Please don’t mind our dust

If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen anything over here at The Spatch in the last few days, it would be because we’re in the middle of a big ole move. That’s right, folks — Way of the Spatula is in the process of getting its own space (unsurprisingly) at wayofthespatula.com.

At the time of this post, the move is about 95% complete. In fact, you probably won’t be seeing any new posts over at wayofthespatula.wordpress.com after this one. So please update your bookmarks and update your RSS feeds if you got ‘em. Eventually, the wordpress.com site is going to be hollowed out and just be a pointer to the food blog’s new home.

Now, having liberated The Spatch from wordpress.com to strike out on its own (though still leveraging wordpress’s great blogging platform), you’ll notice that certain things are missing from the site (for now). However, some new features that weren’t available before are available now.. and that’s pretty cool. Believe you me, this is a pretty exciting time for this particular celebration of food.

So stay tuned. ..And expect big changes.

- Brunch

We are in no way responsible for anything you may replicate

To offset the crazy, ginormously long post that was The Quichening, Way of The Spatula presents to you… a much shorter post! No! Er, I mean.. Cooking with Food with Phil! (My buddy’s wife went to high school with this guy.)

…and in other news, Gizmodo is running a special foodie series of articles for the next several days — “Taste Test, a week long celebration of that beautiful intersection of innovation and cuisine.”

In their own words:

Since technology—and very often crazy gadgets—are at every watershed moment in the history of gustation, it makes sense that we honor it on Gizmodo. Besides, nerds like to cook (and eat).

Here’s just some of what’s to come:

• Guest editor Nick Kokonas—who founded Alinea in Chicago with chef Grant Achatz—will introduce us to the innovative minds they recruited to solve the trickiest problems of modern cuisine (like how to build a “bacon bow”)
• Wylie Dufresne will walk you through his kitchen in New York, showing off some of his most intense, and perhaps dangerous, gear
• Food Network’s geek-in-chief Alton Brown discusses topics ranging from the culinary innovations that changed human history to home hacks that look silly but save time and money
• Wired’s Mark McClusky will tell us how to cook with magnets
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch food reporter Georgina Gustin will set us straight on what is (and isn’t) evil about modern food production

That’s some exciting stuff to look forward to this week from the folks at Gizmodo! For the entire “Taste Test” article, click here.

Thanks to grubdude for this geeky foodie link and j0eboy for the youtube!

The quichening

I probably should have named this particular post “A quichening” instead of “The quichening” since, really, I make quiches a lot and this is just the latest quichening effort to date. No, really. I make them a lot. A lot. Hell, I’ve easily made something like twenty whole pies since the beginning of 2009 and that number will probably double by year’s end, mark my words. They’re a simple enough thing to make, sure, but I don’t make them because of any sort of culinary difficulty rating they happen to have. No, I wind up making quiches an awful lot on the insistence of my friends.

(..and, by the way, it should be said that certain friends in particular are more insistent than others and that they absolutely know who they are and they shouldn’t try to act so scandalized that I make mention of this here because they’re not kidding anyone (although, I suppose, I can’t complain since it’s better to have people clamor for your cooking rather than not) and, wow, what a crazy run-on sentence this wound up being.)

Some of my friends never had quiche until I started making them so goddamn much and, since their introduction, have henceforth declared themselves the egg pie’s biggest fans. In fact, some of these friends are known to make plans involving my baking of quiches and generously inform me of the fact after the decision to have them made is, well, made. There’s sometimes token resistance on my part, sure, but, in the end, they pretty much always happen because, hey, quiches are tasty.

And, no, you didn’t misread that earlier – I affectionately refer to quiches as egg pies. I mean, that’s what quiches really are, aren’t they? They’re totally omelettes in a pie crust. And because they are exactly that, they are frickin’ awesome.

(The one pictured above is my signature quiche: a basil, Swiss cheese and spinach quiche.)

(This egg pie here is my breakfast sausage, mushroom onion and Monterey Jack cheese quiche. It’s my personal favorite of the kinds I make.)

So my work’s got this thing where breakfast is covered every Friday. It’s pretty neat. You go into the office that morning and there’s this spread laid out for the whole company, free for anyone to partake. The way it works is each month is pretty much “owned” by a department, the Fridays that make up that month are split up between members of that department, and these people get a stipend to pretty much plan and take care of brekkie for the company that day. And that’s all there is to it.

Last Friday was my and the saleguy’s Friday. I had been looking forward to getting a chance to rock out on the Friday breakfast dealie since my first day on the job and was thoroughly excited when the day finally came. While my co-conspirator took care of the fruit, mini-bagels and OJ part of the menu, I took care of my part: quiches. Four of them, in fact. Two of the spinach and basil ones and one of the sausage and one of the prosciutto ones.

It was great.

(Up thar be the prosciutto, asparagus and provolone quiche that I’ve only recently added to my repertoire of quichey offerings.)

That morning’s breakfast, though a lot of work (what with the procuring ingredients, the baking, the photodocumenting for this here blog and the lugging them all in a duffel bag via bus, subway and commuter rail train to the office), was actually really neat. After everyone sampled the eggy creations, praise and recognition abounded and, best of all, I was able to feed a lot of people and bring a smile to their faces. Totally worth it.

