Sushi roll at Samurai, Amherst NY (PHOTOS BY SCOTTY HARRIS)

Villager: How can we find a samurai we can pay with only rice?
Gisaku: Find hungry samurai.

Akira Kurosawa – The Seven Samurai

When I first arrived in Buffalo, Japanese food was reflected only by teppanyaki houses, with flashing knives and lots of beef. To one exposed to the sushi bars and noodle shops of places like Toronto, this didn’t quite make it.

In a few years we had Saki, beneath the Guaranty Building. From that came Kuni. In no particular order followed Osaka, Tsunami, O, and the appearance of sushi in most local supermarkets.

Sushi / sashimi boat at Samurai, Amherst NY

Of late, there has been an explosion of Japanese inspired restaurants in northeast Erie County, including, for better or worse (mostly better) Fuji Grill, Sea Bar, Wasabi, Kyoto and most recently Samurai.

My love for Sea Bar is well known. Wasabi brought Japanese closer to my home. Samurai is even closer - within walking distance of our Amherst home - but I had promised my 9-year-old daughter Ellie that we would not go there without her. So it was the perfect place for our family to celebrate our 12th anniversary last month.

Samurai (9648 Transit Rd., 716-688-7808) is located in a strip mall at the intersection of Transit and North French, anchored by a Tops supermarket, bounded by a Verizon store and a Supercuts, and featuring competition from a Subway and bad Chinese takeout place.

Despite the ordinary location, Samurai delivers a casual elegance. Our welcome was warm, without being cloying, and we were seated in what I would bet were the best seats in the house – the last booth, directly across from the sushi bar. I don’t know about you, but I like to watch the Itamae (sushi chef) at work.

We ordered Gyoza, Japanese potstickers, for 8-year-old Alison, whose taste buds are just starting to develop, and chicken yakitori with a Thai-style peanut sauce for Ellie in case she wasn’t quite ready for sushi. We didn’t need to be concerned.

As for us, I spent a few moments talking to the Itamae and arranged for an omakase or chef’s choice menu. We began with a seafood bisque, a special for the night. Unlike the bisque I made regularly at DACC’s, the thickness came not from cream. Squash or yam puree, perhaps?

The second course was another special of the night, a Butterfly Roll featuring shrimp and asparagus.

Next was a Dragon Roll, the eyes constructed from octopus “suckers,” with avocado, eel, tempura shrimp and a topping of tobiko “caviar.” Yum.

But, the main course was the scene stealer – a carefully chosen variation of a sushi / sashimi boat. Salmon, tuna, mackerel, yellowtail as sushi and sashimi, and a Samurai Roll with soft-shell crab. Even the leftovers were delicious the next day.

Dessert was a sampling of Japanese ice cream – mango and green tea.

The only drawback is that Samurai apparently still lacks a liquor license. Sake is not traditional with sushi, but I like it, hot or cold, or even carbonated. Japanese beer? Yes. An ice cold Grüner Veltliner? You betcha. The bottomless green tea was lovely, but on a annual occasion like this the availability of something special would have been nice.

But that won’t stop me from getting back ASAP!

Yum!

Scotty Harris is a recovering attorney and former restaurant line cook at Dacc’s and Fredi’s who retired to focus on a more select clientele: His lovely wife and two daughters.

Sushi /sashimi boat at Samurai, Amherst NY

Tying off the foie gras torchon is one of the steps in making the dish that requires teamwork.

The Rue Franklin, one of Buffalo’s best restaurants, has earned its reputation through carefully crafted seasonal menus, and Menu D’Automne is no exception. One particular tasty appetizer skillfully executed by Chef Corey Kley is the Rue’s foie gras torchon, which can be loosely translated into fatty liver (in this case duck) in a very tight bundle. (”Torchon” is towel in French, a reminder of the linen dishtowels sometimes replaced by cheese cloth as wrappers.)

This is not a dish for amateur cooks to contemplate, but it is delicious and worth every penny of its $15 price.

The Rue Franklin’s foie gras torchon is served with Sauternes gelee, grapes and brioche.

Chef Kley starts with a b-lobe of fresh foie gras, about 1.2 pounds. It’s from ducks that are 100% corn fed, raised in Québec by the husband and wife team of Pascal and Francette Fleury, whose company is called Palmex.

