOLE


WHITE SOUR CREAM


RED HOT SAUCE


The quesadilla was, to put it lightly, CHEESEY AS ALL GET OUT.

Fortunately, I am the kind of guy for whom this is a good thing, and it never came close to overpowering the rich meaty heat of the chorizo safely nesteled within...



Was it authentic? Honestly, I have no idea.

But was it delicious? Most certainly amigo!

I will definitely be going back, and if I'm being fed a tortilla full of lies, then so be it.

If El Taco is wrong, then I don't wanna be right.

Give Yer Thanks!

I am thankful for this puppy. ^
And the gravy.
And the stuffing.
And the mashed potatoes.
And the mashed sweet potatoes.
And the roasted squash, apple, and walnut dish.
And the corn pudding.
And the cranberry sauce.
And the other kind of cranberry sauce.
And the green bean casserole.
And the cranberry, chestnut, and rice dish.
And the hot rolls.
And the crab dip.
And the cheese wheel.
And the spinach and artichoke dip.
And the caprese salad.
And the pretzels, crackers, and dip.
And the apple pie.
And the pumpkin pie.
And the pumpkin cheesecake.
And the whiskey sours.
And the wine.
And those cute little 7 ounce Budweisers.

Yes. Somehow all of this found its way into my belly last Thursday afternoon. Do not ask me how.


For those eager readers on the other side of the pond, I have supplied a detailed instructional video on how one might go about celebrating Thanksgiving properly.

Engagin' Cajun' Jambalaya

Looks pretty good right? Even with the blurry picture...

It tastes good too.

Let's say that you're hanging out at home, maybe you're watching a film on the sofa.

(In this reconstruction of a hypothetical scenario, the part of you will be played by a small wooden Minotaur head.)



When suddenly you get an urgent hunger for something spicy, meaty, fishy, and generally satisfying on a deeply soulful level. They call that feeling "Jambalayawanna", and the only thing you can do to sate it is to make it.

You spring from your seat.



You race to the kitchen and collect together the composite ingredients.



*Note* This dish requires a few things that might not normally be in your store cupboard, so DINNERGEDDON recommends anticipating your Jambalayawanna with as much advance notice as possible.

Here's what you need:

JAMBALAYA
Serves 4

Arborio Rice (I have no idea how much, I just pour it out till it looks right)
4 Chicken Thighs (skin on, bones removed)
8 Raw Prawns (shells on)
Squid Tubes (cut into rings)
Chorizo sausage (diced)
1 Green Pepper
2 Red Onions
2 Spring Onion (sliced)
1 Garlic Clove (sliced)
6 Cherry Tomatoes
1 Chicken Stock Cube
Salt & Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Chilli Flakes
Fresh Parsley
Fresh Thyme
Fresh Rosemary
2 Bay Leaves
1/2 Carrot (sliced)
1 Lemon
2 Celery Sticks
2 Whole peppercorns
Olive oil

Ok let's get started...

1) We need to make a quality stock to cook the rice in. Apply a sharp blade to one of your red onions. See how the steel glints in the light. Mercilessly cleave the onion into two equal halves.



Put the chopped onion into a medium pan. Peel your raw prawns and add the shells to the onion. Dry fry on a high-heat until the shells become pink. This should only take about a minute.

Add boiling water to the pan, along with one of your celery sticks (chopped), your chicken stock cube, your carrot, garlic, one bay leaf, your peppercorns, and a pinch of chilli flakes. Let it all boil, then reduce to a simmer for at least an hour.

This is maybe a good time to go shopping for cutlery and dining-ware, if you don't have any. It would be terrible to cook this Jambalaya and have to eat it out of the sink just because you don't own a bowl.



Return to your stock. Does it smell awesome?

If it smells awesome, it's basically ready, but the longer you leave it, the better it will be.
Jamabalayawanna can not be dispelled in a hurry.



