Happy Birthday Sarah!

I'm glad my wife's family doesn't mind me experimenting with things like birthday cakes. I had a couple of cake ideas that I wanted to play with, and my sister in law's birthday just happened to be at hand. We get together once a month with my wife's family to have a family dinner, and if there's any birthdays that month, soembody will bring a cake for them.

I wanted to get some use out of my new 12-inch cake pan that I had bought to make the Tux cake, so I used that. I mixed together a yellow cake batter and a chocolate cake batter, and then marbled them into the cake pan. It baked and then cooled, oblivious to the Tux construction happening around it. With the evening almost over, I levelled it, then halved it and put a layer of chocolate buttercream in the middle. I coated the outside with chocolate buttercream as well, and put it in the chill chest.

The next day, I whipped up a batch of white modelling chocolate. I used oil-based food color to make little balls of red, white, yellow, green and purple chocolate clay. I had meant for them to be lighter colors, like pastels, but it didn't work out so well. Then I put each between two sheets of parchment paper and rolled them out to 1/8-inch blob-looking things. I had just purchased a set of rolling pin spacers from the cake store, so I know the they were perfect thickness. Then I laid out a full-sheet Silpat, and started tearing off pieces of color and arranging them on the Silpat. When I was done and had what was more or less a circle laid out, I covered it with parchment again and rolled flat to make all the colors stick together. I laid this over my frosted cake, and worked it into a smooth covering, kind of like fondant. Unfortunately, modelling chocolate is not nearly as forgiving as fondant, so there were some seams. I worked most of then out with some fondant modelling tools that I had picked up from the cake store.

I piped out a birthday greeting in chocolate icing, and then moved onto my second technique that I had wanted to play with. I had some foam stamps that I had picked up from my local crafty type store. I wiped them clean with a damp paper towel and then dried with another paper towel, in an attempt to make them foodsafe. Then I scooped out a little cocoa powder onto a plate and tapped a stamp into it a couple of times to coat. Then I stamped it onto the cake. That's when I realized that I should have tapped off the excess first. Even worse, my mistake was with the biggest, fanciest stamp. Fortunately, I was able to just blow off most of the excess, but not all of it. Correcting my mistake with the rest of the stamps, I moved on.



I think that had the colors been lighter like I wanted them, it would have looked much nicer. As it was, I was still kind of impressed. This whole foam stamp thing seemed to work out really well, certainly for my first time. Had I used dark chocolate fondant for the cake covering instead, I would have gone with powdered sugar for my stamping. I would imagine these things are designed for things like paints, so I'm sure it wouldn't be all that difficult to use a colored royal icing or something with them. I think despite my amateur efforts, these techniques have potential. I'm not sure if I'm going to do much with the white modelling chocolate in the future, but I'm sure it will work just as well with regular fondant, or even marzipan.

Greek Festival 2006 Report

Every time I look for information about the Greek Festival, I get frustrated that they don't have a website for me to look at, and to refer people to. That said, I apologize to anyone that may have tried to meet me in the food line at 10:30am. Apparently, they didn't even open until 11:00am, so there was no food line at 10:30. I spent that half hour walking around the farmers market a block away, and then Tony Caputos Deli on the way back. All I'm going to say about those two places now is, I'm going to go back and do a review in a couple of weeks.

My wife did not feel like doing a lot of walking, seeing as she's carrying enough already, what with the baby and all. So she opted to stand in line to get into the Greek Festival while Scott and I walked around. Apparently she saw some crazy Greek lady walking around and complaining that she didn't know where her no-good husband was. He finally showed up, and she complained to him about how no-good he was, and he eventually wandered off again. Can't say I blame him. This gave her the opportunity to complain about his unknown whereabouts again, and say that he was just going to have to find her inside, because she wasn't waiting for him. My wife also got to chat with the women behind her, who had obviously been in a marathon that morning. She looked like she was maybe in her mid-30's, so I was surprised to learn later that she was closer to 50, which made it even more surprising to me when I found out she apparently took 3rd place. That's awesome.