The foie, chilled from the refrigerator, needs to come to room temperature. Once it reaches 60-70 degrees, Kley sets about deveining the foie gras. This is a methodical process that takes a good 20 minutes to complete, even for a trained cook. During the process the liver is essentially pulled apart, both large and small veins are removed as well as dark bits of the foie gras that have been bruised during the harvesting.

After the jump: A slideshow detailing the creation of foie gras torchon.

Pieces of foie gras are placed in a bowl and marinated in a sweet French wine called Sauternes, salt, pepper and sugar. The bowl is covered and placed in the refrigerator for an hour.

Then the foie gras is drained, and the pieces are wrapped very tightly in cheesecloth, before being tied off. It takes two people, one to hold the roll together and the other to knot.

Simmering the torchon gently cooks the liver without melting it into soup.

The foie gras is poached in water, salt, peppercorns, sugar and bay leaf and removed after it has reached about 100 degrees, about 5 to 7 minutes. At no time will Chef Kley let the poaching pan reach a boil, as it would essentially melt away the foie gras - which is largely fat, after all.

Chef Kley then hangs the foie gras in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, to firm it up. The next step involves removing the cheese cloth and re-wrapping the foie gras in plastic wrap. It has shrunk and the plastic will form the plump final torchon.

The foie gras will then be tied again and hung overnight in the refrigerator to be served the next day. One torchon of foie gras will provide about 6 servings.

I think it is admirable for the Rue to offer such labor intensive classic French appetizers regardless of how loud the animal rightists might complain.

Rue Chef Corey Kley with the finished torchon, ready for its final rest before serving.

Foie gras has been served as far back as 2,500 years ago in Egypt where no one dared to complain about the treatment of ducks least they be torchoned themselves. I invite you to find out for yourself how foie gras is harvested by visiting the website Hudson Valley Foie Gras and check out the YouTube post of Anthony Bourdain.

by Matthew John Pasquarella

If you were the type to self-medicate with a tray of Double-Stuf Oreos, you wouldn’t have had the nerve to completely leverage your entire life in the first place.

You douse your food with truffle oil, not ketchup. Your cheese has a name. But it’s hard to settle your stomach when you think about sinking all of your personal assets and then some into a McMansion, the Lexus, the private kindergarten, and a time share that, let’s face it, you had no real intentions of paying off.

But hey, you’ve been living a lie for the past two fiscal years, so why stop now? Indulge! You deserve it!

Relax with a plate of Mortgage Meltaways, shut your eyes and pretend you never bought six condos in Miami which have yet to see drywall. Enjoy the delicate lime-infused wafers as you imagine the IRS, VISA, your electric bill and mortgage companies melting away, just like your child’s college fund.

Hint: For an extra crunch, add chopped nuts – then your chewing should drown out the sounds of your Lexus being repossessed.

Next week: Freddie Mac and Cheese, loaded with hidden richness that will make you throw the rules right out the window!

Previously in CRASH COURSES:

* Start with a bang-for-your-buck belt of fruity Dick Punch.

* Eat dessert first, the repo man is coming for your Lehman Crumbles.

* Work out your aggression and get dinner made with Subprime Steak.

- Kristin Kunert

Recipe and more, after the jump.

Mortgage Meltaways are closely modeled on Martha Stewart’s Lime Meltaways. But Kathy rolled out the dough after cutting discs to make them thinner. Then she applied royal icing to the baked cookies for a smoother stamping surface.

Recipe: Mortgage Meltaways

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) of butter, at room temperature
1 cup confectioners sugar
Finely grated zest of 2 limes
2 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

Mix butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the lime zest and juice and the vanilla. Mix well. Add the flour, cornstarch and salt. Mix until just combined.

Scoop the dough out of the mixing bowl and press together to make a disk shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Take dough out of the fridge and break off a hunk. Work it with your hands for a minute to soften it slightly. Sprinkle flour on your working area and rub some on your rolling pin. Roll the dough out to about 1/4″ thickness and cut out into your favorite shapes. Bake for 12-15 minutes depending on how brown you like your cookies.

I frosted these with Royal Icing but they are good plain too.

To get the picture of the house on the cookie you have to ice them and make sure the top is really, really smooth. Once the icing is dry, put some food coloring in a small, bowl. Put your stamp (a regular stamp that I found in the craft store) into the food coloring and then blot on a napkin. Then place gently on the cookie rocking it to get the coloring onto all parts of the picture.

If you press too hard the cookie will break. But that’s okay. They taste good too.

