Phoenicians Restaurant Review

I am a big Lebanese food fan, I frequent Al Baraki in Troy and they never disappoint. I was driving up Central Avenue the other day when I noticed the new Phoenicians Restaurant at 1686 Central Ave, kind of around where that plaza with the Harbor Freight is. I immediately made a note to drop in there as soon as possible. So when I was in the mood for some takeout last night I swung by around 7:30. The restaurant was relatively quiet, only a couple tables were filled. The restaurant was neat and tidy with amusing hand done murals of Lebanon on the walls. I especially liked the bright blue starry night motif of the ceiling. The Phoenicians advertised itself as an eat-in/take-out restaurant, but it is actually very nice on the inside and features table service. I noticed two pillars of schwarma meat rotating deliciously in the back of the open kitchen and was immediately encouraged. I decided to order a few dishes to get a feel for the menu.

I started with the Meza Sampler.



At 10.99 this was a nice selection of tabbouleh, hummus, baba, falafel, stuffed grape leaves, and nice thin Lebanese flat bread. All of it drizzled with some nice, richly colored olive oil. No complaints on this one, it was excellent. I am usually neutral on baba ganoush, but I really enjoyed this one. It was creamy and had just enough grilled/smoky flavor. I have had some baba ganoushes that tasted like cigarette buts.

I am a hummus fanatic, so even thought the Meza Sampler included hummus, I ordered the Hummus with Meat. I forget how much this cost exactly, but it was around 6 dollars.



The hummus at the Phoenicians is very good, just the style I like. Not too dense, creamy with a nice garlic flavor. This dish was a healthy serving of hummus with a nice amount of beef schwarma slices on top. The schwarma meat is nicely spiced with a nice lemony taste and goes very well with the hummus and flat bread.

For my main course I ordered the Beef Schwarma dinner. Again, I forget the exact price, but my entire bill was 33 dollars and some change. Regardless, I felt that the amount of quality food I got in these three dishes was a value.



The Schwarma dinner was a healthy portion of beef slices over some delicious seasoned rice. You get a small portion of baba and a nice side salad with a couple Lebanese pickle spears. This was way more food than I could eat and I had plentiful left overs.

Verdict: I will probably visit this place on a weekly basis. It is reasonably priced, the takeout is lightning fast, the staff is very friendly, and the food is delicious. As I live out in Guilderland, it is nice not to have to drive downtown or to Troy to Al Baraki for my Lebanese food fixes. I was a little worried by the lack of patrons though, so if you read this go give the place a try. It would be a shame if this place closed down as it is really very good.

Meat in Art: Francis Bacon's "Figure With Meat"

Ahhh, Francis Bacon. This painting is where the holy trinity of bacon, meat, and art come together, if only in a symbolic way. Maybe I will go back to my art school dropout roots and begin painting meat portraits. That will be my thing, you come over with a selected cut of meat and I will paint a portrait of you posing with the meat. Any takers?

Black Friday Turkey/FSM Sighting

While other people were hitting Crossgates for crap they don't really need today, I was shopping around the local P-Chops for some cut-rate poultry. If you have not already noticed, you can catch some serious deals on turkey on Black Friday. Most grocery stores overstock the venerable birds and are looking to unload them cheap. I picked up this 11 pound beauty for 59 cents a pound, not bad at all. As my mother is not a fan of cooking, my family goes out for thanksgiving dinner. I had steak and felt left out of the turkey tradition, so I roasted up a belated bird tonight which will keep the old lady and I in turkey sandwiches for quite a while.



By the way, if anyone out there in the Capital Region knows of a good place that I could procure a nice Christmas Goose to roast up for less than a million bucks, please let me know. I have been hankering to cook up a goose for quite some time now.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I had a Flying Spaghetti Monster sighting at Thanksgiving dinner at the Desmond. There was his holiness, right on top of my humble salad, a noodley vision from the heavens.

Beaujolais nouveau 2008

In case you missed it, last Thursday was "Beaujolais Nouveau Day". Beaujolais Nouveau is a wine that is made soon after the year's grape harvest, fermented for a short time, bottled, and then marketed for immediate consumption. In my opinion this is one of the French Wine Industry's marketing coups. They have annually convinced the world to get all excited about some cheap table wine and to shell out 10.00 (at least) per bottle for the pleasure. I picked up a bottle of Georges Duboef's Beuajolais Nouveau the other night.



