So things have been quiet here as of late, sure, but don’t think for one second that things ain’t happening here at The Spatula. No, sir. For one thing, the move from wordpress.com to our own domain is now complete! Check out that header image, folks. It’s back! I mean, I know that I certainly missed it while it was gone. Didn’t you?

Now that we’re more or less 100% setup over here, things are moving a-pace. For one thing, our contributor list is seeing some growth. Please welcome our new members to Team Spatula. And, hey, if you want in on the action, let us know. Post a suggestion. Give us a recipe to try out. Join our team. I mean, hey, there’s always room for Jello.

In other news, some monthly (or otherwise occasional) features are brewing:

• SpatuLabs will be a recurring post wherein we at The Spatch will try out some crazy experimental whims in the kitchen. We’ll come up with some kind of idea and try our best to plan it out in such a way to make it work. ..But will it be a success? Will it fail? We won’t know until we do them and you’ll see first-hand how it all goes down. In October we’re going to try to make a quiche.. but with fruit! Wacky, we know.
• Upon achieving a certain level of readership, Iron Spatula will be a recurring monthly contest wherein we challenge our readers to come up with creative ways of using or otherwise incorporating a particular (often unconventional) ingredient. Members of Team Spatula may take part in this challenge until we get enough folks reading us. Should be fun.
• Meet the Team will be an opportunity for us to highlight a member of our contributorship and share some details about them and their adventures culinaires.

So, yes, things are happening! Up next: an actual recipe! (We’re due for some food porn, anyway.)

- Brunch

Lazy gene favours adventurous choices
IN A restaurant, do you order the dish you know you love or try a new one, in case you like it better? The level of the reward chemical dopamine you have in a brain region may determine your reply.

The COMT gene codes for an enzyme that breaks down dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. People with a less efficient version of COMT have more dopamine in this region, and this makes them good at storing multiple ideas in the short term…The team concludes that high levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex make people more adventurous, even when the status quo is fine.

^{– Read the full article at The New Scientist}

What does this have to do with Google’s food? Well, every day has a different menu. Unlike some corporate cafeterias which have pizza on Monday or hamburgers on Tuesday every week, Google’s changes daily. In fact, once I found a repeated menu 2 months later and jokingly complained, it caught the attention of our Dining Services masters in Mountain View. Given this mercurial menu, there’s two different strategies one can employ: Stay with the few constants (there’s always hamburgers available) or choose the most eclectic mix. I employ the latter tactic and next time, I’ll mention why (apart from maybe just having lazy genes).

With the hot weather (and random illnesses), I’ve been eating somewhat lighter foods which means I’ve been looking at the Raw and Antipasti stations with more interest. For some reason, I’m not that big on making my own salad. I think it’s because the ingredients usually available at a salad bar are unimaginative or don’t actually go together. For example, sometimes the salad bar here has roasted butternut squash. Great, I love squash, but what in the world am I going to put it with? Carrots and ranch dressing?

My first stop was therefore the Raw station which, as I mentioned, follows dubious principles like “no heating food over 115°F”, “vegan” (what’s a raw bar without shellfish?), and “don’t feed after midnight”. I’m sure there must be some Googlers who are Raw food devotees. I’ll punch them when I see them. Anyway, at least the food is interesting. On offer were Raw “Swedish Meatballs” with Gooseberries; White Asparagus, Mushrooms, and Sorrel Truffle Dressing; Wax & Green Beans with Mustard Vinegar; Apple, Cabbage, and Golden Raisin salad with Caraway Seed; and Candy Cane Beets with Cucumbers & Mint Dressing. I picked up some of the Swedish Meatballs, Asparagus Salad, and Apple Salad.

(Above: Raw Swedish Meatballs with Gooseberries)

Continuing on to Antipasti were a variety of items: A chicken tortellini salad, a beef fajita salad, some mini zucchinis in chili sauce, couscous, roasted peppers, balsamic marinated roasted mushrooms, broccolini, and, I think, a tomato salad. Here I took some of the fajita salad and mushrooms.

