I just got back from a week in southern Kaua’i. Like all vacations, the time was too short, and now I want to move there.

A week living amongst people who stab away their days in the slow, tropical pulse of the south pacific rim makes me wonder how and why I managed to find myself in Chicago, enduring unending indignities for little more than middle-class shelter and a consistently renewed inspiration to carve my nervous system down to a whimpering mass of battery-operated impulses.

But, I learned a lot about myself on this trip. Yup, that’s right. I just invoked that final resignation of a beaten man, that foul consolation of earning a learn “about myself”. What a gift.

But it’s true, I did learn some things. But nicer than the actually learning of these terrible truths was the fact that I had the time to learn them. That was the real treat as, back here in the shit-show, I’ve been existing in a vacuum of commitments, responsibilities and non-starts for so long I hardly recognize myself anymore. So, even though I acquired that dread insight into my failed gorilla self, I’m at least grateful I had the luxury to actually find that filthy wisdom. Too many aren’t so lucky.

For instance, many of paradise’s natives. Before the U.S. finally wrangled the Hawaiian Islands into it’s quiver of territories in 1959, we had spent almost 70 years courting our would be native bride. By courting, of course, I mean indulging in the same shameless charades of European imperialism we’ve come to be so skilled at over the years. You know the map: introduce wealthy white business creeps then promptly employ waspian double speak while systematically dismantling the culture, swatting away would be pests and make way for your pock-marked and alabaster ass to cradle across all those brown faces and building yourself a home.

Take for example the coyly named “Committee for Safety”. These pony-white assholes, formerly known as the more verbose “Citizens Committee for Public Safety”, were a collection of 13 crackers, all republicans, whose goal was the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s kingdom and the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. Filled with a super-sized sense of entitlement, these shitnoses are the same kind of pin-lipped morons who would fart up onto an island as gorgeous as Kaua’i and resolve themselves to build a double-wide church to help them feel closer to God. Yes, whatever god that is you’re praying to – you know, the one that rubs a little warmer on your leg once you shut out life’s bounty – you best keep praying to that there god, Barb, cuz he libel to fuck you up good n’ hard ifn’ ya don’t.

But, hey man, I’ve got flies on me, too. I took benefit from this smarmy white acquisition, as well. I bathed in the blood of so many fellow humans, doing my backstroke through it all and with no regrets.

I’m not so naive as to think that my right and my pleasure to bitch about inequities isn’t paid for in buckets and buckets of innocent blood every day. Keeping Moloch at bay requires a lot of this red dirt gold. But, it’s these kind of tantric truths that keep a middle aged fat man in repose and one of the good reasons I still need to go on vacation.

And vacation I did. Aside from a little surfing, and less snorkeling, and the disciplined art of keeping my head fully submerged in a mai thai from dusk til dawn, I did discover two little gems of Hawaiian grace: Poke and Musubi.

Poke is raw ahi tuna, cut into cubes and served with a little cabage. Amazing in it’s pure form, but I became addicted to the Koloa Fish Market’s variation on that theme, the wasabi Poke. This is cubes of raw ahi tuna, cabage, mixed with a lightly brushed wasabi cream sauce and just a little bit of fish roe to give the whole thing some snap and texture. Truly, this is the fruit of the oceans.

Musubi is the perfect articulation of the cultural pastiche that is the Hawaiian Islands. It’s one part maki roll and one part Spam, tipping it’s hat not only to the strong Japanese influence of the islands, but also the military pragmatism that brought us little white devils to come and steal that land away. Musubi can be served with just the nori, rice and spam, or it can be dressed in any number ways including scrambled egg and coconut oil.

The bride and I made a daily ritual of waking up with the roosters, pouring a cup of coffee, picking up a Musubi roll and heading to the waterfront to watch the surfers play. When death finally comes for me, it will be those waters that my viking soul will follow to the sun.

Here’s a recipe for Musubi from the Spam website:

2 slices SPAM® Classic
3 ounces cooked white rice, seasoned with furikake* and toasted sesame seeds, if desired
1 tablespoon House of Tsang® Hibatchi Grill Sweet Ginger Sesame Sauce, or SAM CHOY’S® cooking sauce
1 sheet nori **

In large skillet, cook SPAM® Classic until lightly browned and crisp.
Place 1/2 of rice into musubi press or small can. Place SPAM® Classic on rice; drizzle with grill sauce or cooking sauce. Top with remaining rice; press down. Remove SPAM® and rice from musubi press.
On work surface, lay nori shiny-side-down; top with SPAM® mixture. Wrap up. Cut each musubi in half. Slice each half diagonally into 2 pieces. Serve immediately.

With a good Musubi, I can bow my belly and my head in reverence to a world so fucked up and complex that blood can taste like pineapple and defeat like the warmest mother’s sun. So, here’s to it.

Made this last night and it worked to make a hunk of protein have flavor. The swiss and chedder cheese and the strip of bacon I put on top helped too, but, in a pinch, this gave my chicken breast some flavor before putting it on the grill.

I fried some brioche in lard on my cast iron skillet to eat this with, but you can eat it alone or however your jaded palette allows.

1/4 cup dijon mustard
2 tblspns lemon juice
2 tspns worcetershire
1 tspn marjoram
a few splashes of vinegary heat
pepper to taste

Put that on about 14oz of chicken breasts and let it sit for at least 15 minutes. Grill around 525* for 8 minutes on each side. Put some cheese on there and let it melt for about the last 2 minutes.

Unlike the voices in your head, this is good.

This past weekend was great, friends came into town and we drank, and we cooked, and we ate and we drank some more. On Monday, the party continued when some Family came into town and I cooked some more and we drank and we ate. This morning… I cooked and we ate.

I haven’t started the drinking yet today, but I did get my face loaded up with one of my three favorite -caines at the dentist office. Dentistry, I’ve found, is a decent replacement for legitimate intoxicants. There’s something about the tools, the endorphins and the team of pretty girls with rubber gloves pulling on my helpless face that tides me over until the beveraging hour. Which today should be just after 4p.

But, back to this past weekend. A lot of our eating and drinking this weekend took place at some great Chicago standards. We hit Farmhouse, Gilt Bar, and the Gage on Saturday.

Farmhouse is always great and their selections of sours this week made it even better. The drinks at Gilt Bar were awesome and the bar tender was actally a really nice guy despite his dubious choice of profession as a ‘mixologist’.

The Gage had terrible service, slow and poorly paced. And, let’s be clear, when someone whose been drinking for 12 hours notices your service being slow, there’s a real problem there. But the duck breast was fucking amazing. So amazing I wouldn’t think twice about going back despite the service.

In between stops we made drinks at home. I had picked up some St. Germain to fuck around with and found several good recipes with that including a St. Germain Gimlet. I also put together a drink mixing St. Germain, Campari, Gin, Bourbon & syrup to pretty decent results. I made one of our guests a Clover Club which she dug, too. 2 measures of Gin, 1 measure of Grenadine, half a lemon and an egg white.

But the cooking is the important thing here. I made some awesome stuff. A big hit was the liver sausage on butter browned spaetzle topped off with some fresh horse radish and parsley. This dish would put tits on a bishop, my friend.

Another hit was the fried chicken. Super easy, but always a show stopper. I bit on Michael Ruhlman from heel to toe on this one.

THE BRINE
15 ounces water (or 1/2 liter)
3 ounces salt (or 100 grams)
fresh herbs (I used sage above)
4 cloves garlic
1 small onion sliced
1 lemon halved
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons black peppercorns, cracked beneath a saute pan
15 ounces ice (500 grams ice), or 15 ounces of ice water
1 chicken (3 to 4 pounds)
Combine all of the above except the ice and chicken in a small pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and remove from the heat and let sit for ten minutes.
Put the ice (or ice water) in a bowl or large measuring cup. Pour the herb brine over the ice. Stir till the ice is dissolved.
Put the chicken in a plastic bag, pour the brine in, seal the bag, and let sit at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.
Remove the chicken from the bag, discarding the brine. Pat it dry and let it sit out for another hour before using (or you can refrigerate it till needed).

