Grapevine Salad

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Hot Knives

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In the beginning, there were Eskimos, who found a use, or a dish, for every drop of fatty, pink seal blubber. Nowadays we have white celebrity chefs who ask a premium because they’ve found a small plate for every ounce of piggy.
Well, we plant eaters can do that too, kinda — find a use for everything, that is.
For a recent salad, we decided to try fitting several shades of the grapevine on a salad platter. We started a couple days before with a batch of pickled grapes. Not white ones, or even red grapes, but big-ass purple orbs that look like olives dusted with cocaine and taste more like synthetic “grape” bubblegum than something Nature made. Ask your fruitmongers and farmers for Kyoho grapes–your life will change. Next we made square packets of fresh chevre wrapped in grape leaves. Have you ever bought a bottle of grape leaves? We hadn’t. (We stood for 10 minutes staring at an entire shelf of the bottles in our local Greek supermarket, half a dozen brands declaring themselves the biggest and the best. We went with the “Made in Fresno” ones.)
For just a sprinkle of irony, we mixed the grapes with grape tomatoes. And we delicately balanced our bright summer circles on a schmear of goat yogurt whipped with Styrian pumpkin seed oil, and torn chives.
Now if we could only figure out what to do with those vines…

Grapevine Salad
(Serves 4)

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1 lbs. red seedless grapes
3 Tbs. kosher salt
1 cup red vine vinegar
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 tsp. olive oil
8 grape leaves in brine
8-10 oz. fresh chevre
1/4 cup goat yogurt
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. pumpkin seed oil
fresh chives
salt and pepper to taste
1. Prepare your pickled grapes, at least two days before. Remove grapes from the stem and wash and dry. Dissolve kosher salt in about 2 cups of water. Place grapes in jar and cover with salt water, add more water until they’re covered. Store out of sunlight for a day.
2. Once grapes have cured in salt for 24 hours, drain them and prepare a vinegar bath. Add both vinegars to a small saucepot placed on high heat. Once you attain a boil, add sugar and stir. Let simmer for a couple minutes. Add any flavor enhancers as desired (cinnamon stick, bay leaves, mustard seed, chili peppers…) Return grapes to clean jar and cover with still-hot vinegar solution. Let sit in fridge for at least another 24 hours.
3. To prepare salad day of: wash and dry cherry tomatoes. In a bowl, dress with olive oil, salt and pepper. Let sit while you roll grape leaf packages. Spoon a tablespoon or so of chevre into the center of each grape leaf, bundling them up by closing one edge after another. Conserve one serving of goat cheese for dressing. Bind the packets using chives as twine–when you sear them the chive will permeate the cheese.
4. Make yogurt dressing by combining with pumpkin seed oil and the tablespoon of remaining chevre, whisking together until creamy. Add chopped garlic clove and oregano and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Heat a pan on high heat, add a touch of grapeseed or canola oil for frying. Once smoking hot, pan sear the goat cheese packets for about 30 seconds on each side, just enough to make them hot.
6. Plate the salad. Start with a 2-tablespoon dollop of goat yogurt dressing, and spread by pressing down with the spoon making concentric circles to widen its mark on the plate. Place 5-6 cherry tomatoes down inside the yogurt circle. Then rinse and dry your grapes and place on top of tomatoes, gingerly. Rip up chives and place as garnish. Finally, slide two grape leaf-chevre packages onto the salad and serve with an extra dash of pumpkin seed oil.
Beverage: Consecration #3
Soundtrack: The Slits’ “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

