Quit Jammin’ Me!
Sometimes I think I’m so smart…
Come on now! 24 years of constantly cooking, experimenting, tasting, burning, succeeding, winning, and losing! You would think, I would have this thing pretty much in the bag, wouldn’t you? Let me tell you though, I am still only learning.
There is so much inspiration out there to glean yet never enough time in a day to take it in with any coherency. I want to learn, apply, and feed my people good and delicious food. I want to do it without unnecessary steps or waste. I want every moment to count in a meaningful way.
Tina Choi’s Doobydobap, Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, Mike Greenfield’s Life by MikeG, and of course the one who does not even know she has the force within her, June as in junelikethemonth are all part of this Swiss army knife of innovation and experience that I wish to fold into my own, go-with-the-flow technique. It is a whole universe floating around in my brain.
Then there is the fact that the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. Let’s call that the Butterfly Pea Effect. The beautiful blue tea arrives at the table. You just know when you squeeze that lemon slice into the tea it will turn green, but then it turns purple!
By now you are asking; “Mike, what are you even talking about?” and you are right. Let me explain.
Good judgment, based on food experience, makes one a better cook and judge when ordering food out. So imagine my satisfaction when we dined at a wonderful Thai restaurant in Littleton, New Hampshire. www.tastethethaiandsushihouse.com We had an excellent experience. There was nothing showy or gratuitous about this restaurant. The staff was warm, helpful, and genuine as well.
For starters, the shrimp shu mai, and pan-fried potstickers were wonderful. Donna ordered the Tom Kha soup which is shrimp, Coconut milk broth with onion, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, tomato, galangal, lime juice, mushroom, and cilantro. Just the right amount of every ingredient.
One of the resources you have in an excellent server is their opportunity to be your consultant and tour guide. In a restaurant that really sets out to serve their customer the best experience they can, when asked by the diner, “What is the dish you see everyone coming here to have?” That server will give you a real answer that does not simply steer you to the most expensive item on the menu. You can always tell the difference from the answer you get too.
Our server answered my question with two possibilities:
The first offer was Massaman Curry with Avocado, one of the most popular Thai curry. This dish was listed on CNN Travel as #1 most delicious food in the world in 2017!! Choice of meat with Potato, white onions, carrot, and cashew nuts. In coconut milk and Massaman curry.
The second offer was Thai Basil Pad Kra Prow. Beef stir-fried with basil sauce, garlic, onions, green bean, bell peppers, and basil.
Naturally, since potatoes are very much a part of the Axis of Evil, I ordered the Thai Basil Pad Kra Prow and was very pleased with the choice. If you are not familiar with my aversion to potatoes, see https://fight4taste.blogspot.com/2022/06/please-don-pass-potatoes.html.
I usually do not write about a single dining experience. What happened in less than 24 hours from this very nice meal perplexes me. We were driving through Lincoln, New Hampshire in the early afternoon. We pulled into a parking lot to look at lunch choices locally on my phone. The place where we were parked got our attention.
Five Main on the River in North Woodstock had several items on their menu that seemed to be winners. We decided we had already arrived at our lunch spot. The mussels, chicken lollipops, goat cheese spinach artichoke dip, and soups seemed to be spot-on to what sounded good to us. The inside was a pub with big televisions playing over the attractive bar.
The more we thought about it, nickel and diming these app-style foods into a lunch will turn into a dinner-size bill which plainly seemed frivolous. Since they had pizza, it made sense to just do that. This is where we go off the rails. We could have just ordered traditional pizza and man, I wish we had. No, we had to order “The Mediterranean” off of the “Handtossed Signature Pizza” section.
Normally, my brain understands that if you take a piece of pizza dough, and spread it out on a pizza pan, then top it with; spinach, kalamata olives, artichokes, pepperoncini, a pound of feta cheese, many very large heirloom tomato slices intimidatingly covering much of the surface of the pie, fresh garlic, oregano, red onions, and roasted garlic. Balancing these toppings on top of a pizza without any effort to remove some of the moisture from them basically gave the pizza the same moisture content had we covered it in cucumbers.
