Broward Palm Beach Food Blog

​Wanna know why your gut hits your ankles when you walk? Why your thighs have more ripples than the Gulf of Mexico in a hurricane? Why your ass is big enough to blot out the sun? 

The "Twinkie Casserole" (24 Twinkies topped with caramel, mini marshmallows and brown sugar, topped with caramel icing), perhaps. Or the "Ultimate White Trash Hot Dog" (hot dog infused with cheese, deep fried, wrapped in bacon and fried again) or "El Nino" (ground beef, sauteed onions, sour cream, lettuce, tomato and cheddar cheese wrapped in a large pepperoni pizza). 

These and all your cardiologist's greatest hits can be found at one of the world's most disgusting blogs: thisiswhyyourefat.com.

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Brazilian  steak joints aren't supposed to have great burgers. Meat on sticks, yes. Endless salad bars, sure. But Zed451, that slick-looking Mizner Park restaurant with mixed reviews, has one fantastic burger. Here's how they get there:

1. The toasted and buttered brioche bun is light and fluffy enough so you can mush it down for your first bite. It has a sweetness that provides a nice complement to what's coming.

2. The fried onion strings are crunchy, salty, and well-seasoned. What more should

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The Meatist's post this morning on which supermarket bacon is the best made me excited all over again for my favorite new holiday: Bacon Day. That's right, September 5 this year will be to bacon what Labor Day is to really cheap beer and barbecue, a day to revel in the wonders of cured pork belly morning, noon, and night. I for one know how I will be celebrating: I'll be making my own bacon. That recipe is culled from Alton Brown's program Good Eats. But here's another one by former South Florida MenuPages blogger Carolina Bolado; just scroll down to the comments section to view.

And for some inspiration once you've cooked your bacon? Well here's some of my favorite bacon links:

Bacon Today - Come out, how could you not absolutely love the guys that brought us the turbaconducken?

The Bacon Fatty Melt - A Hamburger Today isn't necessarily devoted to bacon, but this sandwich, made with bacon grilled cheese sandwiches as buns, deserves a medal.

I Heart Bacon - If you want to know about things like Bacon Salt and why they exist in this lovely world of ours, I Heart Bacon is the place for you. It's a well-written blog that explores bacon and all its ancillary topics with care and adulation.

The Original Bacon Explosion - It sounds like something you'd have to show ID to procure, and then only in a store with black-tinted windows. And it is actually semi-pornographic. The bacon explosion is a tube of bacon weave (GASP, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT BACON WEAVE IS?) wrapped around ground Italian sausage, which in turn is compressed around loose bacon bits. The whole thing is smoked for two-and-a-half hours and basted with barbecue sauce to complete. Yes, you've seen it on CNN and Good Morning America! Now make it (or buy one to order) yourself.

The Royal Bacon Society - Finally, keep abreast (or abelly) of all the latest bacon day happenings, recipes, meetups, etc. at the official site of the very ancient and powerful Royal Bacon Society. Wait till you hear the secret password.

Photo by Flickr user fotophriendly

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Bacon. Say it with me now: "bacon." Feel happy? Hungry? Of course you do. Because really, what's better than bacon? It brings salt to the savory, crunch to the flaccid, "B" to the "L" and the "T." Could you ask more of anything? I think not. And yet, bacon has more to give, asking for nothing in return but a fat scallop to wrap, a salad to be crumbled upon, a burger to dress. Bacon can open up new worlds, give new meaning to things as simple as peanut butter or brown sugar, take you on amazing journeys of piggy goodness.

But every journey begins with a single step, and to go on a journey of bacon discovery, that step is bacon selection. So I hit up some local supermarkets and collected an array of brands and types to take home and fry up. From Publix Greenwise, I bought some Coleman Natural Uncured Hickory Smoked, from Whole Foods I scored Wellshire Thick Sliced Dry Rubbed All Natural Uncured, and from a standard Publix I bought some Oscar Mayer Bacon (the standard type), some Publix Naturally Hickory Smoked Center Cut, and the one that's intrigued me for months, Luter's Genuine Dry Cured Bacon.