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Back on the Homebrew

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Hot Knives

The way we remember our first misadventures with amateur homebrewing back in college – it was fun but lacking in results. Steering Alex’s Saturn toward rural Riverside on a weekday morning after loading up on black coffee and death rock CDs, we pulled in to the parking lot of “Beer Beer and More Beer,” a sort of general store for homebrewers. Where slim abdomens go to die.
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We returned with a 5-gallon plastic drum and some tubing, a couple standard recipes, and plastic baggies of hop pellets, and canisters of malt extract. The first batch we made wasn’t half bad, a simple pale ale. The second batch, well, let’s just say we should have set rules about impulse brewing decisions – like adding grapefruit rind and weed straight into the fermenter. That month, we lugged clinking half-rotten beers to parties. After that, we pretty much only used the plastic tank as a drum at anti-war protests, beating on it with a metal spoon or crowbar.
That was 8 or so years ago. Since then we’ve penned hundreds of blog posts, spent thousands of dollars on beer, walked the factory line of breweries, written a beer-zine, interviewed plenty of brewers and homebrew fanatics, and racked up immeasurable research time on bar stools. And yet, we’ve never once made a move to get back on the proverbial horse, and try our hand at homebrewing again. Until this summer!
Thanks to our friend Alex Macy, an inimitable beer guide in his own right, we have thrown down the gauntlet. A couple months ago, as Macy was gearing up to lead a series of homebrew classes here in L.A., our discussion strayed to the topic of tonka beans, an exotic, nearly impossible-to-acquire ingredient that we figure no one has ever brewed with. Macy was intrigued and suggested brewing a strong beer of some sort flavored with tonka beans. We agreed it might be the best chance of brewing a beer that no one else has ever made before…
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Tonka beans are tear-shaped South American seeds that look like a cross between almonds and black cockroaches. Like something that crawled out of the jungle and expired before killing you, only the things smell — and taste — rather delicious. (Think vanilla, cinnamon and that plastic-y Toys R’ Us scent.) The catch is that tonka beans can actually kill you. Because they contain a chemical called coumarin, which thins the blood, consuming more than you should can lead to liver failure. Or kidney failure. We can’t remember which exactly. But the Food and Drug Administration seems to think it’s a really bad idea. Anyway, we decided to give it a shot.
Besides cheesemongering, Alex imports nuts and spices. So he was able to get his hands on some tonka — its legal for Wiccans to use as power amulets in rituals — and we met up in Macy’s backyard to spend a recent afternoon doing a ritual not so unlike that of Wiccan priestesses: we watched a cauldron boil, added illicit substances to it, and talked about using yeasts as a natural lubricant. The result? Hot Knives’ very own porter. “Fuck the FDA Porter.” Available only for your video pleasure, for now.
Come back next week for a full report on the finished product, along with a Hot Knives review of our very own beer!

Posted in Gastronomy | 6 Comments

Golden God Hot Sauce

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Hot Knives

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Our birthdays are usually witnessed by either a house party or camping. This year it was a little bit of both thanks to an opportunistic, long-ago-made reservation for a desert rental property in Joshua Tree built almost entirely out of mirrors, glass and gold bricks, called Acido Dorado.
We drove out last week, lugging the usual stockpile of iced booze, aged vinegars, citrus fruits, a 15-pound watermelon, sharpened knives, French cheese, BB gun, not one but two tortilla presses, and batches of still-proofing bread doughs. The rental contract helpfully reminds patrons to “bring your own drugs and alcohol,” so that wasn’t a problem. (Although the instructions do include a corollary rule: don’t climb the ornate gold fence proclaiming yourself a “golden god…even if you are in fact a golden god.”)
We forgot only one thing: hot sauce.
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Given that our taste buds no longer register food that doesn’t contain capsicum, this was a major oversight made worse by the fact that our planned meals involved pizza and tacos, fried eggs and beans. So we did what we do and whipped up a hot sauce on the spot. Rather than just vinegar punch, we wanted something sweet: We started with freshly pulsed and strained watermelon juice, and whisked it with pure habanero powder. (Looking nearly identical to cayenne, but significantly hotter, we found habanero chili powder in the bulk section of our health food store. But cayenne will work just fine.) From there it was a quick squeeze of lime, a hearty dash of good red wine vinegar, and a quick boil with a flick of flour to give it body.

