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Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Biscoff Spread (Giveaway inside!)

Judging by the response on Twitter when I tweeted that I was heading over to meet the people that make Biscoff Cookies, these things are the secret addiction of at least 25% of our readers. Biscoff Cookies are an European cookie that is best (in my opinion, anyway) described as a ginger snap, if you took out the ginger and upped the other flavors. They're fantastic.

So I was pretty intrigued when we got an email to come try the new Biscoff Spread. Was this a spread to be used with Biscoff Cookies? They're good enough as it is!

Nope.

It's a spread made with Biscoff Cookies.

And it's mind-blowingly good.

So I had to wonder: who came up with such an insane idea?

I posed this question to Marco de Leeuw, the executive president of Lotus Bakeries North America.

Turns out, in Belgium there is a television show along the lines of the UK's Dragon's Den and the American show Shark Tank. On these shows, people pitch their inventions and concepts to a group of venture capitalists hoping to get funding for their companies. One of the winners on the Belgian version of this show had made a spread out of Biscoff Cookies. The judges loved it.

After the show, Lotus Bakeries contacted her so that they could bring this idea to market. Biscoff Spread is the result. It's creamy (think peanut butter), sweet, and tastes like Biscoff Cookies (as it should, as the spread is 57% Biscoff Cookies!). Best part? Only 88 calories a serving. Awesome.

We tried the spread on green apples. Way better than the "caramel dip" people usually provide with apple slices.

Biscoff Cookies are available at Walgreens. The Spread should also be there, if it's not it will be very soon. 

Can't wait? We're giving away a jar of Biscoff Spread! Enter below!

I want a jar of Biscoff Spread!

 

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Pearl River Pastry

Chances are you've had one of their ridiculously yummy products and didn't even realize it. 

Pearl River Pastry specializes in making various desserts that can be finished by pastry chefs and then served to hungry customers. Most people don't realize that the majority of desserts served in restaurants are not made on site. Making desserts in house requires a lot of resources for a course that a lot of people don't even order. 

I'm telling all the chefs I know to start using Pearl River products. They're that good. I want to grow a third thumb because two thumbs up isn't enough.

Cheesecake! Mousse! Tarts! Muffins! Layer cakes! Their booth was overwhelming in showing off the sheer size of their product line. We spent about fifteen minutes trying all of their different products. All of them were amazingly tasty. This is super convenient for their customers. You can build a huge dessert menu and only have to deal with one vendor.

While I was standing in their booth, a chef was passing by and asked one of the Pearl River Pastry people why he should pick them over another vendor. The answer was simple: "We don't compromise." 

These guys are using the same ingredients and same techniques as if you hired a world class pastry chef and set them up in your restaurant. 

Did I mention they have several vegan products?

They wouldn't let us leave until we tried their new vegan muffins. Now, for me, vegan=FLAVORDANGER. The rep from Pearl River Pastry assured me that they would never release anything that wasn't perfectly tasty just so they could stamp VEGAN on it. 

The above picture is Actual sharing a muffin with Designer Girlfriend. The vegan muffins were fantastic. Actual tweeted out "better than muffins that are made of animals!". Note the jealous yet happy look from the person in the background!

You can check out their extensive product line at their website.

http://www.prpastry.com/

 

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Porta Mangiare

Rest of Chomple Team: Yod, how many booths do you have marked for day 2 of the Fancy Food Show?
Me: One. 
Rest of Chomple Team: ONE? What is it?
Me: Meatballs. They tweeted out that they had meatballs.
Rest of Chomple Team: MEATBALLS?
Me: You don't understand, nobody brings meatballs to the Fancy Food Show unless their utterly fantastic. 

The meatballs were indeed fantastic. But this is really about the meatballs. It's about being a Kitchen Hero.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile then you know that my favorite kitchen products are what I call Kitchen Hero. These are the products that allow you to make fantastically tasty stuff with little to no more effort than you would have spent making something, well, normal tasting. Impress your family! Wow your neighbors! Avoid getting nominated for one of those "worst cooks" shows! An arsenal of Kitchen Hero products stashed in your kitchen goes a long way to smoothing out untasty situations.

Porta Mangiare meatball mix is definitely something you need to keep around.

