How to make a philly cheesesteak sandwich

Please note: what follows in not a recipe, or a how to, for making a cheese steak. If you want one of those, you need to go visit the greater Philadelphia metro area (you should go there any ways, it's a pretty cool, and historic, city). What I write here is simply the best approximate I have found using materials available in my area some 1000 miles from Philadelphia.

First, you start with a source of meat. My brother is correct, Steak-umms create the wrong type of greasy reprocessed meat flavor/texture. If you know a butcher who is willing to finely slice some steak for you, that would be perfect. Unfortunately the minimum wager behind the meat counter at Hy-vee that most of use get our meat product from can't help with this, which is why I am glad that I found Farmland's "philly style shaved beef," the meat comes in an easy to use, pre-potioned format and as the name of the product implies, it is made of strips of shaved beef, not beef puree like Steak-umms.

The second, and harder to find, part of the sandwich is the bread. The bread is also the most important part of the sandwich, it needs fluffy and chewy, and it needs to be able to absorb all of the delecious grease that will come out of your steak bits.

Once again, a compromise has to be found. If you really want an authentic sandwich, you need to find the correct recipe for hoggie rolls and then make it fresh. For those of you that simply want a close approximation, the best substitue I have found are Hy-vee Bakery's brat rolls. They're chewy and fluffy and they're made for brats, so you know they can absorb grease. They're nowhere near the size of the real thing, but once again, this is simply a substitue for the real thing.

Now that you have those two parts, all you just have to do is fry up some onions (I refuse to beleive that you can have too many onions). Throw you meat into the pan, mix it around with the onions. Throw some cheese on top, throw on the bread untill the cheese begins to melt, and then pull off the sandwiches and revel in the awesomeness.

Oh Crap!

A real blog has linked to my blog. I should really have something worthwhile to read...

When I started this blog, I promised myself I wouldn't write about food. I made this promise for one simple reason, I didn't really expect anyone outside of my family to read it, and if they wanted to read, they could read a food blog written by a real journalist (and the best new food writer). Oh well, it didn't take long for me to break that promise.

For a St. Patrick's Day potluck at work, I made candy potatoes. The recipe sounds easy enough, but that is what candy recipes do, they lull you into a false sense of security with their minimal ingredients, and their short, simple sounds instructions.

Anyone who has tried to make candy realizes that the only reason that the instructions sounds easy is because it either works with a fantastic outcome, or you fail and end up with a pound of burnt sugar cemented into the bottom of your pan. I am about 50/50 on the different outcomes, mainly because I don't try the more difficult candies very often (caramel and toffee, compared to the more difficult fudge).

I tried a test batch on Saturday, it turned out like I thought it would, a mess. It seemed to grain up much too fast resulting in half of the mixture turning to a sugary/sandy concoction, and the other half cemented to the bottom of the pot (not burnt, but cemented none the less).

Tonight I tried my second batch (early enough to initiate plan B,) but it actually turned out. The candy seems to taste alright and there is minimal burnt sugar chunks in it.

I would like to say/warn that the step "Beat syrup until creamy." is the biggest misstatement you can have in a in a recipe. The concoction is neither a syrup nor beatable. It resembles a quickly setting glue or (I have already said it too many times) cement. And while I might not have a problem acting out this instruction if I were Lincoln Hawk in "Over the Top" or if my job comprised of more arm curls and less sitting at a computer. Neither one of these is true so it turned out to be the biggest test of strength since the rope climb in elementary gym class.

Luckily with a few minutes of stirring the candy began to set and I began forming potatoes wildly. Once you roll the things in Cinnamon they actually look like something that resembles a potato. We'll see if I can convince my co-workers they aren't animal turds tomorrow.