THE CHICKEN
8 legs
8 wings
3 cups flour
3 tblspn black pepper
2 tblspn paprika
2 tblspn sea salt
2 tspn cayenne
2 tblspn baking powder
2 cups butter milk
peanut oil

The key with the chicken is flour/buttermilk/flour. And while you’re at it, why not fry some cheese curds, too?

This morning I made some crepe suzette that I served with some ginger & sage sausage. The crepes are super easy. 4 eggs, 1/2 cup of cream, 1/2 cup of orange juice, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 cup of flour. Let it sit for 30 minutes and then cook in a cast iron skillet. Right before you serve it dunk it in a syrup of sugar, orange juice, orange zest, lemon juice, Grand Marnier, butter and bourbon. Garnish those fuckers with some mint. Then go get your face Dremilled by a lady in rubber gloves.

That is all.

“I have seen the face freedom and eaten it.” – Eldridge Cleaver after schtupping Pat Nixon.

My nephew gave me some sausage he had left over from a boar he shot a few weeks ago. I wanted to do right by it.

This morning I cooked up a variation of my biscuits and gravy recipe. I didn’t have any butter so I used duck fat instead. I also added a little bit of thyme to the batter to make them more savory.

I don’t know if it was the duck fat or if I fucked up my measurements and put more than 8 tablespoons in, but these were the lightest biscuits I’ve ever made. Amazing stuff really. I also had larger chunks of the duck fat than I normally have with the butter so that’s something to think about for the future. I also added a pinch of sugar to the biscuits, something I haven’t done before but seemed like a reasonable idea.

The boar sausage is leaner than pork so I added about a half tablespoon of lard to my cast iron skillet before adding cornstarch to make the gravy. I also added 1 diced shallot, some chives, thyme and just a tiny pinch of cardamon.

I like putting cardamon in just about anything I can, I think it brings a really nice spicy earthiness to stuff. Be careful not to over do it though, this stuff can get away from you real fast.

I laid off on the cream/milk mixture this time, adding just enough liquid to capture the thickened fats. This was a good idea.

I topped it all off with some diced tomatoes and some more chives for color.

I could topple empires with this monstrosity.

My eminently tasteful wife picked me up a Waring waffle iron for my birthday a few weeks ago. Since that time I’ve been on a bit of a waffle bender trying to get the recipe right, marrying the perfect amounts of crunchy outside with light and fluffy inside. This morning my face found the philosopher’s stone.

1.5 cups water divided
1 packet of dry yeast
3 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs, seperated w/ 1 egg white extra
1/3 cup sugar
1.5 cups half and half
12 tbl butter
6 tbl vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 pieces of cooked and minced bacon per waffle

Take 3/4 cup of warm water and add the yeast and a pinch of sugar. Leave it about 10 minutes until it foams.

Mix flour and salt in a large bowl.

Add egg yolks and 1 of the egg whites and sugar to yeast mixture and blend. Add another 3/4 cup water, half and half, butter melted and cooled, oil and vanilla and mix just until smooth.

Mix the dry with the wet.

Beat the egg whites with another pinch of sugar until stiff peaks. Fold into the batter. Let it stand for about an hour mixing every 15 minutes or so.

Keep your minced bacon on the side and add on a per waffle basis so your idiot friends who don’t eat meat can suffer alone. Use a separate bowl so you can get a very thorough distribution of bacon in the batter.

Top these bastards with some powdered sugar and some sliced fruit. Inject just below the eyelid.

This is a totally simple and tasty recipe for a liver pate that I snagged out of Cook’s Illustrated. It calls for chicken liver, but I made this with goose liver’s from Gephardt’s last time. For our annual Christmas party this weekend I’m making it from beef liver. I’ve not used beef liver before and I’m a little worried it’s not going to be as tasty as goose liver, but fortunately, if it does bomb terribly, we’ll have some fresh lobster and filet mignon to deliver us from that evil. Viva la indulgence.

