Blast Eats: Priapus Chocolate Pecan Toffee

Desserts are a class of foods almost equally over- and under- rated. Some glorify sweets to an absurd, almost Olympian degree, holding the sugary confection on a pedestal higher than any other culinary achievement. Still others ignore candy and sweets all but completely, thereby missing out on the simple pleasure of a perfect dish of ice cream or a just-right pastry. No matter your stance on desserts, Priapus guitarist Jeremy's recipe for chocolate pecan toffee seems manufactured specifically to bridge that divide, pairing the salty and savory qualities of crackers and pecans with the sweetness of chocolate and toffee. And if that's not enough to sway you (pecans, seriously!) his step-by-step instructions also happen to be funny as hell, so there's that.

you guys, this fucking toffee rules. my girlfriend makes this every Christmas and we hand out plastic bags full of this stuff like drug dealers. i usually don't like desserts/sweets (via my unique "eat every fucking carb ever" diet) but sometimes you need to take a break from shame-eating your way through a Hungry Howie's MIGHTY MEATY pizza and treat yourself, you know? THIS WAY TO FLAVOR COUNTRY.

Things to buy at the store:

1 cup of butter. (2 sticks)

a box of club crackers. (go for the brand name yeah? go ahead, you deserve it)

1 cup dark brown sugar. (make sure it's dark brown)

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips. (make sure they're semi-sweet)

3/4 cup chopped pecans. (make sure they're pecans. don't be a fucking fool and use some renegade nut like almonds or, god forbid, PISTACHIOS. jesus.)

some pots and shit

an oven

Things to do:

1. pre-heat oven to 400. (if you just got home from the store, bring the oven inside first.)

2. put some aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. line the sheet with as many crackers that will fit, in a single cracker layer. while you're at it, eat some of those mother fucking crackers.

3. in a sauce pan over medium heat, combine the butter and brown sugar and bring it to a boil. DON'T STOP STIRRING or you'll ruin everything. once it starts boiling, continue stirring and let it boil for 3 minutes or so; it should start to thicken and get kind of sludgy, like a Weedeater riff. this is also the point where i like to pretend i'm cooking meth in fucking Indiana or something.

4. pour the meth onto the cookie sheet. try to distribute it evenly and coat every cracker. i'm not a god damn gourmet chef so if you fuck up and miss a few, no worries, this isn't Gordon Ramsey trying to fix a fucking Applebee's and no one is going to freak out if you grab a spatula and spread that shit around to get the corner crackers covered.

5. pop that bad boy in the oven for 5-6 minutes and take a breather. eat some more crackers if you want.

6. take the pan out of the oven. if you're a pussy you'll probably want to use an oven mitt or a sock or something for your hands.

7. sprinkle the chocolate chips over the crackers. again, try to do it evenly but seriously who cares.

8. let that shit sit for like 5 minutes and then take a knife or spatula and spread the melted chocolate chips all over the crackers.

9. sprinkle pecans.

10. put the pan in your refrigerator. cover with aluminum foil if your fridge smells like butts.

11. turn your refrigerator on and go to bed.

12. the next morning, be a tough guy and break that shit up with your bare hands. if everything went well, you should be dealing with something that looks like this: http://lickmyspoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/chocolate-almond-toffee-005.jpg distribute to your friends and loved ones in small batches.

Check out Priapus' latest, their 2012 split with Old Painless, on their Bandcamp. 

Blast Eats: Violent Restitution Lunch Party

This Blast Eats feature has been one of my favorite things I've done with the blog in recent memory, and the coolest part about it has been, unquestionably, the variety not only of the recipes submitted but also in the points of view of the people who have submitted them. People and food both rule for basically the same reason: there are just so many different kinds, and they're all equally cool in drastically different ways. This installment is further proof of that, as Sarah, guitarist for Vancouver grinders Violent Restitution, walks us through a lunch of some of the band's typical eats while on their most recent tour.

GRIND ROAD EATS - VIOLENT RESTITUTION LUNCH PARTY

These are the items we mostly ate while on our 6 week cross-Canada tour. Items can be dumpstered, some bought. Bread and some produce should be garbage-available, though and we managed to dumpster a half full container of flaxseed oil and that shit is expensive, so score.

