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Cheesy Dreams of Burritos

You never went hungry at the Plymouth house. This living ruckus of a house blared shenanigans within a four block radius of cheap amenities. Ronald’s “Golden Arches” were less than a stone’s throw as well as a liquor store infested with the characters of its community, both serving their own desperation driven dollar menu. Taqueria El Jalapeno, Viking’s Giant Submarines, and Beep’s Burgers filled in the gaps for a more indulgent appetite. Even if your evening had ended in hastily devouring half of your roommate’s rare bottle of absinthe he was saving for some vaguely more sophisticated occasion, a short crawl to salvation was all you had to muster the morning after. We all know that there are times a crawl can be a marathon, especially if it requires stairs or putting on pants. Some came prepared and some had to put on pants.

It may come as no surprise that the dude, pondering his next several meals midchew with the one in front of him, writing this here food blog, falls to the category of more prepared. People who cook to procrastinate more pertinent responsibilities rarely face an empty fridge and pantry. In six years and always rotating cast of roommates, I’d witnessed a variety of prevention stratagems to dire hunger with varying degrees of success, depending on if you played the long game, whole meals frozen or dizzying amounts of Tupperware leftovers, or the short game, a snack supplies deep enough to convince one you ran a string of successful hotel mini bar robberies. Nobody surpassed the brilliance of my downstairs cave mate, Xiomara. Her approach was flavorful, frugal, sustainable, minimal in effort, and safe from lazy predators scavenging for easy leftovers due to the vague aluminum foil covering . Xiomara had taken the lowly frozen burrito and made it her own, very literally. Every so often she’d make batches using smaller flour tortillas versus the gargantuan tortillas used for behemoth Mission burritos. Relying on the pleasure of beans and cheese together as one, maybe some roasted peppers for a little extra flavor and texture, cutting it open a perfect cross section of simplicity. A minute to two in the microwave wrapped in a damp paper towel was all it took to breathe life into its frozen state and thus find salvation. Many were jealous of her ready steady supplies, myself including. It was the right amount of sustenance for the level of effort most of us wanted to partake in to save our own decrepit states. She had the antidote while others writhed, arms out for a hopeful pity driven handout.

On a late afternoon, a thick plume hovering from our living room leisure, hunger struck and lethargic, a dormant lightbulb flickered- what if I just made my own burritos? What if I had enough burritos for not just myself, but for everyone? What if I monopolized on these perma-stoned sitting ducks in my living room and collected actual dollar bills instead of just IOU’s for the food that I fed them anyways? Easy money!

Keeping a similar approach to Xio’s burritos, I outfitted mine with a scant but well rationed mix of carnitas, refried black beans, and some kind of jack cheese. Buying everything from a restaurant supply store I could make about somewhere shy of 250 burritos for around $60, pork shoulder being disconcertingly cheap when purchased in bulk. With enough pestering my dear patron saint taquera, Maria, at El Jalapeno, I was able to get the gist of how they cooked their crispy, never dried out carnitas; a slow braise with roasted onions, garlic, some spices, chicken broth, and a few halved oranges, cooked until tender, juices reduced with the veg before turning it to a thin gravy by way of immersion blender.

The melting pork chunks get roughed up a little, but not so much to where meat turns to ropes before getting re-crisped on a lard glistening griddle. Then instead of tending to futile scholarly duties I went about braising my pork shoulder and patiently simmering the black beans until rendered into a cumin scented swamp. After picking up a six pack of something cheap I was ready for wrapping 200+ burritos. (The first batch’s yield was significantly lower than future ones due to my weak will, unable to stop myself from eating a solid third of my carnitas). Fast forward through that sixpack and fastidiously wrapping what felt like thousands of burritos, I opened up shop- a disposable blue plastic cup, “DONATIONS” scribbled with a magnum Sharpie, sitting atop the fridge.

It’s funny to me that despite articles of clothing, lighters, records, booze and weed was regularly pilfered from one another in our circle of friends, these burritos were a testament to the hanging threads of the honor system. Maybe it was the fear of the Karma KGB that kept the desperate ones from thieving from the overly trusting lord of this juvenile cuckoo’s nest. I’m not a numbers guy, so maybe my math inflated what I was actually pulling in, but it didn’t seem so farfetched that I was collecting $40 profit per month. The profits never really surmised into anything substantial, as I managed to keep a lit match in my pocket all the time, so most of the funds were just being recycled into keeping the party vibes of this delinquent wonderworld bumping. Ultimately, it was just nice to have to have this new monthly project that I got to share with those around me, keeping the mouths of those I cared about most, fed on a steady diet of deliciousness within reach, even when captured in a vulture’s grip of a hangover. The rudimentary satisfaction over time led me to wonder, “Might there be others out there, their bodies enriched with spirits and cheap fermented grains, needing my aid?” There had to be…

For those lucky enough to have lived or once ingratiated with San Francisco know its inclinations to put on grand displays of its love for art,music, and the generally bizarre. You might plan your day aiming to go directly from A-Z, but you stop at unexpectedly at “Q”, a familiar but unnoticed street corner, because it would be a shame to pass up the moment your mind is questioning if you’re actually witnessing: the mythical man who carries a dog on his back, a cat upon the dog’s, and a rat riding atop the cat! He’s out there, believe me. Maybe you luck out like the day I was sucked in by a vacuum of 90’s nostalgia, contently standing front row to Alanis Morisette playing the 90’s eponymous album Jagged Little Pill in its entirety for F-R-E-E in the blissful confines of Golden Gate Park. My mind was in the same disbelief as yours that day, and yes Alanis could still throw down an excellent live show some 15 years after the album’s debut. Beautiful, bizarre, and totally free shit was out there for the taking if you put yourself into its orbit. It didn’t matter if you even really loved what you were seeing, but being part of that crowd, imbibing the eccentric energy circulating amongst the mob of people was intoxicating. The intoxicated were my people, and the people needed burritos.

If you searched through the vaults of CD cases, pirated Kazaa mp3’s, and now two defunct external hard drives with the deepest of dives into my listening history, bluegrass would be non-existent to scant at most, depending on how far you stretch the definition to include the banjo forward sounds of more general indie-folk bands. I wouldn’t outrightly say that I dislike the genre, but the vibe has always been outside the reach of whatever listening mood I’m in. Burritos are also a disjointing stretch when imagining typical fare at a typical bluegrass festival. Corn dogs and funnel cakes darts to the top of my assumptions. San Francisco as described earlier however doesn’t like to play by the rules and will surprise you with how they curate artistic exhibitions that may fall outside your comfort zone, hence their appropriately titled “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival”. The festival being totally free and open to the public, with minor restrictions on outside food and beverages, and completely packed with locals and tourists alike intoxicated on the Bluegrass state’s finest export, Bourbon, and other alcoholic beverages, the prospects for a burgeoning burrito business replaced my eyes with cartoon dollar signs.

Most literary people who embrace “the line, the word, the way” are rarely the folk that you’d entrust to do your accounting or budgeting related tasks… It was Thursday afternoon and the weekend of the festival was nearing. All ingredients were purchased and processing; pork braising, black beans bubbling away happily, and pre-grated cheese, well, grated, because screw trying to grate five pounds of cheese on a broken and barely functioning box grater. I’d perfected my two salsa recipes after hours of extensive and dutiful research: mass taco consumption at El Jalapeno, repeatedly tasting for the nuances of their salsa verde and salsa rojo.) The question of how to get said burritos to the festival was still in the works. What vessel could I carry these little money makers in that would keep them warm for several hours from the time that they’re rolled? What did the infamous Mission Tamale Lady do? Scanning through drunken hazy memories of closing down the bars where she angelically appeared, like the 500 club and El Rio, I remembered that her mountain of tamales were kept in an Igloo cooler. While it made total sense, my brain never considered the possibility of these coolers to serve its exact opposite purpose of keeping things heated. Duuuh. Quick trip to Target for Igloo cooler: $35 + tax. And what about the free salsa to accompany? Another cooler for that. Queue the “cha-ching” cash register sound. Better get some plastic ramekin cups? “Cha-ching”! Napkins? “Cha-ching”. Another $20 plus bucks devoured. Insecure over the quality and the lack of recognizable branding, I planned to charge charging $3 for a single burrito, or 2 for $5, burning up all possibilities of marginal gains. I rationalized that this was the investment cost that I would make up with the many more successful events to follow, and that this was simply the “market research” cost to figuring out what people would pay. The money will come, I told myself.

That Saturday morning was a blur. All delinquents on deck helping in their haggard state wrapping the 230 burritos, after their speed training of correct portion sizing and wrapping technique. “Remember! Less is more! Left-right-center-tuck-roll” echoed over and over. Surprisingly, casualties from poor technique were kept to a minimum, and I would have proudly hired any one of these jokers. After a thorough triple check for all supplies organized, Ryan dropped wingman, Andy, the other honorary burrito boy, and I at the park in the early half of the afternoon, unloading our rig onto a sliver of open space along the busy Lincoln Way adjacent to Golden Gate Park. After making our way into the park we strategized where was the best spot to set up. Eventually we decided on a spot where two trail heads merged between the two different stage locations, just far away enough from where any venue food stalls were located, not knowing if we were going to get hassled for our little side hustle. The first two hours went slower than a snail’s pace with the painful awkwardness of getting accustomed to our stadium vendor sales pitch, “Burritos! Fun-size burritos! 1 for 3, 2 for 5! Get your fun-sized burritos!”. A few stopped for a moment to inquire but were too hesitant to make the plunge in paying for these burritos that didn’t measure up to their mind’s equation of what a burrito should cost and look like size-wise. Afterall we were in the city that deeply respects and adores burritos, the namesake “Mission Burrito”, a denomination in and of itself that upholds specific standards and practices rivaling the seriousness of any wine A.O.C. I recall maybe selling a total of five within those first hours, doing my best to battle off the voice in my head that I’d made a huge mistake. After a couple hours and people’s personal stash of Sabra hummus and pita chips had been long exhausted, and the effects of hoppy ales and medical grade marijuana had clearly engaged, a new twinkle in people’s eyes appeared as they passed by. I could read their faces with clarity, calculating whether they wanted to gamble on these stranger’s burritos or queue themselves up for a mediocre hot dog. Their eyes darted between my line free burrito cooler and the hot dog line, their facial expressions consumed by what seemed to be a life changing decision, potentially forever changing the course of their lives. Finally, their impatient drunkenness and inquisitive nature gave in to the allure of our burritos.

The timid initially bought one to sate the beast in their bellies, taking a few bites as they walked away only to stop dead in their tracks, realize their foolishness for not buying two in the first place. Once there were a few people congregated, the rest figured out how much we’d undersold the value of our delicious product, automatically buying a pair or two to rescue their friends still waiting in line for their hot dog.

When presented with the question of choice of salsa unsurprisingly most opted for the red salsa, which I’d predicted would be most popular amongst the beloved gringo community because of having the closest visual assimilation to your Pace, Tostitos, and other generic-ass tomato-based salsas. (No disrespect to either, as they hold a different place in my heart, helping me get through tough moments of confused indifference at Superbowl parties, not knowing what to do with my hands except continually dive into the salsa bowl). The bold who appreciated salsas outside of the spectrum of several shades of red, I could tell were delighted and surprised by the quality of our salsa verde, which had taken far more trial and error to get right. Spicy enough to know you’re not eating at Chipotle, using punchy serrano chiles to harmonize with the acidity of raw tomatillos, while the avocado soothes and envelops any overtly floral qualities of cilantro, keeping it undetected by the soap-tasting persuasion.

The crowds started making their way out of the park, and just as we were debating if it was time to call it with just shy of a dozen burritos remaining, some cool guy in his cool guy sunglasses when the sun had already set an hour earlier, came up and bought four. He ate one right there, dabbling in both salsas. After some overtly audible animalistic sounds to express his enthusiasm, he proffered his personal chef business card, claiming: we really had some “righteous” flavors happening, and had the salsa verde was “killer”. He told Andy and I, should we ever want to collaborate with him and do something for his clients to hit him up on his Blackberry. “Fer sure,dude, ferrr sure!” we assured, laughing inside at the pretentiousness of his product-specificity on how to contact him. That said, as cool guy walked away with his burritos, holding his card in my hand, looking into a nearly emptied cooler, I couldn’t suppress a small glow. Put one in the books for the Burrito Boys.

**Last photo taken of the not so infamous Burrito Boys**

P.S. The Burrito Boys unraveled not long after this historic day. Andy’s availability to assist in wrapping production and awkwardly hawk burritos at other potential venues and events was extinguished by his returning at the summer’s end to his residence of Chicago, where I had yet to call home. The “DONATIONS” cup continued living his content cup-half-full existence atop the refrigerator, neighboring the forever neglected green sprouted potatoes before greater forces eventually swept Cheesy Fantastico from his high perch at the Plymouth House. The house was changing in sync with the neighborhood; the downstairs, had gone from drunken philosopher’s lair to IKEA’S “Back to College” study lounge, traffic on Ocean Avenue congesting with Prius drivers wedging themselves between several lanes of track leaving the new Whole Foods Market. More members of the house were managing putting on pants and making it to work on time, less crippled by their nocturnal activities. Kitchen cabinets once rife with liquor and oversized boxes of Goldfish were replaced with essentials to actually constitute whole meals, largely killing the need for my frozen burrito business. Perhaps my soulfully greasy but ultimately wholesome carnitas burritos were the harbinger of gentrification in my own home, leading people to the conclusion to generally eat better and cook for themselves? If there is any shred of truth in that, then I can sleep knowing I took gave something much greater to my people and the Burrito Boys did not die in vain. And that’s a wrap;)

If you have roommates you’d like to take advantage of or you’re interested in forfeiting a balanced diet for a steady consumption of pork, bean and commodity cheese wrapped in flour tortillas, make this recipe!

The Burrito Boys’ Ingleside Burrito

250 8” Flour Tortillas (or maybe just 8)

4 lbs Burrito Boys Carnitas (Recipe Below)

4 qts Burrito Boys Refried Black Beans (Recipe Below)

5 lbs Cheese (Quesadilla, Jack cheese, or even mozz will do) Grated

Line a sheet pan with a cloth towel, keeping an extra handy to cover the tortillas after toasting. Over a gas stove on medium/low heat toast a couple dozen of your tortillas, flipping every few seconds, until tortilla has whispers of blisters and is hot. Set aside on sheet pan with towel, covering with towel on top so the tortilla steams and keeps warm. Work in appropriate sized batches depending on the speed of your burrito wrapping skills; toast less at a time if you’re slow, go crazy if you’re a real wrapping maestro.

Tortillas ready, stripe the middle two thirds of the burrito with a couple tablespoons of black beans, followed by a large pinch of cheese, and finally a frustratingly small amount of carnitas, about 1.5 oz if you want to be more precise. The success of your wrapping hinges on your ability to not be a greedy meat head. The burrito will humble you and bring you to your knees as you fail again and again to successfully enclose all its deliciousness should not take heed of my advice.

With the contents of the burrito facing you horizontally, start by folding from the sides towards the center, then fold the side closest to you over the filling, tucking it in to itself, then rolling the tortilla forward until the seam is on the bottom. Set aside, and keep on wrapping.

Once you’ve got a sizeable stack of burritos, preheat a sheet pan or a griddle if you have one, over two burners on low heat, and sear the burrito closed by placing the seam side down on the griddle for 1 minute before turning it over for an additional 10 seconds.

Wrap all the burritos in a square piece of foil just slightly larger than the size of the tortilla, following the same wrapping technique as the burrito itself. Your army is now ready to colonize every last nook of freezer space that your roomies thought was safe for their mediocre microwave dinners. If they question what happened to their food, just tell them with a cold stare that everything had freezer burn and needed to be thrown out, but for a small cash or contraband donation they can have one of your burritos. Total monopoly.

Burrito Boy’s Refried Black Beans

4 29oz cans of Canned Black Beans (no need to flex on fancy dried beans here, but if you must..)

2 spanish onions small dice

10 cloves garlic chopped

2 serrano chiles, diced small , (to seed or not to seed? Can you take heat)

1 C delicious animal fat for ultimate luxury, (lard, duck, tallow) otherwise any oil will be fine.

1 Tbsp Ground cumin/coriander combo spice (1.5 tsp each)

1 tsp chile powder

2 qts chicken stock or water

1 Tbsp El Yucateco Green Habanero hot sauce

2 limes, zest of 1, juice of two

2 bay leaves, if subscribing to the cult

Small handful of cilantro stems (optional

Salt

Strain/rinse your beans over a colander. (While the goop from a can be beneficial for refried beans, if you don’t know your bean brand well the sodium/preservatives might push your seasoning too far. It’s akin to choosing to cook with salted vs. unsalted butter.)

In large heavy bottom’d anything, melt your chosen fat on medium/high heat until the quickly swims around in the pan. Add your onions, cook until the onions begin to color around the edge, stirring occasionally. Season with a handful of salt then add your garlic, chiles, and spices. Continue cooking an additional 3-4 minutes to let all those flavors bloom and the chiles soften.