Armed with hot sauce, we blissed out the rest of the weekend… pulsed a kimche Bloody Mary to slurp while shooting cans; climbed boulders in the Joshua Tree National Monument during a surreal sunset; baked a tasting flight of insane pizzas; and shared the golden hot tub with a desert roadrunner. This sauce is sweet, zingy and hot, so you will need cold beer and a watering hole if you attempt eating it in the desert, and please remember you are no god, but mere mortal before squirting too much of this into your mouth.
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Watermelon Hot Sauce
(Makes about 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup fresh watermelon juice
1/8 cup red wine vinegar (distilled white is ok)
1 Tbs. Habanero powder
1 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. flour
1 tsp. salt
half a lime
1. If you are juicing your own watermelon start by slicing off chunks, adding to a blender or food processor and blending until pureed. Then strain, to remove seeds and flesh, and repeat. This recipe calls for so little, it behooves you to either be making a pitcher of agua fresca or a shit ton of cocktails.
2. Put watermelon juice in a mixing bowl. Add to it 1 tablespoon habanero powder and paprika. Whisk well for 20 seconds, until thoroughly dissolved. Then add your vinegar, salt and lime. Whisk again.
3. Pour the mixture into a small skillet on high heat. Just before it hits a boil, add the teaspoon of flour and stir. When it boils, lower to simmer and let go for 1 minute, just enough to slightly thicken and bind. Remove from heat.
4. Once cool, refrigerate in a small squeeze bottle or eye dropper. Dose often.
Soundtrack: Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”
Beverage: Alesmith’s Decadence 2008

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Lemon-rubbed Kaleslaw

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Hot Knives

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Drafted to come up with a summery, picnic-friendly kale salad, Hot Knives undertook a brutally fibrous campaign of taste tests. With its texture somewhere between a dishwasher scrubby and a garden plant, kale often gets gussied up with winter veg (caramelized squash…) and/or harsh dressings (balsamic reduction…) – the salad equivalent of a scratchy sweater. We were going more for bikini thong.
Our first thought was raw “collard greens,” a sort of imitation of the Southern classic with citrus-rubbed kale, which would wilt as if it was long-braised without losing its color or nutrition, masquerading as collards. This idea morphed into an infinitely cooler format: a kale coleslaw. Softened by a lemon-water massage and sat overnight in a lemon oil, the kale becomes nearly slurpable while staying light and crisp.
The real key is the lemon, not just to soften the kale but to zest the dressing. It feels clean and bright, not harsh and heavy. In truth, we realize now, kale may be the only thing in which we prefer the former to the latter.

Kaleslaw
Serves 8-10

1 head of kale
2 large lemons
1 quart filtered water
1 Tbs. olive oil
2 carrots
1 cup Veganaise
2 tsp. fresh black pepper
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
quarter of a red cabbage (garnish)
1. Prepare the kale for its rub-down: take each leaf and remove the stem by either slicing a “V” shape and separating the two green sides from its spine, or simply pulling off the leafy green in chunks. Discard the stem. Throw the large kale leaves into a strainer. Rinse and let sit.
2. Zest both your lemons into a large mixing bowl, making sure to get every last inch of yellow goodness. Save zest for the dressing. When complete, slice and juice lemons into a separate container. Fill a large bowl with water, and add only half the fresh lemon juice to the water.
3. Submerge kale in lemon-water and let sit for 1-2 minutes. Take a small bunch at a time and massage the kale by scrunching as hard as you can, releasing and taking a new handful of kale. Repeat for several minutes
4. Remove kale and let dry in a colander, or spin dry. On a cutting board, slice each large chunk or leaf like you might chiffonade basil. If the leaves are not big enough to get long, coleslaw like slices don’t fret. Place kale in a container with a lid to store overnight. Combine the rest of the lemon juice (should be close to 2 Tbs., if not juice another lemon) with a Tbs. of olive oil. Let sit in fridge overnight, but before you clean up make dressing for tomorrow.
5. Combine Veganaise with black pepper, sugar, salt and lemon zest and whisk to make dressing. Add a half-teaspoon of lemon juice if needed to whisk, but no more. Save for service.
6. After kale has sat all night, drain liquid and spin dry. Grate carrot and shred cabbage. Toss together with dressing and serve cold.
Beverage: Craftsman Brewing’s Heavenly Hefe
Soundtrack: Talking Heads’ “This Must be the Place”

