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Jerry Orbach, 1935 - 2004

As many of you may know I'm a huge musical theater fan. Last night Jerry Orbach died of prostate cancer at age 69. Most people recognize him as Lennie Briscoe from TV's "Law and Order" franchise. Orbach however was first an actor in musicals. He was originated the roles of Billy Flynn in "Chicago," El Gallo in "The Fantasticks," and Julian Marsh in "42nd Street." Orbach appeard in numerous television and movie roles, including providing the voice for Lumiere in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" (one of the last Disney movies I actually like that isn't made by Pixar). He was nominated for Tony awards for "Guys and Dolls", "Chicago", and won one for his performance in "Promises, Promises." I always enjoyed watching/listening to Orbach perform. The lights on Broadway will be dimmed tonight in his honor. He will be missed by many.

Amazon.com has quite a listing of recordings featuring Orbach (link).

Small Electrics Part 3: The Slow Cooker

This may sound odd coming from somebody who likes good food, but I love the Crock Pot. The slow cooker is a great tool when it's cold outside. We actually use ours year round, but generally the foods made in a slow cooker are more suited to winter weather. For quite a while this fall we made something every week in the slow cooker (usually on Monday so there was more time in the week for the leftovers).

The key to the slow cooker is having recipes that are well suited to long, slow, moist cooking methods. There are several of these recipes in this month's Everyday Food. I'm also a huge fan of Lynn Alley's book, The Gourmet Slow Cooker. This book is organized into chapters by country and provides a variety of food styles. We've liked everything we've cooked from this book (and we've used it quite a bit). Just a warning though, these are not easy slow cooker recipes. The preparation can be quite time consuming, this of course usually results in better food. The slow cooker advantage is that you can prep everything Sunday night, put it in the crock in the fridge, and then move the crock to the cooker on Monday morning to cook all day.

Small Electrics Part 2: BroilKing Griddle

The newest addition to our kitchen is a BroilKing Griddle that I got for my birthday. I know it's been over a month since my birthday, but you just don't have griddle using occasions every day. Let me just say that this griddle is FANTASTIC (it should also be noted that it is the same griddle used in the Good Eat's Episode "The Man Food Show"). If you don't have a griddle you should consider getting this one.

The first test was burgers which came out quite well, but we mixed a sweet bbq sauce into the meat and it burned fairly nicely onto the griddle making clean up painful.

Since the burnt sugar incident I discovered that even though the griddle is non-stick you really still need to season it. After seasoning nothing seems to stick. I've had great success with eggs (although I still can't flip over easy on the griddle -- that stays in the pan), pancakes, grilled sandwiches, and quesadillas.

I know you're probably thinking that $100 is a lot of green to spend on a griddle, but you should know that the difference between a quality griddle and cheap one is night and day. The griddle is heavy cast aluminum and has a large, powerful (I think 1400 watt) heating element. I'm guessing this thing will last a LONG time. The best part about this griddle is that if you remove the thermostat it is completely submersible making cleaning easy. Broil King says it can be run through the dishwasher, but I hesitate to do that.

If your in the market for a griddle, this is a nice one. Stay tuned tomorrow for my favorite winter small electric (and a cookbook).

Small Electrics Part 1 -- Toastmaster Lightwave Oven

In honor of the holidays and the shortening shopping season I thought I'd write up a few reviews from my personal experience with a variety of small electric kitchen gadgets that no house should be without. Some of these I own, some I've just used (and want to own). So over the next few days there will be several reviews for your reading pleasure.

Today's review is of the Toastmaster Lightwave Oven. We bought this toaster oven when we moved to Springfield and thought it was great. Now however we've been without it for over a month with no end in sight. The bulb that is the main heat source in the oven stopped working in early November. The device was sent to Toastmaster for warranty replacement and there is no indication when it will be shipped. The Toastmaster customer service people tell me the item is backordered and will ship when they receive them. I'm dismayed by this as I could go buy a replacement at Target today. I'm pondering doing that and sending a bill to Toastmaster rather than waiting for the replacement unit.

All difficulties aside the Lightwave Oven is a great little toaster oven. The Lightwave uses a halogen heating element on the top and infrared elements on the bottom. It heats up quickly (I wouldn't say instantly, but VERY quickly), it cooks evenly, and the controls are easy to use. I've baked bread, cookies, beans, casseroles, pizza, and other items in this little oven. My favorite item to cook is frozen french fries. I know this isn't healthy nor is it the best way to make fries, but I can pop a serving of fries on the baking pan, set the oven to potato for 8 minutes and have crunchy warm fries with almost no effort.

The toasting leaves a bit to be desired as there are only three settings for toast -- Light, Medium, and Charred (er, Dark). I wish that Toastmaster had included intermediate settings. Light is a bit too light and medium is great with homemade breads, but purchased bread tends to be a bit to dark. Dark may as well be called charcoal. If there were five settings rather than three this oven would be perfect.

My other gripe is that you can't set the temperature for each cooking mode. I've never had a problem with this, but a little chart that says what temperature each mode uses would be handy for recipe conversion.

Overall this is a nice toaster oven (aside from the fact that we don't have one any more). If you want great toast you should buy a toaster, but if you're in the market for a toaster oven the Lightwave works well.

Rating: 4 of 5 (it would be 5 of 5 except for crappy customer service)

Holiday Dinner Party

Last night Sarah and I hosted a dinner party for two couples (Steve & Tammy and Matt & Meredith). We've never really done a small dinner party before and I was very pleased with the outcome. It gave us an excuse to use our china and for me to try out some new recipes. Over the course of about 4 hours there was much eating and conversation. You can read Steve's post for a review of the evening.

The Menu:

Crostini with olive tapanade

Spinach salad with Maytag blue cheese

Braised pork loin with honey lemon glazed carrots and garlic mashed potatoes

Cheese course

Lemon Crème Brûlée

All of the bread throughout the meal was pretty much my standard bread recipe (see other posts on this site) with a mixture of bread, unbleached white, and semolina flours. I also used about a tablespoon of barley malt as a sweetener with more depth than sugar.

Richard's Hawgwild BBQ

I finally feel like I've found good BBQ in Springfield, MO. I haven't tried everything yet, but so far I am impressed with Richard's Hawgwild BBQ. This is an extension of a restaurant in Aurora (they also have a location in Monett). The Springfield location is in the Village Mart gas station at Plainview and South Campbell (the gas station is actually a plus for me with regard to BBQ -- note Oklahoma Joe's).

They have a great lunch special that includes a sandwich (served Memphis style with cole slaw), chips, and a drink for $4.25. I added beans for an extra $0.50. All told lunch was under $6 - what a deal.

I've been disappointed with all of the barbecue in Springfield, but this is not the case at Hawgwild. It wasn't the best pork I've ever head it was quite good. The meat maintains a steady smokey flavor and is very tender -- good enough to not require sauce (the true test of good bbq). Hawgwild has two sauce options a mild sauce (which was served with the sandwiches) and a spicy variety that I didn't get to try but was available for sale along with a rub and various pickled items. The beans are as good as any place I've had them. They're both sweet and tangy and includes generous portions of smoked meat. I was disappointed that I couldn't purchase a single rib, so I'll have to judge those on another visit.

Hawgwild also does catering and will even smoke your own meat for a dollar per pound. Overall, good bbq.

Jeremy Wright's Christmas Cheer Candy Canes

A lot of the blog's I read on a daily basis are technology or business related blogs. It's always amusing when one of these blogs ventures into the food arena. To be perfectly honest this isn't really food, but it's a recipe and it almost made orange juice come out of my nose while I was reading it.

Ensight's Jeremy Wright provides us with a recipe for Christmas Cheer Candy Canes (these provide you cheer when OTHER people eat them).

And this time I mean it

In my blogging slackitude I've neglected to post on several topics over the past few weeks. I'm going to do a brief catch up here and then return to more regular posting. My goal is go to no more than a week without a post. That should be easy for a while as I've been thinking, "I should blog this," and then slacking.

Here's the catch up:
Still at MAX in NOLA: dinner at Red Fish (soft shell crab, great 15 year old Oban), Macromedia party at Mardi Gras World (not too bad, but the food was lame), post MGW Brennan sings karaoke (and is actually not too bad), Palace Cafe (great duck dish and excellent turtle soup), the horrors of standby flights trying to get home a few hours earlier was only made better by the excellent muffuletta I brought with me from Central Grocery.

Back home and recovered from the binge that is MAX, fast forward a few weeks. I discover I've got mono. I'd been feeling lackluster for a while and I think the conference exhaustion pushed me over the edge.

We had Thanksgiving at our house for my family. We got a bit overzealous in the turkey brining -- just a tip, if you start brining on Monday you'll have a very salty turkey. Turkey hotline tip on Wednesday, buy a new turkey. The second turkey brined overnight and was perfect. Turkey, zucchini stuffing, mashed potatoes, praline sweet potatoes, green beans, corn pudding, fresh rolls, pecan and pumpkin pies. Mmmm good.

Saturday Steve Kirks and his wife Tammy had us over for their annual holiday wine tasting. Each couple brings a bottle of wine, they get put into paper sacks, tasted and rated from 1-5. At the end of the night the ratings are summed and the high score in white and red categories each get a prize. We didn't win, but came in 6th (top half of the pack) in the red category with a Cynthia from Augusta (a Missouri winery) that buys their grapes from Sarah's uncle Gene.

Okay, all caught up. Now to avoid the slackitude, and this time I mean it.