Now that every penny of your household budget is devoted to payments on the adjustable rate mortgage (Nice call, Einstein!) for your 5-bedroom house, and your psychiatrist, for wholesale Xanax “samples,” it’s time to sit down and take stock.

Or squat, because the repo guys took everything but the hardwired stainless appliances.

Silver lining time! The laundry room is spacious large enough to house a dozen homeless ex-mortgage brokers. But how can you afford to feed them?

Here’s an idea that will help you cook dinner for the masses and let off potentially felonious rage at the same time: Subprime Steak. You take cheap beef and hammer it soft with a spiked meat mallet. Muttering names under your breath is optional.

Subprime Steak, backed up with carrots, potatoes and onions in milk gravy, stretches a dollar till you hear it holler.

Or, you can buy “cube steak” at the store, already mechanically tenderized for you. Contrary to its name,  cube steak in no way resembles a cube. It hardly resembles a steak. It is not tender, you cannot slice through it with a Lenox butter knife and it will not be enjoyed on your custom built mahogany table that seats twelve comfortably (because you hawked it on Craigslist).

But on the bright side, it’s chock full of vitamins and minerals. Beaten into submission, cooked slowly and combined with good, hearty ingredients, this cheap slab of beef becomes downright palatable.

Whether you beat your meat or buy cube steak, season some flour, fry some bacon, and you’re halfway to simmering the beef in milky gravy with onions, potatoes and carrots. Then, as Ozzy once said, you’re going off the rails on the gravy train.

Hint: Subprime Steak can be prepared in an easily transportable electric skillet that fits nicely on the Motel 6 bedside table.

COMING FRIDAY on One Big Kitchen: “Mortgage Meltaways,” the wafer-thin cookies that disappear faster than a lifetime of equity.

- Kristin Kunert

Previously in Crash Courses: Dick Punch and Lehman Crumbles.

The recipe and more, after the jump.

Recipe: Subprime Steak
3 pounds bottom round, pounded till tender, or cube steak
3 large potatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks
4 large carrots, sliced
3 onions, cut into 1-inch chunks
1/2 pound bacon or sausage
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons plus 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 tablespoons (half a stick) butter
1 cup chicken broth
1 quart whole milk
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce

Add 1 tablespoon of garlic, chili powder, salt and 2 teaspoons of ground pepper to flour in large bowl and mix to combine.

Brown bacon or sausage in large, heavy-bottomed pot. Remove browned meat.

Add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil to pot. Dredge tenderized beef in flour and shake off excess. Brown meat in pot over medium heat, in batches. (Be careful with the heat here, because if you burn the fond, the tasty stuff on the bottom of the pan, it’ll taste nasty.)

Immediately after removing last pieces of beef, drop butter into pot. When melted, add 1/3 cup of the remaining seasoned flour. Whisk for 1-2 minutes, until bubbles stop, then add broth, whisking to scrape up brown goodness off the pan bottom. (If you burned it, no big whoop. Scrub out the pot and start the gravy by cooking 1/4 cup flour into 1/2 stick butter, then adding the seasonings and proceeding from there.)

As mixture thickens, add milk a little at a time, plus the rest of the dry spices (2 teaspoons salt, granulated garlic and chili powder, and 1 teaspoon ground pepper). When the milk and spices are incorporated, stir in soy sauce, ketchup and hot sauce.

Add vegetables and browned meat, turn heat down to a low simmer and cook for 45 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid burning. Before serving, scatter cooked bacon or sausage over plates.

Take Subprime Steak to the park and make the whole week for the former derivatives jocks who live in the woods behind the Little League field.

The trouble with being in a religious minority - aside from the obvious: theological debates, bloody warfare, institutional genocide and worst of all, abject staring from kids at school - is that you can’t explain to those in the Christian majority the rationale behind your holidays.

In the Jewish faith, you have less than a handful of truly important dates in your calendar.  Most of them fall at the same time of year, a period in the early autumn known as the High Holy Days.  Among them, the Jewish New Year, a festival harvest holiday and a day that you dedicate to admitting all your sins of the previous 12 months, casting them aside in hope for a better year.  This is Yom Kippur, and on this day we fast so as to remind ourselves that it sucks to have to celebrate Yom Kippur.

I made some mango salsa to go with chips and pita, just cubed mango, red onion, chopped jalapeño pepper and lime juice.