Add half your beans, stirring to coat the beans with the well lubricated onions. Continue cooking for 8-10 minutes using a wooden spoon to bash the beans up a bit, forcing out their starchy insides. Once most of the beans are pretty busted up, add 1 c of the chicken stock, scraping up all that pan fond. Add the remaining beans and stir to coat these beans with your bean mash before adding the remaining stock/water. Make sure there is enough liquid to cover by 1”. Bring up to a simmer on medium heat, doing the scum skim dance as you wait. Adjust your heat to low, add bay leaves and your optional cilantro stems, partially cover with a lid and continue to cook, stirring to scrape the bottom of the pot every 10 or 15 minutes. If you aint got nothin’ much going on, you can get these beans to a real tasty place in 30-45 minutes if you’re stirring frequently on medium heat, a full on stallion’s giddyup pace, but I recommend taking the slow and old burro for a ride if you’ve got the time.

After the beans have arrived at a desirable sludgy texture, with some whole beans intact, turn off the heat, stir for a minute and allow to cool before seasoning to taste with salt, hot sauce, lime juice. It’ll be easier to accurately assess the seasoning closer to room temp. Don’t go overboard with seasonings as they’ll be accompanying some salty delicious pork with cheese to accompany, but still seasoned enough that you’d happily eat them by the spoonful. Burritos often don’t meet their full potential partly because the beans being overlooked as a critical component, when they take up a significant plot of the total burrito landscape, they might as well be amazing. It would be like making a BLT with unseasoned mayo- gross..

Burrito Boys Carnitas

Large Pot with a lid to fit a whole lotta pork in

Roasting pan or vessel to brown said meat and veggies

Immersion blender or food mill if ya got one.

5 lbs. pork shoulder cut into fist sized hunks.

4 onions, 2 halved north/south , 2 sliced thickish

12 cloves garlic peeled and smashed

2 qts chicken stock

6 oranges halved

2 Guajillo chiles, seeded and toasted

8 oz. lard

3 Tbsp ground cumin

1 heaping Tbsp ground coriander

1 heaping tbsp dried Oregano

Kosher Salt

Aggressively season your pork shoulder with salt first on all sides of your fist sized pork hunks. Mix together your spices and oregano and evenly distribute over the pork, massaging all the goodness into the meat. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Pull pork from fridge at least a half hour before cooking. Preheat a large roasting pan or a couple heavy bottomed pans real until just starting to smoke, adding the lard to melt into all its glory, then brown the meat until is golden on every conceivable surface. Don’t rush this step, and certainly don’t walk away for risk of burning the bejeezus out of your pork.

Setting your well caramelized meat aside, pour off, reserving for later, all but a few tablespoons of the lard in the pan, and on high heat give the halved onions a head start on their caramelization, placing cut side down, leaving undisturbed for 4-5 minutes of cooking before adding the sliced onions, garlic, and a large pinch of salt. Cook the onions and garlic until you build some fond on the pot and have gotten some nice color happening. Add one cup of your chicken stock to the onions, scraping up whatever gold has accumulated on the bottom of the pan, cooking for an extra few minutes.

In your large pot add all your pork hunks followed by your onion/garlic mix, the remaining chicken stock, Guajillo chiles, and the orange halves squeezing their juices out as they’re added into the pot, and the reserved melted lard. Use water for the remaining liquid to almost submerge top layer of pork. Think gator eyes… Bring to a simmer, covering partially. Cook for the better part of 3-4 hours until fork tender. Set the pork aside in a bowl, cover tightly so it steams in its own sauna as it cools. Discard the orange halves and continue cooking the braising liquid on medium heat until reduced by 2/3rds, doing a bit of skimming here and there, but not obsessively. By immersion blender or food mill (both fine, results will vary, but no biggie), transform your liquid into a gravy like consistency. Should taste alarmingly rich, slightly sweet and tangy, with deep porky roasted onion garlic flavor. Keep warm on the side while you test your will power in the pulling of the pork stage. Brace yourself, for the power of the pig is strong, and your happy pile will diminish to a bleak nothingness. Roughly break up the pork pieces with your hands, adding a ladles worth of the gravy to the bowl, mix together and continuing to add additional gravy until you can hear the pork making little noises of joy that it is juicy, full, and happily reunited with its own nectars. Taste the splendor, then hide from yourself until ready to wrap.

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Rise up from the Hashes

My insides are on the brink of car sickness whirring down the winding and ironic “Joy Road”, a splinter off CA-1, shrouded by poison oak and thorny ass blackberry bushes. The circumstances are a cruel but fair trade-off for permanent clarity when asked the essential question: “What’s for breakfast?”.

Once a round wee one, I was under the spell that American breakfast menus had too many choices and directions to choose from. Sweet or savory? Pancake v. Waffle? How do I want my eggs cooked? Eggs singlehandedly will have you floundering. In those fleeting minutes between beverage order and the moment your server comes round, pen and pad in hand.. As if choosing my political party right before voting for the first time, l decide copy-cat my forefathers at the table, who had yet to steer me wrong.“I, uh, I’ll have the corned beef Hash, please”. Those were the last words spoken before my democracy of American breakfast surrendered to its singular almighty ruler.

It should be said that I was no complete stranger to corn beef hash in the time before this life altering moment. In my half dozen years leading up to this I’d already made acquaintance with the crude canned cylindrical form by way of family Sunday breakfasts. Despite its aesthetics being akin to wet dog food,

I was already a believer in this selective cult. If by admitting that my excitement for this dish was supplemented by the ritual and methodical joy of applying ketchup and hot sauce, kills all potential future readership, then so be it. Heinz haters gonna hate.

However, it was at Howard’s Station Café, in Occidental, CA that the elevated form of hash- real potatoes with actual recognizable pieces of meat accompanied by fried onions and bell peppers, took reign over all future breakfast decisions. I’m not going to pretend that I quit putting said condiments on the dish, which sharp minds may consider to be contradictory to the dish being actually great if it’s greatness requires tomato MSG and a little piquant sump’n sump’n. I’d beg to differ in that in the sum of its parts, a methodical application of condiments lifts this dish above the clouds of breakfast mediocrity. It’s not a far cry away from being led to an established haunted house that would otherwise just feel creepy, but if you push F# on the fifth octave three times on that dusty piano in the study, the entire house transforms into some luxurious and magical mansion.

Corned beef hash, and hashes in general, are just that kind of dish that never quits on you. Whether it’s a diner at 3AM, a proper breakfast restaurant, or a tragically trendy brunch spot you arrive even more tragically hung over at, this amalgamation of starch, protein, and ideally two sunny side up eggs, will guarantee you satisfaction if not euphoria . Jerry’s Grill, once supreme greasy spoon south of Ravenswood, Chicago,(RIP, Jerry’s), threw down an admirable display for this dish’s potential for a mere $4!! Canned or not, a hangover miracle cure of: 2 eggs, toast, hash, and more additional hashbrowns making a triple starch meat mashup for only FOUR DOLLARS?!!GET OUTTA HERE!!!

Sorry, got carried away… As I was saying, you know it’s really quite liberating when you give up fussing with other menu options. Like many geniuses and Fortune 500 CEOs report their closet to be a mundane multiplicity of garments, same style, colors, etc. perhaps one, maybe two nice suit for special occasions and meetings, it frees their mind to stay focused on changing the world for better or worse, or just focused on accumulating incomprehensible wealth. My two exceptions to this rule are:1) when hash is not on the menu, or 2.)when the walls are whispering to get the breakfast burrito or my stomach will live in peril and regret for the hours to come. Otherwise, my allegiance to the Hash abides. I implore you all to give up your illusive ideas of freedom for these three words : “All HAIL HASH!”

Pastrami & Jimmy Nardello Hash Royale

This is my best homage to the grandness of tasting Howard Station Café’s corned beef hash, riffing on their corned beef with pastrami as well as the addition of the notoriously delicious ever elusive Jimmy Nardello pepper. Get your gumshoes on and try sourcing these at your farmer’s market, and with any luck you just might catch him.

