Bacon & Garlic Chocolate Cake

I've been thinking about this for a long time, maybe two or three weeks—how could I improve on my bacon chocolate cake? See, about a year ago I was inspired to make a bacon chocolate cake (the same inspiration also led to beer-batter, deep-fried White Castle sliders and beer-batter, deep-fried bacon, both pictured below).


So for two weeks I've been planning how to approach making a new bacon chocolate cake. And my answer—add garlic.

Chocolate is good, bacon is good, and garlic is good, right? So why not throw all that goodness together? I decided on frying chopped garlic and garlic chips to garnish the chocolate cake along with the bacon. This time I also went with a thinner, low sodium bacon. I also used a cast iron skillet as a bacon press to ensure that the bacon wouldn't curl and so I could render most of the fat. Then I let the bacon rest and dried it of excess oil.

For the garlic I roasted two heads and chopped and sliced a third. Using the bacon drippings I fried the chopped and sliced garlic.

For the chocolate cake, I used a standard chocolate cake recipe without doing anything special. It was from scratch though, and not out of some Betty Crocker/Duncan Hines box, although wouldn't it be ironic using one of those classic Americana box cakes and bastardizing it with all sorts of weird things like I was about to do?

For the chocolate ganache, again I use a recipe. But I separated out the chocolate ganache into two parts so that I could blend some with the roasted garlic to be used for the middle layer.

Assembling the cake was a bit of an ordeal, but in the end there it stood, triumphant. A bacon & garlic chocolate cake worthy of This Is Why You're Fat. A chocolate cake topped with fried garlic and bacon bits with an inner layer of roasted garlic chocolate ganache.

I'm not going to lie to you—it was weird. Like sex with an ill-advised hook-up weird. What seemed like a good idea in the end didn't turn up like everything for which I had hoped. It wasn't bad, and surely was edible. I finished the sizable piece I cut for myself. But some of the elements didn't work as well in the end. The bacon was still good, even better than last time, but there should have been more of it and less of the garlic.

The garlic was overpowering. Perhaps it was a little too burned. Deep-fried, thinly sliced onion petals would have been a better fit maybe. The roasted garlic chocolate ganache was probably unnecessary. I think it could still work, but I would used milk chocolate next time and add more sugar, and reduce the amount of roasted garlic.

I could see something like this being served at the Stinking Rose which specializes in garlic dishes. But this cake was akin to their garlic ice cream, which while good, still makes you wish it was just plain vanilla. Or in this case, just a regular bacon chocolate cake. I'll probably get the hankering to make another bacon chocolate cake next year, so in the meantime if you have any suggestions, please pass them along. Apparently it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and that good thing was garlic.

Ocean Seafood

For a while it seemed like I was eating Chinese food every other week, then *poof* ... a dry spell. Well Chinese food is back with a vengeance. We're having a family gathering in a couple of weeks so we've already booked a reservation with Ocean Seafood, but we wanted to test some of the dishes in the banquet selection.

My family has been going to Ocean Seafood for years, back when it was stilled called Miriwa. We mostly go there for dim sum, so we weren't sure how the dinner menu would be. We weren't able to sample all of the dishes off of the banquet as some of them are exclusive to that menu, but we were able to try a lot of dishes.

We opened with the B.B.Q. combination platter, but unfortunately I was unable to take any pictures on account of our hunger. I can tell you it contained pickled jellyfish, char siu (barbeque pork), roast duck, and soy beans. The char siu and duck were expectedly good, as we regularly get char siu to go. I don't often eat jelly fish, but it was good, like salty, sour gelatin noodles. The soy beans were a surprise, literally, as they were hidden underneath.

The next dish up was braised shark's fin with shredded chicken. I've only had shark's fin a handful of times in my life, and while it's good, I've never felt it too be worth the value. I find that reconstituted scallop can offer a similar texture, and flavor-wise it pretty much takes on the identity of the stock, which in this case seemed to be chicken or a chicken/seafood blend. The soup was good, but no shark's fin dish will ever compare to the one I had in Japan. I shouldn't be biased, but I judge all shark's fin dishes by that dish (which wasn't a soup by the way) because it was that good. Adding the vinegar did add an extra bit of dimension to the flavors which in turn made it stand out a little more.