When we finally made it into the festival, the food line was almost non-existant. See what showing up early does for you? There was a bit of a wait, so we ended up talking to a large, friendly Greek guy behind us, who's mom apparently used to run a Greek restaurant in Salt Lake called Anna's or something, and another place in Denver. He wasn't really there for the food, like we were. He had better at home. He was there because he was Greek.

He may have thought the food was just okay, but I thought it was stellar. I piled about half the menu onto my plate, knowing that I wouldn't be able to finish even half of it. I had a cooler waiting in the car to take care of the rest of it. I walked out of there $26 poorer, but with enough food to last me a while. In fact, I'm eating some of the pilafi and souvlaki for breakfast right now, and have a gyro waiting in the fridge for lunchtime. It's the type of thing I live for.

When we wandered out to the tables, we found our buddy from the line, who let us sit at his table. Scott talked to him a lot, and I talked to him a little. His camera, a Nikon N80, made me more than just a little jealous. My dad and his girlfriend showed up and ate with us as well. It was good for my wife to have somebody to talk to about non-geek stuff. I stole some of her calamari at some point, and it was pretty good, though I thought the tubes were a little rubbery. The tentacles were crispy and flavorful, though. I was also the only person who got stew, which is a mystery to me. That stuff is awesome. I did wish the hunks of beef were a little smaller, and easier to fit on my spoon. The dolmades were pretty okay, but nothing special. The meatballs were better than I'd ever had them. They're usually pretty minty, but this time the seasonings were extremely well balanced. The soulvaki wasn't as good as usual, and pretty tough when I reheated it this morning. It went really well with the pilafi though, which was excellent as always. I'm not sure offhand what the thing was that looked but did not taste like cornbread, which was filled with ground beef and had a base of macaroni, but I didn't much care for it.



We finished our food and began walking around the courtyard. I was the only person in our party to not order any sweets. Let's face it, I'm not paying $3.50 for a slice of baklava when I could make an entire batch myself at home for little more than twice that. My wife got a baklava sundae which looked pretty stellar, though.



As we continued to walk around, we saw Ted and Basil's Excellent Lamb Adventure, featuring whole lambs roasted on spits. A lamb dinner was only $12, and one of these days, I intend to order one and see what it's like. Vegetarians, look away.



Doesn't that look tasty? One day I will know for sure. One day when I think to bring more cash with me to the greek festival. Instead, I knew I needed to save my remaining cash reserves for the bazaar inside the Greek Cultural Center. Last year, it was packed. This year it was pretty darn empty inside. It seemed saddeningly devoid of vendors and customers alike. They still had a Greek market inside, where I bought a large bottle of my beloved Greek olive oil. They weren't able to tell me where to buy this stuff during the rest of the year, so I'm going to have to buy some online. We bought a small hunk of feta cheese for only $0.60, for our vegetarians friends who couldn't make it. I would have bought more, but I still have a good half pound of feta at home, which is good but likely inferior compared to this stuff. I finished up with a large jar of Greek Oregano, a pack of Kalamata figs and couple of cans of these Greek chocolate wafer stick things. There's a French version in most markets out here that is so completely inferior in comparison that I won't even mention the name. My mind is completely blanked on the name of the Greek stuff, so if you're interested, watch the comments. I'll post it in there later.

We finished with a tour of the Greek Orthodox cathedral next door. We would have visited the Helenic Cultural Museum in the basement, but it didn't open until 1:00pm, and we all had places to be. In particular, I had a pengiun cake at home to work on. All in all, it was a good time. Next year, I'm going to try and keep the entire day open, so that I can spend more time there. We'll have a wee one with us, so hopefully that works out. Maybe we can coerce either my parents or hers to help keep track of the little one then.

Sam Hawk Korean Restaurant

If memory serves me, in a reply to a recent post, TuxGirl told me to check out a restuarant called Sam Hawk, in Provo, UT. As it turns out, Sam Hawk serves Korean food. Why she decided to compare the authenticity of Chinese and Korean food, I may never know. But as it turns out, I owed The Pete lunch, so we decided to check it out today.

Now, I have no idea why a Korean Restaurant would have a presumably American-sounding name. I'm guessing it's a pun of some sort. But they do have good food, which I'm told is very authentic. Our waitress even told us it was authentic, and she looked Korean, so I'm going to trust her on this one. This was my first time (in memory) eating Korean food, so I have little to go by. We ordered an appetizer called dukpoki, which was advertised as "rice cakes, vegetables mixed in spicy red pepper sauce." The rice cakes were like really short, really fat noodles. One might go so far as to say dumplings. They looked like penne pasta, except they weren't hollow. They were slightly rubbery, and I suspect would be largely flavorless without the sauce. But boy, that sauce was good. And yes, it was spicy. My level of spicy. Sissies need not apply.

The Pete ordered beef bulgogi and I ordered chicken bolgogi. This was described to me by James, a coworker that's too good to have a blog or homepage to link to, as being kind of like Korean fajitas. We each got a sizzling plate of meat, and then between us were "side dishes" that we could add. We also had a plate full of romaine leaves to wrap everything in. The sides were all cold, and included some kind of potato, some kind of really tasty beef, some kind of crunchy beans, some kind of omelet, what I'm guessing was kimchee, and some kind of bean sprouts.

The chicken was good. It was really good. I would have eaten it by itself. The potatoes were also a favorite. The beef was awesome. I don't know why it was only a side, because it warrented entree status, in my opinion. The omelets were nothing special. The crunchy beans were tasty, but I didn't like the way they crunched. The kimchee was... well, you must understand, I've never had kimchee before. This is largely because I hate cabbage. Obviously, I expected to hate it, based on this reasoning. But there have been a number of occassions where I've tossed my biases aside in favor of trying something new, with the hopes that I would be wrong, that I would suddenly discover a new taste sensation that would quickly become a favorite. This has been the case on a number of occassions, where I have added a new item to my list of foods that I enjoy. Kimchee did not make the cut. Fortunately, it wasn't totally awful, so there's hope. However, I don't think I can say the same for the bean sprouts. The Pete described them as tasting like his grandmother's house. And he wasn't talking about the food that his grandmother made. He was talking about the house.

We ended up liking about half the sides, and absolutely loving the entrees. We were also each served some kind of purple rice which I certainly had never seen. Sadly, it only tasted like regular white rice, but fortunately this was not a bad thing. The service might have been a tad slow, but it was extremely friendly. The food was worth coming back for. As I was paying, I saw a printed copy of the menu and asked the woman if they did carry-out. She informed me that they did not, but you could come pick up your order. Keep that in mind. All in all, I had a great time there. I am likely to go again, and possibly go often.

Grilled Fresh Veggie Sandwich

I thought I'd play with my pastry cutters a little last night. I currently only own a fluted set, like this one but much cheaper. There are so many things one can do with a good set of pastry cutters, it's mind boggling. In my case, I decided to make a designer sandwich.

I took the second largest cutter and cut out a couple of bread rounds from a large slice of sourdough bread. You can dry the scraps out in the oven and turn them into bread crumbs if you want, so there's no waste. Then I browned them a little in a pan with some butter, like I would a grilled cheese sandwich, but just one one side each. I set them aside, added a little more butter to the pan, and cooked up some thin slices of zucchini and yellow sqaush, just enough to give them some color, and then set them aside to cool. I also took a piece of red bell pepper, cut out a round with the third largest cutter, and cooked it the same way. To be honest, I wish I had just had some jarred pimiento to use instead.

Then I took one slice of bread and put it on a plate, grilled side down. I added a layer of baby greens, topped that with the thin slices of zucchini and yellow squash, then added the bell pepper. I took the third largest cutter and cut out a round of provolone, and put that on top of the bell pepper. You can save the scraps for pizza, or just munch on them. I topped with the last piece of bread, grilled side up, and stuck a party toothpick in it. Lame, but more photogenic than without.