Needs:

Large Cast Iron Pan,Food Processor/Immersion blender or knife and patience

1.5 lb Potatoes (dealers choice), 3/4” chunkers, rinsed of excess starch

2 lbs Pastrami, cubed ¾”

8-10 Large-ish Jimmy Nardello Peppers

1 each large red & green bell pepper in large dice

2 Red Onions julienned thin

10 cloves garlic, 4 sliced thin, 4 smashed, 2 finely minced

.5 tsp cumin ground

.5 tsp coriander ground

( I keep a small container of these two spices combined after toasting/grinding from seeds every month or so because they’re huge pantry players in the Cheesy Fantastico kitchen)

1 tsp smoked paprika

.5 tsp cayenne pepper

1-2 Arbol chile sliced or pinch of chile flakes

3 Tbsp butter

Olive Oil

Enough Eggs for you and your people’s demands

Red Wine Vinegar

Sherry Vinegar

1 bunch scallions sliced thin on diagonal

.5 C parsley leaves, your best chiffonade chef

.5 C Your preferred mayonnaise, or make your own aioli if you’re vibing that level of effort

Kosher Salt

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Preheat oven to 450º. In a medium bowl, toss Jimmy Nardello Peppers with a glug of olive oil and generous pinch of salt. Spread on aluminum foil lined sheet pan and pop them Jimmy’s in the oven once it’s hot until evenly blistered, but not blackened, on both sides, turning over hallway through cooking. Pinch more salt upon retrieval from the oven, dribble some red wine vinegar on them. Set aside to cool, before slicing your peppers into ½” rings.

In a medium saucepan, add your potatoes with enough cold water to cover. Salt the water liberally like for pasta, checking seasoning once the water comes up to a simmer. This will help ensure a very evenly seasoned potato. (A sprinkling of white vinegar is also a nice touch, but totally optional). Simmer ‘til tender, 12-15 minutes. Drain, set aside to cool.

Get that cast iron hot, drizzle a tablespoon or so of your olive oil and add 1 out of the 3 tablespoons of butter. In go the onions, distribute them evenly over the surface of the pan, then LET THEM BE! After a couple minutes, once some semblance of toasty color has developed, season your onions with a respectable pinch of salt, before making a small well to add your sliced garlic, then turn the heat down to medium, and continue cooking for 10 minutes before adding your diced bell peppers, cumin/coriander, paprika, chile flake, adjusting seasoning, then keep the stir and scrape party going until your peppers have a little color and have softened, I reckon another 3 minutes. Add a small splash of sherry vinegar and one more small pinch of salt, continue cooking until the vinegar dissipates enough to where you’re not making a stink-eye face upon wafting. {;<( . Yeah something like that. We’re looking for some texture and taste just shy of caramelized with a little zing. Transfer the onion pepper mix to a bowl.

Give your cast iron a perfunctory wipe down, before getting all hot and bothered again. Once we’re reheated, add another film of oil, this time adding your crushed garlic, again leaving it alone for that Midas touch, before laying down your potatoes and pastrami chunkers.

Perfect moment to make our Nardello Mayo. (Note: If you’re not alumni or a practicing member of Fat Kid Club, and have never known or understood the ways of true indulgence, skip this section). The food processor people will do their food processor thing, and the immersion blender people will add their peppers and mayo to a deli container or other vessel. Those less fortunate or technology resistant insisting on doing things more rustic, I’d recommend chopping your peppers real fine like before mixing straight into a bowl or busting out a mortar & pestle situation, concentrating on your enemies or that annoyingly weird Aunt of yours before grinding your peppers into a tasteful oblivion, then stirring into your mayo. Add a pinch of salt and a little water to get to a consistency that will ribbon off your spoon.

By now you should have some nice Maillard happening #foodiewords. Give them meat spud chunkers a turn to achieve maximum browning. You want to really push them to the edge, as once we add all the tasty soggy bits back in, we’ll still have some crispiness on our potatoes and pastram’s.

If you are approaching Brown town, fry them eggs. Get your garneeesh of parsley, scallions, roasted Jimmy Nardello rings ready for scattering, Nardello Mayo spoon cocked and loaded.

Fold in the pepper onion mix. Do the garnish dance. Stand back, assess. If you are not excited by the smells and this perfect mosaic that is Hash, right here in front of you, then God help us, everyone of us.

**In case you forgot what the target looked like. Yum.**

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Deli Scented Madness

Once upon a podcast hosted by two heavy-weight Asian gourmands and a world class bread baker, came haunting whispers in my consciousness …. “Boboli…wedge sandwich..mayonnaise…tomatoes…pickles…”. Every day started with a craving for sandwiches echoing the regularity of “I Got You Babe” in Ground Hog’s Day. I have not been to the Boboli heavens, from which this aforementioned sandwich hails, as I like many have never been brave enough, for fear of snob ridden foodie police lurking, to pull one of those green sleeved babies from the stand at the end of the freezer aisle for casual pizza endeavors. Surprisingly, they ain’t cheap neither, so my Boboli cherry remains waiting for now. Thankfully, as the days unfolded the visions for this sandwich blurred and these cravings would retreat into the dark.

In the aftermath of career pivots too many times in a year, I’ve been just so damn lucky to find myself doing bike deliveries this summer – cough, cough, sarcasm, cough. I know – I can feel the jealousy in the air, especially when you picture wearing the humongous heat box complete with subpar shoulder straps, coming in this season’s quintessential color, “Traffic Director Orange.” According to my time spent in meh sandwich chains in Chicago, while there are hundreds of restaurants, varying in nearly every food genre to meet all kinds of cravings, customer desires remain focused and clear that when the weather buoys in the upper 80’s, sandwiches reign supreme.. Within a few short hours I’ll find myself waiting for the Josh’s, the Todd’s, and the Karen’s of the universe order, at various sandwich chains, taking in the sights; a line of reluctant sandwich artists pretending to hustle their way through each order, while the scent of toasted bread, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and pickles slithers into my olfactory glands. Sneaky sons of bitches. The serpentine waft has awoken the beast, and I’m nowhere near to the end of my deliveries, nor do I have any sandwich bread or deli meats at home to remedy this…but, I do have…. Meatloaf, green beans, and focaccia.

The cold meatloaf sandwich is a blessed thing. If not already adorned with the classic ketchup top, my move back in the day was to slather a good layer of bbq sauce onto some whatever white bread and call it right there. This recipe pays homage to that with the use of hoi sin complimenting my curiosity to try meatloaf with a ginger/scallion/soy profile.

Frightfully lean on pickles in my fridge to bring the required acidity and fragrance of a deli sandwich, I macerated some left over blistered green beans in a combination of apple cider & rice wine vinegar, with a pinch of sugar. Pickles together with iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, almost completed the amalgamation of aromas, but not without the final touch- furikake everything spiced focaccia bread.

Everything spice is great, but I’m not as goo goo gah gah over it as the masses, thus adding the Furikake which supplements the sesame seed vibe while providing some extra umami, which assists in recreating the synthetic bread smell that wafts from sandwich shops, as if Febreze came out with a “Toasted Bread” scent, spraying full blast through their air vents onto the innocent civilians passing by.

If you care to put the odd stars together to form this sandwich constellation, and you’ve a tissue handy for tears of joy, please read on and make this sandwich.

Furikake Everything Focaccia

Buy a scale, it’ll do your baking wonders.

600 g All Purpose Flour

425 g Tepid Water

75 g Tasty Olive Oil + extra for oiling pan

5 g Active Dry Yeast (or if you’re a bread Jedi, 100 g healthy sourdough leaven)

12 g Sea Salt

Everything spice mixed with a couple spoons Furikake Rice Seasoning

1 C Leeks thinly sliced (optional)

If using yeast, add to your water, wait a few minutes before checking that yeast is lively and looking foamy on top. (If using leaven, you’re probably smart enough to skip this whole recipe and just make the focaccia with your eyes closed, but just in case, add your leaven to the water, making sure it floats, swish it around to evenly incorporate into the water).

In a mixing bowl fitted with a dough hook or by hand, you will mix your flour with the water yeast/starter mix and olive oil for 3 minutes until it just starts to come together into a mass. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes or longer. Add the salt, and continue mixing 7-8 minutes.

Prepare either a clean bowl or plastic container that will fit the dough with a couple tablespoons of oil, distributing it with your hands along the sides, and just enjoy having your hands coated in the olive oil. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface just until smooth on the surface, about 1-2 minutes. Transfer to oiled vessel, and allow proof until doubled in size, 2ish hours, if baking that day, or I recommend letting it hang out for an hour or two before refrigerating overnight.

Preheat oven to 500º. Get a pizza stone in there to heat for 30 minutes if ya got one, otherwise don’t fret.

Pull the dough from the fridge, give it a little bop to punch it down. Add a generous amount of olive oil to a 14×10 baking dish or half sheet pan – I used a 14×10 Detroit style pizza pan, yielding slightly taller poofy-erfocaccia, which was delicious but requiring an Anaconda’s jaw to fit in a bite, sooo… a half sheet pan is probably best for sandwich purposes.