Pour your stock through a sieve and really press through all the juice. Discard the chunks, and keep your stock warm somewhere. We are now on to phase two!

2) Prepare a heavy-bottomed pan. Do not feel compelled to climb inside it, even though that is what you are doing in this example.



Add all of your rice to the pan and lightly toast it until the colour just begins to turn.



Now add your stock, and some salt and pepper to taste. If you don't have enough stock to comfortably cover the rice, top it up with hot water.

We must now construct a Bouquet Garni.

I know, kind of a drag, but worth the effort. You get to use scissors at least!

With a piece of string, tie a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of thyme, and one bay leaf around a whole celery stick. It might look something like this:



This contraption is your Bouquet Garni, and you can just toss it in the pan like a flavour grenade. It can just sit on top of the rice while it cooks and will smell up the place real nice. Remember to fish it out later though!



Gently pierce the skin of each of your cherry tomatoes, and add them to the mix. As they cook in the rice, the juice will leak out and add to the general moisture and flavouring, but the flesh of the tomatoes themselves will gracefully fade away into the background, like the memory of a long abandoned ambition.

You should now be safe to just let your rice cook away for a bit while you move inexorably onwards to phase three of the plan...

3) Brush the skin side of your de-boned chicken thighs with a little olive oil and salt.



Then, fry the absolute bejeezus out of them, skin-side down. When the skin has achieved ultimate crunchification, and is totally brown and delicious looking, flip them over and let the meat side cook through on a lower heat.



When they are cooked, remove them from the pan, and let them rest. Meanwhile, in same pan, toss in your other red onion (finely chopped) and all of your chorizo. The gloop from your chicken will merge with the red-sausage-juice and form a really great frying sauce for the onions.



Wow, that picture is really terrible.

When the onions are kind of translucent and smelling really incredible, it's now time to add your chopped green pepper and the raw prawns.



Let them do their thing until the prawns have turned pink and you start to get that "I'm ready to eat you now" feeling.

When this occurs, you are ready to throw in everything from your frying pan. Stir it all around real good.

Then slice up your (hopefully still) crispy chicken, and add that too, along with the juice from half a lemon, and as much cayenne pepper as you dare. Then add your raw squid, and let it sit on top of everything until it is *just* cooked.



Lastly, remove the Bouqet Garni and add your chopped parsley, spring onion, and the juice from the other half of your lemon, along with any salt and pepper you feel it may need.



Ask yourself this question: "Om nom?"

If the answer is: "Om nom NOM" then it is ready to dish up.

Serve in an enormous great big bowl.



Phew!

May your Jambalayawanna be kept at bay until next time!

Lunch Unit

** LONDON **

Man's gotta eat, right? Over the months, I've featured a few of my favourite Soho lunch-spots, but let's be honest, if you're like me then you pretty much need to eat lunch every day if you're going to stay alive. Granted, it is possibly less important than breakfast. And dinner. But still, a day without lunch pretty much sucks.

And you can't be spending £10 on a delicious meal at Taro's all the time. Or dropping a 5-bomb at Mooli's on each and every working day. Sometime's lunch is just a thing that needs to get done. Its not always fancy.

You could be all 'DUDES! I am going to Tesco and buying a cheap pot of pasta because this month has 5 weeks and I am saving up for a new hip-flask.' You are a robot and you are ingesting 1x of fuel. You are this guy:


Soho has you covered, as it so often does, with relatively new joint Soho Joe. I am almost sure that the point of this place is to launder money, or its a tax write-off of some kind, because they will sell you a pretty delicious sandwich, which is made right in front of your eyes, for £2. Mental.



SOHO JOE
22-25 Dean Street, W1D 3RY

A fresh mini-baguette, with a simple filling such as red peppers and houmous, or chorizo, tomato and basil. £2 of your hard-earned samolians. HOWEVER. Because I am a classy dude, I bought the significantly more expensive brie and cranberry sandwich. £3.


Fuel rod, prior to loading.

