Quick Hit: Meat Hole

Click for a ridiculously high-def photo

After just over two years in Paris, it must be rubbing off on us: We followed some alarmingly stupid food trend.  The other day, after making doughnuts, we thought "Why the hell not?" and made the infamous Doughnut Burger (aka "The Luther" after supposed aficionado Luther Vandross), which has been immortalized by the likes of Vandross himself, Southern dame Paula Deen, and minor league baseball parks across the US.

Of course, we didn't use factory-churned Krispy Kremes and frozen patties. We used our own homemade doughnuts, of course, fresh beef ground for us by the butcher just moments before, and the same formula for near-perfect fries that we did on Cinco de Mayonnaise.  (Courtesy of the crafty bloggers at  the French Culinary Institute.)

The verdict?  

DISGUSTING.

An utter waste of quality ingredients, to be quite frank. 

I'd already posted a photo on Facebook some time ago, where a discussion ensued among friends...

Some meat for your hole, madam?

...but now, on the eve of a so-called "Street Food" event in Paris featuring burgers (even though it's far from actual street food, considering none of the star chefs involved have ever pushed a cart through Paris), I thought it our responsibility to unleash upon the general public the horrible truth about mixing quality cuisine with flash-in-the-pan trends.  

You're welcome.

Dirty Dozen

Look at that tight, little star-shaped hole, glazed with sticky icky goodness.

Amateur  money shot

We're talking about doughnuts, of course. When we first started this site full of horrible double-entendres in early 2009, we did it to show off a bit of homespun food porn, starting with our attempt to make doughnuts.

In nearly a year and a half, we've come full circle. We've gotten better at finding ingredients. We've gotten better at working on techniques. And we still haven't been able to bust a decent frickin' 'nut in Paris. Sure, dozens of American (or American-style) "coffee shops" sell doughnuts, but good luck getting anything other than a hockey puck that's been sitting in a refrigerated case for days on end.

We gave up ages ago. We didn't even really eat doughnuts back in the States anyway. Then, the other night on a lark (or rather because of discounted tickets), we figured we'd go see Iron Man 2 at the shitty chain theatre nearby. Those fantasies you have of Paris being intellectual and artsy? We tossed 'em ages ago.

Anyway, there's this scene in IM2 where Robert Downey Jr. is sitting in the hole of the famous Randy's Donuts in LA, eating a doughnut. At that moment, I turned to Alannah and said, "I want a doughnut." She turned to me and said, "Me too!"

This isn't slang for a dirty act in public, but what married people actually say to each other.

The trouble is, for all the craptacular chains we've got surrounding us, not one of them makes doughnuts. The UK has imported Krispy Kreme. Spain has been invaded by Dunkin. We, on the other hand, got nothin'. So we went to bed, as we're wont to do.

At some point the next day, I looked in the fridge and saw a mixing bowl of some kind of dough.  "You didn't..." I started to say to Alannah. "Yes I did," she replied.  She'd used the dough part of some sour cream doughnut recipe on Epicurious and modified it to use yogurt instead, and much less orange zest. And it was beautiful.  She rolled out the dough and cut it into shapes.

Doughnuts and stars. Much more organized this time around.

The last time we made doughnuts, we got better results on the holes, and it took a lot of experimenting with oil temperatures and frying times. This time I bowed down to Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook and used the temp and times for his "Coffee and Doughnuts": 30 seconds on one side, 1 minute on the other, and back to 30 seconds on the first at 160ºC/325ºF.

While TK's formula is for raised (yeast) doughnuts, it worked perfectly for Alannah's adaptation of the Epicurious cake (old-fashioned) doughnuts. In fact, the crumb is damn near perfection.

Exhibit A: Cross section of cake doughnut
with perfect crumb.

We made a few experimental doughnuts, as well as a bunch of holes and coated them with cinnamon-sugar for a round of overindulgent taste-testing.

A-holes and O-holes:
An Alannah and Omid production.

Having successfully completed our test round, it was time to go whole hog and make a dozen proper doughnuts. After all, American food deserves American quantities.

Nice (cooling) rack!

As much as I love all things naked, I don't care much for an undressed doughnut. I told Alannah I'd make her a nice, gooey glaze, and after she was done rolling her eyes, I actually got to the business of making some out of powdered sugar and liquid. (You need about an 8:1 ratio.)  Powdered sugar and milk with a touch of vanilla for standard glaze. Powdered sugar and maple syrup and a touch of butter for maple glaze. And powdered sugar and melted milk chocolate for chocolate glaze.

Keep your glazes warm in a bowl, dip your 'nuts in, then rack 'em for at least five minutes 'til it's all firm.  Then it's ready to shove in your mouth.

A threesome of each:
Glazed, cinnamon-sugar, maple and chocolate.