It's pretty simple. Take the mix, add 2 eggs, 6 oz of a dry cheese, 1 lb of meat and a tiny bit of water or milk. Mix it up, then cook up the meatballs (oven or pan). Easy.

But, there are plenty of meatball mixes. What makes this one so special?

Porta Mangiare does the hard part: the breadcrumbs and spice mix. Breadcrumbs especially. For any Italian style meatball, the breadcrumbs are the make or break ingredient, although most people don't realize this. Most mixes use your standard, cheap, baking process remnant crumbs. Not this stuff. They actually have three types of bread that are baked specifically for their meatball mix. The bread is then sliced, dried, toasted, and turned into breadcrumbs. That's incredible attention to detail, and you can absolutely taste it in the final product.

For the rest, you can follow their instructions to the letter or mix it up a bit. You determine what kind of ground meat you want to use. You can use Romano cheese as recommended, or use another kind of cheese to change up the flavor (just, please, please don't use the stuff I won't name that comes in a green can. Actually, don't use anything that comes in a green can).

Go get some right now at www.portamangiare.com

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Sir Kensington's

It all started when this strange fellow named Sir Kensington started tweeting using the #NASFT hashtag that people use at the Summer and Winter Fancy Food shows.

This silly chap was offering free moustaches. 

Moustaches? For free? And what is he doing here at the Winter Fancy Food Show? Surely a moustache is not food! Surely he has some splendiferous food product?

We should investigate this forthwith.

Me: Hello, kind sir!
Sir Kensington: Hello! Would you like to try my wonderful gourmet scooping ketchup?
Me: Scooping?
Sir Kensington: Why, yes! Scooping. Dipping is not enough for my wonderful creation! 
Me: Ok, scooping some now...
Sir Kensington: Make haste, chap! Ketchup so important has no time to waste!

It was fantastic. Best ketchup I've ever tasted. Seriously.

Me: Why is your ketchup so good? 
Sir Kensington: Jolly good, you noticed! We use real ingredients.
Me: Doesn't regular ketchup have real ingredients? 
Sir Kensington: Do camels care about your well being?
Me: No?
Sir Kensington: Exactly, my old taster. Exactly.

While Sir Kensington retired to his drawing room situated in an old bunker under the Moscone Center, one of his representatives decided to take mercy on me and explain why the ketchup was so good. Sir Kensington's sacred creation uses actual tomato puree and not tomato concentrate. Agave nectar, honey, and raw brown sugar instead of HFCS. And real, actual spices. You can taste the difference immediately. Sir Kensington's ketchup is the real deal. Or as Sir Kensington puts it, "the true arrogance of a bowler hat's attitude"... whatever that means.

Sir Kensington returned.

Sir Kensington: It appears you have arrived with some lovely ladies. Do they wish to have moustaches?
Girlfriend Actual: No?
Designer Girlfriend: No?
Sir Kensington: YES!

[Note: the guy on the left is just one of Sir Kensington's mortal representatives. That's Sir Kensington on the right there, wearing the top hat. His awesomeness is so epic that my camera couldn't handle it and rendered him in black and white 2D. Also, Designer Girlfriend is not that short. She's sitting on Sir Kensington's cane, which apparently can be altered into a circa 1760's rococo fainting bed, Transformers-style.]

Sir Kensington: You must order your readers to visit my website. Or else you get no scooping ketchup.
Me: Yes, Ketchup Lord.

So please, go here:
www.sirkensingtons.com 

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: Julian's Recipe

One of the best waffles any of us have ever eaten.

So luscious and flavorful that there's absolutely no syrup needed whatsoever.

Guess what? It comes frozen!

Given the best ingredients and the best waffle iron known to man, I still wouldn't come close in my own kitchen to creating a waffle this good. Hands down the best waffle I've ever eaten that wasn't personally made for me by the Waffle Lady.

 

Julian's Recipe waffles are the brainchild of Alex Dzieduszycki. Alex has already brought the world Alexia Foods and Terra Chips. Both are tremendously successful businesses which make tasty products that I personally consume frequently. You know what? These waffles are his best creation yet. And that's saying something, because I love Terra Chips more than rainbows.