When it arrived at the table, the bottom of the crust had some color, showing that the pizza oven had browned it. Donna did not like the top’s uncooked appearance and frankly, I was not pleased either. The idea of sending it back scared me more than eating it as is, but after talking it back and forth, we asked our waiter, who seemed to have never been asked to take something back ever before in his life, to please take the pizza and brown it more on the top.
I had a core aversion to this idea, but my food radar was being jammed somehow. When the pizza arrived again, the top did appear to be cooked more and thanks to the laws of physics and gravity, the 9 ounces of water content that was once in that pile of vegetables on top of the pizza had now migrated into the crust. Now the crust has the consistency of what happens when someone tries to make a carb-free crust but has no knowledge of what to use, so the ingredients never come together to make a composed crust. Like a gas giant planet, there is not an actual surface that is firm enough to stand on. The worst part is we did this to ourselves.
I know that there are many people who would have sent this back, but by this time we were here over an hour and a half. We ordered the ridiculous “Mediterranean” which has items that should not be on a pizza unless you can carefully roast and drain some of the moisture out of them. But then we requested that they do something to take this abomination and ruin it completely. I felt that sending it back would have led to a need for systemic education. This is a foundational issue with the restaurant and one that I find hard to believe exists. I do also hold out hope that the person prepping and cooking this alien-like food substance is not the normal person who carefully portions, dries, and preps toppings so they are more balanced pleasingly rustic, and tasty.
We took the rest with us, me thinking that somehow I could salvage at least the toppings. 2 mornings later, I opened the box, and when I touched the crust, its cold, wet, slimy texture caused me to involuntarily hurtle the whole mess into the trash can without even thinking about it.
This was my fault. Even if a restaurant thinks they are all cool and trendy by having all of these things on a pizza that I could see Jamie Oliver making, the laws of culinary physics say NO, NO, and NO!!!
So I wonder, who or what is jamming my culinary radar? I feel this is a graduation in which I have tons of new uncategorized other knowledge and it is not indexed yet. I feel that I am in a gear, topping out fruitful RPM and I am about to look down at the gearshift and notice there is another gear that I can shift up into. But not before I make a mistake of another kind.
Fight4Taste Friday comes, and I decide on egg rolls. F4TF is something I voluntarily do in which i cook lunch for the staff at my place of work. Unilaterally you will hear that those eggrolls were delicious and they were, but stupid technical disasters were everywhere.
Ice packs were too cold so the rolls cooled the oil too much, I did not cook the vegetable filling which caused more moisture in the vegetables (sound familiar), and cooled the oil too as well as made the wrappers tough to chew because they sort of steamed. The wrappers were older having been frozen and then thawed which makes them hard to deal with, they break if you look at them too hard and they do not handle moisture well at all. The odd thing is: I know better.
Finally, there is another jamming of my perception and that is my generous spirit to give culinary institutions a chance after they burn me. I did just this last night with a restaurant that has been in operation for as long as I can remember. Joy Wah on the Connecticut River in Vermont. My wife was passing by and I was not feeling up to cooking. The last time we got food there, I think it was in 2020, we had a miserable takeout experience, which last night, I decided to attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was wrong. This is a restaurant that is clearly trying to save money by cutting or skimping on flavor components. The fried rice is only trashcan-worthy. The boneless pork was overcooked to the consistency of hard plastic. Their egg rolls were underwhelming. When is this going to stop?
I have often said that because people have been brainwashed into thinking that they cannot cook many of these things, they are eventually reduced to people who can be fed a rock with barbeque sauce on it and come away thinking it was awesome! We need this to stop!
The final jamming. There is so many distractions that always get in the way of me really getting the good food out there. I make it all the time. So many people say they don’t have the time. Believe me, I do not have the time! Because I still do this it turns my life upside down, I hardly sleep, my RA tries to pin me down, and I live in pain. But I am fighting. I don’t want to surrender! I cannot give up. I do wish I would stop being so stupid when I know I have the knowledge, wisdom, and determination to make better decisions concerning cooking and eating. So whatever it is: Quit jamming me!