8 tbl butter
3 large shallots, sliced
1 tbl fresh thyme
1 lb chicken liver
3/4 cup dry vermouth
2 tsp brandy

Saute the shallots, thyme and a pinch of salt in the butter until brown. Add your liver and cook just until pink in the middle. Take the liver out, add the vermouth and cook down to a syrup. Put all of this into a food processor along with the brandy, a couple pinch’s of the pate blend from the Ruhlman and Polcyn book Charcuterie and salt and pepper to taste. Get it smooth and soft. Put it in a container and push saran wrap down against the pate to keep any oxygen off it. Put a lid on the container and let it sit for a couple days so all the flavors can blend. Serve it with some butter drenched toasted bread slices.

EDIT: I tried it this morning and it’s pretty good. Not as smooth as the goose liver – there’s a bit more of that chalky liver flavor than I would prefer – though that may have more to do with me cooking it a bit longer than I should have and not so much with the beast from which it was ripped from.

It would really hurt to put hot, liquid marrow into a syringe and shoot it into your arm or eyeball so Michael Ruhlman has this satisfactory alternative for using bone marrow to activate your pleasure centers:

“To cook the marrow, roll them in flour till they’re completely coated and sauté them in canola oil over medium high heat (too hot and the flour will burn, too cool and the marrow will melt before the surface is crisp), turning them to brown them well on all sides. On the day Powder made the marrow (that’s him grilling the bread and plating), he poured out excess oil when they were nearly done and added some butter to finish them off. This is a chef I love: when preparing a rich, highly fatty dish, finish it off with just a liiiittle more butter. Fernand would have approved. And in all seriousness, the butter browns and makes the crust especially flavorful.”

I will oblige.

Our country of fat fucks are about to hit their annual apex of indulgence and I couldn’t be happier.

You see, I fancy my self a fairly learned sensualist. Certainly, at times, my adventures slant nearer towards escapes than escapades, but I’m comfortable with my batting average. And what kind of sensualist demands perfection anyway? Be it moral, idealogical or otherwise, perfection is anti-septic and boring. Sensuality lives in those lines between intent.

But there’s a great divide between properly dipping your neurons into the velvety rivers of impress and flat-lining your fat ass into a narcotic stupor with cheap, shitty food, lousy music and bad conversation. Which is why, every year at this time, I’m reminded of two of my favorite men of letters, Allan Watts and William S. Burroughs.

First, everyone’s favorite philandering philosopher, the Zoro of Zen, that drunk monk you know and love, Mr. Alan Watts:

“The commonly accepted notion that Americans are materialists is pure bunk. A materialist is one who loves material, a person devoted to the enjoyment of the physical and immediate present. By this definition, most Americans are abstractionists. They hate material, and convert it as swiftly as possible into mountains of junk and clouds of poisonous gas. “

Amen, Doctor.

And then there’s Uncle Bill, who, in his inimitable way, can carve down any bogeyman to it’s proper size, weight and gravitational pull with a few choice words.

Between these two pillars I level my gravy boat.

This year we’ll have a few selected handmade beers to enjoy during our 4 day bender:

We’ve got a decent American Pale Ale I lovingly call the Maggie Thatcher as it’s very dry, extremely bitter and the yeast has it smelling a bit like eggs. I used the White Labs WLP060 in it, so I knew that the eggy smell would be around, but figured it would pass. Maggie’s been sitting for about a month now and she’s still a stinker. I actually kind of like the sulphur stink a bit and the agressive dryness of the yeast is impressive, but it’s hard to convince other people that her sulphur stank is all that “interesting”. I probably won’t be using WLP060 again.