Buttery. Great crust. Tender inside. Perfectly sweet. I literally can't even put into words how great these waffles are. Add to that how easy they are to prepare and this product is just end to end phenomenal. Parents: this is straight up Kitchen Hero stuff. 

Fantastic. Just fantastic. Waffletastic, even.

www.juliansrecipe.com

Winter Fancy Food Show 2011: SanTasti

Best of show product at only the third booth we went to? That's crazy.

It might happen. We shall see.

On the first day of the show, we encountered SanTasti. They claim to have developed a fizzy drink that cleanses your palate.

Does it work?

F*** YES it works.

About 30 minutes after trying SanTasti, we had the unfortunate experience of trying something completely foul (I won't name who served it/what it was). Needless to say it was completely nasty. Actual and Designer ran to the water station to attempt to get rid of the flavor. It didn't work. 

I had a better plan.

I ran all the way back to the SanTasti booth.

Me: ANDREW!
Andrew (one of the co-inventors): Hey, welcome back, um, what's wrong?
Me: Bad sample. Help. Give SanTasti now. Please. Taste buds. Danger. Help.
Andrew: [laughing] Let me give you a full cup so you can take it with you.
Me: THANK YOU

[By the way, SanTasti people, will you fill a CamelBak with SanTasti for me so I can take it around the show? PLEASE? haha]

It worked. The horror of the bad aftertaste was over. I took the rest to Designer and brought her back to the happy nice tasting world. 

So what's up with this awesome product?

Meet Andrew and Nicole. Nicole's the partially obscured one of the left. 

Andrew and Nicole became buds at CalPoly. They ended up going into some sort of viticulture program. They had a pretty awesome senior project. They didn't reveal what the senior project was, but it lead to some sort of problem which they solved with the product that would become SanTasti.

SanTasti works by [REDACTED]. They told us, but we're sworn to secrecy. Actually, there's an explanation on their website: crackersareforslackers.com

These guys are going to be wildly successful. VC firms, get in now while you can.

San Pellegrino, you have met your match. 

www.santasti.com

Review: Taste of Brazil

About 45 minutes into the meal, Designer Girlfriend looked up at Actual and shrugged.

"Yum."

That about sums it up.

For my readers not fortunate enough to ever go to a Brazilian steakhouse, it pretty much works like this: 

1. Sit down (at some places, Fogo in Dallas--I'm glaring at you, this takes a while since these places seem to be really popular.)
2. Ignore the salad bar for your own good
3. Turn your "serve me" card to green
4. Double your cholesterol level as gauchos keep showing up at your table with grilled meats on swords 
5. Turn your "serve me" card to red when you need a break
6. Repeat 3-5 until fullness or guilt convince you to stop eating

Taste of Brazil is inexplicably located in the dark culinary wasteland (and my former area of residence) of North Sacramento/Citrus Heights. I say dark culinary wasteland. What I really mean to say is that it should be a dark culinary wasteland, but somehow many talented chefs have decided that opening in this area is a good idea. I'm not going to argue. 

Apologies in advance for the extremely poor quality of the pictures. I didn't bring our usual rig because it's a small place. Also the lighting was super tricky.

Upon entering, we were greeted by the best waiter ever, Brian. This guy was an excellent waiter and on top of that was hilarious as all heck. It's a small place so you don't have to request him, the entire front of house staff consists of Brian. While we were having our meal, a very elderly couple came in wanting to eat at the salad bar. Brian gave them five star service and helped them the entire way, even though their total bill probably came out to what Designer Girlfriend spent by herself. In most restaurants they would have just been ignored.

Protip: buy whichever wine Brian brings with him to the table. It will pair perfectly with the food. Also, their wine markups are really really low, so you won't be paying much over retail. I think they realize that a meal like this absolutely requires wine, and that it would be criminal to extort money from customers through wine prices and force them to choose between having a complete meal and not getting ripped off.

So what do you get for your $35?

To begin, Brian sent us off to the salad/side dish bar. I got about 20 grains of rice. Actual and Designer decided to explore a little more. This is Actual's plate. In the upper right you can see the plate of fried bananas and fried cheese that was brought out. I didn't have either but was told they were both excellent.

 

First meat course was grilled chicken legs and wings (I say first, but there's only an order because we were the first people in there. As the restaurant fills up, there's meat going around constantly). These had a crazy good char on them and were fantastic.