There is nothing wrong with this. There's nothing super super RIGHT about it either, but if the goal is 'eat lunch', I would rather chew one of these than a supermarket sandwich, which will very likely be more expensive, and less delicious.

Their pizza is pretty passable too, £6 for a comically over-sized 12-incher. They also have a nice selection of cakes and salad fillings for the fruitier (and vegetablier) patrons.



My final word on Soho Joe is that the pizza-oven is a delicious Confectioner's pink. Like a giant marshmallow, hidden away in the back.

Things To Do In New York When You're Fed

The time had come to call to order the first international DINNERGEDDON board-meeting; which sadly required those of our UK correspondents who had free time to make the trek out to some small town called New York City... have you heard of it?



We flew on a plane!

Once we had the business chatter out of the way (we shredded the notes; take THAT Patriot Act!) there was nothing to do but eat and drink.

"Anybody know any good places to eat around here?"

Fortunately for us, DJ Kneedriver did.




Roberta's - Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Now, we realise this looks pretty spooky, but rest assured, this place is the perfect way to ease into Brooklyn. You know why?



PIZZA.

You walk through that imposing door, behind which you'd expect Carey Elwes to be doing some messed up stuff, to be greeted by the enveloping hum of friendly yammering, heavenly smells, and a real open-fire stone pizza oven.

Behold our blurry action shot!



We ordered up a Specken Wolf, a Chicken Of The Sea, a Da Kine, and a Millennium Falco.


Four funny names; four serious pizzas.

Roberta's even take the time to feature a real herb garden in the back (cared for by Mrs. Kneedriver, we should add) which provides not just fresh herbs for the toppings, but an open space to cool off in, away from the white-hot heat of that bad-ass oven.



After our trip across the Atlantic, illegally stowed-away in the cargo-hold of an industrial freighter jet, we felt a little stone-baked ourselves.

Would you like to see a picture of a pitcher?



BANG. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

This beer was "Six Point Sweet Action", and New York friends, you take this stuff for granted. This Brooklyn-local brew is both smooth and sweet (as the name would suggest) and was the ideal tonic for our jet-lagged metabolisms.

Reeling from the buzz of pizza and beer, we ended our night as we would every night to follow... chilly bottles of Magic Hat.



Morning came.



We felt fine about it.



Ever had Red Velvet Cake for breakfast? It sorts you right out.



So creamy and luxurious (again, as the name would suggest.) We will shortly be attempting a home-made version which will hopefully get its own post, so KEEP YOUR PEEPERS PEELED KIDS.

A heavy day of pilgrimages to locations used in Crocodile Dundee II set us up for more of that geographical oddity that is, the NYC Ale.



This is Dead Guy Rogue.

Not dissimilar to some eastern beverages such as London Pride or Sussex Best, but just, well... different. Colder, that's for sure; with a sweeter, more acidic edge that gave it a much lighter finish.

It was the perfect appetiser for MORE BEER. A thirst that could only be quenched at the source...



BROOKLYN BREWERY = The Source.



Every friday night, the Brooklyn Brewery; in the heart of Williamsburg, opens its doors to the masses to enjoy their fine product in its natural habitat. Rows of picnic benches line the factory floor where you can swap money for tokens and get crunked on the freshest hops in town.

Check out this gear!



Mega stuff.

DINNERGEDDON took it very seriously.



What does one do when they feel a snack coming on?
They get Snacky!



This neon-themed Japanese joint is small, homey, and has a kind of Hunter S. Thompson vibe to it... The feeling that we had just stepped through "the looking glass" pervaded, and we began to feel light-headed.



Fortunately these Garlic Soy-Drenched Greens arrived just in time to keep us grounded. Leaping upon them the same way that a mother jaguar leaps upon those that seek to harm her cubs, we ate most of these before our camera could even take the picture (hence the scarcity of the portion on display... trust us, there was a mountain of them.)