Chickpea Grind Sandwich/Kale Wrap

Carrot-Hot Sauce Blast-wich ( Pebbles' specialty)

Iced Mincer (Obviously not for van eating! But when you can take over someone’s kitchen. )

What you need -

Canned chickpeas ( unless you aren't on the road and would rather soak vs canned )

Nutritional yeast

Tomatoes

Avocado

Salt + pepper packages stolen from fast food restaurants

Bread

Kale (optional)

Flaxseed oil (optional)

Apple Cider Vinegar (optional)

Pickles (optional)

Tofurky Italian sausage (optional)

Large Carrots

Hot sauce of choice

Dairy Free Iced Dessert of choice

Oreos of some sort

Bananas

Chickpea Grind Sandwich/Wrap – Beat-by-beat breakdown

-Open and drain canned chick peas onto sidewalk and place into large bowl. You can try to wash them if you want, if not the left over goo-water should make for a farty ride.

-Mash with fork, if you don't have a fork like we did sometimes, you can attempt to use a spoon but it really sucks.

-Add some flaxseed oil

-Add finely minced Tomato

-Add finely minced avocado, or mash into it

-Add Nutritional Yeast

-Add salt and pepper

-Add apple cider vinegar

-Add optional pickles  ( we had pickles towards the end of tour and it was the coolest )

-Grind and mince together

Put a slice of kale on the sandwich, add mash and if you’re so lucky to have tofurky sausage, slice up and place on bread.

For kale wrap, obviously just wrap it in some kale.

Carrot-hot sauce blast-wich, Specialty of Pebbles the drummer.

1 slice of bread wrapped around a carrot. Add Hot-sauce to desired amount. Ingest.

More enjoyable if you have not showered since tour started (actually).

Iced Mincer

1 Container of Dairy alternative frozen ice "cream" emptied into a saucer.

Grind up the Oreos using a potato masher, hammer, fist or whatever you have.

Finely mince banana into mixture.

Mash together, put in container and return to freezer for 20 minutes.

Serve with Oreo cookie, and a slice of strawberry if you’re so lucky to have access to one.

Blast Eats: Wretch Slow Roast Pork Belly with Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I knew I'd find people in bands that loved to cook as much I do when I started this feature. I just wasn't prepared for how good they'd be at it. For this installment, Duncan from Australia's Wretch brings us this wretchedly fantastic-sounding recipe for roasted pork belly that I'm dying to give a go as soon as I can scrape up the cash. (Also—truffle oil in scrambled eggs? I might shell out the arm and a leg for truffle oil too, just so I can test-drive that concept for myself.) 

You’ll need:

·         Pork belly (I’ve been using pieces around ½ kilo – 1 kilo in size, but it’s easy to adjust cooking times to suit)

·         Mushrooms (a cup or two)

·         Truffle oil (not strictly necessary, but is completely awesome if you can get it –a splash in scrambled eggs is fucking fantastic)

·         Garlic (a clove or two of the fresh stuff, or some of that minced stuff in jar)

·         Cream

·         Butter, one knob (tee hee)

·         Olive oil

·         Salt

·         Sage (ground)

Cooking the pork belly

Preheat your oven to 240° Celsius (which is 460° Farenheit or about 513 Kelvin).

Using a sharp knife score the pork belly skin and fat in a crisscross pattern (lines an inch or two apart).

Dry the skin with paper towel or a tea towel, and rub olive oil (about half a cup) and salt (a couple of tablespoons) into the skin. This makes the crackling awesome.

Put the pork belly skin-side up in a roasting pan (if you have one, put the meat on a roasting rack and put a cup or two of water in the bottom of the pan to keep the meat moist; this isn’t necessary, but it’s a nice touch).

Cook at this temperature (240° Celsius / 460° Farenheit) for 15 minutes. This high heat gets the crackling started nicely before we turn down the temperature to slow-cook the meat and render the fat.