If you want to be civilized use a brush to distribute, or again an opportunity to just get weird and enjoy the moment having your hands bathed in olive oil. Place the dough into the baking dish/sheet pan, turning it over a couple times to distribute the olive oil all over the dough, and gently but firmly stretch dough towards the edge of the pan. Don’t force it! The dough will loosen up as it proofs again for an hour, which then will be no problem getting the dough to the pan’s edge.

Once your dough has happily mansplayed itself to the corners of your pan, it’s time to make them dimples. I like doing a two handed three finger prod and gouge method. If you have nothing going on or just really high knock yourself out and meticulously poke perfect holes in perfect rows one at a time, maybe with the lights off? You do you.

Generously scatter the furikake everything spice over your dough liberally as if you were that crazy bird feeding woman in the park caring more about the pigeons than most humans she will ever meet. Nod to Home Alone 2 fans.Put your focaccia on top of your pizza stone. Turn the heat down to 450º, and bake for around 20 minutes, turning the pan halfway through baking. The top should be lightly browned, with the sides and bottom a more caramelized brown color. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Shameless Fusion Meatloaf

1 lb Ground Pork
1 lb Ground turkey
2.5 C breadcrumbs
2 eggs
½ C Milk
2 T minced ginger
3 C thinly sliced leeks
1 bunch of scallions, sliced thin, greens and whites separated
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp Maggi Seasoning or substitute fish sauce
1 T Oyster sauce
1 T dark soy sauce
2 T Xaoxing rice wine – only a minor demerits if omitted
1 tsp Worchestire sauce
1 T toasted sesame oil
2 T grapeseed or neutral oil
Kosher salt

For the Glaze

¼ C Hoisin Sauce
1 T Oyster sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
¼ C Sriracha
1 tsp honey
1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Set your oven to 350º. Whisk together all your ingredients for your glaze and set aside.Heat a sauce pan on medium heat, add your grapeseed oil, and sweat your leeks, 1 tablespoon of the ginger, all the garlic, and your scallion whites. Add a small pinch of salt and cook for 2-3 minutes, until just starting to soften. Add the oyster sauce, Maggi seasoning, and soy, stirring to incorporate and continue cooking for another 4-5 minutes on medium low heat. Add the rice wine and cook for another 3 minutes, or just enough to remove the alcohol. Add the sesame oil, stir, then transfer to a bowl to cool completely.

In a large mixing bowl add your breadcrumbs, milk, scallion greens, the remaining ginger and mix together. It should feel tacky but not wet. Once your leeks have cooled, add those aromatics and the meat to the mixing bowl and mix until evenly distributed. To check your seasoning choose your destiny and either boil, fry, or even microwave a nub of your mixture to make sure your seasoning is where you like it. It’s embarrassing as all hell to put this work in and have your loaf turn out super under or over seasoned, so now’s your chance to avoid being shamed for your careless seasoning.

If you own a loaf pan, use it, lightly oiling the inside.. As you add the meat give the pan some thorough thwacks on the counter so there aren’t any air pockets. We’re making meat loaf not swiss cheese, so thwack that loaf. Sans pan? Free-style that shit. Sheet pan, double layer foil – lightly greased- , form your meat right on there into a 9×4”ish log/rectangle situation. The thwack as you build your meat situation still applies.

Note: Place a sheet pan lined with foil adding maybe a cup of water underneath the meatloaf pan, as the delicious fats and juices in any meatloaf just can’t contain themselves, spilling over the side to cause a nice little grease fire.

Bake in your 350º oven for 30 minutes before applying your glaze, otherwise the sugars in the glaze will burn before the meatloaf is cooked. Continue cooking for an additional 30-45 minutes, adding a little more glaze in between if you like a thick shellack. The juices should run clear when prodded and temping at 160º. Most important, it should look like a meatloaf and generally delicious in appearance. Allow to cool as much as your hunger will allow before slicing to ensure easy slicing, ideally 20-30 minutes, if not longer. I promise it won’t be cold, and if serving your Dad/Mom/seniors that don’t acknowledge what they’re eating is food unless it’s scorching hot, pop their slice into a 450º oven until it’s hot enough to burn the remaining nerve endings in his/her mouth.

Blistered Green Bean Pickles

1 lb green beans, washed, ends trimmed
2 T Oyster Sauce
1 T Soy Sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
2 large shallots cut into ¼” rings
Grapeseed oil
Blackl Pepper, freshly ground

For the Pickle

2 Cups or whatever sparse leftovers blistered green beans

¼ C Rice Wine Vinegar + 1 T extra

¼ C Apple Cider Vinegar

1 tsp. sugar

Blanch the green beans in the salty water for 1 minute, working in batches if your pot is small. Transfer to ice bath, swish around until the beans themselves feel cold when you bite into one. Transfer to a sheet pan lined with paper towels and allow to dry, dabbing with another paper towel to remove as much water as possible.

Heat a large cast iron skillet on medium/high heat for 4-5 minutes. Meanwhile whisk together the oyster, soy, and fish sauce. When your pan is thoroughly heated and starting to smoke, add your grape seed oil then your green beans in an even layer, again working in batches if your pan doesn’t fit all the beans in one layer. If your pan was hot enough, there should be a real ruckus going on. Leave the beans undisturbed for the first 1-2 minutes. When you’ve established serious blistering on that first side, you may now give them a quick toss and continue cooking for another minute before pushing to one side of the pan and adding your sliced shallots. Like beans, leave the shallots alone for the first minute. Add your sauce mixture, and toss everything together, cooking for 2 more minutes. Drizzle that sesame oil and taste for seasoning.

Allow to cool to room temp before refrigerating to make your “pickles” the next day or in a couple hours.Your green beans chilled, season them with the sugar and add your vinegars, toss and let them marinate together for at least 20-30 minutes if not overnight before using as pickles.

Shameless Fusion Meatloaf Sandwich

I’m no architect nor have I ever graduated from Sandwich Artist University, but this is how I built this devastatingly delicious beast of a sandwich.
Furikake Everything Focaccia, sliced horizontal
4 slices Shameless Fusion Meatloaf, sliced ¼” thick
Glaze from S.F.A Meatloaf
Blistered Green Bean Pickles
Cheese of your choice(optional)
¼ C Kewpie Mayo or preferred brand with a small dosing of MSG
1 hefty tomato Sliced 1/8”
Iceberg Shredduce
½ Red Onion sliced thin
Toasted Sesame Oil
Fresh Cracked Black pepper
Salt and/or furikake rice seasoning

Preheat oven to 425º. Crumb side facing up, layer your cheese if using on the top half of your focaccia. Lightly oil the other half and toast until the cheese is just melted, or just barely golden at the edges. Let the bread cool a minute before liberally applying the Kewpie/MSG mayo. Fan your meatloaf slices out, drizzling a little of the glaze over each piece.

After the meatloaf comes the tomatoes, evenly covering the dimensions of the sandwich, seasoning the tomatoes with a pinch of salt and/or more furikake. Next add the red onions and the green bean pickles. Finally add the shredduce on top, season again with salt and pepper and lightly drizzle your sesame oil and a little of the pickle juices atop the shredduce. Finally, top with other bread half, cut in half, stand back and gaze lovingly into your sandwich’s cross section. The only thing left to do is decide if you’re going to share this with a few loved ones or hastily devour the entire thing, maybe over the sink, leaving no evidence behind of your gluttony. The choice is yours, eat at your own risk.

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Thee Bite: We Meet Again Old Friend

Spending time with your parents as a fifteen year old can really bore the shit out of you. While family vacations are always well intentioned, a long weekend in a touristy as all hell beach town can be less than ideal by teenage standards.. I suppose if cowboy boots and hat boutiques, overpriced kite shops, and chowder houses all claiming to be the world’s best are your jive then well, read no further, because I’m only more likely to insult your tribe as I continue on. Even with a most trusty companion, the boredom had me nearly succumb to sporking myself in the eyes – sporks seemed to be the silverware of choice at these exclamatory chowder houses – while my friend kept things interesting by accidentally smudging his eye with remnants from a bottle of “Dave’s Insanity Sauce” hot sauce, killing a couple hours wandering around red faced, tearing, pondering the silver linings of blindness. But just when hope had receded with the tides into the great Pacific, Pismo Beach unveiled it’s one savior, worthy of worldly claims: Old West Cinnamon Rolls.

Now for those that don’t have any indulgent inner fat kid DNA controlling your circuit boards, you may give two shits about the merit of a cinnamon roll. To that I may not be able to alter your opinion, as I fully understand that most people in the world have been subjugated to the likes of cinnamon rolls available in malls and other corporate bakeries shameless in their aims to give consistent shite. If you can suspend your disbelief that this is the fate for all cinnamon rolls, then take the leap and believe me when I say that Old West Cinnamon Rolls are the heavy weight champions you’ve never heard of, and if you have, a golf clap for you.