This is the most important days for Jews and their reluctant children, and despite any and all attempts to get out of having to celebrate them - throwing up? It’s called aspirin and a prayer -  you simply cannot.  I tried last year, desperately.

The stupid culprit? My Pittsburgh-based friend was hosting her first-ever Chili Cook-Off.  How was I not supposed to go to this?  First of all, it’s a game involving food.  Such a glorious event like a cook-off is often relegated to cable TV, where a room full of Japanese men in tall white hats parade their electric eel ganache and salmon roe butter tarts around as if on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  No one has ever, nor will ever again, witness such divine creations as these.

I wanted in.  My friends, with whom I would face in this bloody chili challenge, thought I should have gotten out of this one.  They thought I could use a coupon to get out jail and pass Go.  I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.  Not even God would understand, my Mom told me, as though I had asked to borrow the car so I could drive to Argentina.  No budging on this one.

So I had to wait until this year, when the blessed event - the one in Pennsylvania, of course, not temple - would fall on one of the 362 days a year I was a free man.  Free from the oppression, free from the bondage, free from the persecution.  This year, I was ready (along with my vegetarian white bean chili) to win.

The hostess’s vegetarian chili. The heat in this stuff was enough to make my eyes blister. I could have used a respirator.

I went into this year’s cook-off as surely and confidently as I do any pot of soup or soup-like meal I ever make: I made it up.

Adhering to the potential judging categories – there would be prizes, remember – I decided to go with a non-meat chili. I wanted to stretch my limits as a cook and not put a pound of ground beef in a stew pot. It would take quite a bit of patience and wherewithal, but I proceeded with confidence. I had never cooked a vegetarian meal, however accustomed to and in love I was with grilled cheese, stir-fry and baked potatoes. No, this would be a new day.

I decided on a white bean chili, something without tomatoes but with the heartiness of an Italian bean soup. This was the autumn, after all; and if any town north of the Mason-Dixon line cried out for a rustic and meaty (non-meat) Chili, then it would be Pittsburgh. This is the town that seasons deli subs with cole slaw and fresh-cut French fries, the way some use milk to season their Cheerios. These are my people. They know hearty.

Being rustic, I threw a few things into a pot to see what came out the other end. It’s something I like to call “Don’t Get Me Started ‘Bout Beans Chili.” (See Christopher Guest’s “Waiting for Guffman” for more on that.) Here’s this:

Recipe: Don’t Get Me Started ‘Bout Beans Chili

2 cans each of cannellini, great northern and butter beans
2 cans cannellini beans, to puree
2 large onions
3 large carrots
1 parsnip
3 cloves garlic
3 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 cups water
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon rosemary
black pepper and salt
2 jalapeño peppers
1 poblano pepper
1 hot banana pepper
1 green chile
2 red bell pepper
4 ears fresh local corn

Dice and sautée the onion, garlic, carrots, parsnip and peppers in olive oil and butter on medium heat in a large soup pot. If vegetables are cut into various sizes and thicknesses, the final result will be heartier, so don’t be too precise with your chopping and dicing.

Cut kernels off fresh, uncooked corn cobs. Save kernels for later, and throw the cobs into the pot. This will sweeten and thicken the stock.

Puree 2 cans of cannelini beans for the chili’s thickener. When vegetables are softened, add pureed beans, whole beans, stock and water to pot. Add cumin, rosemary and a few dashes of salt and pepper and simmer on medium-low for about 30 minutes. Stir all that has fallen to bottom of pot every 10 minutes or so to avoid burning and crusting (pureed beans have a tendency to dry and burn if not mixed well into rest of liquid).

When chili has reached a stable thickness, turn off heat and continue to stir. Add corn kernels at this point, to maintain their texture and bite.

As with most soups and sauces, this is best after a night of refrigeration. When serving, feel free to add some freshly diced jalapeño as a garnish.

I would refrain from topping with sour cream, as the chili is already creamy from the beans. High-fat dairy never hurt anyone or anything, but it’s just a tad unnecessary in this case. Diced chicken would be delicious in this, as would a heaping pile of basmati rice. Treat it like a soup, but season it like a chili.

Mamu’s turkey and corn chili was not too spicy, but good.

It’s great, even if judges are somehow blinded to its pleasures.

The winning meat chili was a surprise to  some, but it came with a great story.  Kelly’s turkey and corn chili  was a recipe from her grandmother - Mamu, they call her.  She said she  threw things into this pot and let me heat up.  Too easy if you ask me.