I corked it, poured myself a generous glass, and sat down to a rousing game of Call of Duty 5 to ruminate over the flavor. The first thing you will notice is the aroma, I deem it grassy, almost lettuce-like. After a sip you will notice the mouth feel, this is a very thin wine and lacks the body of other young wines that you might have had. I enjoy the novelty of a pre-Thanksgiving bottle of B.N. but it is actually pretty underwhelming, but I guess you get what you pay for. As my dad is fond of saying, "Anything that is under 50 bucks a bottle is like drinking Pepsi anyways." I don't necessarily agree with this, I appreciate very much the beauty of swilling decent table wine, and B.N. is an accessible way for everyone to get involved in wine culture.

Bacon Rice Krispies Treats

OK, so if you have been following lately you know that I have been on somewhat of a Bacon tear. I promised myself that I would get back to what I originally intended this blog to be, i.e. a humorous look at the food and culture of Upstate New York. Pursuant to this, I decided that I needed to finish with a bang. Before I could hang up my bacony spurs I needed to come up with a dish that was not only novel, but that people would actually wish to recreate. Something that might actually enter the pantheon of "normal" household recipes regardless of its unconventional use of Bacon. What I came up with was a very simple concept, Bacon Rice Krispies Treats.



I started with a package worth of delicious bacon.



I wanted to go for maximum crispospitude and crisposity so the bacon could stand up to the marshmallow mixture without getting soggy. I baked the bacon in the oven until relatively well done.



I set the bacon aside to cool and began the Rice Krispies recipe. I didn't veer from tradition here, I used exactly the directions that come on the box. I started by melting the marshmallows in the butter.



Next, I chopped up the bacon into small chunks, about the size of large bacon bits. I mixed these with the required Krispies prior to the addition of the marshmallow mixture. I felt that this would ensure an even distribution of bacon and would also help to maintain crispness.



After thoroughly mixing the whole mess together I spooned it into a greased baking pan, leveled it out and set it aside to cool. I thought the be-speckling of bacon was simply divine.



After an anticipation riddled hour I decided the treats were sufficiently cooled to cut into. I set in with my knife and extricated a nice sized hunk of the Bacon Rice Krispies treat.



Verdict: I was pleasantly surprised by how normal and good these tasted, not weird or nasty at all. The treats were simply delicious, it seemed like a time tested concoction instead of something that I thought up last night. The salty bits of bacon work very well with the sweet and gooey Rice Krispies treats. I am a big fan of sweet/salty combinations like salted caramels or peanut brittle and these guys are very much along those lines. To tell you the truth, I think that the recipe could actually stand significantly more bacon than what I used, I might even think about doubling the amount next time I make these. I highly recommend that you give these a shot, forget about the novelty value of using bacon in rice krispies treats, these are simply very good.

Bacon Wrapped Bacon Spam Cracker Sandwiches

I finally decided to do something with that Bacon Spam I picked up a couple weeks ago. As everyone knows, bacon begets bacon, so I made Bacon Wrapped Bacon Spam Cracker Sandwiches. This is a slight variation on the old appetizer of bacon wrapped crackers that you find in 50's era cookbooks, James Beard's American Cookery is one outstanding example. Even though I am supremely suspicious of Spam, I almost barfed while I was slicing it, these actually came out quite delicious.



I started by shimmying the bacon Spam out of its container onto a plate.



There it was, looking like some bastard Spam/Bacon monolith. It kind of looked like regular Spam, only a little browner and it stinked a little bit like smokey bacon. I began by slicing the Spam block into little cracker shaped slices.



Out of these I made little Spam cracker sandwiches. 1 slice Spam, 2 crackers. I used whole wheat club crackers, the kind made in the hollow tree by elfs.



I wrapped each one of these with a nice, thin slice of bacon and placed them loose bacon end down on a foiled cookie sheet.



These little guys went into the oven at 250 degrees for about an hour and 10 minutes until the bacon was nice and crisp. You want to cook these guys low and slow or the bacon will quickly constrict and crush your crackers. They came out looking nice and brown and crisp.



After letting them cool slightly I took one and sliced it carefully with my bad ass chef's knife.



Mmmmm, porky, crispy, spammy, bacon-spammy.



Verdict: Well slap me in the face, these were actually delicious. I will stop fearing and badmouthing Spam all of the time, it seems that there are tasty ways to prepare it. The outside bacon was crisp, the Spam center was soft and had good salty/bacon flavor. The whole wheat crackers lent a nice textural component, it seemed that during the cooking process they had absorbed spam/bacon grease, became soggy and then re-crisped a little. It was a nice contrast of texture from toothsome bacon, to crisp greasy cracker, to soft Spam center. The flavor was rich and delicious, I detected a slight vanillan undertone which was strange, it must have come from the Spam. I am actually going to attempt to convert some of my friends into Spam eaters this weekend with this cunning little hors d'oeuvre. I think this concept would lend itself to some highbrow applications as well, sub a little pate for the Spam perhaps? Delicious.