We've had several doughnuts since making the batch, and I'm already kind of sick of 'em. They're damn good, but like I said, we never really ate doughnuts that much in the US to begin with. It's just that once in a while you get a craving for something you can't have, so you just have to go out and grab it for yourself. After all, the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, right?

That's what we've been doing much of the time since that first post. And we've since discovered that almost anything can be made better at home. When you do it yourself, it's more fun, more involved, and more personal. The same applies to cooking.

In fact, despite the fact that we probably won't make them again for another year and a half (and when we do, it'll be raised doughnuts!), we found that doughnuts give us the perfect synergy in the kitchen.

As the anal type (as in, she's the baker, sheesh!) Alannah's great with measurements and feeling out the proofing of a dough. As the sloppy bastard who eschews recipes, I'm better suited for the other part: Operating a deep fryer.

A Sweet, Dark and Spicy Bastard

Despite our despisal of the despicable Tex-Mex places in Paris, we actually do love the bastard cuisine. It's actually one of the oldest American cuisines, the product of years of cultural exchange (or some might say subjugation or domination). We just don't like it when jerkwads try to pass it off as authentic Mexican.

Bastard food has its place, of course.

In fact, this last weekend I got out of bed a bit before Alannah and whipped together some migas, a Tex-Mex bastardization of chilaquiles: Fried stale tortillas scrambled with eggs, topped with chili or salsa, and served with a side of refried beans. (This isn't to be confused with the trendy Spanish version of migas, which is actually not the original, but a derivative of the Texan dish. Whoodathunkit?)

At any rate, this isn't about migas. This is about Alannah's insatiable craving after having snacked on my weekend treat. We had things to do and places to go, but she wanted churros. The trouble is, it was Saturday. And the only good churros we've found in Paris are sold at the Bastille marché on Sundays. (Any and all tips on how to get them on other days are welcome...) There are churro stands here and there, most notably near the crappy crèpe stands around the Grands Boulevards and other places foreigners go drinking, but good churros? Not a chance. The land of churros y chocolate may be just to the southwest, but this is a country resistant to imports.

Yes, churros are of Spanish origin. I always thought they were Mexican, because the guys selling them at amusement parks in California were Mexican. Or Filipino. But that's no way to determine food etymology, is it?

So anyway, Alannah decided to just do it: Make churros.

These churros may look fancy, but they're actually
a complete accident. Like your little brother.

The batter's like a donut batter: Flour, eggs, milk, butter and sugar, only everything's integrated warm on the stove top... She made it and then passed it to me along with a huge pastry bag. So while she went to get all hot & steamy upstairs (in the shower), it was my duty to splash around with hot oil. Ain't marriage grand?

The only problem is that we don't have a huge star tip for the pastry bag. I tried using our biggest tip, squeezing gooey strips of churro batter into the hot oil, only to get what looked like donut-fries. Which I'm sure would do brisk business in middle America, but my gal wanted churros, dammit. Crisp on the outside, chewy-tender on the inside, and hot hot hot! These pathetic little pencil-dicked strips would not satisfy.

So my Middle Eastern blood kicked in and for the next batch, I squeezed the sac and flipped my wrist in a twirling motion, as though making zoolbia (in Persian, otherwise known as jalebi in Indian/Pakistani cooking). I filled the hot oil with little disks of tightly swirled dough, the end result a golden-brown rose of churro goodness.

By the time Alannah was dressed and back downstairs, I was finishing up a chocolate sauce to drizzle over the hot churros I'd already tossed in cinnamon sugar: Cream, a lot of cacao powder, sugar, cinammon, cayenne pepper, and a few drops of melting chocolate to thicken it.

So I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Chur-rose. Churros shaped like little roses. Hot, sweet, a little bit spicy, and – best of all – a perfectly acceptable bastardization of Latin food that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Sticky Sweet: Chocolate Starfish

What do you have for a late night dessert after a homemade Mexican dinner?

Craving churros and hot chocolate - but with no churro stand to be found - we improvised.

Alannah makes a ridiculously thick, sweet, dark hot chocolate that borders on being nearly-solid chocolate sauce. You can eat it with your fingers if you don't mind the risk of getting burned. And the risky behavior is worth it.

We'd made doughnuts a couple of nights earlier, so we warmed up some of the star-shaped ones, rolled them in cinnamon and sugar, and laid them in the hot chocolate upon serving. ¡Muy Sabroso!

No Holes Barred

It's nearly impossible to find a good doughnut in Paris. Hell, it was hard finding good doughnuts in the States. (You Voodoo Donut fans can suck it...)

So we had to do a little DIY and fry up our own. Then shake them in cinnamon and sugar. Then have multiple mouthgasms.

Admittedly, this was no easy task.


We had to keep an eye on the oil/candy thermometer (absolutely crucial), and the optimal temperature was different for each batch of dough used. Eventually, we found that round doughnuts weren't as tasty as doughnut holes and puffy little stars.