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Wedding Bells

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Hot Knives


If you know us by now, you know that we don’t cater events often. Just the occasional Buddhist-gay wedding or Bavarian arm wrestling contest.
But it was too hard to resist the e-mail request we got six months ago asking if we were game to do the food for a Southern themed “swanky hoe-down” on a private hill in East LA this summer. So we said yes. And now the vows are finally bearing down upon us and we’re gearing up for the big shindig. We decided straight outta the gate that we wanted to serve something decorative on the tables that would tie the menu together. Something pickley, tart, and refreshing. Something that screams Down South. We chose okra.
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This weekend we hit the farms market. If you pay heed to what’s fresh in produce, you know that okra is starting to flood the market quicker than meth in a trailer park in summer. Alex walked up to the Korean vendors we typically get cheap staples like bok choy from and furiously haggled: We bought 10 pounds of the stuff and lugged it home for a go at preservation. Like the fry dredge we used in our recent Po’Boy recipe, we lifted this pickled okra from a coupla ’90s cookbook dudes called the Lee Brothers. We can’t praise them enough (pickled watermelon rinds!). Thank you bros. Here come ten pound, brined wedding bouquets!
Stay tuned for full wedding menu and the ‘morning after’ debrief…
Pickled Okra
(Makes a Peck)
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1.5 lbs. Okra
1 quart plus 1 1/2 cups filtered water
3 tsp. kosher salt
3-4 dried chiles
4 sprigs fresh dill
4 cloves garlic
4 cups distilled white vinegar
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. black peppercorns
Equipment
2 quart, wide mouth Bell jars w/ rims and lids
2 large stockpots
tongs
bread rack
1. Start with the brine: fill a large mixing bowl with 1 quart water and 1 tsp. kosher salt, stir to dissolve. Add okra and let sit covered for 2 hours. Trim the okra’s woody stems.
2. Sterilize your jars while you wait; fill the stockpot two-thirds full with water. Place on high heat until you reach a boil. Gently drop the jars into the water and let “cook” for 15 minutes. Then remove and place upside down on a bread rack to cool (a clean dish rack works too).
3. After 2 hours, drain and rinse the okra pods, pat ’em dry with a clean towel. Stuff them creatively into the clean jars and add garlic cloves, dill and dried chiles as you go.
4. In the second stockpot, combine your vinegar, 1 1/2 cups water, sugar, peppercorns and remaining 2 tsp. of salt and bring to a boil on high heat. Let bubble for 4 minutes before turning off and using.
5. Pour the hot vinegar brine over the okra, leaving barely a centimeter room at the top, and immediately close lid. Store upside down and wait at least one week before breaking open.
Beverage: Avery’s 17th: a Dry Hopped Black Lager
Soundtrack: Pixies “Palace of the Brine”

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Pints of Powder

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Hot Knives

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Of all the scandals we’ve studied in our country’s history, this is by far the tangiest. Stone Brewing Co. has sold thousands upon thousands of glass jars of spicy mustards mixed with their delicious beer. Whether stouts, ales, or IPAs, nothing cuts the sting of good mustard powder like beer. But apparently, Stone Brewing’s sub-sub-contractor decided the beer they were given to make the mustard tasted better poured straight into their pint glasses. That’s right, they weren’t cooking with the beer at all. For shame! Like eating O’douls mustard.
While our friends at Stone handled it gracefully, it does make you wonder: Why not just buy a six-pack, drink five of ’em, and use the last 12 ounces to whip up your own mustard! That’s what our Internet-friend and pickling penpal Matt decided to do. Matt’s a stand-up dude with good taste in blogs (he reads this one) and even better taste in his kitchen projects (kick-ass pickled pumpkin that he dropped off for us to try several months ago).
So to give all of you red-blooded Americans a genuinely alcoholic mustard option to slather on your soy dogs this up-coming Fourth of July, we bring you two Stone-beer mustard recipes from the kitchen of Matt Velick. They take a couple days so get crackin’.
As for Stone, no hard feelings. The brewery is hosting a vegetarian-beer tasting dinner July 13. There will be beer in the food. Take it away Matt!