(Some of the many choices available at the Antipasti station)

Lastly I stopped off at Home which had the theme “Puebla”. I grabbed some Pork Tinga which is sort of a shredded pork with cumin, oregano, and paprika, completing my plate:

(Clockwise: Roasted Mushrooms, Fajita Salad, Raw Swedish meatballs, Asparagus Salad, Pork Tinga, and Apple Cabbage Salad)

Not the most common or consistent mix but it’s all going in my tummy so who cares? That said, the results of this experiment were mixed. The most disappointing item was the meatballs. I’d guessed that they would be made from nuts (they were) but I found them very salty. While they get lots of points for concept and presentation, I only ate 2 of them and gave up. The best (unsurprisingly) was the Pork Tinga. I’m a big fan of piggy goodness in a myriad of forms (except ham. What’s with ham?) and this was no exception. The pork was very tender, falling apart into bits, and the spices gave it a good flavor. It wasn’t as good as carnitas but it’s Mexican pulled pork instead of a braised pork dish. There’s rumors of a small taco made after as dessert to replace the meatballs but these are unfounded.

The salads were each good but admittedly fell slightly short: The flavor of the fajita salad was excellent but I personally don’t like cold beef: the fat re-solidifies and causes it to sort of coat one’s mouth with a greasy paste. Still the onions and peppers in it had a good lime, spice, and cilantro flavor. The asparagus salad was really good but on the whole, I prefer green asparagus to white. Every time I’ve had it, I’ve concluded white asparagus has a less pleasant texture (it’s firmer and stringier) and less flavor than it’s green counterpart. It could be that I grew up with substantial amounts of green asparagus (my family used to grow some) and white asparagus is just “not asparagusy” to me. Lastly, I enjoyed the apple/cabbage salad but not for the apple, cabbage, or raisins. While I was eating it, all I could think was “Mmm, pumpernickel” as I munched through apple and caraway seeds, cabbage and caraway seeds, and raisins and caraway seeds. Basically, put caraway with anything and *poof* instant rye bread flavor! Since I really like rye bread, it wasn’t a problem. The salad is losing points simply because the butter wouldn’t melt after I buttered it. Hmph.

Tomorrow looks to have an 80% chance of piggy goodness since we have a guest chef from Porchetta coming in. Maybe I’ll mention it next time!

If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen anything over here at The Spatch in the last few days, it would be because we’re in the middle of a big ole move. That’s right, folks — Way of the Spatula is in the process of getting its own space (unsurprisingly) at wayofthespatula.com.

At the time of this post, the move is about 95% complete. In fact, you probably won’t be seeing any new posts over at wayofthespatula.wordpress.com after this one. So please update your bookmarks and update your RSS feeds if you got ‘em. Eventually, the wordpress.com site is going to be hollowed out and just be a pointer to the food blog’s new home.

Now, having liberated The Spatch from wordpress.com to strike out on its own (though still leveraging wordpress’s great blogging platform), you’ll notice that certain things are missing from the site (for now). However, some new features that weren’t available before are available now.. and that’s pretty cool. Believe you me, this is a pretty exciting time for this particular celebration of food.

So stay tuned. ..And expect big changes.

- Brunch

To offset the crazy, ginormously long post that was The Quichening, Way of The Spatula presents to you… a much shorter post! No! Er, I mean.. Cooking with Food with Phil! (My buddy’s wife went to high school with this guy.)

…and in other news, Gizmodo is running a special foodie series of articles for the next several days — “Taste Test, a week long celebration of that beautiful intersection of innovation and cuisine.”

In their own words:

Since technology—and very often crazy gadgets—are at every watershed moment in the history of gustation, it makes sense that we honor it on Gizmodo. Besides, nerds like to cook (and eat).

