Daily Eats: The West Indies

Jamaican Curry Chicken Stew with Mango Rice

The necessary ingredient needed in making any Caribbean dish is allspice. Allspice is similar to cinnamon and nutmeg. When accompanied with brown sugar, garlic, and chili peppers, you can make anything thing taste like Jamaica. For this dish, I had really no inspiration besides the fact that I had an overripe mango and tomatoes that needed to be eaten.

For the stew, I used chicken, garlic, allspice, curry powder, brown sugar, chili peppers, salt, onions, tomatoes, and green bell peppers. I incorporated the mango into the rice by simply cooking the rice in a pot and adding in the mango, which I cubed. To add more flavor into the rice, I added some curry powder, along with some salt and sugar to play with the sweetness of the mango. I generally don't like spending more than 30 minutes making a meal and this meal took about twenty minutes to make!

Homeroom: Trailer Mac

The Original Dish: Homeroom's Trailer Mac
Homeroom is a small yet busy macaroni and cheese restaurant in the Temescal neighborhood in Oakland. Although it is located in a rather isolated part of Oakland, the restaurant has a very chill, relaxed, and hipster ambiance to it. I took my ex-roommate Molly out to celebrate her graduation. We tried to pick a day in the week where it wouldn’t be too packed and hectic during their dinner hour because we have heard stories of one hour long waits to be seated.

So, we went to Homeroom on a Wednesday evening, around six. When we got there, there was a line of people waiting outside to be seated. The place was packed and in the words of a passerby, “Homeroom has mad business.” We were seated 45 minutes after we arrived. The wait was not as bad as we expected because the staff was extremely friendly, charming, and funny. The place was amazing because in all reality, you have to try really hard to ruin mac and cheese.

The names of the dishes on the menu are very clever. I had the Trailer Mac, which consisted of cheddar macaroni and cheese and Niman Ranch hot dogs, with crushed potato chips on top. It sounded heartattackerific, so I decided to try it. Molly had a more refined taste and had Mac the Goat, sharp goat cheddar cheese with scallions. I liked both our dishes, but we found ourselves chasing each bite of our mac and cheese with a dash of Tapatio. The meal was good, but it wasn’t spectacular and felt like it was missing a kick to make it go beyond just ordinary mac and cheese.

Mac the Goat

Trailer Mac

The Delicious Double Take
The Trailer Mac at Homeroom was good, simple, and nostalgic. It was a good reminder of the simpler times when mac and cheese was the highlight of my day as a child. Homeroom did a wonderful job of reinterpreting macaroni and cheese to appeal to a more older demographic. So, Brittany and I tried to maintain the overall concept of Homeroom’s macaroni and cheese, simply substituting a few items to give it the kick that Molly and I were looking for.

The first substitution that was made was to exchange the hot dogs for a more savory and spicier meat, like a Louisiana Hot Link. Second, for the Trailer Mac, a sharp cheddar was used, which worked well with the addition of the Tapatio sauce; but, we used mild cheddar to make it less pungent when combined with the bold flavors of the hot link. In the original, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the brand of potato chip that was used, but I assumed it was Ruffles, or some other organic brand of ridged-cut potato chips. So, we used Kettle Sea Salt Chips to recreate the dish.

We made a roux with flour, butter, milk, and the mild cheddar. The roux made the mac and cheese very creamy and cheesy. We added more cheese when the roux was mixed into the macaroni to give it that bright orange color that Brittany was dying for. We added the basic necessities, salt, pepper, and of course garlic powder. The end result was promising. The hot links were a nice substitution to give the macaroni that boldness in flavor and heat.

If we had to remake our double take, it would be nice to classy the Trailer Mac up a little bit. Perhaps bake the mac and cheese and add some bread crumbs on top of it as well. Hopefully, the new additions won't take away from the general feel of the Trailer Mac too much.

Daily Eats: Pita Pizza

Pita pizzas are fast, fun, and easy to make. And in my opinion, it's the only thing that one can make, if the world suffered from a hummus shortage. Like any other pizza, pita pizzas can be made with any and with as many toppings that can be delicately placed on a miniature pizza-like surface. This pita pizza was basically made, like most of my other meals, out of desperation (because I was hungry and wanted something fast) and availability (what is left in the fridge).