Recently, I had the opportunity to revisit this buttery childhood haunt, to which I will firmly attest to their excellence. I’m certain that if you were to subject their baker’s to a polygraph test that you’d find the secret ingredients are : flour, sugar, love, grandma’s blood, and laughable amounts of sweet butter. Indulgent as these essentials are, these cinnamon rolls fall into the cliché’d category of food of the clouds. Ethereally fluffy in texture, they possess a sturdiness to stand up to their appropriately sweetened vanilla laced cream cheese frosting, resting sinfully in a 2-gallon Cambro, lacquering those puppies to order. Remember to close your now gaping jaw before approaching the counter.

While each roll will only cost you $4, it makes little to no sense to buy only one. Buy a plain, frosted, duh!, and then up the ante with something more elaborate like their toasted almond cinnamon roll, (obviously frosted, because we all know we’re eating these for a socially acceptable reason to consume inappropriate amounts of cream cheese frosting). If a boring beach town is not in your top five of soon to be travel destinations, fret not, because they ship these babies. Or, if you’re the type to go Sandra-Lee semi-homemade, pick up one of their dry ingredient kits to bake these suckers at home and make flagrant lies to your friends that you made these scratch-scratch, which is exactly what I did since my sister had mailed me a bag as a gift. Hey! Don’t judge. I at least added some excess sourdough leaven and proofing an extra bit in the fridge. Anyways, treat yo’ self. You probably don’t need them, per sé, but you kinda do if you ever want to know true happiness… It’s been a year and then some, so go west, real west, buy a cinnamon roll, and then I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.

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News, Goons & Squiggle Tubes

I don’t know if you follow the news, but uhhhh… Is anyone else craving calamari lately? Is it just my appetite that transmogrifies the name of a certain Goon’s Goon, Mathew Calamari, into a mental cloud suspended by cravings for squiggly tentacle bits and tubular goodies. For those afflicted similarly, I ascribe the following remedy of starting with this recipe.

Get it:

Ripping hot grill, or if raining in June like it is right now in Chicago, a real hot grill pan.

Pot/Pan with lid and wide enough to fit mussels in even layer, ensuring quick even cook time

A small army of vinegars to employ

1 Lb Squid, cleaned, rings cut ½”

1 lb Mussels, ALIIIIVE!

2 C Cooked cannellini like white bean, rinsed and drained

1 Heaping Tbsp paste of garlic + 3 cloves sliced real thin

1 Bunch parsley, reserving a few leaves for garnish, finely chopped

1 stick of celery, cut thin on a diagonal (celery heart welcomed 😉

1 Lemon, zested, juiced, separated

1 tsp ground chile flake (flex the espelette if ya’s got it!)

1 tsp smoked paprika

30 Grinds, minimal!, coarse ground black pepper

2 Dozen cherry tomatoes

1 Red onion half julienned finely (macerated) & 1 half small dice

1 tsp. Fish sauce

2T Red Wine Vinegar

2T Sherry Vinegar

¼ C. Rice Wine Vinegar vinegar

2 Tbsp Water

Extra virgin olive oil

Sea Salt, or suspend your disbelief and use kosher.

Finishing salt of your choice; Fleur du Sel, Maldon, Jacobsen, etc.

Start your engines, whether that’s live fire or preheating a grill pan to whatever your oven allows, get that going.

To make the squid marinade, we’ll do some real avant garde shit starting and ending by mixing together: heap o’ minced garlic, chile flake/espelette, half of the diced red onion,lemon zest, about a quarter of the chopped parsley, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. In a small baking dish add your squid rings and tentacles and season with a three finger pinch of salt, (That’d be your pointer, middle, ring + thumb) toss lightly, and then pour your super fancy marinade over. The squid should be just coated and not drenched in marinade. I know, crazy stuff happening here, stay with me for this next step. Refrigerate the squid..Woah.

While the squid gets spa treatment, in the pot/pan you’ll cook the muscles add about ½ cup olive oil and all that supremely sliced garlic, heating on low until the garlic just starts to soften, then remove from the heat. I-N-F-U-S-I-O-N.

Next, macerate the julienned onions by adding a pinch of salt, toss lightly, pouring the red wine vinegar and half the sherry vinegar poured over. Give onions a light stir and set aside.

Reserving 10 cherry tomatoes, cut the rest horizontally, season liberally with salt, mix gently, and let drain, reserving juices for your vinaigrette.

Return your attention to the pan with the garlic. Turning the heat on to medium/high the garlic should just start turning a light golden color and the oil with a light sheen AKA hot, adding the reserved whole tomatoes to the pan. We want to lightly blister the tomatoes, so do NOT move them buggers for the first 1-2 minutes. Once there’s some color, add your remaining diced red onion and the smoked paprika, sweating the onions for 2-3 minutes so the spices can cook out. Add your mussels and the fish sauce, stirring briefly to coat with the aromatic oil before adding your rice wine vinegar and water before covering with a lid, lowering the heat to medium, cooking for another 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid, discarding any un-opened mussels, setting aside all cooked mussels in a bowl, picking as soon as cool enough to handle. The delicious sea nectar left behind should already welcome a piece of chewy bread, but Don’t! You!! Dare!!!

In a medium sized mixing bowl, add your drained white beans, the garlic-y spiced mussel nectar, the reserved tomato water, mix well, and taste for seasoning.

Don’t disrespect the squid by trying to cook on some prematurely heated pan or grill. To get that squid Goldilocks perfect, we gotta cook it hot and fast. With a vessel ready to transfer the cooked squid, drain the excess marinade, otherwise you’ll get major flare up, and all that deliciousness will turn to acrid waste! Add your squid to the grill. Allow char for 1-2 minutes or until you establish some good color on the squid, turn over and continue cooking for another minute. Pull one piece, and taste for texture . Should feel aaaalmost raw with the crisp of an intense sear, becoming more tender as it cools . Season your cooked squid with the lemon juice, a solid couple glugs of your best olive oil and remaining parsley, mix well and taste for seasoning, remembering there will be finishing salt at the very end.

Fold your marinated squid in with your beans, the mussels, sliced celery, cherry tomatoes and adding the macerated onions, reserving some of the vinegar to adjust acidity. Be careful not break up the texture of the tomato too much when stirring things together. Give one last taste before plating on a warm large dinner plate or pasta bowl. Save the best prettiest tomatoes to apply as a garnish on top in addition to a few sprigs of parsley and finishing salt.

(Psssss.If you’re the type to guild the lily, go the extra mile and make a lemony garlic aioli to make a small pool beneath the beans and drizzle a good bit over the top, otherwise just give an drizzle or two of olive oil over the top.

While this will cure your irrational cravings, it will not cure your rationale.

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Il Cinque Formaggi; An Awkward Moment of Pizza and Hapaness

Service was over. Another brunch, another dolla. This service I’d deem agreeable, but what made it a moment to celebrate, besides knowing staff drinks were reportedly on their way, was that the solar eclipse of pizzas was seconds away from hitting the staff meal table. Two worlds colliding between when two menus, each changed daily and with their own respective landscape displayed by way of a pizzaiolo’s mise-en-place , brought forth a candidly curated collection of cheeses. This collision only happened so often, so when the FOH general manager, a saint who will rename nameless, saw what pie was getting its last few beauty blisters in the oven, hands clasped by her heart with eyes wide open asked me if it was happening? Was it really happening? With a cool nod and childish grin came a soft, “Yes. Yes, it’s happening.”

I’m talking about none other than “The Cinque Formaggi”. That’s right, to hell with your four cheeses. We’re talking numerically literal next level cheeses here.

The starting lineup on this cheese roster include: 1.) The liberally salted, well drained Mozzarella Curd,2.) Coins of Buffalo Mozzarella, 3.) Coarsely grated Pecorino Toscano, 4.) Shaved Grana Padano, and 5.) Pinched dollops of fresh ricotta. Each cheese in its own respective dimension. It’s important to note the specifics of the application of the Toscano, that being: taking a hulking handful, clumping it in your palm, then broken up into small craters. Part of the PM lineup for the “Amatriciana” pie, all rights reserved to a Jacob W. for bringing that delicious pizza to our attention), the Pecorino Toscano cheese is the real MVP in creating such a dynamic cheese sensation). Salty, but aged just shy of losing its innocent creaminess, and becoming a full fledged, salty, hardened by life cousin, Pecorino Romano. No disrespect, but he just wasn’t part of the chemistry. He’d be like the 6^th member to a boyband. Talented; sure, but sometimes excessive in the hip thrust choreography, always reaching for that higher note in group harmonies with spotty success, and just barely fitting into frame in press photos.

