Magic Pop: Extreme Rice Cakes

I was strolling through the Murray’s cheese section at Kroger last night, looking for samples, when I noticed a small crowd gathered near the bakery. They had collected around a contraption about the size of a popcorn machine, with a plexi-glass partition keeping onlookers back.

Every ten seconds or so, the machine would make a loud popping sound and a cracker about the size of a pita was expelled at high speed, hitting the glass and falling into a basket. There was an attendant on hand, feeding the machine, or keeping it from turning loose and eating everyone in the store, I couldn’t tell what.

Getting closer I could see the words “Kim’s Magic Pop,” on a sign above the crowd. Next to it was a platter of cracker samples served alongside a half-eaten container of hummus. I walked a full circle around the Magic Pop, noting a pervasive fake strawberry smell not unlike the stuff they spray on landfills. It reminds you of strawberry but your nose tells you it’s not.

I reached in for a sample, ignoring the hummus. There were two varieties of magic crackers on hand for tasting, a plain looking kind and another with light pink splotches. I took a sliver of the pink stuff. It tasted just about how it smelled, and it lingered in my mouth for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

I did some research at home and read all about the Magic Pop Story. It seems there’s a couple in South Korea who got the idea in their heads to both terrify and delight the people of America by creating a machine that would pressure-cook rice cakes and fling them at high speeds. There’s also a wonderfully Photoshopped image of Magic Pop “HQ” in South Korea.

I also discovered that there are a variety of Magic Pop flavors, including shrimp – shrimp! Magic Pop’s website lists the benefits of its product and insists that the rice cakes are “especially good for little ones and the elderly.” Coincidentally, I can’t think of anyone who would be more frightened by the concept.

What's amazing to me is how the Magic Pop machine turns a bland food into a supermarket spectacle. Is there a less interesting, less enticing food than a rice cake? No. But if you show people how it's made and send that food flying through the air with the speed and ferocity of a hockey puck, people will eat it up. The small crowd watching at Kroger had already loaded their carts with pre-packaged sacks of Magic Pop crackers. Marketing genius.

The best part of my chance encounter with the Magic Pop was when the employee tending to the machine accidentally moved his hand into the line of fire. He saw me standing in front of the basket of samples, my eyes glazed over in awe, and he said “Good evening ma’am.” And then a cracker whizzed out of the machine and hit him in the arm.

Seasame Peanut Noodles After the Big Game

After a night of glorious, unrestrained indulgence in Super Bowl snacks – including but not limited to Evan’s Manhattan jello shots and his friend’s pork belly sliders – I was in need of something a bit lighter. I made a repentant trip to the gym on Monday and went directly to the grocery store afterward.

I came home with a new jar of peanut butter and a couple of bags of uncooked soba noodles, ready to embrace an easy, nutritionally sound dinner. What does nutrition look like? A glob of peanut butter, of course, pureed in your food processor with some soy sauce, garlic, mirin, red pepper flakes, seasame oil and red wine vinegar.

The recipe is adapted by Ted Allen. You know him from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Now you know he’s a cookbook author. While the noodles cooked I assembled all of the ingredients that I would dress them in for a photo op.

The finished product needs some chopped cucumber on the side, for crunch, and to maintain a semblance of nutritional value. The noodles are so tasty, and vegan at that, how could they be anything but good for you?

I doubt Random House would appreciate if I typed up the recipe and posted it on my blog. Someone else did it though, so either go buy Ted's book or get started making some tasty peanut noodles by checking out the recipe here.

Five Sweet Excuses for a Day Trip to Columbus

I've been considering - some would say obsessively researching - vacation options. I'm bent on taking one this spring, but in the meantime I'm daydreaming about a day trip to Columbus. If you too are looking for a quick getaway, then call in sick, turn off your Blackberry and head to our friendly neighbor to the north for these sweet indulgences.

1. Jeni's
Step away from your black raspberry chip for a minute and try what Jeni is scooping up. Inventive flavors, high quality ingredients and Snowville Creamery dairy make Jeni's ice cream worth talking about. And you don't even have to leave Cincinnati to get it - Whole Foods in Hyde Park carries it. You don't have to quit your Graeter's habit to give Jeni's a shot.


