FoodTrek: Mystery Science Theater 2010

There's a belief that how you celebrate the eve and enter the first is how you will live in the remainder of the year. If that's true, then the Prime greeted the new year with healthy and delicious food, festive drinks, and laughs with friends. If this is any indication of how the year will progress, then I'm very glad to say 2010 is looking to be a very good year, indeed. Brock/Mr. Wasabi and I were invited to friends' Mr. R and Mrs. J's lovely home on New Year's Eve, where they were hosting an intimate gathering with family as well as intermittent visits by the household cats, including the honorable Mr. Zeke. (Sorry, Indy, you were stuck on your own this New Year's Eve!)

Cheers to you in the New Year! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

We were greeted with one of the most colorful tables of food seen in a long time. The winter of soups, stews and roasts, while hearty, yield a subdued palette compared to the array of bright, fresh hues like the feast set out before us. Mrs. J is a fantastic cook and baker. She laid out a wide array of fresh vegetables, savory dips like a roasted pepper white bean dip and a rich tapenade, fresh-baked breads, garlic roasted to candy-sweetness, and her sister and brother-in-law brought some delicious and gloriously spreadable cheeses. Visiting their home is always a reminder to gain a familiarity with the food we prepare, check labels, buy local, and keep things marvelously simple so as to ensure the purity of flavor.

Happy New OM NOM NOM NOM  - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We brought some wine as well as some spice-roasted almonds and cashews (recipe below). We had a head's up that this night would pack a 1-2 punch of board games and cheesealicious Mystery Science Theater 3000 viewing, which ensured a hearty, Hell-to-the-Yeah on our attendance that night. Snacking on pistachios and the spicy nuts, as well as wine and potent Manhattans mixed by Mr. R, we set about world domination and the amassing of profit by playing Rio Grande Games' Dominion. It's a fun and easy to learn card-based game that relies on strategy, and every round is different as the rules of the game changes with a shuffle of a deck of player actions. You will probably hear this game mentioned a few times, as it's been present at a lot of social gatherings over the holidays, and Mr. Wasabi and I have been doing regular board game nights with friends to stave off the winter cabin fever.

Savory snacks and a visit from the Mustachio Pistachio!  - Photos by Mr + Ms Wasabi Prime

Once the Sharpie came out and faces were being drawn on empty pistachio shells (Mustachio Pistachio!), we knew we were getting punchy enough to be ready to absorb the humorous wisdom of Mike, Joel and the Bots of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). I'm sure you've at least heard of this series, which began back in 1988:  a sleepy-faced guy named Joel gets trapped on the Satellite of Love (SOL, yes), forced to watch horrible movies with his companion robots, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, adding their own witty commentary as they sit silhouetted in the lower right corner of the screen. The sets were as cardboard low-budget as the movies they were screening, but the humor was pun-laden, literary, pop culture-arcane, and as witty as it gets. The series ran for over ten years, swapping host Joel for new guy Mike towards the end, which is usually the Mason-Dixon line for this series over whether you're a Joel fan or a Mike fan. Team Joel all the way, but Mike was a cutie, too.

From the Satellite of Love to the Space Needle... to angry action hero face - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We started on a 1958 English-dubbed movie called The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy , which looked to be one of the earlier MST3K episodes. Dr. Forrester's evil sidekick Frank was not there yet, the sets looked extra-rickety, and even Tom and Crow's voices sounded different. The movie was of course terrible, but it was the worst kind of terrible in that it was agonizingly long and boring -- who would have thought robots and Aztec mummies would be so bland? Before the clock struck midnight, we switched to watch the midnight countdown at the Space Needle, took buzzed photos of the TV to pretend we were there, and switched gears to the action-packed  adventure,  Future War, which inexplicably featured futuristic dinosaurs. Don't ask, as I still have no idea what this was about other than it had a hooker turned nun, a Swiss-born Jean Claude Van Damme lookalike, and yes... rubbery dinosaurs. As the Bots would say: Van Dammit, this was bad. The fact that this was made in 1997, a relatively recent release compared to other squalid gems MST3K unearths, makes it that much more of a stinker, knowing it had the benefit of better resources. But I guess that's what makes MST3K such a blessing -- it finds the things Hollywoodland would prefer to stay buried and forgotten, and then attacks with merciless teasing.

Make mine a Manhattan, with a side of chocolate cookies - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And so this night ended with rubber dinosaurs and delicious no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies made by Mrs. J, along with glasses of New Year's bubbly. More and more, I find that the best dining experiences are often ones in our own homes, with the hospitality of friends. This officially concluded the holiday season, but certainly not the gathering of loved ones for good times. If this ensures that 2010 will be full of happy times shared with friends, then I think that is a good sign of things to come.

Chili Spiced Sweet and Sour Mixed Nuts
(for a crowd of 6-8 people)

13.5 oz unsalted almonds
13.5 oz unsalted cashews
(or any mixture of nuts of your choice; unsalted preferable)
2 tblsp canola oil
1 tblsp chili powder
1 tblsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp kosher salt (leave out if nuts are already salted)
Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine nuts in a large bowl. Add dry spices, lemon zest, lemon juice and oil -- toss to mix and coat all the nuts. Spread mixture on two baking sheets. Spread evenly. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, keeping an eye on the nuts so that they don't burn. Remove from oven, toss and flip contents of each baking sheet and put back into the oven for another 5-10 minutes. Sugar should be caramelized and nuts should be slightly browned but not burned. Cooking time may vary on different types of nuts, depending on their oil content. Let the finished nuts cool and serve.

