Wherein I Eat Awesome Stuff in Atlanta

I was in Atlanta recently, visiting JHK and taking the LSAT -- it's a long story. WHILE I was there, I indulged in three particularly sumptuous meals, photographic proof of which I now will present.

1) Dinner on Friday night at Murphy's

I've now visited Atlanta thrice, and each time I have found myself at Murphy's -- but before this visit, only for brunch. (GET THE SHRIMP AND GRITS, DAMNIT. SO GOOD). This dinner menu, like Napoleon Bonaparte, is short -- but fully prepared to conquer my appetite and unify my taste buds into a single regime under its rule.

Awkward simile? Maybe.

Anyways, I resisted the urge to get shrimp and grits AGAIN (it's on the dinner menu too) and instead opted for classic dry-rubbed ribs. I don't get ribs often, but I think ribs such as these are my death-row-last-meal meal. They were so fall-off-the-bone, finger-lickin', bone-suckin', tender and flaky delicious that it was struggle to set a few aside for later. When you can't even keep the meat on the bone if you tried, that's when you know you've found a good ribs joint -- and Murphy's is, at that.

Here too I tried the mussels, which were good but nothing to blog about (oops). However, nestled next to the dish of mussels marinara were thick-cut handmade fries, which were pretty much worth it right there. Moist without being greasy, salty without overpowering the flavor of the potato, they were pretty much just how I like 'em. Another win for Murphy's. I'll be back.

2) Breakfast before the LSAT (at the ungodly and inhuman hour of about 6:30)

I'm not sure I need much commentary for this photo, except to say that if I did well on the LSAT (I find out Nov. 1), it's thanks to this breakfast of champs -- cheerios, leftover ribs, and macaroni and cheese.

3) Dinner Saturday night at Bistro Niko

My experiences with French restaurants are more than limited -- I think I've been to ONE in my life, on Key Biscayne in Miami, where I tried escargo. I know almost nothing about the cuisine, except that they eat frog legs.

SO I DID.

That's right; I tried frog legs. And you know what? Duh duh duh...

They tasted like chicken.

Except they tasted like the best, most tender, flavorful, and wonderful chicken you've EVER HAD. These were lightly breaded and pan fried with lemon juice and a little tomato with spices, and once I got past the fact I was eating something that looked VERY much like a frog leg, I could focus on how tasty it was. If you, my dear readers, think you have it in you, I highly recommend trying frog legs sometime.

For my main course, I had skate wing. For those unaware, skate is a cartilaginous fish, like sharks or manta ray, in fact, very much like a manta ray. Skate is a very tender white fish, markedly un-fishy tasting/smelling, and when cooked, flakes cleanly into large chunks. The skate I ate (hahaha) was pan-fried with lemon juice, white wine, and capers -- EXACTLY the same way MB an I cooked it during my only other experience with skate. It's an easy fish to cook, as the meat is thin and of uniform depth, but the tricky part (MB and I struggled with this) is separating the flesh from the cartilage structure under the wing without making a mess of the fish. Apparently, the trick is to be careful.

In my mind, as much as I love staples and favorites, there's nothing quite as exciting as trying the new and/or exotic; I give Bistro Niko two or three thumbs way up for presenting both in an excellent and perfectly executed fashion.

Next time on Hungry Sam: What I made for dinner tonight.

Blessed be Brunch

I will be brief. The exceptionally talented blogger Suburban Sweetheart, my coworker and friend, loves breakfast potatoes. She adores them. They are her everything, in a Barry White sort of way. She ALWAYS gets them with any meal at which they are available, and has only the highest and most discriminating breakfast potato tastes and standards. And her Ideal Potato, in a Platonic sense, is the brunch buffet breakfast potato at the Marriott Crystal Something Hotel.

When she speaks of these potatoes, her head cocks slightly up and to the left. Her whole body tenses slightly, as though she is straining toward the image in her mind's eye. Her brow lifts and her eyes widen and become unfocused, as though directed inward with a Buddha-like concentration. I think she even tears up. She really, really likes these potatoes.

Being Hungry Sam, I've understood her passion in a general sense. But this last weekend, brunching after a hard morning of tikkun olam-ing, I had the glorious opportunity to taste the object of SS's long-unrequited desires. I had the Potatoes.