Next up: giant pork ribs. These were so meaty you had to gnaw on one for at least a minute before you got to the bone. Extremely tender as well while having the same fantastic char that the chicken had. These were almost as good as Daddy Actual's ribs. But I'm not going to declare a winner. We're just going to take him here and let him decide for himself :)

Next course consisted of bacon wrapped chicken and beef. The chicken was amazing, throughly moist and infused with bacon flavor. The beef was just ok as it was overcooked (at least for me). This is going to be an issue at any Brazilian steakhouse. With the larger cuts of meat they can just give people slices from different parts of the piece depending on the doneness they want. For smaller items such as this they can't. So they end up having to make everything medium-medium well for all of the people out there that like eating grilled shoe leather.

Then came the parmesan encrusted pork tenderloin. You don't need a description on this one. Let's just say that it tastes every good as bit as it sounds.

Garlic steak. When they say garlic, they mean it. If you're not a garlic lover or you're on a date, skip this one. I love garlic so it was amazing. For all of the beef dishes, make sure to mention to the guy with the sword what level of doneness you want. Don't make them guess or hope they remember. They are serving the entire dining room, so unless you're particularly memorable just tell them what you want every time.

My favorite dish: the leg of lamb. They're using the good grass-fed stuff here, so it actually tastes like lamb. Absolutely wonderful.

Medium well piece on the left, rare-med rare on the right.

Dessert? People still had room? I guess so. Actual and Designer ordered this concoction of ice cream on top of roasted pineapple. They take a whole pineapple, cover it in cinnamon sugar, then roast it the same way they do the meats. A fabulous way to end the meal.

Wait! The meal isn't over yet! Do we want more roasted pineapple? Of course we do!

WIN

You know what I'm about to say. Run, don't walk, run to Taste of Brazil. You know you want to.

And here's Brian and Designer Girlfriend :)

 

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Yod's ultimate old school birthday pizza party!

It seems that I have come full circle. All of my birthday parties growing up were pizza parties. In previous years, I tried different venues and cuisines. Unfortunately, every cuisine has its haters. Except, it seems, pizza. Wanting to maximize "the happy" at my birthday party, I picked the greatest pizza place of them all: Taste of Tuscany. 

During the planning stages of the event, we mentioned that we would be providing products from the Colwell Thundering Herd Ranch for use during the meal. Uncle Dave, one of the owners and the creator of many of Taste of Tuscany's crazier dishes, was upset that he was going to miss the party on Saturday and miss trying all of the absolutely awesome Colwell products we were going to be serving. So the night before, we made a special trip to Taste of Tuscany so he could try everything.

That's obviously Designer Girlfriend pictured, not Uncle Dave. The oil on top is mandarin olive oil. The other is meyer lemon olive oil. The darker one is their 18 year old balsamic vinegar from Italy. I actually don't believe it's only 18 year. It tastes and pours like a 50.

Uncle Dave called the kitchen staff over to try some and dream up delicious uses for the stuff. One of their staff, Krista (I think that's how she spells it), devised a brilliant salad using the mandarin olive oil and the balsamic. We'll be discussing that dish momentarily.

We began the meal with Taste of Tuscany's totally awesome breadsticks. These are just their fresh pizza dough baked with cheese. These are better than the actual pizza at most other restaurants. You get bottomless breadsticks with an entree purchase, which is probably the best food value in town depending on how hungry you are. 

You can have olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip the breadsticks in, or you can opt for ranch or marinara sauce. Our twist today was that we served them with Colwell Thundering Herd products. Some tasting notes:

"The only way this balsamic vinegar is actually only aged for 18 years is if they are only counting leap years."

"The mandarin olive oil really brightens up food. This stuff would make McDonalds tolerable."

"Every olive oil from here on out is going to taste completely pedestrian."

"Shame on every fancy Italian restaurant that I've ever dined at that wasn't serving Colwell olive oil."

"I would eat this stuff out of a spoon."

"I just ate it straight out of a spoon... try it."

"Oh my God. Where do I buy this stuff?"

