Jamaican Patties

OK, so the pace has slowed considerably at Kitchen Studio, most recently due to the premature death of Kurt's fryer. The fryer was lain in state so that all of our fans could pay their last respects, but it wasn't until Christmas morning that a new one took its place. So we welcomed in the new year with a new fryer and an indescribably delicious batch of Jamaican [pork and] veggie patties.

Though we used a pastry dough recipe for Jamaican beef patties, the filling was comprised simply of leftover roasted vegetables and pork, which we sauteed in butter with some vegetable broth, bread crumbs, and curry powder. The result will go down in Kurt + Amy Deep Fry Shit history, and may even give the legendary Jamaican beef patties of Troy, NY a run for their money. The trifecta of butter, shortening, and fry oil made this our greasiest, if not our tastiest, venture to date.

Speaking of money, in this economy who's a former pageant winner with physical therapy training, a keen understanding of subprime mortgages, and a white running back husband gotta sleep with to get her son on a flag football team? This question and many more inane ones can only be answered in Lifetime's The Client List, starring Golden Globe nominee Jennifer Love Hewitt, which provided the evening's entertainment. Of course, since the taping of this episode, we have learned that Claire Danes took the award*, practically stealing it right out from under J. Lo-Hew, whose dedication to her role was so fierce she didn't even remove her fake eyelashes when she went to sleep.



*Editor's note: This is horseshit.

Shepherd's Pie

Well this month (err, last month), Amy and I found ourselves victims to the Irish Curse: too much footage.

This resulted in some rare restraint by our creative director in chopping out a couple of zingers from the opening few minutes. Stay tuned for the deleted scenes in the season 1 DVD box set. Anyway this happened so long ago (sorry guys) that I'm just going to give a quick running diary and provide my reactions:

00:01: New take on the intro: having inaudible comments over the finished product.

00:50: This intro sequence is still the best thing we’ve ever done.

01:15: God I wish I had improv skills. Note to Amy: don’t put me on the spot.

01:45: Veering dangerously toward montage status. Glad we averted that.

03:40: No, you’re not a biologist Kurt. Or talented.

03:52: Taking those lamb chunks out of that plastic sleeve looked like Alien Autopsy. But with the grainy blogger video compression, it could've just been special effects.

05:13: Even I’m nodding off at this point

05:22: I’m saved from losing interest by yet more terrible improv. “Other types of sodabread” indeed.

06:15: Nice extended torso shot of Amy.

07:10: Spinoff alert: Kurt & Amy Pan Sautee Shit coming in 2011.

07:50: Cap’N’Trade deserves an explanation, but unfortunately you’re not going to get one here.

08:30: Fry science is being dropped. Look for our article “Nature’s Delicious Jacuzzi” in next month’s Scientific American

09:12: Way to start a joke you can’t finish Kurt. Amy, way to not edit that out. You know what? I'm going to swear off analogies. If they're not good enough for the SATs anymore, they have no place in K&ADFS

09:55: We hand-selected our gallery this week to be underwhelmed by whatever was put in front of them, and they did not disappoint.

10:55: “I would add salt to it.” A fitting way to end the episode. Thanks for coming Lili!

Superbowl Leftovers

Kurt's Superbowl party yielded such a surplus of food that his guests, so full of homemade empanadas and wings -- served in copious quantities despite warnings from Stephen Colbert -- were unable to consume it all. Luckily, our dear friend Lena was available to emerge from the comfort of her Snuggie(TM) and help us out in tackling the leftover jalapeno poppers, goat cheese balls, and ravioli.

The ravioli are easy enough; simply coat in egg, roll in breadcrumbs, and place in basket. For the jalapeno poppers, we halved and seeded the peppers, then filled them with a mixture of cream cheese and monterrey jack, then egged and breaded them. Finally, the goat cheese balls are simply egged and breadcrumbed as well, but with panko (japanese breadcrumbs). They're all fried together at 350, but the ravioli are going to cook first, and they float so make sure you turn them manually after about 30 seconds. What could be easier.

Anyone with a penchant for inscrutable After School Specials will be tickled by clips of Ace Hits the Big Time (1985). This classic tale of a boy with a stye, whose therapeutic eye patch looks so tough that it gets him tapped by the Purple Falcons who are in a heated gang war with the rival Piranhas, and subsequently by a big-time movie director, and his unwavering conviction that cake triumphs over hate.

Finally, to answer Kurt's question about the career trajectory of Horace "Ace" Hobart portrayer Rob Stone...
It turns out his superbly nuanced interpretation of the role of Ace landed him a sweet spot on the cast of the beloved series Mr. Belvedere (1985-90). Looks like that fictional talent scout in Ace spotted a very real rising star!

