My Most Favorite Snack In All Of Walt Disney World

Walt Disney World in Florida is a huge resort. With theme parks and hotel resorts, it is almost impossible to sample the entire area.

Still, after going there multiple times in a year, and for a lot of years, I can easily say that my most favorite snacks in the entire place is the Nutella fruit waffle that is sold at Sleepy Hollow in the Magic Kingdom.

It is a thick, Belgian-waffle style, schmeared with chocolate hazelnut spread (thus, the Nutella), and then filled with fresh slices of bananas, strawberries, and blueberries.

It is the bomb! And I may have called it a snack, but it can easily qualify as a meal.

Zz.

Sukiyaki At Home

Had a great time last night having the Japanese favorite Sukiyaki at home. This a popular dish, and often prepared tableside. In this case, we prepared it right on the dinning room table as we sit around having wine, pleasant conversation, and preparing the food.

The prep work started earlier in the afternoon. There were lots of ingredients.

Yam noodles and Inoki mushrooms.

 

Tofu, bamboo shoots, Inoki mushrooms, Mung bean sprouts, green onions, white onions, and the yam noodles out of the package. The other ingredients not shown here are the sliced beef and the fresh spinach.

All the ingredients are cut into proper sizes and, when ready, brought to the table.

Now the fun begins. Cooking them. We had two separate pots to prepare them. First, the beef.

Then most of the ingredients are added.

The entire mixture is seasoned with beef broth, soy sauce, Mirin, and sugar. It is seasoned to taste, so you need to have a reference point of knowing what it should taste like.

After this has cooked for a couple of minutes, add the spinach.

Once the spinach has wilted, the dish is done and ready to be eaten. We each served ourselves in individual bowls.

While it is good as is, we accompanied this with a side dish of rice and pickled Daikon radish. The rice here was cooked with kombu, and then served sprinkled with rice seasonings and shredded Nori.

The meal was oishi! It was definitely the perfect dish to have on a cold, winter evening. It goes perfectly well with a slightly sweet Chardonnay.

Zz.

How To Boil An Egg

OK, confession time. I'm a food snob!

{shock rings through the room!}

Now, let me explain. It is not that I turn up my nose at some food. What I meant by being a food snob is that I like something to be the best that it can be, and hate settling for less, even though in many cases, I do.

Take a hard-boiled egg, for example. I mean, how difficult can it be? It is a hard-boiled egg!

Ah, but that is where you are wrong. Even boiling a hard boiled egg can be an art and a science. I once was staying at a hotel in Berkeley, CA that provided breakfast, and the hard-boiled eggs were boiled for so long and so overcooked that you can almost bounce the egg off the floor! In fact, many of these breakfast places simply abused the egg, turning it into a rubber ball!

Here's the thing. Overcooked hard-boiled egg is less tasty, and once you get that dark ring around the yolk, that is when you get the acrid, sulfuric taste one associates with smelly egg.

But I go even a step closer. I way prefer a hard-boiled egg where the yolk still has a patch of darker, almost orange color where it is slight moist (see photo). Not only is the egg white nice and soft, the yolk is also tastier without the strong egg smell.

Trust me, you can tell the difference between these eggs, and the ones that are overcooked and rubbery.

So how do you get such "perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs"? Put the eggs inside a heavy-bottom saucepan, and filled it with water will the water level is about 1/2 inch above the eggs.

Put it on the stove on medium-high heat. Let the water comes to a rolling boil.

Put up the lid onto the saucepan, and kill the heat.

Let the eggs sit in the saucepan for 5-6 minutes.

Remove the eggs and immerse them in cold, ice water. Let it sit in the water for 3-5 minutes.

Peel the eggs. Do this even if you don't intend to eat the eggs. You may store the eggs in air-tight container till you are ready to eat them. Do not cut or slice them till they are ready to be eaten.

After you get used to these eggs, you'll never be satisfied with badly-cooked hard-boiled eggs.

Zz.

Pasta With Broccoli Rabe

Often times, the simplest of usually the best.

This is my frequent standby, either for a quick lunch, or a weeknight dinner. It requires only a few ingredients.

I use linguini for this, but you can use any long pasta. As soon as the salted water boils, add about half pound of pasta. While that is cooking, start the "sauce".

Saute 2 cloves of garlic that has been roughly sliced and a pinch of pepper flakes in some olive oil. Add 1 strip of anchovy that has been roughly chopped. Stir until the anchovies has melted.

Add broccoli rabe (5 or 6 stalks that have been cleaned. You may cut the bottom 1 inch if it is too thick). Saute in the oil. Add 1/4 cup of white wine or chicken stock. Lower heat and let it gently cook until the pasta is done.

Use tongs and fish out the pasta out of the water and directly into the saute pan. Toss. If it is too dry, add pasta water, one ladle at a time. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.

Drizzle extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkle some good parmesian cheese if you have some. Toss thoroughly.

And there you have it, a quick and easy meal that is delicious and nutritious.

Note: some people are squimish about anchovies. Don't be, at least, not in this dish. You will not taste it. The anchovies simply add a background flavor to the dish. If I don't tell you that there's anchovies in here, you would not have guessed.

Zz.

Physics And Food

"Hey, if this physics thing doesn't work out, you should be a chef!"

I get comments like this every so often, especially after I have people over for dinner, or if I bring something to be shared. I take that as a compliment, since obviously, they were impressed by what I can cook. Still, knowing how difficult it is to make it and survive in the restaurant business, I don't think it is something I would consider doing.

So how often does the world of physics collide with the world of food? For me, personally, they collide quite regularly. I have a physics blog that I started many years ago, which is still going strong, and I've posted several stories relating to how these two worlds met.