Here was my approach to a quick pita pizza:
Note: please excuse the informal layout of the ingredients. But, it's necessary to show what it was exactly that I had to work with

• "a sliver of "cheddar cheese
• "half-eaten" sausage
• "what was left of" an onion
• green bell peppers
• canned diced tomatoes
• salt
• pepper
• garlic powder
• basil flakes
• day-old whole-wheat pita bread

In order to make the sauce for the pita pizza, I heated the diced tomatoes in a saucepan and added the salt, pepper, garlic powder, and basil. I allowed the sauce to cook for five minutes under a low flame. When the sauce was ready, I spread it evenly on the pita bread. And for the more elaborate pizza making process, I shredded cheddar cheese on top and threw on the finely diced vegetables and sausage. I placed the pita pizza in the 350 degree oven for five minutes, or until the cheese melted. In the end, the pizza was amazing. The pita bread was bordering the state of becoming a chip, which made the pizza really thin and crunchy.

Daily Eats: Broccoli and Mushroom Penne

Broccoli and Mushroom Penne with a Creamy Garlic Sauce and Meatballs

Pasta is probably one of the most easiest and quickest thing to make. This meal was made mostly out of desperation because everything that I had in the refrigerator were moments away from going bad. But, it was amazing and a meal that could be easily modified to consist of whatever vegetables happen to be around.

American Cupcake: Red Velvet Fried Chicken

The Original Dish: Red Velvet Fried Chicken from American Cupcake

American Cupcake is a hip restaurant in the Marina District in San Francisco. Michael and I have been dreaming of going to this place for almost a year and during finals week, we finally went.

All we ever talked about was trying their Red Velvet Fried Chicken. The chicken came with a side of cream cheese, garlic mashed potatoes, and cocoa-powdered coleslaw. The restaurant and the meal looked amazing and inventive and we were excited to indulge ourselves with the sinfully chocolaty taste of the red velvet batter and the savoriness of the chicken underneath the fried, crispy layer.

American Cupcake's Red Velvet Fried Chicken with cream cheese, mashed potatoes, and cole slaw.

The meal was prepared in less than twenty minutes. The plate of food looked overwhelmingly delicious, with three colossal pieces of chicken (thigh, leg, and boneless breast) piled on top of the mashed potatoes and coleslaw. With our knife and fork, we wasted no time removing the flesh from the bone of the chicken. The build-up of the moment was finally coming to its climax and then we took our first bite.

The chicken was good, but we underestimated the sweetness of the dish. My palette was basically tricked because the savoriness of the chicken was underplayed by the sweetness of the cake batter. The other components of the meal were moderately tasty. The Red Velvet Fried Chicken needed to burst with seasonings, especially salt, which it lacked. The meal was about $15, which is way out of my budget considering the taste of the fried chicken and working at KFC for a year. But it was on a square plate, which makes everything bougie; so, I guess the price is understandable.

But American Cupcake is a really good place to eat due its creative and whimsical atmosphere and menu. The menu is very diverse, containing items from bubblegum cupcakes to candy cocktails accompanied with a fancy peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It is definitely a fun place to eat out.

The Delicious Double Take
Due to our limited funds, we remade our version of the dish on a small budget, which included using a boxed red velvet batter cake mix. However, it was still very tasty and gave the meal a couple elements we thought were missing from the original.

First, we seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. We also added the same seasonings to the flour base, which we used to coat the chicken before and after it was covered in the red velvet batter. The chicken was triple breaded, which make it crispy, crunchy, and delicious. Garlic was the secret ingredient that made everything better. We even recreated the cream cheese and garlic mashed potatoes and coleslaw from scratch.

A few alterations: we substituted American Cupcake’s vinaigrette dressing with a creamy mayonnaise and apple cider vinegar dressing, which was a more balanced combination of salty and sweet. Also, the only type of potatoes we had in the house were Yukon gold potatoes which made the mashed potatoes yellow in color and we also left the skin on for a more filling meal. American Cupcake skinned their potatoes and probably used Russet potatoes, which made their mashed potatoes white.

If we remade our own remake of the Red Velvet Fried Chicken, we would probably avoid using the cake mix from the box and instead make our own.