Turn down the heat on the over to 160° Celsius (320° Farenheit) and cook for one hour. If you have a larger piece of pork belly, adjust the cooking time to suit. I’d cook 2 kg of pork belly for 2½ – 3 hours. The cooking temperature is very low, so you can afford to be imprecise and not worry about ruining the meat too much.

Take the meat out of the pan and fry it skin-side down on a high-heat BBQ, griddle or frypan with a good thick coating of olive oil until the crackling is good and crispy (takes about 10 minutes – if the crackling starts burning, turn down the heat a bit).

Allow the meat to rest while you cook the sauce.

Cooking the sauce

Heat up a saucepan (medium-high heat) and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Fry up a cup or two of mushrooms (sliced thick or thin, whatever you prefer) along with some garlic (a clove or two of the fresh stuff, or a teaspoon or so of the minced stuff that comes in a jar) and add a few tablespoons of water if the pan starts getting too dry.

When the mushrooms are cooked, turn the heat to low and chuck in a teaspoon or two of ground sage, a knob of butter (about a tablespoon), a good splash of cream, and (if you have it) a dash of truffle oil. If you don’t have truffle oil and want to give the sauce a bit of zing, you can use a teaspoon or two of mustard.

Cook the sauce down a bit (you can thicken it quickly by mixing a teaspoon of plain flour with a small amount of water and gradually adding this to sauce) before serving.

Best served with roast potatoes, a stack of vegetables, beer and wine … then some scotch, maybe a scoob.

Blast Eats: Cloud Rat Buffalo Seitan Grinder

I figured that it was about time to kick off the band submissions, and first up, we have Rorik from Cloud Rat showing us how to put together an awesome recipe for a vegan Buffalo wing sandwich, vegan ranch dressing and all. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian anymore, but this sounds so good that it might become part of my repertoire anyway. Never fear, carnivores, I’ve got plenty of meat dish submissions as well, but trying something new never hurts either (and c’mon, how can something that’s deep-fried be bad?) Maybe next time your favorite vegan grind band plays an awesome show in your basement, you can repay them with delicious Buffalo wings before they crash on your lumpy couch.


Okay, so one of my very favorite things to eat is a Buffalo Seitan Grinder. So yummy. Homemade seitan works best, but store-bought can work. There are tons of recipes for seitan out there in books or on the interwebs. You can also get store-bought buffalo sauce and vegan ranch dressing, but fuck all that.



For the wings:

1 pound Seitan, cut into "chicken" wing shapes

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 package Soft Silken Tofu

Unsweetened plain almondmilk (as much as needed to make deep fry batter creamy)

Vegetable Oil for deep frying (high heat oil is a must)



For the sauce:

2 cups Louisiana-style hot sauce

1/2 cup vegan butter

1 Tblsp arrowroot powder

2 Tblsp cold water

salt and pepper to taste



For the vegan ranch dressing:

1 cup vegenaise

1/4 cup plain almondmilk

1 Tblsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp dried dill



Whip it all together. Whisk it. Blend it. Stir it. Whatever. Wallah!



For finishing the foodstuffs:

1 sweet onion, cut into 1/4" half-onion rings

Fresh french baguette or sourdough or anything that resembles a sub / grinder, cut in half grinder style

Fresh spinach

Vegan mozzarella cheese



Have three bowls ready. Put flour in one bowl. In another, whisk the silken tofu with the almondmilk, adding almondmilk little by little until it turns into a creamy substance that runs a bit. The third bowl should be big, and with a paper towel lining it.

Dip the seitan in the flour, then the creamy mixture, then the flour again. You can do this a few times if you want a really thick layer of fried goodness. So bad for you, hell yeah.

So yeah, deep fry them shits, and once they are a light gold-ish color, put them in the bowl with the paper towel lining it to drain the leftover oil.



After the seitan is all done being deep fried, make the sauce: Heat the hot sauce and butter together in a saucepan. At the same time in a separate bowl, stir the cold water and the arrowroot powder together to make a slurry. When the butter is completely melted, heat it up real hot til it bubbles and then add the arrowroot slurry. Turn off the heat and stir it up mad for a good minute til it thickens up a bit. Add the salt and pepper, mix. Toss the deep fried seitan wings in it till they are slathered up good.