It was a good sandwich, but there were a couple of things wrong with it. Mainly, there was too much bell pepper. I think had I used jarred pimiento (or a fire roasted red bell pepper, for you snobs out there), it would have been better. Also, there was too much, so I should have gone with half of what I used. And let's face it, using a cutter for something going inside the sandwich was probably just wasted effort. But using the cutter on the bread is definitely not wasted effort. It looks nice. Polished. Fancy. Like you could charge an extra couple of bucks for it.

And why did I call it a grilled fresh veggie sandwich? Well, first of all, there are fresh lettuce greens on it. Second, the veggies should be cold when you serve it. Fine, just call it a grilled cold veggie sandwich. See if I care.

Salt Lake Greek Festival 2006

It's coming. This weekend. You can't stop it. It will come with or without you. And why would you want to miss it?

The Salt Lake Greek Festival is held every year, the weekend after Labor Day, at the Greek Orthodox church downtown, at 279 South 300 West. Of course there's things like dancing, booths, even a carnival for the kids. But the main reason to go? The food. This festival has some of the best Greek food I've ever had. Ever. If you doubt my words, take note: If you get there any time after noon on Saturday, expect to spend a good couple of hours waiting in line for food. It's just that good. Rumor has it this is the largest Greek festival west of the Mississippi. The lines probably have something to do with that too. But mostly, I blame the food. It's so good.

Of course you have to pick up a Gyro. Or two. Definitely some pilafi (Greek rice pilaf). Don't forget the dolmathes. Grab some souvlaki, and don't even think about not getting at least one meatball. In fact, do what I do and just get one of everthing, at the very least. While you can eat a good size meal for about $5 or so, I usually end up bringing $20 (just for food) and a cooler full of ice to bring it home it. It usually almost makes it through the weekend. I also try and bring a little cash for the booths. Last year I picked up a Greek family cookbook, and even a cookbook devoted entirely to phyllo dough.

According to About's Utah event page, admission is $2 for adults, and $1 for children under 12. That sounds about right to me. There's plenty of parking nearby, and it's usually not too expensive. If anyone wants to meet me there, I'm trying to pull together a group of friends to meet in the food line at 10:30am Saturday morning. Email me for details if you're interested (joseph at thatworks dot com).

P.F. Changs

Utah is a land of chain restaurants. There are few places to eat that aren't owned by a corporate entity. PF Changs, a local Chinese restaurant is no exception. But while my cooking school buddies would frequently slam on various chain restaurants, I would hope that this one does not make that list.

My wife and I celebrated our first anniversary this past Saturday at the PF Changs near our home. We had been there only once before, about two months after we were married, and that was at the expense of both of our workplaces. We had both managed to score giftcards there on Halloween, so we decided to check it out. Now, I may have mentioned before that I am not a fan of Asian food in America. Even if I go to a Chinese restaurant, with a Chinese staff, and eat what is supposedly authentic Chinese food, it still tends to taste more like a wet yak. Still, with $65 worth of gift cards in hand, we had no reason not to check it out.

The service was superb. Somehow we got lucky enough to get an entire half of the restaurant to ourselves. The waitresses checked on us often, and our every need seemed to be attended to. I don't think anyone there could possibly be mistaken as being Chinese, and maybe the food wasn't real Chinese, but it was still nothing short of stellar.

Remembering our previous experience at PF Changs, I decided to take my wife there again for our anniversary. I decided to make it a surprise, and she had no idea until I opened the door for her. We were promptly seated, and we had scarcely opened our menus before our waiter showed up and asked us for our drink orders. He offered to get us an appetizer, and I quickly agreed and ordered lettuce wraps. By the time I had decided upon the rest of our order, our drinks and lettuce wraps had been delivered. The lettuce wraps were okay, but just okay, until we added the sauce at the side of the table. Suddenly they were properly seasoned, and had been elevated to nothing short of magnificent. I had wanted to save plenty of room for dinner, but I couldn't help myself from finishing off all of them.

Once our appetizer plates were cleared, it wasn't long before the rest of our meal showed up. Now, I had been saving for this meal for some time, and I had a strategy in mind, albeit an expensive one. We would order a lot of food, and then take a lot home with us. The concept at PF Changs is that each dish is meant to be shared around the table. They each come with serving spoons, and each diner gets to pick and choose. The more dishes you order, the more selections you have to put on your plate. We ordered four dishes: kung pao scallops, orange peel beef, beef a la sechuan, and due to my southwest-tuned palate, blean bean chicken.