Oyster beds in Cape Cod.

There's a certain kind of man who never fails to impress me, a guy who does things (apart from the obvious) that I could never do. Vacationing in Cape Cod last week, I met one of them: the contractor who was renovating the upstairs loft in my sister's new house in Chatham. After a full day of putting up sheetrock, this 60-something specimen showed up for dinner freshly showered in a nicely ironed pair of jeans and a black shirt, lugging a cooler full of oysters and clams that he had RAISED in his OWN BEDS, and proceeded to shuck them and serve half raw with a squeeze of lemon and the other half briefly broiled in the toaster oven with a crisp bacon topping.

*Sigh*?!?

Coincidentally, a tome called The Stag Cook Book fell into my hands recently, a charming, testosterone-fueled bible penned in 1922 "For Men by Men." [You can download the PDF here, and I highly recommend it]. Wives will have to swallow both their distaste for silly rhymes and their feminist ire at the opening ditty:

At range and at oven (whisper it) still,
Man is undoubtedly Master;
His cooking is done with an air and a skill,
He's sure as a woman -- and faster!

Well, messier, anyway, right, ladies? But it's hard to stay mad at the sweet lugs (the contributors include Houdini -- deviled eggs; Charlie Chaplin -- steak and kidney pie; Rube Goldberg -- hash; and Douglas Fairbanks -- bread tart) when they've gone to such trouble to write down their homespun recipes for chowders and welsh rabbit and baked beans and -- yes -- cornflakes.

In honor of the good men of Cape Cod, hit the jump for a very simple stag codfish recipe.

Who's Yurmami?

We're all familiar with the four primary tastes we experience on our tongues: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. Food scientists and restaurant critics desperate for novel terms have also added two more semi-tastes: astringent, and spicy. But a century ago the Japanese identified a fifth primary taste -- "umami" -- which can be roughly translated as "deliciousness." Writers and scientists have had a hard time describing exactly what umami is -- not a flavor, not quite a sensation. Many people agree that when you encounter it in food, umami imparts a feeling of fullness, roundness, savoriness, or yumminess.

Umami comes from glutamate (yes, as in MSG, which is glutamate in a shaker. MSG has been mostly given a bum rap, but that's another story). Glutamate is an amino acid that is found in many foods. One of the great challenges for chefs in both the East and the West is finding ways to combine foods to get the biggest glutamate punch, because the more umami a dish has, the more likely customers and stray food critics are to fall into ecstasies of devotion. Umami is probably the main reason why spaghetti & meatballs is so universally loved.

Wanna guess which of the foods pictured below contain glutamate? PS: If you're really an umami devotee, as I am, you can join the Umami Information Center, and learn all about the fun conferences and symposia and seminars they sponsor around the world.

*the photo above is from hoosierburgerboy.com, a great blog about all things burger.

Hit the jump to identify yer umami.

"Hors d'oeuvre: a ham sandwich cut into 40 pieces." -- Jack Benny

And you thought the best thing about Mother's Day was the satisfaction you get from making your mom feel like the most special lady on Earth, for at least the course of one homemade brunch. Actually, the best part is the leftover bacon -- enough fatty, crispy slices of swine so as to be able to create the World's Most Perfect Sandwich only hours after gorging oneself on omelets and French toast. I'm talking, of course, about the BLT.

Is there anything better than a bacon sandwich, all salty and smoky and fatty, topped with crunchy, grassy romaine lettuce, thin slices of tart tomatoes, and laced with a generous swath of creamy mayonnaise? Until the day when we all have personal robot chefs who can duplicate to a T the cooking of world-class chefs in our own kitchens (and slightly before the Great Robot Uprising to follow), that answer is no.

Here's a way-cool graphic showing U.S. slaughter of meat, per second. Click here.