“Stone Killer”

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Stone IPA Pub-Style Mustard
Makes about a pint
2 cups mustard powder/flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. honey
12 oz. Stone IPA (flat)
1. In a food processor, combine all dry ingredients and pulse to mix.
2. Add the honey and mix while slowly pouring in your flat beer until everything is blended and of a smooth consistency.
3. Pour mustard into a jar, seal, and leave out at room temperature for 2-7 days. (The flavor will initially be a sharp and sinus-destroying assault, but the longer it stays out at room temp, the more the flavors will mellow and begin peace negotiations with each other. When you’ve had enough of this mellowing business, stick it in the fridge, to aid preservation, obviously, but this will also lock in the flavor index you’ve settled upon).

“The Emperor’s Caviar”

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Whole Grain Imperial Stout Mustard
Makes about a pint
8 oz. Imperial stout
2 oz. dark, aged rum (I used 23-year Ron Zacapa)
1 1/2 cup brown mustard seed
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. white pepper
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground mace
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1 Tbs. honey
1. Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive bowl. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 24-48 hours, to let the mustard seeds soften, and to allow the flavors to get to know each other.
2. Blend in a food processor until mustard mixes and thickens, but not so much that it destroys the mustard seeds, as this should maintain a “whole-grain” appearance. When it looks good to you, you’re done.
3. Jar, seal, refrigerate.
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A note on sourcing: You want good quality powder. Here in L.A., Silver Lake Spice Station and Nicole’s Gourmet Foods in Pasadena are good sources for mustard powder in bulk. You can also order brown mustard seeds from legit mail-order companies like Penzey’s. Beware bunk spices.

Posted in Gastronomy | 1 Comment

Face-off: ‘Naner vs Jackfruit

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Hot Knives

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While some of you were cheering for a team in the big rivalry this weekend (UK vs. USA), we had bigger, better, weirder rivalries to attend to. Like which tropical fruit makes a better pig replacement in stewed pulled pork?
Ever since tasting the BBQ “Pork” Sandwich at Hollywood’s Pure Luck (a sandwich we’d like to take with us into the afterlife) we’ve held Jackfruit to be the preeminent faux pork. It’s stringy, tender and slightly sweet like the more barbaric original. But one day Alex expressed this love and admiration for the J-fruit to one of Pure Luck’s neighbors, Tai Kim, owner of Scoops. Since Kim is known for arty gelato flavors like kimchee and truffle, we weren’t surprised when he said something along the lines of: “Jackfruit’s okay but I don’t know why they don’t use banana flower.”

This weekend, we finally had the opportunity to make these tropical plants face-off in a sweaty barbecue-scented cage match. We needed to try out a barbecue sauce recipe we’re working on for the aforementioned Dirty South Wedding we’re prepping for. We set to perfecting the sauce and then preparing the “pork.” The sauce itself was gorgeous, red chili-flecked, slightly gooey, sweet from peaches. Rather than have to pick between “Carolina Style” sauces (thin, red and vinegar based) and “Kansas City” style (gooey, sweet and sloppy) we found a happy medium by making a simple vinegar sauce and using that as the base of a thicker crowd pleaser. Try it yourself!
For the Jackfruit, we took Pure Luck’s recommendation and got the canned in brine variety from a Filipino market. Rinsed and pulled apart by hand, this stuff is great and easy to work with. Though next time, we plan to soak the tanginess of the brine out completely.
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As you’ll see in this video however, the banana flower was, how shall we say, more challenging to work with. Peeling layer after lawyer of young banana pods the size and shape of reptilian phalluses was not appetizing. Nor was the task of taking each and every one out of its bitter, starchy pod to soak in citrus-salt water. Or cooking it in three stages: boiled to remove bitterness, sauteed in oil, then stewed with the sauce.
The final result was surprising: The jackfruit was good, its texture pitch perfect, and appearance very close to the ribbons of pig flesh, but left something to be desired in terms of having its own tang. The banana on the hand was a standout: though slightly on the mushy side from the cooking process and being finely chopped, the mouth feel and taste were glorious — not just fruit, but nutty, which we understand people dig in pig chops. So what’s a coupla cooks to do? With the ‘naners time prohibitive, we’ll have to call it a tie for now.