I can’t speak for other organized religions, but if a bowl of this isn’t enough to get your heart repenting and your prayer shawls all ironed for a big day of faith, then I don’t know what is. Amen to that.

Ben Siegel is editor of Block Club Magazine (www.blockclubonline.com) and a regular eater of most things edible in Buffalo, NY.

Edible Buffalo Fall 2008

Edible Buffalo, a quarterly that debuted this July, is the sixth magazine in the New York State Edible family. It’s a great introduction to the lesser-known (and more familiar) regional foods and tastemakers of our eight Western New York counties, from peaches and garlic to vintners and organic farmers.

In addition to several main feature articles on our local foodshed, the magazine includes recipes using local ingredients, lists of nearby farmers markets, and announcements about new edible products and events in our area.

Edible Communities is a national network of local food magazines that began in California less than 10 years ago. In only a few years, Edible magazines—each one locally owned and operated—have sprouted up across the nation. Their passion is advocating for local, seasonal and artisanal food, featuring the people who produce and sell it, and connecting eaters (that’s all of us) to what’s on our plates.

With the second, fall issue recently under its belt, Edible Buffalo is participating in Edible Communities’ Local Hero Awards—a way for all of us to “get out the vote” and help celebrate our rich agricultural region, and the food-related accomplishments and products of Western New York communities.

The four categories of awards are Farm/Farmer, Chef/Restaurant, Food/Beverage Artisan and Non-Profit Organization.

This year’s winners will be announced in January at the Edible Communities annual meeting in Santa Fe, NM, and will appear in the spring 2009 issue of Edible Buffalo magazine, as well as the Edible Communities Web site, www.ediblecommunities.com.

For the Western New Yorkers out there, you can nominate a Local Hero and vote online at www.ediblebuffalo.com, through December 12, 2008. Keep your picks within Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans or Wyoming counties.

Lehman Crumbles: Tangy lemon cream in a cookie crust, dusted with toasted almonds and powdered sugar.

Tangy, toasty Lehman Crumbles are sure to disappear faster than a stack of applications at a Wall Street Starbucks. Nuttier than the “Dow 36,000″ guy, this lemony, crunchy treat is a fabulous addition to any dinner party, bake sale to save your home or bribe for any B-level associate who may know a bit too much.

Save big bucks by cracking, skinning and chopping the nuts at home, unless of course you’re one of the lucky few Lehman employees who were rewarded for their incompetence with millions of dollars before the old girl cratered.

If so, you’re better off keeping a few Brazilian models on retainer who can jet into town, crush your almonds between two signed Picassos and serve them to you on ivory trays made from the tusks of albino elephants carved into your likeness by Tibetan monks.

Hint: For extra tartness, double up on the lemon juice so you can pucker up like a Wall Street trader who just got ran over by a Dow headed for an eight-hundred-point plunge. Again.

COMING TUESDAY ON One Big Kitchen: “Subprime Steak,” how to get the most out of cuts of meat that when you left home, you swore you’d never eat again.

- Kristin Kunert

PREVIOUSLY IN CRASH COURSES: Dick Punch.

The lemon cream is terrific, and you can use whatever nuts you like.

The recipe and more, after the jump.

Recipe: Lehman Crumbles
Adapted from “The Dessert Bible”

For the crust:
1 ¾ cups flour
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ sticks of butter at very cool room temperature, cut into 1-inch pieces

For the lemon curd:
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
3 tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup lemon juice (from 3-4 large lemons)
¼ cup whole milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted and slightly cooled

1. For the crust:  Grease the bottom of a 9×13 pan with butter or shortening. Line with a sheet of parchment paper so the paper goes up and over the edges. You might need two sheets (one going the short way, one going the long way). Grease the top of the parchment paper.

2. Pulse the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the butter and process to blend 8-10 seconds and then pulse until the mixture is pale yellow and resembles coarse meal, about three 1-second bursts. Sprinkle the mixture into the prepared pan and press firmly with your fingers into an even layer on the bottom of the pan and about ½ inch up the sides. The mixture will be very light and fluffy, almost like cornmeal, rather than like a pie dough. Forming the sides may appear difficult, since the mixture is so light, but it will harden during baking. Don’t worry if the sides are uneven either in height or thickness. It will look much better once it is baked.

3. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. While crust is chilling, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake crust 20-25 minutes, until light golden brown.