Peeps' Last Meal

Ingredients: "Everything but the squeal"

Here's where Italy meets Philly meets the tropics: at Caffe Luna Rosa in Delray Beach you'll dine on homemade breads, handmade pasta, and veal chop Milanese at outdoor tables just a hop from the beach. Somehow that salt air is all the seasoning chef Ernesto di Blasi's Northern Italian specialties need. The gang at Luna Rosa are sticklers for quality: meat and poultry is natural and hormone free; tomatoes are the real San Marzano deal; hamburger is ground fresh daily in the kitchen; they even roast their own coffee beans! And they're as obsessive about breakfast, brunch, and lunch as they are about dinner. There isn't a pleasanter place to dig into your first meal of the day, from the overstuffed omelets and eggs Benedict to cinnamon swirl French toast, and if there's another restaurant in South Florida serving Philadelphia scrapple and pork roll we have yet to find it (if you don't know what's in it, don't ask, just eat). Even the creamed chipped beef on toast - a meal our servicemen used to fondly call SOS -- is a delicious exercise in nostalgia. 34 S Ocean Blvd Delray Beach, FL 33483 561-274-9404

Untwist those panties: Bacon is good for you!

1. Chocolate
Two words: Flavonoids. Antioxidants. Dark chocolate, more than 70 percent cocoa, has both of them, and they destroy evil free radicals, lower blood pressure, and balance hormones. The folks at Galler Chocolate, a candymaker from Belgium, will be happy to consult with you about the optimal mix for good health and a sin-free soul. Check out their tin of 70 percent cat's tongues or a tube of truffles. Give up instead: Both diet and regular soda, which contributes to obesity and shortens your life span.

Galler Chocolate, 920 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
954-523-9690
Also: There's not a good reason on Earth to give up the chocolate raspberry or French chocolate cupcakes, made with artisinal ingredients, at Lola's Cupcakery:
Lola's Cupcakery
1523 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
954-530-3153

2. Lobster
It may taste like a decadent luxury, but lobster is good for you. And this year, the prices on Maine lobster have come down significantly enough that you needn't suffer a moment's guilt eating it -- some reports put the price per pound at the equivalent of sliced turkey. Lobster is full of omega 3s, it's high in protein and low in fat, and it's low on the food chain, so it doesn't contain more than trace amounts of mercury. Best of all, lobster trapping is very easy on the environment. Give up instead: Tuna, which is severely overfished.
Where to get it:
Two 1 1/4 pound Maine lobsters are on sale for $51.95 (a $20 savings) at lobstergram.com. I've also had good luck ordering live lobsters from Legalseafoods.com. Patriot Lobster sells 1-pound "culls" that have lost one claw for a bargain rate of $9 each not including shipping.
Pop's Fish Market in Deerfield Beach has Florida lobster tails for $28.99 a pound and live Maine lobsters for $11.99 for a 1 1/4 lb. lobster, $13.99 for anything above that. Call them at 954-427-3331.
 
3. Caviar
No need to ever suffer another sleepless night over the endangered Russian sturgeon -- farmed sturgeon caviar is now widely available, and there's also a color palette of nonsturgeon caviar that's nearly as silky, salty, and luxurious as the real thing. Check out the caviar menu at Marky's in Miami: They've got farmed osetra from France, Italy, Uruguay and the U.S. from about $55 an ounce. Give up instead: Russian wild beluga. Nasty.

4. Bacon
That most misunderstood of foods, bacon, it turns out, is even better for you than eating vegetables. Just kidding. But anybody who'd even think of going 40 days bacon-free is a total masochist. The good news is that now you can buy bacon from humanely raised heritage breeds that is not only miles better than the old grocery-store Oscar Meyer but also helps preserve rare breeds from extinction -- and just generally makes the world a jollier, more delicious place in which to unravel our mortal coil. At Heritage Foods USA, six pounds of Edwards Heritage Berkshire Bacon will set you back $85, but that's enough to last even a serious baconophile until well after the Lenten period ends. The Pig Next Door also has a heritage-bacon-of-the-month club: a pound a month plus tasting notes for six months is $149 plus shipping. Give up instead: One meal at a mediocre restaurant.