HK “Crowd Pleasah” Sauce
(Makes about 4 cups)

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Vinegar Base
1/4 cup hot water
1 Tbs. brown sugar
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. paprika
1 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp black pepper
1. Add brown sugar to hot water and stir to dissolve. Combine with cider vinegar in a small pot over high heat.
2. Add spices and whisk thoroughly until mixture reaches a boil. Remove from heat and cool.
BBQ Sauce
1 white onion
1 Tbs. butter (optional, sub oil for vegan)
1 Tbs. olive oil
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. cumin seed
1 tsp caraway seed
2 cups Peach Ketchup
3/4 cup vinegar base (above)
1/2 tsp. Dijon
2 Chipotle peppers
2 Tbs. molasses
1 Tbs. maple syrup
1 tsp. liquid smoke (optional)
1 tsp. salt
3. Measure out all your wet ingredients and whisk together in a measuring cup, including the vinegar base. Set aside.
4. Mince the onion. Bring a large sauce pot on medium heat, add the butter and oil. Add onion, cooking until onions are translucent but not caramelized, about 3 min.
5. Chop the chipotle peppers, then add to the onions with the garlic, cumin and caraway. Cook for 3 minutes.
6. Pour in wet ingredients and give a heft stir. Let cook on low for 20 minutes, stirring every five. The goo should be sputtering. Remove and use cold or hot.

Soundtrack: Os Mutantes’ “Meu Refrigerador Nao Funciona”
Beverage: Buckeye Brewing’s ’76 IPA

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Our Summer Oyster Po’boy

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Hot Knives

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If you’re like us you’ve probably been feeling shitty every time you get in and out of an automobile, what with the evil oil gush that’s still spurting all over our southern coast right now. Make no mistake, we’re complacent. Dirty South indeed.
What better reason to prepare for summer barbecues, picnics, and Sunday fish fries without the seafood, huh? We give you the vegan “oyster” Po’boy — a winner of a recipe that sandwiches crunchy-fried, Southern spiced oyster mushrooms and sweet peach ketchup as well as a runny, salty, creamy radish remoulade all between two cute buns. No Louisiana oyster (or costly gas mileage) required! ‘Course if you follow our twatter, you already knew that.
Warning: This is just the beginning in a long spurt of veggie Southern goodies you’ll see here this summer. Hot Knives is knee deep in recipe testing for a kick-ass Deep South ho-down wedding for some new friends of ours. Think ginger beer mules, Cajun mac & cheese, definitive cornbread, blackened potato salad and raw collards coleslaw. We hope that means you’ll come along on the journey with us, spilling fry oil and corn meal all over your laptop screens like the god damned crude itself.

Oyster Po’Boys
(Makes a dozen)