You can find out more about the Colwell Thundering Herd Ranch and their products (and buy some) here: mandarinoliveoil.com

For my birthday, Chef Jeremy also made us some "awesomer breadsticks". These were insanely good, and even more so when dipped in Colwell balsamic vinegar and meyer lemon olive oil

Diners of all ages unanimously approved of the breadsticks.

Next up: Krista's salad using Colwell balsamic vinegar and olive oil. This was a crazy good salad made with a base of spring mix. To that, she added candied nuts, bleu cheese, beets, onions, avocados, granny smith apples, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. Just trust me. It was spectacular. They need to put this on the menu.

The salad was so good that people ate both full platters of it even though there was a ton of food to come. Much joy was to be had. 

The salad was soo good that even I ate some. Designer Girlfriend captured my confusion as I ate an unfamiliar substance that I later found out is called "lettuce". Very strange.

Daddy Actual reacting to overhearing a party guest having to explain to his future son in law what vegetables are.

And then it was time for the pizza. First up what was Chef Jeremy just called "mega combo". Taste of Tuscany has a pizza on the menu called the Fat Max. From the bottom, the Fat Max is crust, beef ravioli, crust, sauce, toppings, cheese. What he made for us today was a Fat Max base with half combination pizza toppings and half meat lovers toppings. Designer Girlfriend tried to calculate the number of Weight Watchers points per slice but the calculator had a stack overflow. This pizza was "make you forget your own name" good.

Next up was the consensus favorite: spaghetti and meatballs pizza. It's exactly what you think it is. Captain America liked it so much he borrowed one of his wife's hands so he could give it three thumbs up.

Some of the pizzas were so good they were held hostage out of my sight way down at the other end. The one on top is a veggie pizza, the one on the bottom is a combination white pizza (alfredo base instead of marinara). I tried some leftovers of those two pizzas today. Incredible.

Multiple pasta dishes came out but only one made it close enough for a photo (I didn't know I needed to bring my telephoto lenses to dinner...). This (I believe) is their Mona Lisa pasta. All the pasta dishes here are good. Chef Jeremy and Uncle Dave said they tried pastas for days until they found a supplier that made a product that they were happy to serve. They picked well.

Of course this is not an official birthday without a Cake Sister cake. Or in this case, TWO Cake Sister cakes.

Cake #1 was Cake Sister's world famous mimosa cake. The recipe for this cake underwent vigorous testing and revisions from Chomple's staff when it was invented. This stuff is always absolutely amazing. 

You need to see the guts of this cake to understand just how good it is.

My actual birthday cake was a LOLcat-themed heavenly chocolate cake with biscotti liqueur. This is actually how it was presented:

YOD. THE HELLO KITTY IS NOT EDIBLE. STOP TRYING TO EAT IT.

The reactions to the cake from everyone pretty much looked like this.

So that was my birthday pizza party. I challenge anyone to find a better pizza, a better salad, a better cake, or better olive oil or balsamic ANYWHERE. Cue contented sigh...

 

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Review: Heat Shabu Baru

A shabu shabu place? In Sacramento!

I have dined at over 100 shabu places around the world. Heat Shabu Baru is better than all but one, and that meal, in Tokyo, cost me more than 20 times what this one did.

The concept behind shabu shabu is simple. It's Japanese fondue. Pick up some meat or veg, cook it in the steaming broth, dip it in sauce, and eat. It's deceptively simple. The problem (and when it's good, glory) of shabu shabu is that the restaurant has to be dead on with the cooking broth and the quality of the meat and vegetables. Mess up on either, and there's nothing to cover it up.

The first thing we noticed about Heat is the absolutely fun decor. Check out these funky lamps!

Heat has the best deal in town. All you can shabu AND DRINK for $41. The drink part covers beer and sake. You can have any beer that they have on draft, which tonight consisted of Sapporo, Kirin, Shock Top and Bud Light. The sake is their house sake, which is excellent. Check out the cool bottle they serve it in. In my joy I forgot to get a good shot of the sake shot glasses which had a picture of a Japanese girl in the bottom of the glass!

This is the cooking pot. The dark broth is miso and the white one is pork bone (tonkotsu). Both were extremely tasty. Each type is also available in a spicy version, which we didn't get since it was Designer Girlfriend's birthday and she forgot to wear her asbestos suit.