And like I mentioned earlier, yep, I photodocumented the process and it’s produced below. Photodocumenting while cooking in the kitchen ain’t easy, kids. Especially flying solo. The whole damn thing took about 4 hours to do and when I was finally done, I was pretty exhausted. That said, the following gets kind of long and kind of crazy since I’m doing four pies at the same time (go, go, gadget multitasking!), so the focus may wander a bit and meander even more. But you can pretty much follow it.

I’m feeling lucky

Living in New York City is hard: There’s too many people, there’s too much noise, it’s far too expensive. Most people think I have it easier than most because one of the hardest daily decisions is more or less made for me: Where to eat lunch. This quotidian question bothers most offices but at Google, the answer is seemingly simple: Why, in the office, of course. With free food available, that would appear to be the beginning and end of it but it’s not. No, it’s not. You see, there’s still three options:

5 Borough Bistro
On the same floor as Engineering. Convenient but less variety.

Hemispheres Cafe
Located 4 flights up (endure the excruciating pain in your legs as you climb the stairs or endure the excruciating delay as you wait for the elevator?) but has more choices.

Chelsea Market
Across the street and therefore not an option in this 90°+ weather but does have made to order sushi.

Each has its benefits and in this installment of Way of the Spatula, I will hopefully allow you, gentle reader, to vicariously experience them. We start with my tasty lunch from Hemispheres.

Clockwise from top: Mutton Chop with Wild Mushroom & Arugula salad; Radicchio, Apricot & Cashew salad; Strawberry, Blueberry, and Honey Smoothie; Banana, Pistachio “Ice Cream”; and Roast Butternut Squash. Not pictured: Berries (on left) and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup cookie (in vivo).

Of course, the food is all free and one can feel free to take some of whatever they like – I try not to take too much but stranger things have been known to happen… My general plan is to find a tasty looking meat and then supplement the rest of the plate with as many interesting vegetables as I can find.

The mutton chop struck me as an odd item: Normally one has lamb chops, not mutton. Mutton is mature sheep and is still tasty. The chops were actually cooked medium which, given their “in a big (All-Clad) pan” nature, is surprising. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve had mutton chops anywhere except at the office so I can’t complain about the variety.

The Wild Mushroom & Arugula salad featured a variety of mushrooms, the predominant one being probably a porcini or oyster mushroom. While good, as Seinfeld once said “Hey, salad’s got nothin‘ on this mutton.” I picked it mainly because mushrooms typically go well with meat.

On the other hand, I took the Radicchio, Apricot, and Cashew salad because I like cashews. Unfortunately, I forgot I don’t like Radicchio or other bitter greens. I ended up picking around it.

Two items came from the Raw station, the smoothie and the “ice cream”. The ice cream is interesting for two reasons. First, it’s dotted with flowers making it a lot more visually appealing. Second, the recipe contains no ice cream. In fact, it’s made from agave, banana, and pistachio. To be honest, the texture isn’t much like ice cream; it’s closer to mashed banana but the freezing process makes it more ice cream like.

The Raw station is one of the more interesting ones. Given the dubious limitations on preparation (vegan and a cooking temperature no higher than 115°F), I’m surprised I often find one or two items to take from there. I’ve even asked for recipes for a couple of their items like their Walnut Taco Meat and their Black Sesame Butter.

Lastly, while I didn’t photograph the cookie (some things are better left undocumented), I’d like to note that the cookies are really good. Since they’re made there, sometimes you can get warm ones when they’ve just come out. Surprisingly, my favorite ones are the white chocolate with dried cherries but I’m never one to turn down peanut butter, unfortunately.

More next week!

Do you like to eat meatballs? (fast?)

Silly question? I thought most of my readers would say that to themselves. I guess the real question is: How MUCH do you really like meatballs fast? Well, if the answer is A LOT and REAL fast, then check this out. Grubdudes is putting together a speed eating contest featuring everyone’s favorite ball – the meatball!  If you live in or around the Boston area and would be interested in participating (speed eating), becoming a sponsor or are a local or national media outlet that would like to be present for the event (hint: Guinness Book of World Records, maybe?) then keep reading!

Grubdudes is looking to partner with local business to sponsor the event, an event hall to hold the event, as well as vendors and assistants to help with organizing it. If you are interested, please send your info, ideas and how you would like to help to grubdudes@gmail.com.  For the short list, we are looking for:

• Food sponsor (to provide the meatballs)
• A venue to hold the event, preferably with a kitchen (approx 100 people capacity)
• Assistants to help organize, set up tables, sign contestants in, etc.
• Volunteers to help promote the event such as local or national food blogs, websites, newspapers, etc.
• A local charity (fitting) for possible donation of revenue generated by the event

Also, if you feel you have an an idea that could benefit us in our quest for the ultimate food eating contest, email us at the address above, and we will get back to you as soon as possible!

PS… the photo is courtesy of my mom!

Originally posted on GRUBDUDE.