Here’s just some of what’s to come:

• Guest editor Nick Kokonas—who founded Alinea in Chicago with chef Grant Achatz—will introduce us to the innovative minds they recruited to solve the trickiest problems of modern cuisine (like how to build a “bacon bow”)
• Wylie Dufresne will walk you through his kitchen in New York, showing off some of his most intense, and perhaps dangerous, gear
• Food Network’s geek-in-chief Alton Brown discusses topics ranging from the culinary innovations that changed human history to home hacks that look silly but save time and money
• Wired’s Mark McClusky will tell us how to cook with magnets
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch food reporter Georgina Gustin will set us straight on what is (and isn’t) evil about modern food production

That’s some exciting stuff to look forward to this week from the folks at Gizmodo! For the entire “Taste Test” article, click here.

Thanks to grubdude for this geeky foodie link and j0eboy for the youtube!

I probably should have named this particular post “A quichening” instead of “The quichening” since, really, I make quiches a lot and this is just the latest quichening effort to date. No, really. I make them a lot. A lot. Hell, I’ve easily made something like twenty whole pies since the beginning of 2009 and that number will probably double by year’s end, mark my words. They’re a simple enough thing to make, sure, but I don’t make them because of any sort of culinary difficulty rating they happen to have. No, I wind up making quiches an awful lot on the insistence of my friends.

(..and, by the way, it should be said that certain friends in particular are more insistent than others and that they absolutely know who they are and they shouldn’t try to act so scandalized that I make mention of this here because they’re not kidding anyone (although, I suppose, I can’t complain since it’s better to have people clamor for your cooking rather than not) and, wow, what a crazy run-on sentence this wound up being.)

Some of my friends never had quiche until I started making them so goddamn much and, since their introduction, have henceforth declared themselves the egg pie’s biggest fans. In fact, some of these friends are known to make plans involving my baking of quiches and generously inform me of the fact after the decision to have them made is, well, made. There’s sometimes token resistance on my part, sure, but, in the end, they pretty much always happen because, hey, quiches are tasty.

And, no, you didn’t misread that earlier – I affectionately refer to quiches as egg pies. I mean, that’s what quiches really are, aren’t they? They’re totally omelettes in a pie crust. And because they are exactly that, they are frickin’ awesome.

(The one pictured above is my signature quiche: a basil, Swiss cheese and spinach quiche.)

(This egg pie here is my breakfast sausage, mushroom onion and Monterey Jack cheese quiche. It’s my personal favorite of the kinds I make.)

So my work’s got this thing where breakfast is covered every Friday. It’s pretty neat. You go into the office that morning and there’s this spread laid out for the whole company, free for anyone to partake. The way it works is each month is pretty much “owned” by a department, the Fridays that make up that month are split up between members of that department, and these people get a stipend to pretty much plan and take care of brekkie for the company that day. And that’s all there is to it.

Last Friday was my and the saleguy’s Friday. I had been looking forward to getting a chance to rock out on the Friday breakfast dealie since my first day on the job and was thoroughly excited when the day finally came. While my co-conspirator took care of the fruit, mini-bagels and OJ part of the menu, I took care of my part: quiches. Four of them, in fact. Two of the spinach and basil ones and one of the sausage and one of the prosciutto ones.

It was great.

(Up thar be the prosciutto, asparagus and provolone quiche that I’ve only recently added to my repertoire of quichey offerings.)

That morning’s breakfast, though a lot of work (what with the procuring ingredients, the baking, the photodocumenting for this here blog and the lugging them all in a duffel bag via bus, subway and commuter rail train to the office), was actually really neat. After everyone sampled the eggy creations, praise and recognition abounded and, best of all, I was able to feed a lot of people and bring a smile to their faces. Totally worth it.

And like I mentioned earlier, yep, I photodocumented the process and it’s produced below. Photodocumenting while cooking in the kitchen ain’t easy, kids. Especially flying solo. The whole damn thing took about 4 hours to do and when I was finally done, I was pretty exhausted. That said, the following gets kind of long and kind of crazy since I’m doing four pies at the same time (go, go, gadget multitasking!), so the focus may wander a bit and meander even more. But you can pretty much follow it. (More… )