James Starmer – Food

I have fond memories of baum kuchen from a trip to Germany my family took when I was a kid. It translates to “tree cake” in english. It’s cooked in a special machine with a spit where layer upon layer of batter is cooked into a cake with concentric circles like a tree. It’s covered in a hard chocolate shell. It’s the best cake I’ve ever had.

My sister Anika has tried to replicate baum kuchen with her baum kuchen spitzen. Honestly she has had much better results than I have, I should have asked her for her recipe before setting out on my own. But I did get a layered effect and I think my mini cakes look pretty cool, even if they don’t really taste like true baum kuchen. But honestly I don’t think you are going to get true baum kuchen at home unless you can get that crazy spit cooker thing. Here is the base recipe that I used.

This is the icing that I used but I don’t think I’d use it again, it was just too rich and it didn’t set as hard as I would have liked but I’ll post it for reference.

They’re really just doughnut holes covered in tang icing and dipped in astronaut ice cream, but I think that warrants a weird name. I used this doughnut recipe. I probably got 50+ holes out of it. And all of the pictures were taken by my wife Rachel.

The initial steps with the yeast is a little weird, I’ve never really seen it done that way, but the doughnuts puffed up like they were supposed to, so I can’t really complain.

Toasted sandwiches are awesome. Also known as toasties or jaffles depending on where you are from. They’re like a hot pocket that doesn’t taste like total crap. I’ve wanted to make a waffle sandwich for a while now. I finally bit the bullet and borrowed my mom’s sandwich toaster. It’s an early 90′s contraption that we used now and again growing up but since then has been collecting dust in a corner of the pantry. The concept is pretty simple, make a toasted sandwich with waffles instead of bread.

Waffles. A few years ago my brother and sister in law bought me a waffle iron and I went through a half a dozen recipes before finding what I consider the best all around recipe. I know, I know, it’s Emeril. I don’t hate him, I just think his catch phrase is weak. I have dozens that I use when I’m cooking that are much better like the classic “fuck” or “shit” or “eh”. I don’t think those would fly on TV though. I can totally imagine Emeril brushing his teeth with some crest or what ever he is hocking at the time and yelling, “Fucking Shit! that’s some good toothpaste”. Ok, I’m rambling. One thing about these waffles, if you want them to look pretty, eat them fast because as they degas their steaminess they tend to get a little floppy. But we’re going to cook them again so who gives a shit. Bam.

*My, brother asked for a review of the taste. They tasted great. I think I would probably pour a little syrup into the bacon egg and cheese one next time before cooking it. I would also try under cooking the waffles a little bit because they didn’t fuse as well as I would have hoped.

The Brewers Art in Baltimore has some great beer. They also have some moderately priced french fries that are covered in garlic salt. It’s really hard to beat garlic salt covered fries and great beer. I wanted to cook up some sweet potato fries for a party and I remembered how great the brewers fries were. So one thing led to another and I created this salt.

Last year I did a bike tour with some friends through State College, Pennsylvania. Shaun Deller was along for the ride taking time off from his recycled bike hat business in Portland, Oregon. Shaun is a “wilderness living” expert and a wealth of information.

On a previous ride he taught me and another friend about edible plants. We picked some stinging nettles and steamed them over a camp fire. The cooking neutralizes the stinging part of the plant and they have a really nice mild flavor.

My fingers were tingling for hours after picking these

On this trip Shuan found a squirrel that had just been run over by a car. He knew it was fresh because it was still warm and we were riding in fairly cold weather (about 50F). So he grabbed it, threw it in a bag and when we got back he gave us all a lesson on cleaning and cooking a squirrel.

I don’t remember how long it took, maybe 20 – 30 minutes depending on the heat of the oil. Everyone present had at least a taste. I think the general consensus was that it tasted like chicken.

*Disclaimer: Obviously this is a wild animal precautions should be taken. I don’t advocate eating squirrels, I just thought it was worth a try once and I had a professional along who knew what he was doing. He actually said that if you gut the squirrel wrong, the contents of the digestive system could contaminate the meat and make you very sick. So be smart, hire Shuan to butcher your squirrels for you.

Oh and if you really get into eating squirrels you can always try squirrel melts:

Dinner for two

This is another salt experiment. Still a work in progress. The New Mexican chilies that I used lent an almost fruity flavor to this and the spice wasn’t really over powering so this could easily be dusted over corn and it wouldn’t over power it with heat.

Like I said, this is an experiment. I’m gonna keep playing with ratios / spices until I come up with a final mix.

I ran across smoked salt the other day and I thought, “Eight dollars for salt?”. Ok, it’s special sea salt from Maine. It’s slowly smoked so the flavors infuse etc etc. Still just sounds like salt that’s been put in a smoker to me. Unfortunately I don’t have a setup to do cold smoking, and my hot smoking setup is just a grill and a smoke box. So I improvised a little mini smoker from an old tea tin, some aluminum foil, and my camping stove.

The brown bits are the smokey

So the results are just so so. You can see in the above picture that some of the salt is still white. That stuff barely has any smokey to it. The dark bits on the other hand are pretty smokey. I have a few other ideas that I’d like to try out before I settle on the best method. I can’t imagine that anyone else will try to make this contraption so I’ll just quickly review what I did.

Drill holes in the top of a tea tin. Heat it up really hot to burn of any paint / chemicals that might be on it. Wrap 1/2 cup of salt in cheese cloth. Place wood chips (soaked) into the tin and put the lid on. Add Make a little volcano of tin foil around the top of the tin and put the cheese cloth wrapped salt into the volcano. Fire up the stove and let it smoke for a while. I think I smoked mine for 20 minutes.

Pink Rabbit? Blushing Bunny? Welsh Rarebit Bastard Love Child? Growing up we only knew it as Bunny.

Ok so lets start at the beginning, Welsh Rarebit. For those who don’t know it’s just toast with some savory cheese sauce poured over it. Simple enough. At some point American’s decided to bastardize it by using condensed tomato soup instead of ale. Americans 1, Welsholians 0.

Because people usually drank ale with Welsh rabbit, ale crept into the topping, and the best-known recipes call for ale and dry mustard.

In this country, Prohibitionists seem to have had a problem with the ale. At some time between the 1890s and the 1920s, a recipe arose that substituted canned tomato soup for ale, giving rise to the pink rabbit or blushing bunny of many a nursery lunch.

[latimes]

That’s it for the history lesson. Lets get into the recipe.

*Disclaimer: This is a great recipe for kids, just not fat kids.

The Ugly American sounds like some kind of sick joke. But I was curious. I figured that Elvis liked a freaky fried sandwich. And that guy obviously knew how to eat. So I thought I’d give it a shot.

This is the best fried peanut butter, jam, banana grilled cheese I’ve ever had. It was like there was a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. Seriously though, it was surprisingly good and it definitely hits the spot when you are looking for more than a simple grilled cheese. If I try it again I’ll probably do more cheese and less peanut butter.