Baked crab with ginger and green onion came out next, and was the clear MVD (Most Valuable Dish) of the meal. I find Chinese crab or lobster to be difficult to eat, since it's usually coated in cornstarch and pan-fried with the sauce making it increasingly difficult to eat. But one couldn't deny the wonderful marriage of flavors involved in bringing this dish together. The was the bite of ginger and the roundness of the green onions which came together in a savory blend with the naturally sweet crab meat. We also benefited from an incredibly large crab that itself was meaty and succulent. God bless that crab. I should mention that there were only four of us, but the minute that crab showed up it was a goner. In fact, there was nothing left to take home, and I'm only halfway through describing the meal.

We also ordered steamed cod. We picked one with a disproportionately large head. Or rather make that a disproportionately small body. It was still good, cooked just right so that it was still juicy and just flaking. Where the flavors in the crab were bold and up front, the cod was a more subtle and balanced well with everything else. I also made the mistake of trying to eat the eye (which was chalky) rather than the area around the eye (which was slimy, but in a good way).

The last two dishes out were braised abalone with black mushrooms and house chow mein. After having had mediocre chow mein the last three or four times, I was finally reminded of how good chow mein can be. There wasn't anything particularly different in this chow mein when compared to the others, but the execution was far superior. The noodles were genuinely crispy with a gravy that wasn't thick or goopy so that it consumed the noodles. Both the noodles and the gravy managed to retain their identities while also combining as one, and that's how a good chow mein should be. Once the dish takes on the identity of one or the other completely, it becomes lost, as either a mushy mess or a never-ending chewy, crunch fest. As a house chow mein, it came with the requisite bok choy, char siu, squid, cod, and shrimp, all of which were good and distinct like the rest of the components.

While the chow mein was clearly good, the abalone did not fare so well to put it mildly (which it was). Like with the shark's fin, I guess I'm just not that big a fan of abalone. It's not that I dislike the taste or the texture, but I feel that there a similar things out there that cost considerably less, like clams. It didn't help that the abalone was accompanied with bok choy and shiitake which themselves are commonplace and uninspiring. A good shiitake is a good shiitake, but still when they're in pretty much every other dish, they're not special. And the same goes for the bok choy. Still, abalone is a delicacy and it is different from clams or squid. I'd still eat it gladly if put in front of me, as long as I don't have to pay for it.

Because of our decadent meal the restaurant manager comped us dessert, a plate of gelatin and a plate of coconut and taro gelatin. I especially enjoyed the coconut and taro gelatin, as I am quite fond of taro.

If I wasn't already full (which I was), then the gelatin was the straw that broke the camel's back. After that I was done, and from then on I can't recall much. But I do recall the delicious crab that I'll be looking forward to eating come the actual banquet. Yum!

Some other notes about Ocean Seafood:
- We were probably one of only four or five parties dining that night in the large serving area. However one of those parties was a thirty person Asian tour group that took up 15% of the restaurant. The group brought me back to my youth, as about half of them were wearing plaid over-shirts. Sister C would have totally blended in if she went over. She just needed to feather her hair more.

Ocean Seafood
750 North Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 687-3088

Celebrity Sightings - Chris Parnell

So in my life, I've had the good fortune of running into three cast members of "In Living Color," one member of "Mad TV," and two from "SNL." Today's story is about one of the "SNL" people.

Chris Parnell came into Mail Boxes, Etc. once needing help with a package. After offering him some suggestions on what he could do he eventually opted not to send the package. He wasn't exactly cool about it, but then again he wasn't a complete dick. I chalked it up to the stress of commuting between L.A. and New York. Or maybe it was because he had gotten fired from "SNL" only to be rehired the season after.

It's fine though, since he went on to play Dr. Spaceman on "30 Rock" and Cyril in "Archer." Watch "Archer" everyone!