Sadness, Sadness, Woe is You.

Now I know I don't exactly have a multitude of regular readers on this here humble blog, but I think there are a few friends and randoms who are mildly amused by some of my musings. I have recently been offered a position in a certain agency that will require me to go off to some training wherein I will be away from a computer Monday-Friday for about 6 months. I will have to pare down my posting to probably once a week. Now I know you probably won't cry yourselves to sleep tonight over this, but I just wanted to offer a word of explanation as to why my posting frequency has reduced, lest you think I died or something. I will be back in May and will probably have a bunch of pent up ideas, so stay tuned!

In the meantime I have acquired a Tur-duc-hen!



I plan on roasting this up over the weekend to keep some friends fortified with meaty strength while we all help a couple of treasured acquaintances move their worldly possessions into their new chateau. I will document the feasting and post again.

White Castle and Bacon Breakfast Bake

I have seen a couple of recipes floating around for "Castle Casseroles" that piqued my interest into the idea of using White Castle sliders as a component of a dish. None of the recipes I saw really sounded too good, so I decided to try to think of something on my own. I envisioned a kind of savory bread pudding made out of sliders, what I ended up with was OK, it didn't meet my expectations but I thought the concept was sound and might inspire someone else to outdo me. Then I can steal their recipe.

Unfortunately, we do not have an actual White Castle franchise locally in the Capital Region so I had to resort to using frozen burgers.



I removed the tops and arranged the sliders in an oven proof dish, making sure that they were somewhat compactly arranged.



It just wouldn't be normal if I didn't find some way to wedge bacon into a dish, so I fried up a few slices.



I layered some cheese on top of the burgers and topped with the cooked bacon.



At this point I replace the tops of the buns and whipped up an egg mixture. I used 2 cups milk and 6 eggs seasoned with salt and pepper. This ended up being way too much, I think you could get away with 1 cup milk and 4 eggs.



I poured this over the sliders and kind of tamped them down so they would absorb as much of the liquid as possible. One of my secrets to good bread pudding is to let it sit for a while to allow the bread to really become sodden with the egg mixture, so I let the sliders soak for about 30 minutes and then topped with some more cheese.




I threw this into a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. It came out nice and brown and puffy. The sliders had coagulated into one contiguous mass and it smelled pretty good.



Verdict: This was pretty good, it kind of reminded me of the sausage, egg, cheese bake we all made at Farnsworth Middle School in home ec. back in 6th grade. It definitely had a kind of breakfast quiche feel. I think the bread absorbed a little too much egg mixture and became a little too omelet-esque. In fact, the whole thing was kind of like eating a weird, bready, slider omelet. This was not necessarily a bad thing, I think a little futzing with ratios of milk and eggs to improve the texture would elevate this to a sublime level. I also think the frozen buns were much drier than usual Castle sliders, I think had I used fresh 'uns this actually would have been much better. I think maybe even a Slider Gratin would be pretty good, layered fresh sliders with some heavy cream, baked in the oven without egg? Perhaps? But anyways, I chalk this one up to experience and implore anyone out there who has access to fresh White Castle to attempt to refine this idea.

Salty Ham

Oh, how I miss Kids in the Hall. Some of the finest pork related one liners are contained within this sketch-

"I didn't wolf it down. A man works all day, he expects a normal ham meal, not Goddamn bastard brine!"

"Christ! I work hard all day, I expect a normal ham meal, not, not--Voodoo pork!"

Hilarious Google Search Resulting in Hit on this Page

Sorry, but I had to share this. I was checking the recent Google searches that have resulted in hits on this blog and one of them was "deliciously hot food that makes your soul warm and doesn't give you the squirties." I am speechless, this is like some sort of bizarre poetry. I am very proud of the fact that my blog is the 5th result for this query. I sincerely hope this person found their delicious food and most definitely does not get the squirties.

Beer, Pork, Cheese, and Bread

I have been on something of a health kick for the past couple weeks. As I am only a couple of years away from 30 it is fast dawning on me that the 5 or 10 pounds around my midsection will only further entrench itself if I don't do something soon. Because of this I have been, as of late, denying myself the pleasure of some of my favorite food stuffs. Instead of beer I have been trying the whole healthful couple glasses of red wine thing, I have been laying off bread almost entirely, and the cured/salted/smoked/encased pork products that I love so much have been consumed only in scant quantities. It has been going pretty well, except for the whole being miserable and wanting to die thing, and I have shed a couple pounds. So, like any deluded dieter I decided to fall off the wagon and stuff myself with the prohibited goods.