Peach Ketchup
1 large white onion
12 oz. can peaches in syrup
2 cups peeled tomatoes in sauce
6 oz. tomato paste
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1. Chop the onion and sauté in a large saucepan on medium heat with a touch of canola oil to keep from sticking. Cook until tender and see-through, about 8 minutes.
2. Add the peaches with their syrup, and the tomatoes with sauce. Stir and add tomato paste, sugar, vinegar and bay leaves. Cook for about an hour on low heat, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Watch for it to reduce by about a centimeter, and thicken. Remove from heat and let cool for 20 minutes before blending.
3. Place cooled sauce in a blender and pulse for several minutes until consistent. Refrigerate and use once cold.
Radish Remoulade
8 radishes
1/4 cup Veganaise
1 bunch chives
1 lemon
2 tsp. black pepper
Salt to taste
4. Scrub and trim radishes of tips and butts.
5. Prepare a mixing bowl with 3 or 4 cups water. Juice half the lemon into the water.
6. Slice radishes with a mandolin, or as thin as possible with a chef’s knife. Now line them up and julienne as thin as you can (they should look like tiny matches.) Let your julienned radishes sit in the lemon-water for 5 minutes.
7. Wash and mince the chives.
8. Combine black pepper, chives, the juice of the other half of the lemon, and the drained radishes with the veganaise. Season with salt to taste.
Fried Oysters
2 lbs. oyster mushrooms
1 tsp. smoked salt
1 tsp. smoked paprika
canola oil spray
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbs. corn meal
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 tsp. ground white pepper
1 tsp. Aleppo pepper (or chilie powder)
12 oz. pale ale
9. Pre-heat oven at 375 degrees. Prepare mushrooms by splitting large caps into thin strips. In a mixing bowl, coat the mushrooms with smoked salt, paprika and spray thoroughly with canola oil. Then place the spiced mushrooms on a sprayed cookie tray and slide into oven. Cook for about 15 minutes, or until slightly crackled and brown. Remove and set aside to cool.
10. While they cool, prepare a fry batter. We went with an all-purpose Southern “fry dredge” as dictated by the Lee Brother’s excellent Southern cookbook along with a simple beer batter. Start by mixing fry dredge: 1/2 cup of the flour, the cornmeal, the salt, pepper.
11. Next make the batter, really just a slushy mix of 1.5 parts ale to one part flour that you’ll use to wet the mushrooms.
12. Once the mushrooms are cooled, get your fry oil ready. Empty 6-8 cups canola oil into a deep pot and set on high heat for at least 10 minutes.
13. Batter the shrooms: take each one and dip into beer batter, shake off excess and then dredge in flour mixture, patting off the excess as well. Reserve on a plate for once the fry oil is hot enough.
14. Fry 5 or 6 at a time for about 30 seconds or until crispy. Fish them out with a spider or slotted spoon and let drip dry on paper towels. Keep on top of the oven so they stay warm.
15. Serve by opening each bun and pinching out about a teaspoon of extra bread to make room for your oysters. Slather with ketchup first, then place shrooms down, and finish with a dollop of radish remoulade and the top bun.
Beverage: Buckeye Brewing 1776 IPA
Soundtrack: ” “ Indian Jewelry’s “Going South”

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Getting Trucked Up

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Hot Knives

Now that the curd-grease has settled (and our butter burns have healed) we’ve had time to reflect on last month’s Grilled Cheese Invitational – a claustrophobic, mostly lucrative, without-a-doubt triumph in which we graduated from grilled cheese champions to commercial capitalists and busted our food-truck cherry.
That last bit just meant we rented a 4-wheel kitchen, not that we engaged in any sort of lurid sexual acts inside a taco truck. (Although we did watch a coupla pedigreed chefs toke medical-grade weed in our ride).
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For this year’s Grilled Cheese Invitational – which we’ve competed in thrice and won, errr, fice – Hot Knives rented a food truck from the company Road Stoves. Our buddy Tucker Neel set to making a psychotic truck banner of neon stripper knives slicing into the gooey center of a muscleman sandwich. We sold three different grilled cheese sammiches for $2 a slice. We burned through more than 50 loaves of bread, 18 pounds of Vermont butter, 13 pounds of homemade kimchi, and 2 tiny summer truffles (off-menu, motherfuckkah). The line at times sprawled several city blocks and, we were told, lasted 30-40 minutes. We needed no fewer than four assistants to manage the beasts. And between noon when the gates opened and about 4:30 we served just over 1300 slices.
At some point during the crush of the mid-day crowds, with our truck out of battery, the fridges warming and the health inspector about to board our bus, we looked at each other and exchanged ‘what the fuck are we doing’ looks. How did we get here?
It started with whiskey, of course. We were drinking several months ago with GCI Founder Tim “Cap’n Shady” Walker when he asked us to consider being vendors at this year’s festival in his quest to offer more festival goers the chance to eat copious amounts of cheese. Whereas in previous years, the 100 or so attendees would easily consume vom-levels of dairy just by showing up, it’s gotten a lot harder to please 8,000 people, he told us. So Tim was courting all manner of chefs from Mark Peel to Eric Greenspan to the Border Grill ladies to placate the huddled masses. After mulling it over (sober) we said yes and set to grilling. It seems like we spent the entire month of April debating the merits of thick bread and the magic of using steam to melt cheese quicker (it works).
After trying numerous iterations of flavors we set on the following sandwiches:
Band Camp: Hook’s and Fiscalini aged cheddars with Ha’s Apple Butter
Lemon Sunn: Cana de Oveja sheep’s milk cheese and lemon oil
White Light/White Heat: Beemster goat gouda with homemade kimchi