The steamed leaves retained a nice crunch, and the sweetness of the dressing made for a rich and satisfying start to our Asian odyssey.



This is Snacky's own version of a long-established DINNERGEDDON favourite, the Bi Bim Bap, and is as good as any we've ever had. Just as always, it stirs together into a big heaping love-in of deliciousness, and because the food continues to cook itself while you eat, each bite really is different from the last.

Of course we took full advantage of a deal that pairs a chilly bottle of Tsing Tao beer with a crisp shot of Sake for a bargain price.



It's combinations like this, that lead to combinations like this...



KIM CHEE HOT DOG!

Some of us had never tried Kim Chee before, while others at the table we seasoned connoisseurs of this vinegary/sweet pickled cabbage. Not dissimilar to Sauerkraut, just A LOT more full on, it is kind of a berserk choice for a condiment, yet oddly appealing in a way that is difficult to describe. We will be acquiring some of our own shortly...



A good night's sleep left us feeling refreshed and completely not-at-all jet-legged.
Honestly. Not even a tiny bit.

Fancy an insanely strong coffee?



Man, that is a work of art. The people at Blue Bottle Coffee in Williamsburg really know what they're doing.



Utilising the power of what can only be described as a COFFEE BONG (see above) Blue Bottle roast their own beans and drip their own brews to bring you the richest, most natural cup in town. Quite the eye-opener, and perfectly matched to a Lox Bagel on the river-front.



We now find ourselves lacking an appropriate segue into dinner, so let's just use a Segway.



Smoothly done.



This behemoth is the Diner cheeseburger, and it is no exaggeration that I would readily crawl all the way from England to New York on my hands and knees just to get another one. I might need a snorkel for the middle part of the journey, but it would be worth it.



All the meat for these burgers comes fresh from the grass-fed organic butchers right next door, so what you're eating is nothing but the highest quality steak, in patty form. I asked for mine rare, and it came just how I wanted it; pink in the middle, full of flavoursome juices, and big enough to demand two hands to complete the task.



We toasted to Diner, as it remains in our minds the single best meal of the trip. Look at the intense face DJ Kneedriver is pulling in the background... that's what this much red meat does to you.



We will finish this epic post (have you made it this far?) with a breakfast place that is one part greasy-spoon, one part Cheers bar, and one part backyard clubhouse:

JIMMY'S



This place is so much fun. Check out the decor!



Colour me charmed.

They aren't shy up "Irishing" up your breakfast either, should you so desire...



Classy touch. We placed our order, and were promptly brought complimentary cinnamon donuts to enjoy while we waited.



I know they are a simple pleasure, but holy mackerel! I can't believe they give these beauties away free, fresh from the fryer! Awesome.


CHEESE GRITS AND FRESH CORNBREAD

Grits are very much an American phenomenon; being a kind of savoury porridge made with bacon-grease, but man oh man, they are no laughing matter. Just an intense flavour hit with every spoonful, and a perfect pairing with some slightly sweet cornbread for mopping up with.


MADE-TO-ORDER SPINACH, GOAT'S CHEESE AND HAM SCRAMBLE

If you wanna "have it your way" at Jimmy's, they are more than happy to oblige, with an extensive list of scramble ingredients to throw in the mix. Check out the occurrence of more grits and cornbread on the side too! That is out of control.


PULLED-PORK HASH WITH EGGS

You'd think something like pork, potatoes, and eggs would basically be the same everywhere you go, but Jimmy really knows how to handle the humblest components and elevate them into a thing of greatness. Nobody is leaving his place with room for dessert, that's for sure. (Although to be fair, you've already had your dessert with those free donuts. Oof.)

Highly recommended.

...and with that, we reluctantly packed our bags, knowing full well that we were likely to exceed our weight-allowance due to a little extra food-induced "baggage".

Thanks a bunch New York. I hope we didn't eat you out of house and home.

Next DINNERGEDDON board-meeting in the UK? I'll get the Jellied-Eels in!