The first one was how I learned how to bake bread by hand as a sort of trying to get my nervous energy out while I was studying for my oral comprehensive exams.

How I learned how to bake bread because of Physics.

During my career as a physicist, I've made banana breads and the blueberry pound cake for various meetings at the office/lab. I remember one time, we had a Dept. of Energy review, and I was requested by our group leader to make something for the breakout group that we will be in, since we usually are served only coffee and maybe pastries from the catering service. So I baked my blueberry pound cake and brought it in.

One of the reviewers actually asked us where we bought the cake, and my boss pointed to me as the person who baked it. My response to all the praise was:

"Hey, making photocathodes, and making pound cake. Not much of a stretch there!"

(One of my major tasks at that time was to produce/fabricate photocathodes for our accelerator). So that got a good laugh.

More recently, I actually used a loaf of banana bread to teach my students a lesson.

Drilling in the importance of units, via a banana bread

So yeah, in my world, physics and food live side-by-side.

Zz.

Dinner Last Night

Since I bought some bitter melons, I decided to use it for the veggie dish last night. I cooked some Malaysian chicken curry with whole spices, onion gravy, Chinese eggplant, and carrots. It is served with Jasmine rice.

For the veggie dish, I simply stir-fried the bitter melon with daikon radish and green beans. I first have 2 garlic cloves and a small piece of ginger that I smashed and minced, sauteed that quickly before adding the vegetables. Stirred it quickly over high heat, poured in about 1/4 cup of water, and covered for about 1-2 mins. I hate limp, mushy veggies and would rather have it raw than overcooked. So I don't cook it as much.

Then I seasoned it with salt and white pepper to taste, and served! This is how the whole thing looks on a plate.

And just like soups and stews, curries taste better the next day! So I made quite a bit to have for the next few days! :)

Zz.

Food Shows on TV

I watch cooking and food shows on TV a lot. In fact, this hobby started in the early 1980's (did I just dated myself?). I watched reruns of The French Chef with Julia Child, and I was also a big fan of the Frugal Gourmet on PBS. In fact, Jeff Smith of the Frugal Gourmet was the first person that I was aware of who opened my eyes to how food relates to the various cultures, nationalities, and social practices around the world. It was at that point that I slowly developed my appreciation for various ethnic cuisines around the world.

When the Food Network came on many years ago, I thought I died and gone to heaven. Imagine a non-stop food shows on TV all day long! For a foodie, this was as good as it got. In the very beginning, there were a lot of interesting shows on that network, especially on "how to" type shows that we are familiar with. One of the early shows on the network was called something like "Dining Around" of "TV Diners", where hosts Alan Richmond and Nina Griscom reviewed 3 restaurants around the country each week. Think of it as a more subdued and upscale "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives". It was one of my favorite shows, because for the first time, I get to see different food at different places all over the country.

Unfortunately, for me, the Food Network has gone down hill, and by a lot! It seems that the focus now is on "game show", where food is incidental, but the style is more important than the substance. Just like MTV, it has lost its way and seems to have ignored the very idea of culinary arts and skills. It is also worth noting that, from all the news reports that I have read, my top 2 food shows on TV that I list below were all REJECTED when they were first pitched to the Food Network. Considering that since then, these two shows have received awards and acclaims, those folks at the Food Network must be very proud of their decisions.

So here is my list of my most favorite food shows on TV:

1. Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern
I've loved this show since its inception many, many years ago, and I continue to love this show even today. This is not, despite the title, a show to gross you out. But rather, if you pay attention, it is about how people make do with what they have and what they can get. This show not only presents you with food that people from various parts of the world eat, but also tells you quite a bit on how they live. This connection between the food and people's lives is what makes this show very special and very uncommon as far as TV food show is concerned.

2. A Chef's Life
I love this show so much that I bought all of their shows (all 4 seasons up to this point) from iTunes and loaded them on my iPad. It is what I watch when I'm on the plane, and I've watched each show multiple times. It follows the chef's life of Vivian Howard in opening her fine-dining restaurant Chef and the Farmer in rural Kinston, North Carolina. Strangely enough, the type of food that she presents on the show, which is southern, pork-heavy cuisine, is not my favorite. Yet, I've grown to appreciate the food as part of a historical and social context of people living in that region of the US. Again, the context of the food in relation to the people, and why they eat what they eat, provide an intriguing story to the food. I was so enamored with this show that on our last trip to North Carolina about 2 years ago, we made a trip to Kinston just to dine at Chef and the Farmer. It did not disappoint, and we are hoping to make our return trip to it this coming April.

3. America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country
These two shows, shown on the US Public Broadcasting Stations, are the mothers of all cooking instruction shows. These shows present explicit instructions on how a home cook can make many types of dishes. Most of the recipes and dishes work quite well. Where I have issues with them is when they try to do ethnic cuisines. I know that they have to do this based on what a typical home cook in the US can do and can get access to. But because of that, certain ethnic cuisines, such as Chinese dishes, have been "Americanized" to suit not only the taste, but also the ingredients available. This is really a minor issue, because for other types of dishes, especially when they get to baked goods, their instructions are spot-on.

4. I'll Have What Phil's Having
This was a limited series of 6 episodes, also broadcasted on PBS. As with A Chef's Life, I also have the entire series on my iPad. The show follows Phil Rosenthal, the creator of the TV sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond", as he went and ate through one location after another. The show is funny, touching, irreverent, hysterical, educational, and more importantly, relevant! I have written to the show and pleaded with them to get Phil to do more shows.

That's it. It is interesting to note that Vivan Howard, Andrew Zimmern, and Phil Rosenthal all have won James Beard awards for their shows. It is also interesting to note that the 2016 James Beard award in the Broadcast Media section had no shows that aired on the Food Network. Need I say more?

Zz.