4. For the filing: Whisk the eggs, sugar, and zest in a medium bowl. Whisk in the flour and salt and then stir in the lemon juice, milk, and butter to blend.

5. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees. Stir the filling one more time and pour into the hot crust. Stir the filling one more time and pour into the hot crust. Bake until the filling feels firm when touched lightly, about 20 minutes. Watch carefully, since once the filling starts to set, it will firm up quickly. Do not overbake it.

6. Spread a thin layer of blanched almonds over a tray and toast them lightly in the toaster oven.  Once they are as toasty as you like, pulse them a few times in the food processor, or chop them well with a knife.  Take about 1/3 cup of confectioners’ sugar and sift it or shake it through a wire strainer to remove the lumps, and combine with about 1/3 cup of the chopped toasted almonds.  You’ll have to judge the crumbliness by eye.  It all depends on what you like.

7. Sprinkle the nut-sugar mixture over the cooling filling. Allow to cool completely, and cut into squares.

You don’t have to cut the Lehman Crumbles into large pieces - and this way you can make friends with more people. You can never have too many friends.

Nothing says “depression” like drinking handle vodka ladled out of the plastic garbage can you stole the day your job went the way of the S & P 500. Somebody deserves a Dick Punch - and that somebody is you.

Dick Punch is named in honor of the ruined broker who reportedly punched Lehman Brothers rockstar CEO Dick Fuld in the face while Fuld was de-stressing in the Lehman gym after a hard day of destroying the American financial system.

Dick Punch is the drink that fits your new station in life. Start with the worst vodka in the store, then add the finest powdered Kool-Aid money can buy, and sugar, cause it’s cheaper that way.

Although any vodka will do, we recommend one available in plastic, which will reduce the cost per unit significantly. Plus it won’t break if you drop it in the way home while wracked with sobs.

Stir with your unopened 401K statement, drink it out of a discarded Big Gulp cup and sniffle into your closed fist.

What will it take to numb the pain? Just $8.69 plus tax, less than your buddies used to drop on a Diet Coke at Scores.

Enjoy the orange slices. ‘Cause that’s dinner tonight.

COMING THURSDAY ON One Big Kitchen: “Lehman Crumbles,” a cookie bar that’s rich, crusty and leaves a million tiny crumbs behind.

Kristin Kunert is a marketing analyst and freelance writer in Pittsburgh, PA. She knows her way around a spreadsheet better than her kitchen. This is her first article for One Big Kitchen.

Recipe: Dick Punch

(Cost: $8.69)

1 750 ml bottle vodka (Nikolai) ($5.99)

3 envelopes Kool-Aid, (Fruit Punch, Orange, Black Cherry) ($1.20)

2 cups sugar ($.45)

3 quarts water

3/4 cup lemon juice ($.73)

2 oranges ($.60)

Dump everything into the wastebasket and stir briskly, but without signs of irrational exuberance, using an unopened 401K statement.

Slice the oranges and float them in the mix.

Ladle, over ice, into glasses, or appropriate vessels like your “Employee of the Month” mug.

PHOTO (C) THOMAS LEPLUS HTTP://LEPLUS.ORG

It was half past ten on a Saturday night in January when the servers gave me their final tickets.

Shumai. Shumai and a chicken coconut curry holding. I turned the steamer up to full blast and started gathering ingredients for the curry. Two plates down from the racks: fistful of chopped red onion and bell peppers in one, one cleaned butterflied chicken breast cut into bite-size pieces in the other. I started salting the meat.

“Jake!”

Chris from the sushi bar. I could see through the kitchen window he was holding up two fingers. I had been cooking on the Elmwood Strip in Buffalo for about four months, but the sign language had been ground into me the first day: two fingers meant two shrimp tempura rolls at the bar. I nodded and washed the chicken juice off my hands, ducked into the fryer station reach-in and grabbed four tempura shrimp and dumped them into the fryer.

I turned back to my prep area and took the lids off plastic quart containers filled with garlic, ginger, and finely chopped scallions. The water under the steamer was up so I placed ten pork dumplings in the basket and covered it. Back to the fryer to get the hot shrimp out for Chris’s roll. I had time; no need to call a server. I walked them out to the bar myself.