Shitty Movie Review - "Space Truckers"

Well, it's been a long time since my last shitty movie review. But to be honest, "Killdozer!" is a pretty tough act to follow, so I had to take a break. But now I'm back with more shitty movie reviews and hopefully you'll find something to your liking.
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"That was some of the best driving I've ever seen."
-Mike Pucci

With the passing of Dennis Hopper earlier this year, my friends and I wanted to do something to honor him—so we had a mini-movie marathon of some of his greatest films. "Space Truckers" is one such film. A classic staple of late night television unwatched, many have heard of "Space Truckers," some have seen parts of it, and fewer have sat through all 95 minutes of it.

It starts out promising enough, with an opening setup reminiscent of the rebels lining the hall of the Tantive IV right before the slew of stormtroopers busts in and starts ripping shit up. But instead of an army of stormtroopers, it's one incredibly cheesy looking robot that looks like the lovechild of the xenomorph from "Alien" and the predator's shoulder cannon from "Predator." It's pretty hard to take this sophisticated, state-of-the-art war machine seriously when it has a pincer for a left hand. Really, did the scientists not want it to be able to pick things up with its left hand? Is pinching the future's answer to this century's Brazilian jujitsu? Good thing it's a got a switch blade built into it's left arm. And if that's where the film starts ... you really shouldn't expect a whole lot in the way of serious cinema, but that's okay.

See, "Space Truckers" is one of those movies you'd swear came out in the mid 80s. It reminds me a lot of "Robot Jox" in terms of its aesthetics (read crappy special effects), and even that movie was released in 1990. But no, it's not from the 80s, it's not even from the early 90s. This movie was released in 1996. By comparison, "Jurassic Park" came out in 1993. Hell, "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" came out in 1977, and the special effects in that film blow "Space Truckers" away. But the lack of believable special effects is not really a detriment to the film, as it's more of a charm point. The effects are quaint by today's standards, even by yesterday's standards. This movie isn't trying to be a blockbuster special effects movie, and on that note it succeeds. For example, vector graphics are all over the HUDs in this movie. It makes me want to play that old PC tank game I had back in the day.

There are plenty of bright spots in the film. The gates and trucking lanes are pretty cool, and one can see the influence that "Space Truckers" had on "Cowboy Bebop," especially in Session 7's "Heavy Metal Queen." I also have to give a lot of credit to the set designers who really put a lot of work and effort into all the little background details, like the advertisements and the signage.

As for the characters, Dennis Hopper as John Canyon delivers as good a performance as a completely sober Hopper can, as a character who is neither a drug addict or an alcoholic. Debbie Mazar plays a space version amalgam of pretty much every other character she's played, and Stephen Dorff is Stephen Dorff, getting topless and showing off his body in the almost nude and sweaty second act. I was surprised to see Charles Dance of Numsy in "The Golden Child" fame in a fairly comic role as Nabel/Macanudo, the half-human, half robot scientist that created the abomination mentioned earlier. Most people who've seen part of the movie will remember that he looks like Hacker from "Centurions" and that he has a pull-start robo-penis with blinking blue LEDs (hey, it's just like my 'puter). Oh, and hey, there's Norm from "Cheers!"

If this still isn't enough to get you to watch the movie there's also this: square pigs.

Dennis Hopper left behind a legacy of films, and "Space Truckers" is right up there at the top, along with "Hoosiers," "Speed," and "Super Mario Brothers." As his character John Canyon puts it in the movie, "For a son of a bitch gimp racist murderer, he died okay." Indeed, indeed.

My shitty movie rating: 6.5 out of 10. It's worth watching, especially with group of friends, but unless you're a Dennis Hopper fan or Stephen Dorff fan, you may not want to watch it multiple times within the year. Maybe a once every one or two year dealy.

Ghost Book of the Week - Ghosts in the House!

I was in the Japanese bookstore several weeks ago, killing time as I am wont to do when I chanced upon the most charming ghost book called Ghosts in the House! I was captivated by the cute cover illustration and the fact that it was about ghosts. The book cast a magical spell over me, such that once I read the first page, I couldn't stop until I had read the whole book. Unbelievable is right, a whole book in one standing!