We’ve also got a yummy belgian golden strong ale weighing in at 7.77% ABV and named for another brit, this one a queen. The Golden Dawn has been given it’s title in honor of that fat little cocksucker Aleister Crowley and his first hermetic society. This was made with the Achouffe yeast and some spices. It’s really quite good and a little fruity, just like Frater Perdurabo.

Lastly, we’ve got the Lemmy, an 11% coffee stout that clocks in at about 51 SRM, made with Metropolis coffee. We monkeyed around with a couple different ways to get the coffee into this, but found that racking on top of coarsely ground coffee and letting it sit for 60 hours was the best way to get the most flavor without any shitty side effects. Thanks to the Jamil show and the guys at Terrapin for this bit of insight.

There’s our beverage profile. Add into that a few bottles of decent bourbon, some Bailey’s and a theives ransom of coffee and we should be solid. Some red ambulance never hurt either.

For food this year I think we’ll try something different and make a Turkey on Thursday and then maybe eat shredded Turkey and mayo sandwiches for the rest of the weekend. But, seriously, why mess with success? There is a Platonic ideal that is the Thanksgiving Turkey and to stray too far from that premise is treasonous at best. But, since we’re talking about it, I did come across a recipe for braising the turkey that sounds amazing. Seriously, say that slowly with me: Braised Turkey.

So there you have it: turkey, beer, and booze. Throw in some guns and bath salts and we can send off this holiday with the panache it requires.

My money is on Green Bay.

Ok, so I finally got to the end of the two-week alcohol extraction of fenugreek seeds that I found digging four pages deep into a google search on fenugreek and maple syrup alternatives. The experiment was successful though I did need to make some adjustments.

I wound up using twice the amount of vodka as stated in the article since the fenugreek was very absorbent. Just use your eyes and best judgement on the amount of alcohol needed.

When I strained out the fenugreek yesterday, and after I spilled some of the extract being a knucklehead, I had about 50ml of extract remaining. That’s a pretty high absorption rate considering I probably had about 6-8oz of vodka in there initially.

To the 50ml of fenugreek extract I added a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

I mixed the fenugreek and vanilla up and put about a half teaspoon into 4oz of soy milk. The nose was pretty good, I was quite happy, it did indeed smell like I had put maple syrup in the soy milk. The taste was terribly bitter, however, so I added some agave syrup to balance that out. At that point, I’m happy to say, I had a tasty little beverage.

So what I know so far about fenugreek as a replacement for maple syrup is that the alcohol extraction works at 2 weeks (I’ll probably try a longer length extraction, too) but that further experimentation with adjusting the hop profile in the beer is going to be needed as the extraction requires some serious sweetness to off-set it’s bittertude.

The next step is to do a larger extraction and then start adding it to 1 gallon of beer adjusting the hop schedule as I go. From there I’ll scale it up.

Stay tuned, there is more to come.

My water extraction experiments were vaguely successful last week, but didn’t yield anything I felt would be worth jamming up a whole batch of homebrew on. With the water extraction I found that the whole seed, untoasted and cold steeped for a day, offered the best results. I put 1 tblspn in 4oz of water. I then reduced it down about 2/3rds for my final product.

But like I said, nothing too great…

Though I am bound and determined to nail this puzzle. Aside from providing a more stable substitute for maple syrup, fenugreek is apparently also quite beneficial for nursing moms. In fact, I’ve got a nursing mom in my house right now and her Doula has instructed her to drink one hoppy beer a day and take some fenugreek extract. Apparently, the fenugreek and hops aid in the production of breast milk while the B vitamins in the brewers yeast and the alcohol help manage emotions during that terrible state of being a new mother. I think it’ll be awesome to brew her a beer where she could kill both those mangy birds in one tasty glass.

After digging an unprecedented 4 pages deep into my google search I came across an e-how article on making an alcohol extract of fenugreek. And, much to my delight, this e-how article actually has useful information in it and isn’t just serving to litter up our precious little internet with SEO trash. I’ve ordered up some more fenugreek and am hoping to have a new experiment underway by the week’s end. And you, imaginary world, will be the first to know.