Now, believe it or not, I had never had kung pao anything before. But as I may have previously mentioned, I have decided to start ordering things that I'm not used to. Unfortunately, kung pao did not become an instant favorite. It was good, but I will probably not rush to order it again anytime soon. And sadly, the chicken in black bean sauce, while tasty, was not as good as I had expected either. And that had been my "safe" dish. Amazingly though, both the scallops and the chicken were perfectly cooked. In fact, the chicken had found that sweet spot, thoroughly cooked, yet juicy and tender, like a rare tenderloin steak.

The stars of the show were the orange peel beef and the sechuan beef. I was intrigued when the menu described the sechuan beef as being cooked twice, which gave it a "unique" texture. And a unique texture it had: crispy, but not leathery like overcooked meat. The flavor was amazing. It was served amidst a bed of julienned carrots and celery which were also tender, juicy and flavorful. The celery was not stringy, and while both flavors complimented the beef, neither overpowered it. It was definitely my favorite dish.

A very close second was the orange peel beef, which tasted almost exactly like I had imagined it, and yet so much better. The orange peel was chewy, but not in a bad way. It had a slight bitterness to it, and yet it was slightly sweet too. It was like they had candied it before adding it to the beef. The beef itself was sliced thin, coated in an orangey goodness, and flavorful. It looked like it was going to be tough, but it wasn't. It was just about perfect. I'm not a huge fan of beef, but I would gladly order either of these two dishes again in a heartbeat.

Impressive though the food was, I'm not sure it could have matched the service. Rather than stop by every twenty minutes to ask if we needed refills on our drinks, our waiter would deliver refills before our glasses ever became empty. This is the sort of anticipation that the staff at Charlie Trotter's strives for. Both our regular waiter and the one who delivered our entrees were friendly and willing and ready to answer every question and serve our every need. There was only one mistake that I caught: our waiter initially brought me raspberry lemonade instead of the strawberry lemonade that I had ordered. When I informed him of this, it was quickly remedied.

Speaking of drinks, I had an odd revelation while I was there. This was largely inspired by my lemonades, both of which tasted fake, and the raspberry far more so. While considering this, I thought about my wife's root beer. I thought about how odd it really was to drink American soft drinks at an expensive Chinese restaurant, and yet how common in our country. And then I considered how poorly my drink matched with my meal. What in the world was I thinking? When was the last time you saw strawberries served with steak? There's a reason you never see them together. Straight lemonade would have been better, because a hint of lemon can compliment beef. Why in the world did I order a flavor to drink that I would never cook anything in my meal with? That was just a bad idea.

When our waiter brought us our check, I gladly added a generous tip to the bill. As our waiter put our food into chinese take-out boxes, we talked about the food, and which dishes were our favorites and his. All in all, we were in and out of there in about an hour. We took our time eating, and didn't feel the least bit rushed. The service I am used to in normal restaurants might have taken as long as an hour and a half, and might have made me feel rushed at that. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend checking out PF Changs. It may be a chain restaurant, but it's an oasis in a sea of "just okay" or even substandard food and service.

Burgers and Jello

My dear friend Anita said it best when she told me that "fry sauce alone is reason enough to avoid Utah." For those of you who have been spared this atrocity, fry sauce has been described as "thousand island dressing without the islands." More simply, fry sauce is nothing more than ketchup mixed with mayonnaise, with the occassional addition of pickle juice. This concoction was brought to us by a Utah-based restaurant named Arctic Circle.

When I was young, my family lived down the street from the national headquarters. We grew up on food from the AC, and fry sauce was common in our household. As I grew older, and I began to grow chest hairs and tastebuds, I realized that I really didn't like fry sauce. In fact, I thought it was absolutely disgusting. I still liked the burgers, especially the bacon double cheeseburger, which is no longer on the menu, though you can still get a double cheeseburger and ask them to add bacon.