Ghosts in the House! is a charming book about a young girl and her cat who move into a house only to find that it is haunted. But she is no ordinary girl, so she makes the best of what could be a bad situation and ... well, you really should read it. The story is fun and not at all scary, and the book is full of wonderfully conceived illustration by Kazuno Kohara in an art style reminiscent of block printing.

I enjoyed the book so much that I bought it to read to my niece, but so far I've only read it to myself, multiple times. It never gets tiresome and always cheers me up. If you're looking for an excellent read about ghosts, then check out Ghosts in the House!

Ghosts in the House!
Kazuno Kohara
Roaring Book Press: 32pp., $12.95

Yokai of the Week Halloween Edition - Tengu

After a long break, the Yokai of the Week is back for a special occasion—Halloween!

Tengu are demons that live in mountain and forest regions. Their name derives from the Chinese Tiangou, a dog-like demon, but the Japanese version instead bears both human and avian features. But perhaps the most prominent features of tengu are their red faces and long noses.

They were long ago associated with war, and were often seen as harbingers of war. But as time went on, their image has softened and they are now associated with the practice of Shugendo, wherein individuals seek enlightenment through an understanding of their relationship with nature. They can still be menacing as they are protective of the nature around them, but they have also been known to take in human disciples and train them in mystical martial arts.

Yokai Masterpiece #8 - Tengu - Pumpkin & Zucchini

I didn't like having to use additional materials to make the nose, but at least I kept it in the squash family. It also didn't help that the pumpkin was totally lopsided (I didn't pick it) so I had to cut out the top and made that the bottom.

Samosa House

Today I had lunch with a good friend I hadn't seen in a long time. She's vegetarian (more precisely a starchitarian) so I suggested Samosa House, as it was close to her place and I had never been there. It turned out there are two Samosa Houses, the original Samosa House and Samosa House East, so we met at Samosa House East.

The set up is much like a cafeteria, with steaming trays of various curries behind the counter. The dining area is very open and well lit, with one large dining table in the middle and several smaller tables along the windows. Outdoor seating is also available.

They don't have an expansive menu, but it can still seem daunting with all the choices. I ordered a three item combo, a samosa, and a mango lassi.

For the three item combo, you get your choice of three of the items available at their food counter. I opted for aloo baingan, saag, and the veggie chicken. The aloo baingan was made of potatoes, eggplant, as well as the requisite spices. I like aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower), so I thought I would give the aloo baingan a try, and it turned out I like it just as much as aloo gobi. The potato kind of disappears into the dish, but the eggplant pieces are prominent. It looked as though the eggplants were green rather than purple, but they didn't taste bitter like an unripe eggplant or even a ripe eggplant which can also be quite bitter. For me, the aloo baingan was more about textures than the wonderfully rich spices, and if offered a stark contrast to the other two dishes I got.

The saag was pretty straight forward, consisting of spinach and spices. I prefer saag paneer (spinach and cheese), but that appears to be a dish exclusive to the original Samosa House. It wasn't bad, but the other dishes were so good that it kind of got pushed to the back.

The true standout of the meal was the veggie chicken. It had to be good, since even hours afterward it was still on my mind. The veggie chicken came in bite-size chunks in what appeared to be a peanut-based sauce. It's not that it tasted exactly like chicken or even had the exact texture. The texture was similar to chicken in the way the grain followed a mostly uniform direction, but it was chewier. The closest food I could think of that the veggie chicken most resembled in terms of taste and texture would be an Asian fish meatball. Now bear with me, as I know that might be gross to some people, but if you've ever really had an Asian fish meatball, like in Japanese oden, then it's not at all like, say, an Italian meatball. It's more processed and it doesn't taste strongly fishy. It's difficult to explain unless you've had it, which might also be the case with the veggie chicken. All you need to know was that it was very good. I will go there again just for the veggie chicken.

The combo also came with a choice of white or brown rice (I got white) and plain or garlic naan (I got garlic of course). The garlic naan (which is like a lightly-toasted bread) came hot and buttered and could be used to dip in the different sauces, although I ate it straight.