Shabu vegetable platter! Shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, corn, bok choy, tofu, spinach, fresh ramen noodles, and some other stuff I can't remember.

The first meat that showed up was American wagyu beef. Very tender and flavorful, especially after a dunk in the miso broth and then the ponzu sauce. Check out that marbling.

A halfway cooked piece of the American wagyu that I yanked out so Actual could take the picture. Honestly, I see some grey, that's probably cooked enough for me.

New Zealand lamb. Not corn fed, so it actually tastes like lamb. Amazing.

Heat has actual Japanese Kobe beef on the menu. It's not part of the all you can shabu deal. Either they were being nice to us or the waitress grabbed the wrong plate, because we got some. Check this stuff out! For those of you that are familiar with Kobe, I would say this stuff was an A-5 score BMS 9.

Absolutely crazy marbling and flavor. Completely melt in your mouth tender. This meat doesn't even look like it came from a real animal. $27 a plate a la carte. Totally worth it.

Dessert is also included! Tonight it was green tea ice cream with strawberry mochi. It was so good that the girls actually finished theirs and mine, even though they were completely stuffed from the meal.

This is definitely a RUN, don't walk, RUN THERE RIGHT NOW review. Oh my meaty goodness.

Sacramento: Anthony and Yung have decided to absolutely spoil you and open Heat Shabu Baru in your town. Enjoy it now before everyone else figures out how good this place is and you have to wait 3 hours for a table.

Heat Shabu Baru
2416 18th St.
Sacramento, CA 95818

916-930-9888
www.heatshabu.com

 

 

 

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Quesozilla: THE GRILLED CHEESE TO END ALL GRILLED CHEESES

So, we had a Chomplevent. Lots of people showed up. It was great fun and a rather calm event until THE GRILLED CHEESE TO END ALL GRILLED CHEESES (henceforth referred to as Quesozilla) showed up.

We headed to the Roseville outpost of The Squeeze Inn. Yes, THAT Squeeze Inn. This burger joint (now small chain) creates cheeseburgers with giant cheese skirts. It's been on every food travel show known to man except No Reservations (come on Tony, you'll love it).

It began as a calm affair. We all ordered our food. Here's the part of the menu that shows all of the fun addons you can put on your burger. They're good, but not really necessary.

   

Parks and Recreation Guy got the first burger. I think it scared him a little. By the way, this was not the most grandiose cheese skirt of the night...

 
 

This was my dinner. I don't really like cheeseburgers, even ones this good. So I always get the teriyaki steak sandwich. Thin sliced ribeye with homemade teriyaki sauce? YES PLEASE!

Also pictured: my corn dog.

 

The most grandiose cheese skirt came as part of Concierge Girlfriend's Squeeze with Cheese. Just look at that thing! Designer Girlfriend estimated that the average burger here probably comes out to 40 Weight Watchers points.

 

And then came... Quesozilla.

Sir Ocho's son Kart King came along to the Chomplevent and was amped when he saw grilled cheese on the menu. Watch out, we warned, these people take cheese way too seriously. It's going to be a scary monster of a sandwich.

He wanted it. He ordered it. They made it.

Here's Kart King with the freshly arrived Quesozilla. He's not sure quite what to make of it. It looked innocuous enough.

 
   
See that huge wedge of fried cheese on the edge? That should have been his first warning sign that he was about to experience the monstrous cheese of Quesozilla.

 

"This should be easy enough... I'll just pick it up like a normal grilled cheese... yeah."

 

"Uhhhh... what the hee haw. Um. Mom. Mom. MOM HELP. MOM!"
"Ok Kart King, let me help you... uhhh what the heck? How much cheese is in this thing? Hey hubs, we have health insurance for Kart King right? We do? Ok, good."

 

"Here, take a bite."

 

"Oh... ohhh yeah. That tastes sooo good. Hey. HEY. It's still ATTACKING ME. IT WON'T LET GO."

 

"I WILL DESTROY YOU QUESOZILLA!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!!1!!!!1!11!!1one"

 
 

Ten minutes later, the sandwich was defeated. Congratulations were given by all at the Chomplevent. Kart King 1, Quesozilla 0.

 
 

I don't think he'll look at cheese the same way again.