I started with some Schaller and Weber Jagdwurst.



I am a big fan of wurst in all shapes, species, and sizes and Jagdwurst is one of my favorites. It is kind of like grown up baloney, a nice pink, sort of sweet, cooked pork sausage. I like the texture, it is something like a giant frankfurter with bits of ham intermingled. Really quite tasty with just a bit of mustard, also very good breaded and fried a little.

I put the sausage on the plate with a few slices of my homemade Roggenbrot. Not to pat myself on the back, but the roggenbrot is one of the few bread goods that I truly make well. I use some of my own sourdough starter, rye flour, a little King Arthur bread flour, salt, and water. That is it, it is a nice and simple bread that stands up admirably to strong mustardy, sharp cheesey, porky, beery flavors. I also had some nice 13 months aged New York cheddar which I thought would not be out of place.




I think sometimes that a meal like this is my favorite. Good bread, a bit of meat, cheese and some mustard all washed down with a nice beer. It is good and simple old timey food. No complex cooking or recipes, just simple goods derived from the wonders of fermentation, bacteria, and the art of preserving meat.

The beer I was drinking I bought on kind of a lark not expecting it to be that good. I picked up a 6-pack of "Pork Slap Pale Ale".



This stuff pretty much met my low expectations. This is kind of a brew up some piss beer, slap it in a trendy "cheeky" can, and wait for the hipster foodies to shell out 9 bucks a 6-pack thing. It was over carbonated and under hopped and generally pretty mediocre. It kind of made me itch to break out the old brewing tools and start crafting a nice early winter brew. I have been neglecting the brewing arts to a woeful degree during the past couple of years. Time just slips between my fingers, I blame my laziness of the past few weeks primarily on the lack of pork so hopefully I am cured now.

Bacon Spam? Oh, hell yes.

Ok, so am I the first one to notice this being sold? Spam! Made with real Hormel bacon! Bacon and Spam together in a can, it is almost like something I dreamed once. How is that flimsy can containing all of that porky flavor without bursting and spraying my walls with sweet, pink, meaty shrapnel? I don't even know what kind of magnificent creation I am going to craft out of this ambrosia but I am sure it is going to be thunderously bowel shaking. Maybe I will just wrap the entire can in bacon, deep fry it, lube it up, swallow it whole!!! However, I think that I am going to sleep on it tonight and hit you all with it tomorrow, PM. That is all for now. Mr. Dave out.

(Bacon. And Spam. In a can.....)

British Style Back Bacon, an American Review.

I picked up some British style back bacon at Eats care of the William's Pork company. I have heard a lot about the differences between national bacon styles and the woes of American expats who are unable to find their accustomed bacon abroad. I have never had British/Irish style bacon, so when I saw this stuff at a very reasonable price I decided to give it a go.

The first obvious difference between American and British bacons is the cut of pork used to make them. The American bacon seen below is made from pork bellies, a very fatty cut of pig.



British bacon is made of center cut boneless pork loin. It kind of looks like very thinly cut pork chops with a little tail of darker meat. It is noticeably leaner then American streaky style bacon.



I threw this in the skillet with a little vegetable oil to brown. The British bacon does not give as much grease as American so a little more oil is necessary to achieve browning.



The cooked back bacon is a very different animal then what I am used to. You are not really going to achieve any great deal of crispness. If it is crisposity you seek, American bacon is the undisputed champ. It was too early to judge the bacon yet so I decided to see how another component of the pork. American bacon gives us a gift of luscious grease in which to cook our eggs and potatoes, the British stuff gives much less, barely enough to cook a couple of eggs.



I sat down with a nice plate of bacon and eggs to really see what this stuff is all about.



I was planning on making a definitive value judgment on who makes the better bacon, Britain or America. But after finishing the plate of the British style back bacon I decided that a direct comparison to our own bacon is really not fair. The two products are like comparing apples and oranges. Other than the fact that they are both a cured pork product they are really pretty different. If you are looking for crispy, greasy, salty and decadent goodness American bacon is definitely the way to go. British bacon has its own hight points, it has a delicious pork flavor and really goes well with eggs. It is not as salty and is totally without the smoked flavor of most American bacon. There is very little crispness, British bacon is more like eating an actual piece of meat, a thin pork chop if you will. It is not necessarily bad but it is so unlike the bacon that I was reared on that it defies comparison. I am not going to bad mouth the British stuff, but I would definitely miss our own homegrown strips of heavenly pork if I was forced to live abroad.