Heat an oven up to 450 degrees. On a cookie sheet, put ya bread down in pairs of slices, as many as you can fit (pending on how many folks you are feeding I suppose). You can spread olive oil on the back sides of your bread if desired as well. On one slice, put the veg mozz cheese all over it. On the other slice, put the buffalo seitan wings and onions (you can fry those separate too if ya want). Bake for a bit, until the cheese is bubbling/melted. Don't burn this shit.



Take the cookie sheet out. Add leftover buffalo sauce if you want. Smother it in vegan ranch dressing, and put lots of spinach in it. Put the slices together, and now you have one hell of a sandwich.



I know it sounds like a lot of work, but you can do all of this within an hour, no big deal. Especially if you have someone helping, makes a world of difference. FUCKING TRY IT BECAUSE IT'S REALLY GOOD I PROMISE.



Love Rorik / Cloud Rat

Blast Eats: Introduction/Deluxe Potato Cakes

Music, for me, can be as much about the people behind the songs as the songs themselves. Because of this, I've always loved interviews that share more than album details and what trashy horror film a band picked their name from. Grindcore's street-level, everyperson sensibilities make it perfectly tailored to this interest of mine, and I, like many others love when a band mentions being influenced by something I love, or simply liking to do the same things that I do.

For these reasons, I've decided to put together a feature where members of grindcore bands (and some others along the way) share their favorite recipes, to celebrate a universal, community aspect of everyone's lives that seems to get lost among hand-screened album covers and basement-painted t-shirts in the punk ethos: cooking. I'm starting the feature off with my own favorite recipe for cheesy bacon potato cakes (yeah, they've got to be terrible for you, but they make up for that by being fantastic), and you can expect some awesome recipes from actually talented people very soon.


Bacon Deluxe Potato Cakes

2 Medium potatoes
1 Cup onion, diced
3 slices uncooked bacon, sliced into 1" (2 1/2 cm) pieces
3 eggs
1 cup grated New York Sharp Cheddar cheese
oil for frying
Salt, pepper and other seasonings to taste

Wash and shred potatoes into hashbrown-sized strings. Carefully strain off excess liquid (yeah, you might lose some nutrients, but your potato cakes will stick together that much better). Set potatoes in a bowl and set aside.
Fry bacon in a pan or skillet, cooking until halfway done. Set aside.
Crack eggs, and separate yolks from whites in a cup, immediately depositing yolks into your potato mixture. [Feel free to add a portion of the egg whites for an eggier texture; don't add too much or your patties won't adhere properly.] Freeze your egg whites in a baggy (marked with the number of eggs and the date you froze them) for future use in a mousse or egg white omelet.
Add onion, bacon and cheese to your potato mixture. Add ground pepper, salt, dried chilies or other seasonings to taste. Using your hands, combine ingredients thoroughly.
Add about 3/4" (2 cm) of oil to a clean skillet, or enough to halfway submerge your patties. Turn your burner to around medium and begin heating up your oil.
Begin forming patties around the size of the palm of your hand, and once your oil is hot enough, start frying several of these patties. Cook each side around 2 minutes, or until each side is golden brown and fully cooked.
After each is cooked to your taste, remove to a paper towel-covered plate, and sponge off any excess grease with another paper towel. When finished, plate with spiced sour cream or Sriracha mayonnaise dipping sauce and serve.

Veganize It: This recipe can be easily made vegan by using a vegan cheese of your choice, substituting store bought fake bacon or homemade tempeh bacon for its meat counterpart, and using vegan egg replacer or vegan mayonnaise as a binding agent in the place of eggs. Vegan ranch or Sriracha mayo made with one of the many varieties of eggless, vegan mayonnaise will both work great as a dipping sauce.
Note: Different vegan cheese products melt at different times and temperatures. If you know you have a softer, quicker-melting product, consider initially leaving the cheese out, frying the first side and then removing the patties from the oil and combining the cheese with the uncooked second side before returning your patties to the pan.