Recently, Esquire magazine named Dick’s Burgers “The Most Life Changing Burger in America” based on the results of an online poll. I have never understood the fascination with Dick’s – Coltrane, Annie, Mrs. Iron Chef and Mrs. Iron Chef’s sister are all huge fans of the place. While it is cheap and is fine drunk food, the burgers are bland with wilted lettuce on a soggy bun served with generally limp and greasy fries.
This Dick’s burger will change your life – it will make you appreciate an actual good burger. This is actually the picture from the Esquire article.
I honestly don’t think that Dick’s, which claims that the “secret” of their success is their patties are “fresh, never frozen, and delivered locally every day.” Based on the price of their burger, I would be willing to bet that those patties are also factory farmed beef, probably no different than what you would find at Wendy’s, which also uses fresh burgers, and who’s burgers are slightly more appetizing than Dick’s (that is really damning praise, since I tend not to like them either).
Of course, #2 in this poll was In-N-Out Burgers which I think may actually be more overrated than Dick’s.
When Iron Chef wants a good, cheap burger, he heads over to Uneeda Burger in Fremont. Their basic burger is about $5 but it looks and tastes so much better than the stuff coming out of the “kitchen” at Dick’s.
A weekend of car camping with very very low batteries in the camera = only one chance food photos *and* no reviewing to look for blemishes… here are some less than perfect photos.
I have previous reviewed Dot’s Deli here, so I won’t do that again. Dot’s has become a regular in the Iron Chef lunch rotation, mostly due to their intriguing specials like the tongue sandwich or the cheesesteak. Because of the lack of a good cheesesteak in Seattle, I decided to give Dot’s version a try.
I can tell you that this is not your father’s cheesesteak. The sandwich at Dot’s is not huge, but it makes up for its smaller than your average cheesesteak size with its incredibly high quality ingredients and bold flavor. For $9, you get a 6 inch mini baguette with a slathering of their provolone cheese sauce minced peppers and what tasted like thinly sliced round steak. In terms of the messiness factor, this is only a 2 napkin sandwich, which is not a bad thing. You don’t have grease and cheese sauce slopping all over the place.
The cheese sauce was really a standout – a creative take on cheese whiz, it was slightly sharp and tangy and I came really close to asking for a side of it to dump over my order of fries. The sauce is what cheese whiz wants to become when it grows up. The beef, while sliced thin, is significantly thicker than your average cheesesteak’s meat, so there is significantly more toothiness and chew with Dot’s version of the classic. This is not a bad thing. Since Dot’s is using a high quality beef, the flavor of the meat really stands out in the sandwich, rather than being a supporting player like in the classic, and when melded with the cheese sauce and the punch from the peppers, brings you to a place where you feel like you are no longer eating a sandwich at a deli, but eating a steak at a sit down restaurant. This steak really reminded me of the tongue and round cheesesteak I did at my Odd Bits Dinner (recipe to be posted eventually) and that was definitely a good thing.
Overall, Dot’s cheesesteak garners 4 “hey, what you lookin’ at’s” out of 5, with the only thing keeping it from getting a perfect score is that it is only infrequently on the menu. If you are looking for the classic Philly cheesesteak, this is not it. If you are looking for a delicious take on a Philly cheesesteak, head over to Dot’s when they have it, you won’t be disappointed. It is not much more expensive than any other cheesesteak in the city, and despite its smaller size, go for the quality over quantity and you won’t be disappointed.
Check Dot’s Facebook page for their daily specials and run over to Fremont when the cheesesteak is on the menu.
The very cool Del Popolo food truck serves wood-fired pizza out of a 5,000 lb oven — the oven is inside the truck! Includes a slide show and an interview.
This is an older post that I just ran across today: Donna Currie has a 12-part post discussing many different baking surfaces for home oven pizza. Includes a slideshow overview highlighting the pros and cons of each surface. There’s a lot of useful information both in the posts and in the comments. Well worth the reads.
The Batali Pizza Dough recipe has sort of become my go-to-almost-fast-food-pizza-dough. There’s only 45 minutes of rising time, so dinner can be on the table in an hour.
Here’s one that’s steaming hot out of the oven covered with onions, italian sausage, and red peppers. The sausage got slightly precooked to avoid rawness. The thinly sliced onions and peppers went on raw. There’s also some cheese hiding under the sauce.
I was convinced that these Easy Dinner Rolls (Food.com) were going to fail, all the way until they came out of the oven. So convinced, that I asked Iron Chef Leftovers to pickup backup rolls on the way over. (For another beer tasting, go figure.)
One of the benefits of living in Seattle is that you have access to some interesting stuff – great foraged mushrooms in the fall, nettles and fiddleheads in the spring, geoduck and spot prawns throughout the summer, great cheese makers and some of the best ice cream in the U.S. There are also a ton of places that do some really creative things with the local bounty.
Case in point is Molly Moon’s Ice Cream Shop. They have made some interesting seasonal flavors in the past from things that you would not necessarily expect to find in ice cream, most of which are worth trying. They recently produced an ice cream using another local ingredient – Beecher’s Flagship Cheese. I tried it on a recent trip into the Molly Moon shop in Wallingford and found it interesting, but not something that I necessarily would order. I commented to Mrs. Iron Chef that I was surprised there were no special sundaes on their menu board around the Beecher’s ice cream.
