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From 5 Denny’s Menu Items That Sound Like Dirty Sex Acts:

It’s French Toast that’s so good you don’t eat it, you fuck it. Yet it somehow still gives you diarrhea.

BenStarr.com - Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey

Brining isn't easy, but it's worth it. After you've had one dry, tasteless Thanksgiving turkey, you know how awful it can be. Brining is the cure.

I wanted to make Black-eyed peas and Hog Jowels for New Years. Unfortunately, I live in Seattle, and none of the grocery stores or butchers seem to think that carrying Hob Jowels is a good idea. But why wouldn't it be. I mean, just read this little section of beauty from cooks.com:

Wash jowl and cover with water. Cook for 2 hours. Add black eyed peas that have been washed and soaked overnight or follow instructions for soaking on package of peas. Add enough water to cover peas and jowl. Season with salt and pepper and cook until peas are tender. Serves 6 to 8.

I'm so sad. One of the butchers was kind enough to mention that with warning he could probably order some jowels. If I'm still here next year, maybe I'll be able to get some.

For those who aren't aware, on New Year's Day, you are supposed to eat a meal containing Black-eyed Peas, Hog Jowels and Turnip Greens (or collard or mustard, I suppose) The Black-eyed Peas give you luck for the upcoming year, the Hog Jowels provide health, and the Greens help out in the wealth department. I suppose the fact that I refuse to eat Greens is directly responsible for my continuing money woes. Apparently, the key to good Greens is good vinegar, so perhaps I'll take Jim's advice and try them with a nice balsamic. Maybe they won't taste like the seed of the devil.

Tonight, I made some wonderful crabs, courtesy of a recipe provided to me by Lemoncheese. Since it went so well, I thought I'd share the love. The recipe is for 6 dungeness crabs.

First, take 2 1/2 pounds of butter. (Shouldn't every recipe start with 2 1/2 pounds of butter. Clarify it. You really do need to clarify it - it prevents burning later on. Chill the clarified butter. Once it's cooled, mix in more cayenne pepper than you would expect, followed by more paprika than you would expect. Seriously. Dump it in there. Think a 1/3 to a 1/2 a jar. The resulting thing should be a sort-of reddish orange. Add salt and garlic. I put in 6 clover for 2 crabs myself. Set this mixture aside. If you make it in advance, keep it cool until you use it, it is butter after all.

Get some crabs. Boil them and then gut them. (Or have the friendly guys at the market do this step for you) Cut them in half.

Preheat the oven to 400.

Whack the crabs and their legs with a mallet or the back end of a knife, so that you've cracked all the shells so that butter could seep in, but not so much that appendages start detaching. Put the crabs on or in something (I used a roasting pan) that you can bake in. Rub the butter mixture all over them. If you did things right, you should have a lot of butter. Use it all. Pile it on. (It's going to melt pretty quickly)

Put the crabs in the oven. Bake them until the butter starts to smoke, at which point you should say "good" and then bake them a little longer. Or, if the butter doesn't smoke (happened to me) just bake them for a while. Mine were probably in there a good 20-25 minutes. They'll look done to you at some point, at which point you should take them out. Or not. You should also baste them with the melted butter once or twice.

Eat the crabs.

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I'm not a wine drinker, but this certainly made me raise an eyebrow. A Japanese company (Innovative Design and Technology Inc) has invented a machine that uses electrolysis to rearrange the molecules in wine to give it a more aged taste. The "machine is a two-chambered device roughly the size of a stereo. Wine passes through one and tap water passes through the other; a membrane the company has patented separates the two. Platinum electrodes provide the juice, driving negative ions -- the cause of acidity -- from the wine into the water." (source) This process apparently breaks up the water molecules so that they mix more freely with the alcohol, a process that takes place naturally while aging in a barrel. Obviously there has been a lot of skepticism with the traditionalist, but the company did manage to talk a couple of wineries in California and Washington into trying it out. What I found most interesting about the whole thing is this video ad that explains (sort of) the machine/process.



(AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)