The Hoboken Falafel War (Part 1)

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Hoboken is a bustling little city just across the Hudson River from the West Village (even though most New Yorkers consider it to be further away than the moon). It’s famous for being Frank Sinatra’s home town, the birthplace of baseball, and more recently for being the home of Carlo’s Bakery (where the reality show Cake Boss is shot). One thing it’s not known for is being a good place to pick up a falafel sandwich.

Hoboken is the biggest party town in New Jersey. It’s a weekend destination for people who like to drink beer, eat hamburgers, and try to hook up. Many “Snooki” and “The Situation” types prowl the streets from Thursday night till early Sunday morning. There are tons of bars, loads of pizza places, and even a little establishment that only sells french fries. It’s a meathead’s paradise. The denizens of Hoboken have drunkenly wandered the streets since the early 1600′s without a reliable source of tasty fried chickpea balls.  Continue reading →

Chicken + Shrimp = Bleach Bum

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While I wholly support a deli’s commitment to maintaining a sanitary work environment, I personally draw the line waaaay before actually mixing cleaning solvents in with the food.

This little piece of unfortunate advertising hails from Bistro Market Place on West 34th Street. To their credit, the error was spotted and the sign was removed several weeks later. Sadly, when the sign came down, the Bleach Bum lunch special went with it. No longer can one savor that bleachy combination of inspired ingredients.

A Black Tea Not to Futz With: Keemun Mao Feng

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The needs of black tea drinkers are constantly overlooked. Walk into any store and they’re bound to have stacks of herbal teas, yet a black tea drinker is lucky to find a single box of English Breakfast amongst them. Often the only choice is Lipton, and I’d rather drink weak gas station coffee over that stuff anyday. Seriously, you can go into an up-to-date “hip” cafe that offers a globally enlightened bounty of herbal and green teas, but if you ask for black tea they’ll be stumped. “We’ve got some really nice white teas…”

Unfortunately, if you want a rocking cup of black tea, you have to put some serious effort into hunting some down. The latest somewhat exotic black tea that I ensnared in my manly hunting net was Keemun Mao Feng. It has a confident flavor that sits comfortably on your tongue, an aroma that lifts out of your mug velvety and clean, and a rich red tone when brewed. The smell and taste transports you to a mountainous meadow… or a Chinese jungle of sorts where tea grows in the wild. Here you will find wild Keemun Mao Feng giving the fragrant mountain air a hint of intrigue. If you stop and cut off some leafs to stuff in your satchel, a passing migrant farmer will knowingly nod to you, non-verbally confirming that you have wisely chosen the master of all teas, Danielson.

The leafs themselves aren’t as fine as standard black teas. They dry out in such a fashion that they maintain a good bit of their leafy shape. It also doesn’t seem to crumble as easily, so you don’t end up with a bunch of “shake” at the bottom of your tea container. Lifting the loose tea and putting it into my filter by hand was kind of fun, like you’re a mini Mike Mulligan steam shovel scooping and dropping little bundles of dried branches and sticks. Great, great fun.

Overall I really liked the flavor of this tea, however, one thing I didn’t like was that it was too special tasting to augment with sugar and milk. I tried this a couple of times, and it just tasted weird. I didn’t try it with honey, but I think honey would clash with the flavor of Keemun too. I know the mere thought of adding milk and sweets to hot loose tea is repulsive to purists, but sometimes I just like me some milky sweetness. Drinking Keemun Mao Feng with hot water only is the way to go. The flavor just has its own natural sweetness. There’s something cool about a tea that has inherent characteristics which force you to appreciate its raw beauty.

My First Successful Quinoa Soaking & A Good Instruction Link

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As you may have read in the About Me page on this site, Forker’s Guide was created to address my need for easy-to-understand quinoa cooking instructions. However, as I was preparing to cook quinoa for dinner tonight, that old panic hit me again. Once again I had forgotten how to cook these little edible seeds, and I needed to look up instructions on the Internet. Then I remembered that I had created Forker’s Guide, and I felt at ease.