Please, please, allow me to be more precise. I had the Brunch. I OWNED the Brunch. WE owned the brunch. In the 17 minutes my friends and I had before the buffet closed, we ate nearly every bit of food at the buffet. I personally ate NINE POUNDS of food. See?

That plate is my first of 3. Plus there are more out of frame. And I think I ate a little off my friends' plates, hence my ridiculous expression, which is meant to communicate victual-related victory. Altogether, we enjoyed plate-cracking loads of:

• scrambled eggs
• The POTATOES (2 varieties, both cheesy and non)
• strawberries
• melons
• blackberries
• omelets
• chicken sausages
• pineapple
• waffles
• blintzes
• probably other things, but I forget.

The meal is like a dream; I almost don't believe it happened. So much food, so fast, and just so damn good (which is obviously important; everything was impeccably prepared). The potatoes were everything I'd hoped, everything I'd dreamed, and almost as satisfying as eating them was seeing Suburban Sweetheart doing so herself. This brunch, these potatoes are enough to make me willing to return to the high-rise hell that is Crystal City. And that's saying something.

PS: I'm pretty sure I can make said ridiculously stupendously mouth-wateringly superb potatoes with some minor variations on my recipe.

Well-Balanced Breakfast

Remember how kid's cereal commercials (not the Mom-approved ones; more like Froot Loops et al.) used to end with the assertion that the hydrogenated fat-sugar in focus was somehow part of a well-balanced breakfast? And didn't those well-balanced breakfasts look so freaking good?

Yes, yes they did. It was great! There'd be toast, an egg, orange juice, milk, maybe a sausage, framing the sugar cereal of choice. It wasn't even the food itself that looked good; it was the beauty of their visual and nutritious balance. The effect of surrounding the food being pushed with other delicious but generic foods was immediate and irresistible (like Rudolfo Otto's mysterium tremendum): I would always immediately begin my mother's application process for new sugar cereal (to be completed in triplicate and submitted under a blue moon).

Now, it would be too contrived to imitate such a breakfast (although I do frequently make for myself multi-Act breakfasts balancing protein, fiber, vitamins, etc). BUT every now and again, when Mars aligns with Saturn, Demos, and my toaster oven, a well-balanced breakfast just coalesces before me. Bowl of cereal? Check! Coffee? Yes please! Bananas? SIX FOOT SEVEN FOOT!

This happened last weekend, as my colleagues and I breakfasted at a hotel, gearing up for a long day of social justicing. It looked a little like this:

Well, actually, it looked exactly like this. I got very excited and snapped this shot even though balanced as it might have been, it was not the smorgasbord of fat and sugar from Frosted Flakes commercial's glory. This excitement has translated into a post here at Hungry Sam, and now I'm going to ask for some responses from you, my avid and loyal readers (BANTER!)

What is your well-balanced breakfast? What constituent elements, in joining together, have the Captain Planet-like effect of combining powers into something wholly other and stupendous? You can respond by commenting below (for the superstars among you) or by voting at the right.

Happy breakfast!

Pan-Fried Brunch Potatoes! Wooooot

As I sit here on this lovely, too-bright Sunday morning, hydrating heavily, slowly and stupidly beginning to contemplate the point at which I will have to venture outside once more, I'm listening to the whine and crackle of sautéing onions, potatoes, peppers and broc. That's right, I'm making my pan-fried breakfast potatoes. Hells yes.

RLK's mom is in town and she invited a bunch of us to Hotel Quincy (Bagpipes: If you're reading this -- not a real hotel) for brunch. Being my parents' child I'm unable to go without bringing something so I am making these potatoes. They're time consuming, but pretty easy and low maintenance.

I think I used about 6 or 7 good-sized red potatoes -- fingerlings would be ideal but couldn't find 'em -- and threw them into boiling water for about 20 minutes while I showered and dressed. The key is to cook them only about 90% of the way; you want them to finish on the stove with the spices and accoutrement. Once they finished (you can insert a knife and remove it easily) I began to sauté onion (1 large), broccoli (1 stalk), minced garlic (generous dollop), red pepper (1/2) and cilantro stems in butter. Health conscious kid I am, I normally use olive oil for sautéing, but here the potatoes only really shine as they absorb and cook with bitter. Ok, I used half-and-half butter/smart balance or whatever.