I also had a samosa, which seemed superfluous in the context of all the other food. It was good, but I'd have to say I actually prefer the samosas from Whole Foods. Weird, I know, but I could easily see it being the other way around for other people. Perhaps it was because I was so involved with eating the other food that I neglected the samosa until it was a little cold.

Complimenting the meal was a mango lassi. I don't really like mangos, but the mango lassi was pretty good. It was a little tart, but not overly so, and only the slightest bit sweet. It did an excellent job of clearing the palate and keeping all the different flavors distinct after each bite.

It was a very good experience eating at Samosa House East, made richer with the companionship of an old friend. If the food hadn't been good, I still would have had an enjoyable experience, but the fact that it was good only made things that much better.

Some other notes about Samosa House East:
- For some reason I'd been thinking of some place I made up in my head called Samosa Hut that I wanted to eat at, when I realized later there really was a place called Samosa House. Subconsciously ("Inception" anyone?) Samosa House got into my head. Then when I took one of their business cards, I realized I had seen it before, as it turned out I already had one. Wherever did I get my hands on it?

Samosa House East
10700 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 559-6350

How To Tell If Your Friend Is a Zombie Or a Dick

This is a very easy test for finding out whether your friend is a zombie or a dick. As your friend approaches you, moaning and groaning, squat down below the reach of his outstretched arms and quickly punch him in the groin. If he is truly a zombie, your punch will likely elicit a non-reaction as zombies don't feel pain. Then it's time to run. But if your friend is only faking being a zombie, he will crumple over in intense pain, righteous justification for acting like a dick.

My use of masculine pronouns is not a generalization. Girls generally don't act like dicks, and almost never would act like a zombie dick under most circumstances. If a female friend is acting like a zombie, it would be best to incapacitate her as quickly as possible. Decapitation is usually a viable method.

Ed. note: This method also guarantees that no one will try being a zombie ass again, so if your friend is lurching towards you a second time it's best to find the nearest heavy, blunt object and whack them over the head.

Ocean Sunfish

Actually it sort of looks like Blinky flying sideways, or maybe Pinky.

Why Mars Wouldn't Be Such a Bad Place For Me to Live

I'm thinking about moving some time in the next several months. There are a number of factors playing into my decision including proximity to work, proximity to friends, cost, access to food, zombie security, neighbors, etc. Some of my top candidates include Silverlake (closer to work, but also closer to hipsters which is a plus/minus), West LA (closer to friends, farther from work, but better food), and Los Feliz (closer to work, hipsters again). But one other option that I really should consider is Mars. The red planet, the fourth in our solar system, actually wouldn't be a bad fit for me. It might be far from my workplace and my friends for that matter, but it's also far from my enemies. Here's a few reason why Mars wouldn't be such a bad place for me to live.

The days are longer on Mars, 2.7% longer than Earth's in fact. Days on Mars are 24 hours and 39 minutes long. That means I could get an extra 39 minutes of beauty sleep!

The years are also longer on Mars at 687 Earth days. That means I would be considerably younger in Martian years. Why, in Martian years I'd be a little bit less than sixteen-years old! I'd still be a teenager!

Mars is also considerably cooler, at over 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun. As I run hot and prefer cooler climates, this would work in my favor.

I also prefer night to day for the most part, because it's cooler and also because it makes for better movie watching. And it's much easier and more fun to look up at the starry night sky than it is to look into the retina-frying sun. Plus Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. That would be like having two giant nite-lites in the sky.

Lastly Mars is named after the Roman god of war (who in turn is just a rip off of the Greek god of war, Ares). I'm not particularly fond of war, but I do enjoy weapons of all sorts. It's like it was meant to be!

There are drawbacks to living on Mars though. Enormous dust storms. The largest dust storms in the solar system. That makes it pretty hard to play basketball outdoors. Limited water supply, possibly hidden in the polar ice caps. So no swimming pools. A nigh unbreathable atmosphere. Zero food options. But if a Mos Burger or a Pioneer Chicken were to open on Mars, then that would pretty much seal the deal for me.