18_The NotAFoodie Show - Avocados and Millenials, Street Food and Guy’s Grocery Games, Pasta Pomodoro, Giz Fizz and Vin de Pamplemousse

Food News: Avocados and Millenials

Guacamole Cheese will be available for purchase starting May 1st at all 161 locations of fresh market.  This gouda-style cheese is pale green,and combines avocado, lime,chili,tomato,onion,and garlic.  It can be cubed to eat alone,shredded on nachos, or melted into a queso dip.

To quote a great mathematician Dr.Ian Malcolm "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."  Simply put this just shouldn't  exist. Avocados and Cheese are both delicious things that do not need to be part of each others world. This is the new "dessert hummus"  a Frankenstein mashup of food that is made for clicks and insta-likes

In other avocado based news, a property developer in Vancouver is promising a year of Avocado Toast with everyone $300,000 condo sold. After purchasing the condo you get a gift card to an unnamed restaurant that would cover Avocado Toast or any other breakfast for a full year.

As NotAFoodie's residential millennial, I think this is a hilarious marketing attempt but it's getting people all over North America talking about  it.  The developers are also taking a 10% down payment  as opposed to one typically in the 15-25% range, which I think is much more enticing than slicing avocados on top of toast.

Lastly in Food News another old person is blaming Millennials for their failures. Jonathan Maze at Restaurant Business Online wrote this article saying that Millennials are to blame for casual restaurants chains profit drop. The fact of the matter is blaming everything on Millennials at this point is lazy.  Yes wages are on the rise and unemployment is low, but $15 minimum wage is still a low salary and rents are very high. If I just spent 40 hours working  for $600 before taxes, so a take home pay between $400-$500, why am I going to spend $30 of it at a crappy chain restaurant where everything is microwaved. Restaurants need to see that in addition to  being cost conscious  Millennials also want to know where their food is coming from,and be wowed by the flavor, not eat something  that just got popped into the microwave

Street Food and Guy Fieri

Street Food is Netflix's newest debut in the world of Food Documentaries. In the same vein as Chef's Table. It highlights street food from around the world. Esquire magazine  gave it the highest praise saying it fills a"Bourdain-Sized hole in Food TV."  Tom and I are obviously both big street  food guys. The photo for this blog post  is of the Boat Noodle Soup I ate at a Night Market in Bangkok. I went with a friend of a friend who just ordered for me. I've said before how  the soups in Thailand are out of this world, with crazy depths of flavor. This  is one of the best things I've ever ate.

Somehow we went from Street Food to Guy's Grocery Games. I've watched a few hours of this show(compared to like a million hours of Chopped) and I am pretty sure with my combination of IQ,Fitness, and Cooking knowledge that I would absolutely clean up on this show.  I am very good with thinking on my feet, deceptively fast, and of course I can throw down in the kitchen. I went to their casting site but they only cast actual chefs unfortunately

How To  Make Pasta Pomodoro

Italian Cuisine is defined not by crazy techniques or and a million ingredients, but by its simplicity and letting the ingredient speak for themselves.  I don't think that there is a single dish that does this better than a Pomodoro  Sauce. "The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts" is the best way to describe it. A 5 ingredient dish that will please everybody

Pomodoro for 4

16 oz of dried pasta(I like Rigatoni, Tom likes Spaghetti)

8 Plum Tomatoes

1/4 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 Onion

4 Garlic Cloves

3 Basil Sprigs(plush more to garnish)

Prepping The Tomatoes

Take your 8 tomatoes and cut an X onto the bottom of them. Prepare a pot of boiling water as well as an ice bath. Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for 30 seconds, and then place them in the ice bath. Remove and peel from  the bottom, scoop out seeds with a  spoon

Prepping the Pasta

Heavily salt your boiling water(3 tbsp), do not use any olive oil. Cook pasta al dente

Making the Pomodoro Sauce

Pour your olive oil into a large pan on medium heat.  Add diced onions and cook for 2 minutes stirring throughout, add crushed garlic cloves and continue to stir for 1 minute. Now add tomatoes, stirring occasionally and breaking them up with your spatula. Cook for 18 minutes, add chiffonade basil to your sauce  and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.

Optional: Add 2 tbp of butter at the end for a richer sauce

Add the pasta to your sauce, use tongs to plate. Garnish with Pecorino  Romano and Fresh Basil

If you decide you want to make this, DM us photos @NotAFoodieShow on Instagram and Twitter

Let's Drink: The Ramos Gin Fizz and Vin de Pamplemousse

This week Tom and I pulled out all the stops for this segment.

On the podcast I said a Fizz is a Sour with seltzer but I was wrong

A Fizz is Liquor, Acid,Simple Syrup and Seltzer

A Sour is Liquor,Acid,Simple Syrup,  Egg White

This is a Ramos Gin  Fizz

Mike's Drink: The Ramos Gin Fizz

2 oz Gin

.5  oz Lemon Juice

.5 oz Lime Juice

.5 oz  Simple Syrup

.5 oz heavy cream

3 dashes orange flower water

1  Egg White

Top  with club soda

To Prepare:

Put all ingredients besides the club soda into a shaking tin and shake vigorously without ice. This is called dry shaking and allows for the foam to form in the drink. Add ice and shake vigorously again. Honestly you will be shaking for about 5 minutes. Pour into a Collins Glass with ice, add seltzer into the tins to pick up whatever is left and top your drink with it.

The Ramos Gin Fizz was created by Henry Ramos in New Orleans in the 1880s. People would come from all over to drink one so he employed an entire line of men to just shake these cocktails.

Tom's Drink: Vin de Pamplemousse

3 Ruby Red Grapefruits

3 White Grapefruits

4 Lemons

1 Vanilla Bean

3 Cups Granulated Sugar

5 Liters of Wine($10 NZ Sauvignon Blanc preferred)

1 Liter of Vodka

To Prepare:

Slice all your citrus very thin with the skin on. Sterilize a large bucket and add all the ingredients.  Cover with plastic wrap and put away in the dark for 40 days. Your first few days you need to go and stir it vigorously to make sure the sugar dissolves, then just  leave it and let all the flavors meld.  Pour it into sterilized wine bottles and cork them

If you want a bottle of Vin de Pamplemousse DM us on Instagram or Twitter