As the onions began to sweat and turn translucent, I added my first round of spices -- salt, pepper, paprika and basil, then the potatoes. A few minutes later, another round of spices. Now this is CRITICAL -- potatoes, starchy little fellers that they are, DEVOUR salt. They need TONS of salt. You'll be continuing to add salt (and the other spices) throughout the process; you'll actually probably say aloud, "Damn. This is alot of salt." TRUST ME.

From here on out and for about 30 to 45 more minutes, I continue to cook on medium low heat, adding more spices as I see fit (lots and lots of paprika, more than anything other than salt) and butter. you've got to continue adding butter to keep the potatoes moist and prevent drying, and stir every, say, five minutes. I think all told, I use about a quarter to a third of a stick of butter, not really that much when you consider the quantities with which we're working here.

The beauty of this is it's all vamping on a theme, so if I want spicy I can add chili powder or even ground chipotle peppers; if I want a bit more decadence I throw on grated parmesan (didn't this time since RLK is very intolerant of lactose). These potatoes are a real staple of my cooking; although it takes about an hour and a half or even more I spend most of that sitting on my couch typing to you, my faithful readers (hahahaha). Plus the outcome looks and tastes like a tough dish and it just isn't. Score!

Final Effect:

This Waffle Person Thinks Like I Do

My cravings are rarely for "sweet;" I nearly always crave savory. Plus, I generally feel gross after overindulging my sweet tooth. It follows, then, that for my POWER BREAKFASTS I make eggs and toast or only-subtly-sweetened oatmeal. And when I eat out for breakfast or brunch, I ALWAYS order something eggy -- omelets, frittatas, scrambles, what have you.

This doesn't change the fact that the most beautiful or creative items on many a brunch menu are the waffles drenched in butter and syrup. I always order the damn eggs, I ALWAYS do -- and then I ALWAYS stare in unbridled and unashamed jealousy at the person to my left gasping in ecstasy (almost made an egg pun; wouldn't have made sense) at the gorgeous waffle-y stack before her.

GOD.

Anyways, RLK sent me this page in full knowledge of how much I would enjoy it: http://www.waffleizer.com/

Check it out. The way this person feels about waffles inspires me; we should all be so lucky as to feel this blind passion toward something in our lives. It makes me believe that I too could one day overcome my predilections and predispositions toward the savory and attempt the sweet.

(Also, can we all agree that waffle fries are the best form of fried potato? NEW POLL!!!)

Wicked Good Milk

Most Americans are a reflection of or a reaction to their parents in three key respects: in religious belief, in political orientation, and in milk-fat-content preference.

I am a skim milk guy, having been raised on it. The weight and density of whole milk, in my opinion, make it suitable only for making sugar cereal decadent or for perfecting coffee. 2% is an acceptable compromise, particularly for coffee, but I'd still rather be drinking skim milk.

I know the complaints - skim milk is too watery, too thin, too whatever. I suppose that really just amounts to one complaint. It's not that I don't concede the point, it's more that I don't care, and lower density milk is probably ideal for a guy who drinks at least a gallon a week.

At least, I used to concede the point, but then I tried Real Skim Milk. Fresh skim milk, milk from cows that only ate grass and hay (NOT corn), from cows situated just a few miles away. Milk milked that very day. Now, I wasn't seeking this milk out; I was semi-desperate coming home from work - the three convenience stores on my walk were out of skim. So I tried this bodega on the corner of my street, a little store which only sells things no one ever needs. Except, apparently, milk.

They sell this local milk, skim included, in big, half-gallon glass jugs with plastic covers. It was expensive - more on that - but I eat oatmeal made with milk every morning, snack on milk and cereal, and drink a glass of milk or more pretty much every time I sit down at my table. So ain't no mountain high enough.

And wow. This skim milk was identifiably not as creamy as whole, but it had such flavor! Such character! as to differentiate it quite entirely from the rest of the skim family. Frothier, smoother, deeper, and much more complex than supermarket milk, I'm actually not even using it for oatmeal and use it only stingily for cereal. It's that good to drink. This skim milk is to that other skim as FDR was to Grover Cleveland, as a Cadillac is to a Daewoo, as the Sun is to other stars: clearly the same elemental stuff, but so, so much better.

A final note: including a two dollar deposit for the bottle, this half-gallon cost $6.75. Damn - I'm not made of money, and at nearly 3 times the rate of the crappy stuff, this milk will have to be an infrequent treat. Good thing I can return the bottle...