Easy, I thought. I was drenched in sweat and my muscles were burning, but I had made it to the end of my first good night in the kitchen. No help, no screw-ups, no late orders. The feeling you get on your first night truly hanging in a restaurant kitchen isn’t one you’ll get back. It’s a hockey player’s first goal, the first big fish caught in front of your dad, a writer’s first byline. It’s a moment of public accomplishment under extreme pressure and after weeks or months of constant failure, and it’s hard to fit in a scrapbook. It’s sink or swim every night you clock in. I had screwed up badly enough, often enough, that I realized sinking was no longer an option.

My night wasn’t over yet and I still had to clean and close the kitchen, but when those last tickets came in I felt like kissing someone, anyone, just to see if they turned to gold.

As I waited for the pork to cook I set up the shumai plates with ramekins of dipping sauce. Two orders of pork shumai takes about six or seven minutes in the steamer, so by the time they were done I had everything ready for the coconut curry. At the time, I was still trying to toughen my hands up, so I barehanded the shumai out of the steamer and onto their plates, applied sesame seeds and scallions as a garnish, and put the apps in the window.

Too easy, I thought. I turned down the steamer and topped it off with water, though I knew I wouldn’t be using it again that night; I was still working off of reflex. The server fired her curry bowl and I smiled. Even though it was the most nerve-wracking dish I had to prepare as a novice Asian cook, it was also the most fun.

I got to move fast and toss hot things around and sometimes the wok would flare up, little tongues of flame and spark on the far edge of the pan as I shook it or minor infernos if I was cooking with sake. Though I’ve seen it happen a thousand times or more since I started cooking, that little reminder that I am Man Cook Animal With Fire still gives me that heady, excited, semi-sexual jolt that men get when they’re doing something they think makes them a badass.

I grabbed the light wok from the rack over the stove and put it on the center-front burner and put the fire on high. Grabbed a squeeze bottle and spun a light circle of oil around the edges of the wok, letting the oil slide to the center so it would heat evenly and quickly, like I’d been taught. Pinch of garlic, pinch of ginger, pinch of scallions; shake the pan so everything’s touching the oil and cooking.

I waited for the aroma to hit me from the pan, then I dropped the chicken pieces in and waited. My instinct was to toss them immediately, but I had been wrong every other time I’d done that, so I waited for something, the sound or the look or just a feeling about the chicken to tell me it was browned on the one side. I tossed the chicken pieces, flipped over a few stragglers with my tongs, and waited some more. From there I dumped the veggies in, stirred and waited again, and then finally the prepped rice and coco-curry sauce.

I tossed, added water, tossed, reduced, and when the sauce had reached a dark orange I grabbed a fluted bowl from the rack, plated the curry, wiped the plate, garnish with bean sprouts, get ‘er in the window, and -

It was done. My first busy double shift without a fuck-up. No more tickets. No more servers. No more sign language from the sushi bar. Done. I was still standing with my tongs in my right hand and my arms crossed, staring out the kitchen window, when Chris came in.

“Good job tonight, dude,” he said. “No complaints.”

I smiled, shook his hand, lowered my eyes. I wasn’t being modest or deferential to the man that taught me. I was trying to look sympathetic. Here I was, Man Cook Animal, tongs in my hands, blood and sinew on my uniform, flames at my beck and call, and this poor schlub was out at the bar rolling rice burritos for the weekenders and the Williamsville wives. He even had to talk to them. It was awkward. I wanted to warn him to walk behind me as he left the kitchen, lest he stumble over my whale-sized penis.

Later, we went out. Chris got me a few shots. I spent nearly half that month’s rent money buying drinks for anyone that looked at me. I drank the mead of gladiators. Every man was my subject, every lady my concubine.

I didn’t get laid or anything; success in the kitchen doesn’t translate to success in the outside world. And the next Saturday I would be as bumbling as ever. The right combination of orders and mindset will have anyone falling behind, losing their shit, letting the side down. Or, for that matter, busting out every dish in record time without a problem. The business is just that fickle.

But I didn’t think about that, not that night: I was a cook, damn it. Everyone else was just hungry.

Jacob Drum has dished, bussed, cleaned, cooked, and managed restaurants from fast food to fine dining, from Boston to Buffalo. His writing has appeared in The BEAST and LiteraryFever, and his blog, Master Caution. He lives in Buffalo.

Leo’s in Folcroft offered a cheesesteak with just enough grease to give it taste, allowing the Wiz and hot sauce to mingle.

Someone recently told me that cooking was more than just ingredients and technique – it was also the attitude, perhaps even the emotional state, of the chef.