But rather than deal with customers walking up to the window saying, “Gimme two Band Camps, one Lemon Sunn, and… what’s goat gouda?” we implemented a Soup Nazi-like system of giving people no options. Chef’s Choice, we called it. Take it or leave it. Each sandwich had a stage time and we served it until we ran out. And we did run out. So other than raking in green, what were our fondest memories? Well for starters, we met Chef Roy of Kogi fame outside one of his trucks at the Road Stoves depot. And Dave from the Grilled Cheese Truck let us in on some fascinating trade secrets for how to grill 1200 sandwiches in three hours (can’t tell).
Now, picture this, if you can. It’s 7:30 the morning of the festival and the two of us are pulling the truck out of the truck depot south of downtown L.A. only to find that bicyclists are passing us. The truck won’t go faster than 5 miles per hour because we are… Out. Of. Gas. So we pull over to an already bustling Chevron near the Staples Center and we yank the sliding door to hop out. Except the door is jammed and it won’t budge no matter how hard we pull. Okay… Sweatshirts are taken off, and sleeves rolled up. Nothing works. And it’s the only exit. Not until we started really sweating (just imagine not showing up to a massive festival you’ve helped promote because your dumb ass is locked in a truck at a gas station) and we started prying at the door clasp with our grill tongs did it finally creak open.
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Other classic memories include: mind-blowing street mural at the Road Stoves depot of a cop spray painted with “187”; borrowing a dozen lemons from a grandma in a taco truck, putting us in karmic debt; passing our health inspection with flying colors (they tried to shut Tillamook down); abusing our bullhorn by making all sorts of announcements to the crowd; and watching our friend Juvenal who manned the grill with us for the first half of the day furiously chop at big piles of our kimchi on the griddle with spatulas like some deranged Mongolian Barbecue chef. Whatever next year holds, we know this: We will butter the ever-loving shit out of it.
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Wood: The New Hops

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Hot Knives


We are lovers of barrels, that which resides within their steel banded darkness is heaven.
The aging of beer at our own hands is still just a fumbling hobby; but when done by brewers, it becomes a kind of sorcery. That synergy of time, bacteria, and wood coalesces into flavors and sensations that Hot Knives and other beer freaks now hunt down with the same voracity that we used to for heavy-handed hop brews.
Let these bottles cost way too much. Let them stay out of the fridge a little too long, and let them lose 20% of their fizz before you swill and contemplate the vastness of fruit-inflected, ale infections.
This Red Poppy was the one time we wanted, nay, needed the flaccid security of a rubber cork and one of those cheap air pumps the weak use when they can’t finish their fancy grape juice. A strange compulsion to be sure: Why did we not want to saber more bottles, dumping the ruddy, red suds into our gaping mouths like blood crazed cannibals? What preservation, what need would stretching this 375 ml. continuum fulfill that another tall glass would not? This was different; this was like some forced sensation of the Sacred. We wrapped the bottle in saran wrap and rubber bands, trying to tie off the gusher so that another tart-minded tongue could sip something this good.
Tartness that actually made the words “oh my god” come out of our mouths — a sensual knee jerk reaction like the kind you only have in the company of naked people.
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Even keeled tartness with no bitterness? Amazing old ale flavor with no saccharin back side? Deep flavors of barely mashed grain? S. H. I. T. This is good. Brain zaps. Mind pops. This needs to be repeated. Where, and when, will we get back to the beer store — which is where by the way? Where did you get it? Where was I…
We’re not fucked up, we’re going crazy.
Maybe it was circumstantial. The sun had just peaked through the clouds. The chores were done before noon. All the knives had been sharpened, and news from the wilderness was that all our ladies were safe and elated and on their way home. A sense of calm.
Fumbling, we unwrapped our hermetically sealed leftovers, we lost control. It’s so perfect.
Dairy Pairy: Bavarian Limburger
Soundtrack: Fever Ray “If I Had a Heart”

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