Big Fat Ostrich

Remember that chicken pita recipe that we put together last year? Well this is nothing like it, yet it is, in that special way that gives you a sense of longing and sadness for that certain taste that you just can’t put your finger on.

As usual, we don’t bother with teaspoons or measuring cups because when you cook at BFO Kitchen Labs and Grills, you go oldskool and measure with your bare hands. Like your grandmother did. Anyway, worry about those tummy tucks later if you use too many ingredients today. That’s our motto!

To start, you’ll need the following ingredients:

1 chicken breast
a bunch of fennel seeds
freshly ground black pepper
a handful of whole or sliced almonds (I used both)
1 Spanish onion. Use about 1/4. (don’t use the whole thing unless you’re insane)
1 Orange bell pepper (use whatever color you like, but the orange looks awesomer)

Heat up some olive oil in your pan or skillet or whatever you’re cooking with today and throw in about half of the quarter of the onion. Slice up the chicken into strips and toss it into the pan when the onions start sizzling. When the chicken is sealed, throw in some fennel seeds. Use your instincts, so don’t use too much, but just enough for the fennel to do its fragrant magic. You can throw in the almonds at any time too since they’re not accomplishing anything just sitting there on your counter.

Next, slice up the orange bell pepper, throw it in as well and grind some fresh black pepper over everything. I sometimes throw in a little water just to keep the chicken extra tender. You don’t want it to dry out, so watch the heat.

And that’s pretty much it! Your chicken fennel almond dish is ready:

Served with fresh salad and pitas to wrap it all up in. You can use a little honey mustard on it for fun, but it was really pretty succulent and didn’t need anything else. Yep. It was that good.

The recipe is scalable as usual. To make more servings, add another chicken breast, another fistful of almonds, etc. Don’t forget to invite your guests to share so that you can keep your liposuction cost down.

One of my great pleasures in life is to invent dishes. I am the proud father of the “hamburdog” and of course, the inevitable “hot-durger”. I make a killer taco salad that uses the hard shells as croutons (since they kept fucking crumbling in my hands anyway). But my greatest achievement so far has to be the Spagstramizza.

Intrigued yet? Good.

Let me show you how to prepare the thing.

First you take a plate. Any plate will do.

Then you add a fat toasted slice of pumpernickel bread:

Then you pour hot homemade spaghetti sauce on the fucker:

Then you sprinkle your favorite cheese on it:

Then you add hot smoked meat (Montreal style, like Levitts’, is the best, but standard pastrami will do):

And then you eat it with utensils. A pickle or coleslaw on the side are great addition to the experience.

Enjoy!!!

PS.: To the chick who wanted to sell us ads and then said that our website “tried to attack her computer” because Norton said so but she didn’t remember the exact error message but to not try to contact her again: Go fuck yourself. Our website is squeaky clean, bitch.

While I’m sitting here waiting for Oneiric Ocelot to be released (and how it will probably crash my computer), I went out and bought some Astro yogurt. And every time I buy it I can’t help but think of Astro by The White Stripes.

So if you were to wonder if maybe Mike O does the astro, the answer would be yes. Yes he does.

By the way, I expected the Lime flavored yogurt to suck so badly, because how good can a 750ml thing of yogurt be when it costs 2 bucks? It was in fact, great, and I ate the whole thing in 2 sittings. The lime taste wasn’t too overpowering at all. Astro makes creamy fucking yogurt yes they do. Just don’t buy the cappuccino one. Same creamy texture, but the flavor gets old pretty fast.

Astro!

The original plan was hot dogs. Yeah, good old BBQ hot dogs in buns. But then we started thinking about Chiabatta bread and soon after merguez followed. And then somehow hot dogs became Fuck You Dogs and I can’t remember how we came to that conclusion since we had a few beers with some Campari and Whisky chasers. But not all at once.

In the end, the ingredients were Ciabatta bread, merguez sausages, Sauerkraut, dijonnaise, jalapeño cheeze whiz (believe it!) and some almond stuffed olives to top it off.

Step one: Boil the sausages until they look like big fat disgusting fingers. Here’s the pre-boil. Sausages in a pan full of water. If you fuck up this part, you’re not allowed to cook. Ever. Just give up.

When they’re boiled, throw in the sauerkraut.Use olive oil. Do not burn it. If you burn it, throw it out and go to McDonald’s.

In a separate pan, cook the ciabatta. Make sure to lightly coat both sides of the bread with butter or margarine. But mostly butter. Margarine is one molecule away from plastic you know. Also, don’t forget to lightly burn the bread by mistake. It makes you look hardcore.

Slice the bread and Cheez Whiz it along with the dijonnaise. Put in the sauerkraut and sausages and make a sandwich. Tie the whole deal together with the olives so that it looks like one creepy fuck. Christ, look at that thing!