But that peaceful feeling only lasted a few moments. I realized the only quinoa instructions on Forker’s Guide so far were on the About Me page, and that I had written them on an evening when I wasn’t cooking, so I couldn’t put absolute faith in them. Those instructions remained untested. The online resource I had created was still too much of a spring chicken, and I didn’t want my dinner to be its guinea pig.

So I turned to the Internet to be schooled on quinoa preparation. Perhaps this would be the last time. Luckily on this particular evening I wasn’t in much of a rush. I searched Google and passed on the first few recipes I found. They were too wordy and annoying. Nothing’s worse than a blog post about quinoa preparation that’s filled with self-indulgent drivel.

Thankfully I was able to find a site with decent instructions. Because this was a relaxed friday evening, I decided to experiment with soaking quinoa for the first time. During the week I’m usually in too much of a rush to bother to soak, and I’m also paranoid I’ll throw off the the water to substance ratio, and end up with mushy food. Thankfully the author of the page I was reading was careful to point out how this wasn’t a problem, and can be compensated for.

Here’s the link to the site with the decent quinoa soak/cooking instructions:

http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2010/08/make-fluffy-quinoa-every-time-how-to.html

Now, I only soaked and cooked the quinoa, using just the basic instructions on that site. Deeper down on that page the author gets into adding all sorts of spices to the mix. I haven’t messed around with those recipes, so I can’t vouch for how good they taste.

However, my finished product tonight tasted pretty good. To my mouth it didn’t seem all that different from when you skip the soaking process, but I was still glad I had experimented with it. Will I soak again in the future? It’s hard to say. Time will only tell.

Before I sign off, I’d just like to note that most quinoa preparation instructions that get into soaking suggest using some kind of fine strainer to dispense the water. I don’t have that kind of fancy kitchen gear, so I improvised. I just carefully tilted the pot into the sink, using my finger to block the little quinoa pebbles from falling out. This method worked quite well, and there was no strainer to clean up when it came time to do the dishes. Another cooking boundary blown clean out of the water with raw human ingenuity. That’s progress, my friends.

Welcome to Forker’s Guide!

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I’ve been thinking about starting a food-related blog for a long time, and I finally decided slip on a pair of oven mits and start typing. I spend most of the day thinking about eating food, so writing about it just feels like a natural fit for me. Forker’s Guide gives me one more way I can spend the day obsessing about my next meal.

There’s more to food than just finding something to eat. Good cooks, no matter if they’re working with a makeshift grill on the side of the road or at a fancy restaurant, all share the same wonderful quality: they care about how their food tastes. This seems like it should be a quality that’s easy to find in a cook, but in my travels I’ve found that this is sadly a somewhat rare thing.

That’s one of the reasons I started this blog. I wanted to spread the word about the rare good cooks of the world. Having a tasty meal is an important and wonderful thing. Good food has soul. Good cooks put their heart into it, and you can taste the love. Eating a good meal is a purely mundane, daily activity, but in the right hands it can elevate your mood, and wow you completely. Finding this kind of elation in repetitive daily activities is one way to lead a happier life, and so running a food blog just seemed more and more like a good idea.

Since I do a fair amount of traveling, I figured I’d also talk about it in the blog as well. Travel and food discovery go hand in hand, but one of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog is that I love to write. Just as a good cook puts their soul into their food, I always put mine into my words. Even if I’m just writing a little note a scrap of paper and leaving it behind for a single other person to read, I go out of my way to put 100% of my soul into the words. On one level, this could be viewed as a waste of time. But I get a kick out of it, even when my audience is potentially only a solitary unseen stranger.

I think you should visit this site on a regular basis. We’re both here on this Earth together, and we’re both sitting down and eating meals everyday. This blog will be our conversation across the table (even if you’re on the other side of the planet). At the end of the day, food is about living, and the best food out there has an undeniable transcendant quality to it. Let’s make the most of this life, and let’s seek out the most transcendental grub we can find. Pass the mayo, baby. Forker’s Guide is live.