2. Pistacia Vera
If the pastry case at Pistacia Vera doesn't make you giddy, then you don't have a sweet tooth at all. They're whipping up trendy Macarons, sweets and savories in an adorable German Village storefront. Leave your new year's resolutions at the door.


3. Taste of Belgium
Our own Cincinnati-based Belgian waffle joint has opened a location in Columbus's North Market. Save some gas and get your waffle fix at the Findlay Market location. The authentic Belgian waffles are worth a trip to either location. Watch for their unique seasonal creations like a shrimp and grits waffle around Mardi Gras time.


4. Sugardaddy's
These brownies and blondies are made with seasonal flavors like dark citrus and harvest with apricot and cinnamon. The downtown location is dressed up in pink and brown, but don't be fooled by the cute branding. These are serious treats with a mix of creative and classic flavors.


5. Knead Urban Diner
For some sweet and savory with local flair, head to Knead Urban Diner. I sampled the excellent yogurt parfait and the homemade twinkie when I visited in the AM. Brunch is served on Sundays, and options include an "Egg McJunkin" sandwich with house-cured bacon. The lunch and dinner menus feature locally sourced goods in re-imagined diner favorites.

Tom + Chee serves up winning chili

Did you miss the Gold Star Chili Cook-off at Findlay Market? You've still got time to sample the winning chili recipe. Tom + Chee will be serving up the blue ribbon "Blackened Voodoo Chili" at its Court St. location. It's a limited engagement, though, and your only chance to scoop it up is today, Tuesday February 1 and tomorrow the 2nd. Find out more at Tom + Chee's Facebook page.

The Voodoo chili recipe was created by James Czar and Mary Beth Weaver, inspired by a recent trip to New Orleans and named in honor of Czar's band, Voodoo Puppet. They were declared "Chili Meisters" as winners of the Gold Star sponsored cook-off.

If you make it to Tom + Chee today for some chili, you can wash it down with some glazed donut bread pudding. Need I say more?

Four Fork Meatloaf

There are two things Alex will request when I ask him what he wants for dinner – beef tacos with hard shells or meatloaf.

I try and talk him into other kinds of tacos, maybe pork with soft corn tortillas, and he just keeps telling me,

“No, get the taco kit.”

Then I get frustrated and suggest we just go out to eat. This is successful most times, except when he’s been out of town for a week and I cave in to his whims and make something that he wants. If nothing else, it will shut him up for a couple of weeks.

He made his usual plea for meatloaf, and I promised to make it when he returned from his trip to Nashville. Saturday rolled around and he hadn’t forgotten about it. I had no choice but to find a recipe that would satisfy his request and wouldn’t make me ashamed to cook.

I turned to my dearly departed Gourmet magazine, living on by proxy of epicurious.com. One keyword search turned up this recipe, yielding no less than 204 reviews with the highest possible user rating. When a meatloaf recipe gets 21 pages of four fork reviews on epicurious, you take it seriously.

Some of the ingredients came from our favorite big box with the blue logo. The good stuff, like the pork products, came from vendors at Findlay Market like Kroeger and Sons. By the way, nothing relieves the tension of grocery shopping with your significant other like a double scoop Capn’ Crunch and Vietnamese Coffee gelato from Dojo.

Ah, how many relationships could be saved if they’d only turned to gelato.

Sunday night came. I rolled up my sleeves and dug my hands into a big bowl of raw pork product. Sounds inappropriate? It kind of was.

Gourmet’s meatloaf requires soaking of breadcrumbs, chopping and sautéing, food processor-ing and then mixing raw meat and egg with your hands. Then you slap it into a 13 by 9 inch roasting dish, throw it in the oven and clean up the mess in the kitchen for the next hour. Throughout this process, Alex came to the stairs to shout down at me,

“Damn! It smells good in here!”

The meatloaf came out in just about an hour with a browned crust and a lot of rendered fat in the pan. We ignored all that and sliced into the loaf.