Back to the fry sauce. So I don't like it anymore. Big deal, right? The theory is that when they ask me if I want any sauces, I either say no or just get ketchup. This doesn't happen at Arctic Circle. You get fry sauce no matter what, unless you actually reach in the bag, pull it out, and give it back to them. I have done this on a number of occassions. Then I ask for ketchup. I always have to ask for it. Every other fast food restaurant I go to (not that there's many these days) asks if I want ketchup. In Utah, most of them ask if I want ketchup or fry sauce. Kudos to them for actually bothering to ask.

Several years ago, Arctic Circle got the bright idea to start selling burgers made with Angus beef. Just about any burger on the menu could be requested with Angus beef. Now you don't get the option. You get Angus beef or you go to another restaurant. Here's the thing about Angus beef: when was the last time you met somebody that could tell it apart from regular beef? Especially considering the charcoal that they have to turn the beef into in the first place just to be safe. While the taste may be no different, I did notice early on that the texture did suffer. Let's face it, Angus beef just isn't meant to be used as burgers.

Arctic Circle's new thing is their new yukon gold fries. We stopped by today because it was time for my yearly craving for an Arctic Circle burger. My wife ordered a combo meal, and was asked if she wanted to upgrade her fries to yukon gold fries for free. They told us that yukon gold potatoes had a naturally buttery flavor. Now, this is true, if you get "yukon gold butter potatoes", which I have only seen a couple of times in the grocery store. This is not true of regular yukon gold potatoes. Still, we went for the yukon gold fries. They did have a slightly buttery taste, and had a little more yellow to them than regular yukon golds. Apparently they're using the right variety. They also tasted largely undercooked and undersalted, even for me, and they were of course soggy.

Arctic Circle is largely located in Utah and Idaho, which are not two states that are known for their cuisine. The highest score a restaurant can receive on the Zagat Survey is a 30. Three restaurants in Utah (the whole state) have a food score of 27, and none higher. Compare this to New York City (just the city, not the whole state), which has ten restaurants with a score of 28, and thirty restaurants with a score of 27.

It makes me sad that what was once an occassional treat from my parents has taken it upon themselves to convince themselves that they're improving their menu, while they continuously allow it to degrade. It also makes me sad that this seems to be perfectly okay with the majority of the locals.

As I'm typing this, I have the Travel Channel turned on in the background. I just happen to glance up in time to see footage of my beloved downtown Salt Lake City. As I turn up the volume, I see the host standing in a very Utah-looking kitchen, talking to a very Utah-looking woman. I blame my wife and her hairstyling training that I take note of the woman's bad hair. What is the focus of the segment? Jello. This women has made lime Jello, filled with carrot shavings, inside a pineapple mold. This is wrong on so many levels. The combination of green mixed with orange is entirely unappetizing. The host is gushing about how limey it tastes. I'm thinking, "she made it from a box of lime-flavored Jello! Of course it tastes like lime! They sell the stuff in every other state in the union!" As if that isn't enough, the women has invited several friends and family members to bring their own Jello dishes, so that they might have a Jello fest. There is a line of people outside her front door, and each one describes their dish to the host as they walk in. One of the Jello dishes has spinach mixed into it. The host is acting as if he has just walked through heaven's doors and still can't believe it. Something about him seems just a little fake, but everyone else seems to be buying it.

Utah, you're giving yourself a bad name. Knock it off. Yes, I like Jello. It definitely comes in handy whenever I have oral surgery and have to stick with soft foods. But I don't make it every day. I don't even make it every month. In fact, I have only made it once in the past several years. There are so many foods out there for you to explore and enjoy. Maybe you should think about trying them out occassionally. Go check out that Thai restaurant sometime. Maybe you won't end up liking that tom yung kung soup. At least you will have tried it. And who knows? Maybe you will like it. And maybe, just maybe, when you expand your culinary horizons, you can break out of the molds that you have convinced yourself are good enough, and maybe your standards will go up just a little. And maybe, just maybe, some day I'll be able to proudly declare to my out-of-state friends how great the food in Utah is.