Rice Balls

Well I'd like to be the first to challenge my own proclamation that the holiday episode was a "rollicking success," both on grammatical and factual grounds. Anyway onto the episode, the rice balls came out really, really well, and it seems like a nice way to take some leftovers that are probably too meager to use otherwise, and resuscitate them into a late-night snack. Amy dined on some leftover vegetable curry that I had hanging around in the fridge, and I took some hoisin sauce, soy sauce, onions, and frozen shrimp, and sauteed it up rather quickly. The point is though, that you could really put anything in there (ground beef? Chicken? Chocolate???) and it'll turn out nicely.

As for the unnecessary apology at the beginning of the video, we know that there was nobody calling us out on the state of our oil, but it was pretty reprehensible. We have since found some religion on the subject and would like to proffer the following websites as sources for good deep fryer (and oil) maintenance:

American Heart Association Guide on Deep Frying

Easy and Informative Best Practices from some website named "stop the clog."

I plan on posting one (or a series) of entries regarding deep-fryer maintenance, but for now, here's a quick link on how to properly dispose of your used oil. This applies not only to deep frying, but any kind of oil used in cooking.

I would also like to take a moment to correct myself and state that the solution should not have a 90%/1% ratio. These are the hazards of the semi-live vlogosphere. And I'll take a second here to apologize to Sir Isaac Newton for uttering the phrase "the Law of Continuity of Matter."

The key for these rice balls was, as usual, temperature. The rice was too cold and dry to work into a ball at first, but the more we worked with it, getting the heat from our hands into the mixture, the more cohesive and moldable it was.

Anyway, as you can tell, Amy and I are not huge fans of Aida and her Tech whelp Noah. To date, no response has come to our email, but we’ll keep you, our faithful viewers, posted.

To back up our libelous rhetoric, here’s her wikipedia page, which details her background, which is decidedly light on actual cooking experience. And even though she could most likely cook circles around Amy and myself (though the straight-faced inclusion of "scrambled eggs" on her show might suggest otherwise), the premise of her show is still ridiculous. To have viewers ask questions and have them answered is one thing; to have them utilize the internet, in some cases even taking the time to send videos(!!!) to ask questions that they could just fucking google is patently absurd. It's as if you required your viewers to write their questions in the margins of the encyclopaedia page on which the information is found, and then mail it to you. And obviously having a "tech guru" on board whose job it is to simply check email is laughable.

Mac & Cheese

Part of our mission in creating a deep fry blog is to offer creative options for reheating your leftovers, and to that end we bring you deep fried mac and cheese. We know what you're thinking: mac and cheese is already so delicious and decadent in its natural state, why deep fry it? Well, for one thing deep frying is exponentially better than microwaving your leftovers. We used Paula Deen's recipe for The Lady's Mac & Cheese (her words, for the love of god, her words; not ours), but substituted the more robust cavatappi pasta for elbow macaroni. We sliced our leftover mac and cheese into squares and coated them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs: the deepfryer's holy trinity. The end result is a crispy, creamy, cheesy delight.

I have to give even madder props to Amy. I'm blown away by the even sweeter title sequence. Someone's getting comfortable with iMovie. Sorry for the lame and pointy intro in the video. I was really...um, punchy. I'd like to go over a few more points from the video that I wish I could've expressed a little more cogently. First, the appropriate recipe. Don't feel you need to recreate Ms. Deen's concoction, but disregard anything made by the Kraft Corporation, and kindly unhand the Velveeta. I've never tried deep frying either of these types of Mac & Squeeze, but I would presume that they goop up real good and have a hard time staying together. Thanks to our dedicated Italy Consultant Marina for the interesting (and inaudible) tidbit on Cavatappi. And 349 is not in fact a multiple of 7 (unless the thermostat starts at -1). Luckily there isn't a math prerequisite for deep frying. I don't in fact know what system of numbers leads my deep fryer to think 347 degrees is an appropriate increment. I think it's a Fibonacci Sequence or the digits of pi.

Finally, let me address my controversial plea for America to buy deep fryers with sincere apologies. What is in that glass? But in all seriousness, people say to me "I would weigh 300 pounds if I had one of those," but it's not necessarily true. First, as I said, some healthy recipes just call for poaching or frying in oil. You can of course try this in a pan and guess as to the proper temperature with unpredictable results, then throw away that expensive oil when you're done. It's far more economical, however, to use an instrument that takes the guesswork out and allows you to reuse your frying medium. And let's face it, unless you're running an international Ponzi scheme, you probably don't need to be spending a small fortune on oils. And if you're worried about gaining weight, just don't use it too often. I only use it for a regular meal a few times a month (but when I do need it, nothing else will do), and only for late night snacking every few weeks or so.