In short, you can taste the love.

But, ironically, when it comes to a signature dish from the city of Brotherly Love, it’s all about the anger. And anger - at least when it comes to a good, greasy pile of chopped steak on a bun with cheese or a cheese-like substance - tastes good.

This revelation came as a follow up to last year’s trek to the epicenter of the cheese steak universe, South Philly and the corner where Pat’s (”King of Steaks”) and archrival Geno’s (”The Best from South Philly”) square off for steak supremacy over an otherwise unremarkable corner.

Both are little sandwich stands with grills shoehorned inside. You get your food from a window. The working conditions inside look horrendous: too many people packed in a tiny space that is all sweat, steam, sizzling fatty steak and vaporized Cheez Wiz polluting the air.

The result can be soooooo tasty, you don’t mind standing or parking your butt on an uncomfortable metal bench attached to a table.

But some native cheesesteak fans felt we missed the real steak story, scoffing at the trek to Pat’s and Geno’s as tourist claptrap, with the real deal to be had elsewhere. Specifically, at two places, both a short drive outside the city – LaSpada’s in Parkside (2912 Edgmont Ave., 610-872-9881) or Leo’s in Folcroft (1403 Chester Pike, 610-586-1199).

LaSpada’s (right) was the first up, nestled in a working-class residential community significantly away from the mean streets of Chester. Stuck on a street corner, there were few obvious places to park implying the place primarily catered to locals.

I arrived just after the lunch rush to only one or two other customers in the place. Unlike the dueling steak stands of Philly, LaSpada’s had a few tables inside and an extensive menu beyond steaks.

They touted the quality of their ingredients, “100 percent rib-eye steak sliced fresh daily” and indeed in the spacious and well-aired kitchen they appeared to be slicing off some fresh rib-eye when I ordered. The people were perfectly pleasant and laid back, telling me I could sit anywhere and they would collect my six bucks after I’d eaten.

The LaSpada’s cheeseteak was loaded with a nearly greaseless chopped meat confetti.
This as opposed to South Philly where you are told exactly how to order via a sign, with the implicit threat of “No steak for you” if you screw up. Also unlike the corners at 9th and Passyunk, where you are essentially getting one off an assembly line, the LaSpada folks took time to make a steak just for me, per my order.

So how disappointing when it arrived and it was a mouthful of meat mush.

The roll was decent – always a key to a good steak – but the meat was chopped into a moist but grease-less confetti, sucking the flavor out of anything that was added to it, including the onions, Cheez Wiz and hot sauce.

The LaSpada’s cheesesteak seemed short on the flavor department, even doused with Wiz and hot sauce.

A few days later and a few miles closer to Philly, I went to Leo’s on a slow Sunday. The anger-tastes-good theory starting to form already, I was heartened to see the area looked a little rougher. On the edge of a neighborhood, but fronting a heavily developed main drag, Leo’s (below) was halfway between the laid-back LaSpada and the steak merchants of South Philly.

You could walk inside, but there were no tables. The kitchen was spacious and they had a full menu like LaSpada and they even appeared to be cutting their steak fresh.

But it wasn’t as happy a place and when I went in I was almost overwhelmed by the smell of freshly chopped onions. Not in the good “Ah, fresh ingredients” way but in the “Good God is that pepper spray?” kind of way.

Like LaSpada, the steaks didn’t come quickly. There was no assembly line. I had to wait outside in a persistent drizzle because of the onion onslaught. And because of the rain and lack of tables inside, I had to eat the steak in my car.

And the additional anger floating around produced a better steak.

The Leo’s cheesesteak packed a cushy roll with an abbondanza of meat and “cheese.”

The roll was soft, a surprise for a cheese steak. But it was strong enough to hold the mix of steak and cheese without disintegrating. The steak had just enough grease to give it taste, allowing the Wiz and hot sauce to mingle.

I could feel my arteries harden with joy.

My wife Charlotte, who came along on the Leo’s mission and questions my taste for grease in a steak - declared Leo’s one of the better steaks she’d had. But it was still no Pat’s or even a Geno’s.

It just wasn’t angry enough.

Sean O’Sullivan, a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, is a Buffalo native who every day curses the fact he can’t get a decent order of wings or a beef on weck anywhere around his home. (That deprivation is somewhat mitigated, he will concede, by the fact he can get some good, Old Bay-crusted hardshell blue crabs.)