After thinking about it, the gastronomic wheels started spinning and I had a brilliant idea of what to do with the ice cream. If my forays into molecular gastronomy have taught me anything it is that the goal of cooking should be to take familiar flavors and present them in new ways without really changing the taste of the original. This lead me to the brilliant conclusion, if someone makes an ice cream using one of the cheeses that I love on a grilled cheese sandwich, then why don’t I just turn that sandwich into a sundae?
At a recent dinner party, I unleashed my creation on the unsuspecting guests. I have found that the easiest way for someone to not like something new is to tell them what it is before they eat it. In this case, I did not reveal what everyone was eating until after they finished and the creation was generally pretty well received.
So I present to you, Molly Moon’s Beecher’s Flagship Grilled Cheese Sundae.
It really does taste like the some of its parts - a grilled cheese sandwich.
The Software
1 lb. heirloom tomatoes, seeded and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon dry vermouth
1 pinch kosher salt
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
3 slices bacon, cooked crispy and sliced into 1/8 inch lardons
1 cup brioche crumbs
1 pint of Molly Moon’s Beecher’s Flagship Ice Cream
The Recipe
Brioche crumbs
Cut 3-4 slices of brioche into 1 inch cubes. Place on a sheet pan and dry in a 275 degree oven for 90 minutes or until the bread is completely dried out.
Remove and pulse in a food processor until a coarse crumb (about 5 pulses, one second each on my machine).
Store in an air tight container if not using right away.
Tomato Compote
Add the tomatoes, vinegar, salt and vermouth to a medium sauce pan over medium heat and cook until the tomatoes break down, about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Transfer the tomatoes to a blender and puree until smooth.
You are looking for roughly the consistency of a really thick tomato sauce. If your compote is too thin, return to the heat and reduce, stirring occasionally. If it is too thick, you can add water to thin it out.
Let cool
The Sundae
In a ramekin, take a tablespoon of the tomato compote and put it in the bottom. Add one scoop of the ice cream and top with the brioche crumble and bacon lardons. Serve to an unsuspecting public.
The recipe should serve 4 to 6 people.
Notes
I used some really nice heirloom tomatoes that were sweet enough that I did not need to add any sugar. If the tomatoes you are using are not very sweet, add some sugar to the cooking process, a small amount at a time and let dissolve before adding any more. You are looking for slightly tart to balance the sweetness of the ice cream. I suppose that any bread would work for the crumble, but I really like the buttery flavor of brioche. I used Skagit River Ranch’s uncured bacon for this recipe because I like the balance of smoky and sweet it has. Use whatever bacon you would normally use on a grilled cheese sandwich for the recipe.
Mark Bittman, on his show The Minimalist. While using a serrated knife to slice as steak, he had this to say:
I wonder if my mom is watching?
Mom, you watching? How am I doing?
(mom voice) Why are you using that stupid knife?
(Bittman) My father would come out with an electric knife. It’s this little power tool with these two reciprocating blades. Rrrrhmmm.. and it would go (high pitch) rrrrrrrr!!!
It never quite worked very well, but it was cool, you know, it was the 60’s… Electric can openers, electric knives… Blenders… very exiting time… Rocketships.
Rocketships! What an anachronism! It reminded of this Simpsons line, as usual.
This is fake menu that was handed out at GOOGAMOOGA recently. GOOGAMOOGA was a big food/wine/beer/musical held for the first time this year in Brooklyn and, by all accounts, was a poorly managed and a complete disaster (they are actually offering refunds to ticket holders it was so bad). I think that the menu would be funnier for anyone who attended the clusterfuck that was GOOGAMOOGA, but I got a few chuckles out of it.
Laughing Dog Brewing out of Ponderay, Idaho, is one of the more underrated breweries in the Northwest. The produce several good beers, but where they excel is in their IPA’s producing several outstanding ones. One of my favorites is the Alpha Dog, a very highly hopped double IPA, coming in a sizzling 127 IBU.
This beer pours amber and slightly fizzy with a smooth, white head. The nose is pleasantly floral from the inclusion of Columbus and Mt Hood hops and teases with hints of malted barley. The initial taste yields a great crispness without being tannic with a short hit of bitterness followed by a lingering hoppiness with a hint of sweetness on the finish.
As the beer warms, the bitterness fades and is replaced by a subtle sweetness with a more pronounced floral notes on the nose. My only complaint about this beer is that it lacks the strong citrus notes I love in an IPA – they are there, but barely noticeable, even as the beer warms. Even then, there is tremendous balance in this beer, producing a high IBU beer with enough bitterness to remind you that you are drinking an Imperial IPA, but not so much bitterness that the only people who would drink this are the most hardened IPA lovers. At 8%, you probably won’t find yourself having more and one or 2 of these.
Overall, I love this beer and would gladly drink it any time someone handed me one or I see it in a bottle shop.
FlatbreadGarden 