The backstage players to our fab 5 were: Garlic( oil dabbed, heavy handful of slivers), Sea Salt, Ground Chile Flake, and a skosh of Sliced Calabrian chiles. The Calabrians are the perfectly placed lights that capture the inherent glow of our glistening cheeses. All elements together as one create one hell of a show that impregnates your memory as one of the finest pies your mouth has ever witnessed.

Pizza in hand, drink imbibed, I paraded around the corner, holding the pie high over head, resting it securely on the elegant three prong finger stance. Wanting for a French horn or other exclamatory wind instruments, I settled for a deep chested booming “ Thee Cheenk-Way Formaggi!!!” I placed the pizza down next to the other less adored ‘za’s. I’d barely placed the pizza on the table before a murder of Sunday Brunch Survivors circled in for a piece. Standing back, I see one of the newer staff, look at me with an awkward open-mouthed glare. Had I reached an obnoxious volume in my enthusiasm for delivering this lauded pizza? Yes, absolutely. Did it call for the resting “what the fuck did he just say?” face? I doubt it.

The server made her way around the crowd and came up to me eyes slanted in grave dissent.And Scene…

Brunch Survivor #4367: “What you said is racist, and I don’t think is very funny.”

My face turned to a puddle rippled by this confusing pebble out of left field. In earnest befuddlement and my staff drink kicking in I burped out,

Cheesy Fantastico:“Que?”

Brunch Survivor # 4367: “What you said is racist.”

My chef was in ear shot of our conversation and now was also interested in what potentially I, one of the more tamely mannered cooks in the lot, could have said that would be deemed racist. Quietly, afraid to repeat what had been hollered, she murmured.

Brunch Survivor #4: “Chink. Chink way …. You called the pizza “Chink Way Formaggi!”

I turned to face my Chef, as he simultaneously turned towards me, in the dawning disbelief of this lost in translation moment, this homonym gone wrong. With a shared tone of “you dumb-dumb” we replied in unison,

Chorus: Cinque means “5”.

Brunch Survivor #4367: What?!

Chorus: It means “5” in Italian.

Brunch Survivor #4: Like, really? Oh. Oooooooh.

Chorus: Uh, yeah.

With a couple seconds to digest the awkward assail, we found ourselves in hysterics. How preposterous?! To think that a Chinese American “halfie” like myself would use such vulgarities to describe a pizza, innocent in its nature besides its volcanic cheese waiting to eviscerate the mouths of the impatient, and further haunting digestive systems sensitive to excessive dairy consumption…Oh, wait, that’s right. I forgot that nobody has ever correctly assumed me to be from this ethnic gene pool. Forever I am: ambiguously brown.

Forever, shades too dark to accurately match any specific cultural identity. Culturally steeped in a rare blend of San Franciscan and Midwest culture, I was a brown splotch on the spectrum of typical American upbringing. I felt myself to be as white as they come in many ways. My own mother, blonde and blue eyed. My Grandma Ethel; a veteran pie maker, held in high esteem by her Midwest neighbors, not to mention a wicked ketchup-topped meatloaf recipe in her back pocket. Without these two blatant reminders, it always remained clear in my own head that I was in fact Chinese, by way of the sheer volume of Chinese relatives that speckled my earliest memories of family gatherings, and the red envelopes peering out from their pockets around holidays. It was my secret from the world. It never required effort to maintain this ambiguity. Why ruin the peaceful view of the world I operated in? Never being made fun of for cultural disparities, my enemies unable to find a foothold on from what angle to attack from. I grew up chubby; cheeks ripe for some old bingo freak to pinch to their heart’s content, an appetite and diet destined for King’s disease, contained by a thick layer of awkward shyness the majority of my years. Wasn’t that enough fuel to be occasionally picked on? Why add tinder to the fire? Let them believe whatever suits their imaginations, and I could continue to live on with my life in quiet acknowledgement of my own ethnicity.

In the moment, under the cross hairs for making racist remarks, I spoke up, corrected, and told Brunch Survivor #4367 that I was half Chinese myself, so there was no possibility of any racist undertones, and we all lived happily ever after. Or did we?

(Caution: Real Talk Ahead)

The current climate for racism towards Asian Americans as well as pretty much every other ethnicity, color, and culture, is scorching the available Earth we’re all trying to share. My social media feed is buried in rampant injustice towards Asian Americans. Photo after photo depicting innocent people physically and verbally beaten for trying to co-exist in a misinformed country that allows them to be themselves only when convenient and done quietly. I can’t unsee the pain, confusion, and disappointment in these victim’s eyes. I can’t unsee the images of my own grandparents, relatives superimposed on these same faces. Their gaze piercing my question; what if I’d spoken up sooner? How many times did I passively let small aggressions, “jokes”, racially charged gestures towards my own people go uncontested? My answer is sad and not uncommon; far too fucking long. I am sorry.

Hiding behind my ability to float between a myriad of ethnic possibilities is not an option to pursue any further. Posting a blog encouraging myself and others to speak/stand up for innocent individuals facing these often violent injustices is a lot easier than doing so. I acknowledge this, and can’t fix the passive mistakes I’ve already made, but I’m telling y’all now that the cloak comes off, and accountability starts now.

Il Cinque Formaggi; The Pizza

For those that forged across the Cheesy Rambling River, appetite and ambition to cook still intact, here you go.

You will need:

An oven that will brave 450 + temperatures
Brush for garlic oil
Pizza peel/well-floured upside down sheet pan (MacGyver approves this message).

Pizza Dough (buy it or make it, this recipe don’t care. We’ll talk dough some other

time, so long as you have enough to make at least two of these pizzas)

Cheeses (Quantities are for TWO pizzas. Don’t be a joker overtopping your shit and making soggy puddles on your pizza)

8 oz Fresh Mozzarella Curd, well salted and drained (regular fresh mozz. is fine but be sparing due to higher water content)
1 Ball of Buffalo Mozzarella, about 3.5/4Oz, cut into ¼” coins
8 oz Pecorino Toscano, grated (relish the quest in finding this cheese or sub a mild aged sheep’s milk cheese
5 oz Ricotta cheese, if you feel like burning bucks look for Bellwether Farms
1 piece of Grana Padano or King Parmigiano, peeler/shaving instrument at the ready
7 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced…(insert tired Goodfellas reference here), submerged in olive oil
3 Calabrian chiles, seeded and sliced thinly
Red chile flake ground finely
Sea salt

Preheat your oven to it’s brink. 500 is the furthest my oven goes to, so ya, if yours doesn’t, it probably won’t be quite as good. Bring your slightly inferior but still delicious pizza to your landlord and give’m hell until he does something about it.

For now, I’m making the sweeping generalization that with the 1 billion google results for pizza recipes that y’all are able to make/get dough transformed from blob to supple blob to circular canvas, thus the dough disquisition isn’t on today’s agenda.

With your pizza stretched and ready on a well floured pizza peel or upside down sheet pan in my case, using your brush dab five or six spots on your pizza canvas with your garlic oil. Sprankle that sea salt and ground chile over the center of the dough. Throw down a dozen or so slices of the garlic from your garlic oil. Now, with a disciplined hand of restraint add your mozzarella curd, followed by the buffalo mozz. Squish and pinch the pecorino toscano, and spoon the ricotta into any remaining cheese gaps. Light application of Calabrians to top things off, and boom! Yo pizza is ready for takeoff.

Bake that bad Sally for a solid 5 minutes before even considering looking, let alone opening your crappy apartment oven. Give the pizza a little 180º, and forget about it for another 2-3 minutes. Cook it until there be some major browning or blisters, if you lucky, on the crust, and the cheese be bubbling. The cheeses should still have some discernible definition, and not some homogenous orang-y brown veil.

If all this looks proper, get grating thick and quick with that grana or parm situation. With just enough parm to cool the volcanic cheese bubbles, you may be safe to start scarfing this wonder of the world, otherwise let cool a minute, drool bucket situated appropriately. Mangia that shit.