UnRecipe: Meatless in Seattle

I often wax poetic over the versatility of pork, The Magical Animal, or marvel at The Power of Beef, usually with the haunting voiceover of Matthew McConaughey in my head. But I have several vegetarian friends, and I always feel bad that when "vegetarian options" are made available at gatherings or restaurants, it's often some limp pasta salad or an expressionless pile of steamed vegetables. It's like when Francis "Baby" Houseman gets put in a corner, and while I would never compare myself to the almighty power of The Swazye (peace-out, Patrick!), I felt the need to take those lackluster dishes from the corner and at least attempt a triumphant movie-finale lift. My attempt at an UnRecipe/MacGyver-style cooking vegetarian meal worthy of a Swazye roundhouse kick, consisted of a Roasted Corn Soup, Stuffed Table Squash, and a Caprese-inspired Pesto Portobello Mushroom Cap, with a Mango Sorbet topped with Spiced Pecans and Toasted Coconut.

Nobody puts vegetarians in a corner - Photo by Wasbi Prime

Squash is a nice, no-fuss ingredient to use since it's quite hearty and its structure remains relatively sound for most cooking methods. The little yellow table squash were looking colorful and cute at the market, so I picked up a few of those. They were easily hollowed-out using a mellon baller. Hit with a drizzle of olive oil and some salt/pepper, and away they went into the oven to get a head start on roasting. For the stuffing, I pulled some small carrots and green onions from the garden (so freakin' cool to be able to do that!), chopped up a few cremini mushrooms, a small yellow onion, and sauteed this mix down to reduce the liquid. I mixed a bit of Parmesan cheese into the cooked filling and stuffed the partially roasted squash halves, letting the oven do the rest of the work. The result was a simple, mild-flavored side dish that could be paired with anything or just eaten on its own, and the filling materials could be adjusted in any way, since the squash flavor is so light and ingredient-friendly. It's the perfect neutral party for a MacGyver meal that requires minimal preparation.

The roasted corn soup was more of a rolling experiment. This was how the Swiss-precision, steel trap mostly likely run with rubber bands, known as The Wasabi Brain, went through the food thought process: 1) Flip through the September Martha Stewart Living magazine. 2) Ooh! John Derian's having a dinner party, and he's serving beautiful corn soup! 3) I need to make corn soup. 4) Ignore all recipes and directions, purchasing random ingredients from grocery store. 5) Throw random ingredients together, in a Voltron-like manner, to form-of a pot of corn soup. Ta-daaaah.

In between all that quality thinking, I roasted several cups of corn until they got slightly browned and super-sweet, and added it to a pot that already had some onions, garlic, and a little bit of carrots, sweatin' to the oldies. I added probably a quart's worth of vegetable broth and used the fabulous hand blender to combine everything from rustic chunk to rustic charm. A cup of cream made the whole thing creamy-dreamy and that's what the end-result of the corn soup experiment was. I added the fresh tomato flourish that John Derian had, and that made for an easier photo, since soups always look boring as hell in pictures.

Tomato, tomahto, let's just call it dinner - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Portabello mushrooms are another versatile ingredient to work with. I know it's touted as a meat substitute, and while it's got the moxy to stand up to being grilled, if I get a portabello burger, I'm not having it because I want faux beef, I'm eating it because I dig fungus and I appreciate its own nuanced flavor.

Pesto from Jardin de Wasabi - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Jardin de Wasabi was thankfully able to yield a good amount of basil this season, so with a few snips, the plants were shorn of their precious leaves and a batch of pesto was made, using almonds instead of pine nuts because we're crazy like that. This was the genesis of the Caprese-inspired mushroom caps. I love tomatoes and cheese, but what makes them even more wonderful is when the mozzarella gets gooey and toasted from the oven. The fresh basil wouldn't have stood up to the scorch of the broiler and I really wanted the herb flavor baked into the ingredients, so I put a healthy smear of pesto over each mushroom before they got pre-roasted in the oven. Once cooked down, each cap was piled with thinly sliced tomatoes and a wedge of fresh mozzarella, and under the hot coil they went on the road to Melty Delicious-ville, final destination: My Belly. It was a good trip.

I don't always include desserts in meals, but I had been inspired by blogger Carli, of Velveeta Ain't Food fame, who had a great avocado ice cream recipe. I loved the idea of a creamy recipe that used a unique ingredient combined with savory elements like spiced nuts and sweet roasted coconut as toppers. However, our ice cream machine has a broken paddle, causing a serious harshing of my ice cream mellow, so I couldn't make avocado dessert magic. I still wanted to combine the spiced, savory nuts and sweet coconut with some kind of dessert, so I opted for a store-bought mango sorbet.

Sweet, spicy, salty -- keep dessert interesting! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The dessert result was still delicious. I think even a vanilla ice cream would have worked fine with the spiced pecans and coconut. While I was roasting the corn for the soup, I double-booked the oven, using a second rack for the cookie sheet with the seasoned pecans and some shredded coconut. I still have a fair bit of leftover coco-pecan-nut sprinklage, so I may get a little pint of creamy vanilla and make my Friday just that much more enjoyable.