I told you, a lot of fat.

This is a meatloaf worthy of four forks. Here’s what it has going for it:

• Prunes and bacon ground to a coarse mixture and worked into the rest of the meat, so there’s a sweetness and a smokiness throughout.
• Cooked onions and carrots that soaked up a lot of butter in the sautéing process.
• All the umami goodness of Worcestershire sauce, however you want to pronounce it.
• Tons of salt

It’s hard to go wrong when you’ve got all that going on. It was so enjoyable to eat, this recipe is going in my “saved” bookmark folder. If I was my mom, it would be printed, folded and shoved into a decaying Ziploc bag. It’s a keeper, even if it is meatloaf.

Orange Rosemary Scone Therapy

I was pulling onto my 275 exit yesterday and from somewhere inside my head came the words "orange rosemary scones."

Probably I saw them on a menu somewhere, or flipping through a cookbook at a bookstore. Maybe it was divine food intervention. I didn't spend a lot of time debating the origins of this idea, I just got to work searching for a recipe once I got to the office.

If you type "orange rosemary scones" into Google, you'll find a wealth of advice and recipes. I bookmarked a Food & Wine recipe, decided to skip the pistachios, and picked up some sprigs of rosemary on my way home from work.

Merely an hour after I got home, I had a warm batch of scones and an apartment filled with the scent of citrus. They're not overly sweet or orangey. They're good warm out of the oven next to a bowl of soup. They go down really nicely next to a mug of spicy hot chocolate.

The recipe also gave me a chance to do one of the best things you can do with orange rinds: run some hot water down the sink and grind them up in the disposal. The sink smells like an orange grove. At least I think it does, I've never been to one.

These scones were not fussy or time-consuming, and the results were nice. The process of making them was even sort of therapeutic in a Ruth Reichl kind of way. Are voices in my head now shouting out recipe ideas for dinner? Maybe this is the first sign of food insanity. I don't care, commit me, just as long as there are oranges and rosemary there.

Tradition

We were a strictly “real tree” household growing up. A fake tree was never to cross the threshold of our home. We were on Charlie Brown’s side every time Lucy tried to peer pressure him into getting a plastic tree. Of course, getting a real tree was always a miserable ordeal. We would march out to a freezing gravel parking lot and inspect a hundred trees, mystified by the names like “Douglas fir,” and eventually picking one out to be wrapped and strapped to the top of the car. By this point, everyone was unhappy and our nasal passages were frozen shut. Then there was the process of getting the tree into the house, which traditionally entailed a lot of cursing and stomping.

Once the tree was wrestled into a stand and the needles had been vacuumed from the carpet, everyone calmed down and we returned to our jolly holiday selves.

Cookies were another essential tradition in our house. Mom would load the pantry up with peanut butter, sugar and AP flour weeks ahead of schedule and when the time came, baked up a flurry of sugary, fatty delights. No-bakes, peanut butter kisses and snickerdoodles were usually on the roster, with a few variations from year to year.

Last year, Alex and I had been dating for only a few months when the holidays rolled around. We decided to celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas all in one evening. Since I was in the overachiever stage at the beginning of a relationship, I agreed to make two kinds of cookies and do the latke frying all at once in his tiny Clifton apartment. I was ready to whip up some no-bakes and a pan of snickerdoodles, but Alex whimpered,

“Can we make cut-out cookies and decorate them?”

Who am I to deprive a Jewish boy of cut-out Christmas cookies? They weren’t traditional in my house, but I didn’t want to let him down, so I nixed the snickerdoodles and found a basic sugar cookie recipe. They turned out pretty well, considering my roommate and I had to beat the dough within an inch of its life to get it to roll out to the right thickness (no rolling pin).

This year, I do have a rolling pin, and Alex and I did the holiday thing all over again. I went back to the same cut-out recipe and we made them on Saturday night. This time, we did the latkes earlier in the month around the first few days of Hanukkah and saved the cookies for another day. And much to Jeff’s dismay, we used store-bought icing to decorate our, well, non-traditional traditional Christmas cookies.