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All Hopped Up on Balls

I don’t know any other way. At this point, when it comes to making meatballs, beer is a must. As gross as it is to fondle a cold pint with hands tacky from getting totally spherical with a harmoniously seasoned pile of meat, bread crumb, and the varied DNA of any great meatball, I make damn sure that the glass is within arm’s reach. It is vital to my assurance that the approximate 3-finger pinch, jabbed with the ferocity of the “5-Point-Palm-Exploding-Heart-Technique”, weighs out to 2.5 oz, my ideal meatball size. It’s a vibe thing, and not all too different from my strategy when going bowling; One power glug, make sure good tunes are queued up if not already blasting from either stereo or iphone tucked into quart deli, then and only then can I get my hands dirty and get rolling. Maintenance sips in between to keep the feel and rhythm going. Be forewarned that the benefit of these sips can quickly plateau and before you know it your groove of spares and strikes will quickly turn to gutter balls and you’ll end up Munson’d(if you don’t get the reference, you should quit reading this and watch Woody Harrelson’s masterpiece performance in “Kingpin”).

Once upon a time as a prep cook I was often summoned by my Chef after grueling shifts of dough rolling, lettuce cleaning, garlic mincing, and other romantically mundane tasks ,to help him out with getting the next day’s army of meatballs rolled out, so they could be well chilled before frying the next day. Even though we both knew the question to stay later was rhetorical, the answer being always and forever yes, he was kind and wise enough to soften the blow and proffer me a couple beers from the bar in exchange for the free labor. Fair or not, I will always dig the bartering system. Plan ahead for this recipe, as much as possible, ie: Breadcrumbs ground, cheese grated, greens and onions cooked, pint glasses chilled, making sure you have enough beverages to finish however many meatballs you intend to roll, whether it’s 24 or 200+. Use a scale, or just drive by feel, baby! This is the way of the meatball.

Stupidly Delicious Pork Meatballs

You will need:

The Meat

3.5 lbs ground pork (Grind it yourself from a beautiful butt if you’ve the means)
1 tsp each fennel & coriander seed toasted and ground
1.5 Tbsp chile flake ground

Everything else..

6 C breadcrumbs (ideally from a softer pan de mie like bread)
2 ½ C Parmesan Cheese grated on medium hole of box grater
1 C Milk (may need a little more or less depending on the breadcrumbs and their absorption)
3 Eggs whole
1 C cooked yellow onion (sweat it low and slow with EVOO until translucent tender, 8-10 min)
3 T minced garlic (keep nearly submerged with evoo until ready to use to prevent oxidation)
1 bunch parsley finely chopped

2 Bunches Rapini AKA Broccoli Raab, everything but an inch of the stems chopped, washed and drained
½ C EVO
2 T garlic
1 T chile flake

Dat Sauce

(2) 26 oz. cans of quality whole peeled tomatoes, squeezed into pieces by hand
1 yellow onion grated
3 cloves garlic sliced fine
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp chile flake
1 Tbsp tomato paste
6 leaves of basil
½ C EVOO
1 Tbsp salt
½ lb. miscellaneous ham skins, prosciutto scraps, roasted pork bones, and/or parm rinds ( I keep these little witch treasures in my freezer for these simmering occasions. Flavor habits.)

To make the sauce, put a large sauce pot on medium heat with your EVOO, onion, oregano, chile flake, season with half the salt, and cook for 3-4 minutes. We’re not going for color on the onions, so don’t wander away. Add your sliced garlic and cook for an additional minute, letting that garlic just start to melt before adding your tomato paste. Cook the paste until you get a brick red color coating your onions and garlic, and then finally add your hand squashed canned tomatoes, seasoning with your remaining salt. Use less salt if you’re a freaky witch adding the recommended savory bits. Bring to a simmer on medium heat before lowering to a simmer and covering, leaving lid slightly ajar to allow some evaporation, with a stir here and there as you walk to the fridge for a tasty beverage or snack. Once the sauce is reduced somewhere between half and a third, resembling porridge cereal like consistency, take it off the stove and discard them witch bits. Set aside.

To get the rapini right, you will test the sensitivity of your smoke alarm, or just live on the edge with batteries removed at all times. Get a wide bottomed sauté pan reeeal hot, until it is about to smoke, then add your olive oil, turning off your heat before adding half your rapini. Turning off the heat will prevent flare ups, which will burn your oil and ruin your rapini and your day in one fall swoop. If your pan was properly heated, the Rice Krispie elves will run for cover hearing the firecrackers going off in your pan. Having your salt, chili, and minced garlic ready, quickly season with salt and chile, adding half your garlic to a corner of the pan, tilting slightly so the oil begins to bloom all that garlic flavor throughout. Vigorously stir the rapini for a minute, coating it with the oil. The rapini will start to release steam which will help it cook through. When it starts to sound like it’s beginning to fry again, about 4-5 minutes, taste a piece for seasoning and tenderness. It should have texture but not bite and taste delicious, cooking and seasoning more if this is not the case. Transfer to a sheet pan to cool and repeat with the remaining rapini. Make sure you’ve removed any bits before ramping the heat back up as all that will burn and make everything taste burnt.

Finally, we’ve arrived at the meatball portion of this damned recipe. Mix together in a large bowl your: breadcrumbs, parm, sweated onion, eggs, milk, minced garlic, parsley, and rapini. Squeeze it between your fingers, both because the mix needs it and it just is an irreplaceable tactile sensation. Thank me later. It should now feel slightly tacky, but not wet. Set aside (refrigerating if you’re the masochist grinding their own pork shoulder).

Get a small sauté pan on medium low heat with 1 T oil. Add your ground pork to your breadcrumb mix. Fold everything together. Mix until things seem evenly distributed, about 3-4 minutes. Pinch a little half dollar sized patty and add to the preheated pan. Cook on one side for about 2 minutes before flipping, and continue to cook until it aint raw, about 2-3 more minutes. Taste to adjust your seasoning before the final balling.??? Salt? Spice? Chile?

Assuming you’ve crushed it on seasoning your meat properly, give the mix and yourself a good little pat with your meaty zombie hands, as now the fun begins.

With a lightly oiled parchment or aluminum foil lined sheet pan ready, as well as a chilled and filled pint glass with beer of choice, begin to roll your meatballs. I like giving a couple slaps between the palms before frenetically rolling 15-16 revolutions in my slightly cupped hands to ensure that I’ve encapsulated the spheric essence of the meatball. Repeat until every scrap of meat has become a ball. Refrigerate for 2 hours, overnight is best, to allow to firmly set.

Preheat oven to 325º. Prepare the roasting pan that will comfortably fit your balls in one single layer. Get a large sauté pan on medium heat, adding enough olive oil to come up the sides of the pan about 1/8”. The oil should be hot and shimmering looking, but not smoking. Add your meatballs, giving a little baby rollaround in your hands as you add them to the pan, making sure not to crowd them. Without moving, cook for 2-3 minutes, basting the tops with the oil before gingerly turning the balls over once a deep golden brown crust is achieved. Repeat with remaining meatballs, transferring to your roasting pan.

Meanwhile bring your tomato sauce up to a simmer on low heat. The balls should still be raw, as it is intended to have them cook through in the braise.

( If preparing a true army of meatballs and not just a small militia as this recipe provides, I highly recommend setting up a large pot and deep frying them in a neutral oil of your choosing. This will significantly speed up the process while ensuring an evenly caramelized ball.)

Add enough sauce to just cover your meatballs, wrap tight with aluminum foil, and cook in the oven for an hour. Take out of the oven, remove the foil and observe the glory. If equipped with an asbestos lined mouth, you’ll taste the glory immediately. The others will have to be more patient. Freeze what you don’t devour, or just adopt a strong diet of meatballs for the coming weeks. No judging; you do you. Now drink up and get ballin’.

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The Genesis: “Where did he come from? Where did he go? Who dressed this salad? Cheese Fantastico.

I was one of the lucky ones. To grow up in a family where eating delicious food was a fairly important part of keeping morale high. It was ludicrous thinking to us all that food was just some kinda gut fuel or feces in waiting. Flavor need be present at all family meals; a vegetable or salad of sorts and some kind of protein and starch. That said, with two working parents, and two busy commuting grandparents, hauling their asses to and fro between San Francisco and Castro Valley to nurture two moderately spoiled brother and sister, there was not always time for scratch cooking. And you know what, we were all okay with that, because Bernstein’s had our back. In a time before there were 14 kinds of Caesar dressings and a dozens of varieties of French/Italian vinaigrettes, there existed Cheese Fantastico, my Grandfather’s (referred to as Yeh Yeh) dressing of choice. He was my hero, and if my hero only wanted to eat his leafy greens with one of Bernstein’s finest, then I followed suit. Salty, acidic, peppery, and yes, cheesy. This vinaigrette got me excited to eat my greens and taught me something important; Like breaking bread, the gesture of sharing the simplest of salads, with people you truly cherish will always beat the fancy and the fussy.