Take another picture with better lighting. Here yo go, the friendly Fuck You dog sandwich. Ain’t he something?

The verdict: Pretty tasty. Actually very tasty.I won’t be buying any Cheez Whiz anytime soon, but in this recipe, it worked. It did. Thanks, I’m going to pass out now.

Remember this guy? He’s the “Ancient Grain Whose Time Has Come”. Look how hip he is with his piercings and studded belt and everything!

Well, let me tell you. I came across these here Synergy Flakes, complete with 8 ancient grains! 8 of ‘em! How could I not pick up a box for a little cereal review? I had to give Nature’s Path another chance, since the last time I reviewed one of their cereals, I concluded that the box tasted better tan the flakes themselves. That cereal sucked.

I’m happy to say though, Nature’s Path Synergy ain’t bad. But the trick is, eat with some fruit or something. On their own, they’re a little bland. Those grainy, ancient grains need a little help in the modern world. Sort of like helping your parents with the Internet, or trying to explain the latest meme to your grandfather. What I’m getting at is, cover them in milk and fruit until they don’t taste like the box.

Here’s how:

Get a bowl
Open the box
Fill up the bowl halfway
Put in some raspberries (like I did just like on the box! Or are those strawberries? I can’t tell!)
Pour in a bunch of milk. 2%, 1%, 0%, soy. Whatever.
Drink it right from the bowl. Cause fuck spoons.

It should look like this:

In our quest to find the perfect ostrich burger, me and that guy from Stubborn Fool instead found an amazing Bison Burger at Comme Chez Soi on St-Laurent Boulevard in Mile End/Plateau.

Next time I’ll use my Nikon, but for now you get pics from my now crappy (formerly awesome) Sony Ericsson W380 (now retired).

So here. Bison burgers with Brie and Goat Cheese, but not at the same time. Use your powers of deduction to tell which burger has which cheese. Or go to their Facebook page for better pics. Went down real good with some Boreale rousse and a spinach arugula salad.

Comme Chez Soi
5386 Boulevard St-Laurent, QC
514-277-0100

Since Epic Meal Time has used up about 14 minutes of their alloted 15 minutes of fame, here’s Sweden’s answer in the form of Regular Ordinary Swedish Mealtime.
Where the last few Epic Meal Time videos have felt like they’re just trying too hard, Regular Ordinary Swedish Mealtime continues the tradition of extreme cooking while still feeling honest.

Regular Ordinary Swedish Mealtime dudes Niclas Lundberg, Niklas Odén and Tom Brännström have been cooking up dishes while beating the fuck out the ingredients since January 2011. Who needs a mixer when you’ve got fists?

Anyway, here’s how I aspire to make breakfast:

Never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.

If you do, your stomach will make the decisions and some of those might be some bad choices.

18 percent meat protein!

I spotted this Presidents Choice Tandoori Chicken last week at the local Loblaws. My stomach immediately said YES but my brain was saying NO! Don’t DO IT!

Well I did it. And you know, they’re kind of gross. It’s like, weird Tandoori flavor on breaded chicken strips. And although I do love my chicken finger strips once in awhile, you probably shouldn’t mess with the traditional flavor, which is just plain breaded chicken.

I did manage to salvage them because I couldn’t find anything good to dip them in. Mustard made them extremely revolting, and mayonnaise made them taste even more disgusting. I soon realized what my problem was.

I wasn’t thinking like an Indian!

Enter…YOGURT. Of course, everybody knows that tandoori chicken craves Indian yogurt sauce, but we didn’t have any. So we improvised. With yogurt. Blackberry yogurt.

And it worked.

Why did it work? Well there’s a number of reasons. For one, I love blackberry yogurt to the point where I can eat a whole container of it in a single sitting. If you’ve never done that before, I wouldn’t recommend trying it. It’s something that you have to work your way up to. Like doing 50 push ups or something. Start small, like maybe a quarter of the container, and then work your way up to half. Before you know it, you’ll be a yogurt eating machine!

Secondly, the tandoori chicken is tangy and hot out of the oven, so every bite dipped in the cool sweetness of the yogurt became a battle for taste supremacy in my mouth. Hot versus cold and sweet versus tang and the winner was myself since I was really hungry and ended up quite satisfied.

But I don’t think I’ll be buying these again.

If you do it, here’s the “recipe”.

1 box of President’s Choice Tandoori Chicken
1 container of Liberty Blackberry Yogurt
1 spoon
1 plate
1 fork (to eat with)

Cook the chicken finger strips for 20 -30 minutes, take them out of the oven and put them on a plate. Get the spoon, and heap a few dollops of blackberry yogurt on the plate. It should come out like this. Eat.