5. Foie Gras
Probably the most controversial food in the world, despised by PETA, beloved of chefs and gourmets. But New York chef Dan Barber went to visit the Spanish Farm Pateria de Sousa and learned that it's indeed possible to produce foie gras "naturally" by letting geese gorge the way they always have in the wild, seasonally. Farming this way eliminates the need for gavage (force feeding). Judging from Barber's video, these fowl live in a birdly paradise so wonderful that geese flying over readily land and join them, increasing the flock naturally. The Spanish foie gras isn't available locally yet, but if you love the stuff, lobby your favorite chef to see if he or she can source it. Give up instead: foie gras produced by gavage until the humane version becomes available.

Totally uncensored, sorta...

meadowlandsparkinglot

The Jabaconageburger with cheese, a cheeseburger topped with sausage and bacon and sandwiched between two Jamaican beef patties. Urg.

Food porn is all the rage these days. There are entire sites devoted to the obscene pleasures of voyeuristic foodie-ism, and they're growing in number each day. Just this week, food writer and chef Anthony Bourdain explored the subject on a special episode of his Travel Channel series No Reservations, complete with over-the-top camera angles and plenty of double-entendre about cream sauces and long, hard sausages. But the latest food porn craze is a website that revels so desperately in absurd gluttony while simultaneously mocking it that it's hard to look at it and not come away with coronary blockage. It is, the aptly-named, This is Why You're Fat.

Today's pic -- that disgusting concoction of Jamaican beef patties and cheeseburger you see above -- is just the tip of the iceberg. Spend a couple minutes on the site sampling such goodies as "the garbage pile" and (appearing on Short Order before) "the bacon double fatty melt," and your self-loathing just builds and builds. I mean, do we really need to be this self-destructive? What's next, a website for children of divorce entitled "You Are The Reason Mommy Left Daddy"? A montage of depressing photos for people on suicide watch called "It Feels Like Heaven Once All That Evil Finally Seeps Out of Your Wrists"? I'm not so sure it's really all that healthy and empowering to embrace all the terrible addictions in my life -- I already spend too much time guzzling beer like a 50-year-old NASCAR fan and supplementing my World of Warcraft addiction with a blog roll the size of Perez Hilton's ego. I frankly don't think I can take much more of this! If only I had something that would instantly make the pain go away... say, like a bacon shell taco! Oh sweet relief!

Corey James

By now the Frankenstein monster of Thanksgiving dishes, the turducken, is old news: Stuffing a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey is just sooo Thanksgiving 2007. I mean, three animals? Is that all you got? Well, Corey James over at Bacon Today has you beat, my friend.

This, is his Turbaconducken -- a 15 pound turkey containing bacon-wrapped chicken and bacon-wrapped duck, which itself is then wrapped in bacon too.

The sheer bravado of constructing such a meal makes my head swell. I mean, the  symbolism of celebrating Thanksgiving by basking in such decadent gluttany makes me either really proud to be an American or really, really embarassed.  But somehow, I still want to eat it. The question is: What type of gravy do you serve with your Turbaconducken, Corey?

Thanks to reader Tim Litsch for the tip. And happy Turbaconducken Day!

-- John Linn

Every once in a while, someone comes along who pushes boundaries, who doesn't let words like "no" or "impossible" cross their lips. A Hamburger Today's Adam Kuban is one such pioneer. When they said creating the ultimate bacon sandwich couldn't be done, he didn't budge. No, he ventured into the unknown, with little regard for his own safety, and produced this: the bacon hamburger fatty melt. It's a bacon cheeseburger housed between two bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwiches. And I want one. I don't know what I'd do with it - eat it, I presume, but more likely build an altar an worship it like a Carpathian deity -- but I want one. (Note: Don't scroll down the page of that link unless your heart is strong enough to see -- dun, dun, dun -- the DOUBLE BACON FATTY MELT. You've been warned)

-- John Linn