TGI Fry-Day

Before we begin, a brief note: I try not to mention names as people may not want to be written about, but I have to tell you that my sous chef is Willie Nelson.  He’s a great guitar player and singer, but he claims not to know many of his own songs.  Now then…

I closed out this workweek manning the deep fryers for Captain Dan’s Infamous Seafood Platter—a lunch featuring breaded “buffalo-style” shrimp (fresh from Lake Erie?), scallops, clam strips, oysters, and jojo wedges (those orangey seasoned steak fries).  At the beginning of the shift it was unclear what exactly made this homage to Long John Silver’s infamous…but it happened as I was cleaning out the sludgy burnt bits from the FryMaster.  Sometimes boys are such boys.  One cook bet another $5 to eat a spoonful of said oily nastiness.  Despite how disgusting it looked/was, I can believe that it wouldn’t taste horrible.  Actually, it probably tasted just like all the deep fried stuff.  Unfortunately, we forgot that it was still about 400 degrees, and my friend burnt his tongue pretty bad.  On the plus side, the other guy decided it was only fair to pony up $20.

In other cooking adventures, I was given free rein to invent some soup.  Leftover rice and a desire for something different led me to Thai roasted red pepper red curry rice soup, a mouthful of a name for a simple tasty belly warmer.  The next day, I wanted to recreate mom’s crowd pleaser ham-corn-potato chowder, but I’m limited to making vegetarian soups.  In order to make up for the lost flavor and heartiness of the ham, I roasted a ton of garlic and margarine (because the precious, rare butter is reserved for Thanksgiving), and mixed in lots of extra milk powder (mmmm, dehy milk, keeping our hardworking scientists and forklift drivers strong).

And in grammar news, we were thrilled to pull cases of hushpuppies from the freezer and find that they were “ovenable,” and recommended for serving as “grabitizers.”  It’s kind of like, “Well, you should probably deep fry these, but…yeah, why not, they’re ovenable.  Let’s put them out after the champagne toast, but before the first course.  An amuse bouche, if you will, or, let’s say, grabitizer.”

Here's a picture some guy took of a penguin near here: