Chicken Legs and Broccolini

June 30, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This recipe is pretty easy to execute, and every time I make it, it delivers with amazing flavor and texture. Crispy skin lemon and herb chicken legs with sautéed chorizo broccolini.

What The Fuck Do You Need?

Two chicken legs (thigh and drum X 2)
One bundle of broccolini (aka baby broccoli)
Lemon juice
Oregano
Salt
Cracked black pepper
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Crushed red pepper
Vegetable oil
Butter
Dry, cured sausage (the hard kind, like a pepperoni or chorizo)

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

STEP 1
The first thing you need to do is make the lemon-herb paste. This is basically made “to taste,” so you can vary the proportions and amounts to your liking. Just keep the consistency to a paste and not too liquidy. Combine your salt, cracked black pepper, crushed red pepper, oregano, onion powder and garlic powder into a small dish or bowl and add lemon juice. Stir until mixed into a paste.

That shit is going to smell amazing: very Greek/Italian. Try not to shove it down your throat just yet, because you need it for the later steps.

STEP 2
pre-heat your oven to 350, rinse and prep your broccolini, and chop up your sausage as such:

STEP 3
Next, you’re going to shove some butter and your lemon-herb paste underneath the chicken skin, without completely removing the skin from the meat, of course. Spread it around evenly so you don’t get any blank spaces of flavor. Don’t worry either – you’d be surprised how much the butter helps to slosh the spices around once it gets cooking. Get down into those drumsticks too!

STEP 4
Get your vegetable oil in a pan and heat it up. You shouldn’t need more than two cups of oil. Just enough to get the majority of the chicken skin into the hot oil should do the trick. Then drop your chicken legs in, top-side down.

You’re going to flip these bitches once they get golden and crispy. Try to keep the skin covering the meat too on the bottom side when you flip it (that part of the skin doesn’t quite connect to the meat as well as it does in other areas).

STEP 5
Remove the chicken from the frying pan once the other side gets nice and crispy brown, and place the legs onto a baking sheet. Pop that shit into the oven for another 20-30 minutes, top-side up.

STEP 6
Clean your pan (or use a second one), and then begin to sautee your sausage/chorizo. When they start to release some grease, you can add your broccolini in there as well.

STEP 7
When the pan is nice and hot, and your broccolini is really cooking, I want you to hit the pan with a few ounces of water to deglaze the pan. Doing this releases all that nice brown sausagey goodness from the pan and puts that flavor directly into the broccolini.

Once the water is all evaporated from the pan again, your broccolini should be fully cooked and your chorizo should be slightly crisped and browned. Plate that shit.

STEP 8
Remove your chicken from the oven and plate that shit alongside your broccolini.

That’s it. Super simple, and this will feed two people, unless you’re a fat fuck like me and can eat it all by yourself.

I also like to add sliced onion and fresh garlic into the broccolini sautee as well sometimes. When I did this recipe, I didn’t have that stuff handy, but here’s a shot of the finished plate from a previous night when I made the dish with onions and fresh garlic. As you can see, the skin actually came out a little nicer that time, due to better butter coverage and frying technique.

American, Chelsea, Flash Deals, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Restaurant Reviews, Rib Eye

Gallow Green

June 28, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My wife scored a nice Urban Daddy deal for brunch at Gallow Green that saved us a bunch of money and also gave us a carafe of mimosa. The brunch is all-you-can-eat, and includes music by their house band “The Heathens.”

I won’t say much other than the music was awesome, and the food was even better. They even sang songs about the bread pudding.

The fried chicken with black pepper honey was fucking outstanding. Close runners up were the salmon and caperberries, the bread pudding, and the cinnamon rolls.

The setting is great too, on the rooftop of the “McKittrick Hotel,” home to the spooky Sleep No More interactive play (Get tickets. It is amazing).

UPDATE 9/1/17 – CLUB CAR SURF & TURF

“Club Car” is Gallow Green’s surf and turf pop-up. My wife scored a Gilt City deal for a discount on the meal, which was great, because not only did it get us snacks, apps, entrees, and desserts, but it also got us two cocktails per person – all for about $120.

Cocktails:

Skillet bread and crudite:

Apps, chilled lobster corn soup, and endive with tomato salad:

Each person gets a 10oz cut of 30-day dry aged rib eye with their choice of seafood. My wife chose razor clams:

I chose… well… not seafood. I went with the oxtail and bone marrow, because beef.

Lemon chiffon cake and chocolate cake.

A seriously great meal. I was surprised at how much dry-aged flavor was packed into the steak at just 10oz and 30 days. The crust could have used a bit more char on it, but I was happy with the overall flavor and texture. 8/10.

GALLOW GREEN
542 W. 27th St.
New York, NY 10001

Burgers, Midtown East

Burger Heaven

June 24, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

Last week I walked by this joint and realized that I still hadn’t eaten there. It’s close to my office, so I figured I’d come back soon to try.

So this week I ordered their Burger Heaven burger for delivery. For $16 it comes with fries and coleslaw, and is topped with their special sauce, caramelized onions, lettuce, tomato and American cheese. Sounded like a pretty good deal to me.

Here’s what it looked like when it arrived:

In a span of about three streets, it managed to get almost completely fucking mangled into an incomprehensible mess. After some tinkering, wiping, stacking and organizing, I managed a halfway decent reassembly. See below:

I ordered medium. Not quite:

The meat lacked seasoning, the cheese was over-melted to the point where I know that their griddle probably retained the majority of it (the cheese likely having slid off during the melting process), and the onions completely overpowered the flavor of the meat and ultimately ruined the burger. Whatever they cooked the onions in was bitter-sweet, dark red in color, and completely sucked.

Their special sauce was a thousand island dressing type of deal, which is fine on its own, but this crap went way the fuck overboard with the relish and diced red pepper in the mix. It was hideous; too overpowering in the “sweet pickles” flavor department. Ugh.

I also ticked off the “pickles” box on my order form, expecting them to be ON the burger. Instead I got a single soggy, super sour pickle spear in a plastic bag on the side. Oh well.

In retrospect I probably should have just ordered their classic cheeseburger for $10 (without fries), but it seemed like a bunch of bullshit that this place was then going to charge me $1.25 for lettuce and tomato. So I opted for their namesake burger.

Thoroughly disappointed, I moved on the the equally dreadful french “fries.” I put “fries” in quotes here, because I typically associate fried items with crunch, not sog. Every fry was limp and soggy, mushy: like a 90-year old man’s non-functioning skin-sock. Look at these pathetic fucking things:

Part of this could be the fact that the food was transported in a closed tin, which was then stuffed haphazardly into a closed paper bag, which was then tossed into a plastic bag with reckless abandon, and then slogged over three streets to its demise by someone who gets paid so little that they could not possibly give any fewer shits as to whether the product actually satisfies the ultimate customer.

As for the coleslaw? Watery bullshit. I have a thing with coleslaw anyway. Feel free to listen to this episode of the Hungry Dad’s podcast (at 00:17:40 – 00:20:22), where I explain my aversion to a specific style of coleslaw… Anyway, I took two bites just to try it, but as I suspected, it was pure, unadulterated garbage.

So to sum this up for you burger enthusiasts: Skip this place. Burger Heaven? No… More like Burger Hell (had to do it).

BURGER HEAVEN
9 E 53rd St
New York, NY 10022

Recipes

“Homemade” Pizza

June 24, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

I put the word “homemade” in quotes because, well, nothing about this recipe is really homemade. It’s just a really incredible combination of store-purchased ingredients that comes together as one of the best pizzas you will ever eat in your fucking life.

I will 100% guarantee that this fucking pizza is better than where you get your delivery, and I don’t give a fuck if you regularly order from fucking Di Fara!

What Do You Need?

Small can of sauce (8oz)
Small package of mozzarella cheese (8oz block/ball is preferred)
Parmesan cheese (to taste)
Pre-made pizza dough (the fresh kind)
Olive oil (just a few ounces)
Bread crumbs or cornmeal (2 teaspoons)
Various spices (to taste)
Perforated metal pizza pan

Directions:

Pretty simple. Watch the time lapse video below, and if you can’t fucking figure it out from that, you can read on below…

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. While waiting, coat your pizza pan with some olive oil. Shake a few teaspoons of bread crumbs or cornmeal across the pan. Stretch your pizza dough across the pan to get full coverage. Pour sauce evenly over the dough and add a few drizzles of olive oil. Add parmesan cheese and spices to taste. Cut up the block of mozzarella cheese and arrange slices evenly across the pizza dough. Bake 20-25mins or until cheese begins to bubble and turn brown. Remove from oven and allow pizza to cool down a bit before slicing.

This shit also comes out really nice with fresh ingredients. I did the same type of thing with sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, herbs and some sliced onion. Check it out:

Before the oven:

After the oven:

The tomatoes actually make each vote really juicy, so this was a much better pie than the ones I make with canned sauce.

Once in a while I even add eggs into the mix:

Midtown East, Ramen

Hinata

June 22, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This little midtown east ramen joint puts up a decent bowl.

The broth is paitan chicken based, but for a price premium you can choose the Nikumiso ramen if you need to get your pork fix.

That bowl still has the chicken broth, but it’s topped with miso-glazed sliced pork and miso-seasoned ground pork. For me, this was the right choice, because I’m not a huge fan of just chicken flavored broth (unless it’s amazing), and the miso on the pork brought back a little bit of the cloudy thickness that I like without going all-in on an entirely miso-based broth.

I chose the straight noodles over the wavy egg noodles. If I went full chicken broth I probably would have went with the wavies though, because they keep that eggy flavor going strong in every bite.

The bowl also had black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, beautifully sliced corn fresh off the cob, properly sliced scallions, and spinach, which was an interesting touch. There was a bit of burnt or black garlic as well. The bowl looked incredible. The flavor was good but not the best I’ve had. With a soft boiled egg added, the bill came to $18, which is a bit pricey for a bowl of slightly above average ramen.

HINATA
159 E 55th St
New York, NY 10022

Recipes

The Johnny Prime Burger

June 22, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

Let me start off my reiterating the fact that I am a burger purist. I like my burgers pretty much on the standard side. My ideal: a nicely seared beef patty (on a flat top – not grilled), sandwiched between a potato bun with mayo on both halves of the bun, and topped with melty American cheese, iceberg lettuce, one thin slice of tomato, some pickles and a few rings of raw onion (not a full slice). Occasionally I will throw some bacon on top, but I figured out a better way to get the bacon into the mix without adding yet another topping. Sometimes when the toppings get too numerous, you end up with a tall stack; that sucks.

I should also mention here that anyone can make a good burger at home. In fact some home burgers far surpass anything you can get at a burger joint. It’s one of the easiest things to cook at home, so a “recipe” for a burger is kinda nonsense, know what I mean? There’s nothing particularly special or innovative about this recipe other than the first three steps, and to even suggest innovation there is a stretch. It’s really just good sense, and I feel like more people need to know about it.

Here’s a quick time lapse video of me executing all the steps below:

1) Fry up some bacon in a cast iron pan – as much as you would normally include on top of your burger.

2) Remove the finished bacon from your cast iron pan, but leave the grease in the pan.

3) Once cooled, crumble up the bacon and mix it into your chopped meat. The crunchy bacon inside will add texture as well as flavor to your finished product. Don’t overwork or overpack the meat when mixing the bacon into the patty. I like about 6oz of chopped meat for a burger. That means it’s not too ridiculously thick, and not too thin to the point where you need to eat two burgers just to feel something in your stomach.

Note: Some burger recipes tell you to add diced bacon into the chopped meat BEFORE cooking the bacon. BIG MISTAKE. If you’re like me, and you like your burger medium or medium rare, then some of that bacon won’t cook properly in the amount of time is takes to get the beef up to temperature. There’s nothing worse than rubbery, undercooked bacon. It blows. The key is to fry that shit off beforehand, as I noted in step one above, and then mix the fully cooked bacon into the raw beef burger patty.

4) Cook your burger in the bacon grease, in the same cast iron pan. This will follow through on your bacon flavor, and it’ll give the patty a good crust to boot.

5) When you flip the burger (you’re only flipping it once, by the way), add your American cheese (go with two slices) and cover the pan, so that the cheese gets nice and melty.

Note: Some people add a bit of water into the pan at this point, before covering the pan (like maybe 2-3oz). Why? The water instantly sublimates to steam, which is a higher temperature than the air in the pan. When sealed up and covered, this helps to melt the cheese faster. This is especially helpful if you like a rare or medium rare burger, because you don’t have to wait as long for the cheese to melt, which in turn means you are less likely to overcook your burger while waiting for the cheese to finish melting.

6) Remove your patty from the pan when the cheese is melted, and set it aside for a moment. You can use a cooling rack or a plate.

7) Prep your bun for assembly. This entails a few sub-steps:

a) Apply mayo to both sides of the potato bun.
b) Add one leaf of iceberg lettuce to each side.
c) On the bottom side, set down your thin slice of tomato on top of the lettuce. Ideally you want a good sized tomato so that your slice covers the majority of the bun from end to end.
d) On the top side, place your rings of raw onion and pickles on top of the lettuce.
e) I’ve also opted to add some fried crispy shallots to the burger for extra texture, as well as some sliced jalapeños for heat, mainly because I almost always have these things in my fridge.
f) Put your burger in there, and close her up.

That’s it. You’re ready to eat!

Flash Deals, Product Reviews

Carnivore Club

June 20, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

I follow Carnivore Club on Instagram due to the high quality images of incredible meats that they post. When I’m telling you that they post some of the best quality foodporn, I’m being dead serious…

They’re located somewhere far, far away from NYC, so I figured I’d really never get to try one of their boxes of products unless I spent big dough and ordered something online to have it shipped. Well, to my surprise, they were offering a Groupon deal! There was a massive discount on a premium box of meats (along with a $15 credit to use on your next purchase).

A premium box is a real wood humidor of sorts.

A subscriber can get monthly deliveries of high-end meats at their doorstep. This is what the unboxing looks like:

There are generally four meats per box, though not all boxes are this amazing. Mine was filled with iberico shit:

Again, mine was a premium box (which is generally much more costly), made of real wood, nice hidden hinges, ultra high quality meats, etc. The regular packaging is a faux wooden box, still very smart looking. But take a look. Mine even came with the humidity gauge and shit.

“Satisfy your inner carnivore” is printed on the box, as well as an image of their logo.

Okay so let’s get down to the goods here. The box came with four meats, and I’m going to review each one and provide some pretty pictures.

The first thing I did was to slice up some of the chorizo, which you saw in the video above.

If you treat your meat like you would treat your own dick, you’re always going to enjoy it. This stuff was super flavorful. It wasn’t overly spicy to the point where you couldn’t keep shoveling slices down your throat. The fat content was soft and malleable, melts between the heat of your fingers. Really nice.

This next shot is everything together. The chorizo, plus the other three packaged meats.

The top left is the chorizo that I sliced, so we will skip that, since I already talked about it. The top right was another type of chorizo. This one was softer, a little more moist, had less fat content and a more smoky flavor. Clearly they had different diameters too. I really thought I was going to get jipped here with two of the same type of meat, as far as flavor goes, but the two chorizos were very different from one another. The bottom right was the salchichon. Like the chorizo, this had good melty fat content, but it was a more mild and more pure flavor. You could taste the meat, unencumbered, because it wasn’t laden with spices. Very crisp. The sparse peppercorns really made it pop too. The bottom left was the dry cured ham. This was really soft. It had the texture of a very high quality prosciutto, with a clean flavor. Really nice meat, excellent non-stringy fat. It wasn’t paper thin, but the flesh was so soft to the touch that it was difficult to get each slice up in one piece. That’s freaking tender shit!

Overall this was a great buy. If I didn’t get a Groupon deal, I might have thought it was a little overpriced, but then again I am not a rich bastard. Some of you bank-makers out there might find this to be a good price given the supreme quality of meat that you get in each box. So give Carnivore Club a try. I think you’ll like it.

UPDATE

Since I had a credit with Carnivore Club, I ordered a regular box. The quality is once again incredible. Take a look at the unboxing here:

Inside, there is a card that tells you all about the meats you are about to eat, along with suggested pairings like cheeses.

Here’s what they look like unwrapped – like shriveled penises:

While a shriveled penis is admittedly not the greatest look in the world, I’m pretty certain that these taste much better than a shriveled penis. If any of you have had both, give me your opinions.

So as I was going over my note card along with my packaged meats, I noticed something. The “salami picante,” #4 on the note card, was swapped out for “campo seco.” It seems the provider ran out of the salami picante and substituted the campo seco instead, but Carnivore Club was unaware and unable to update the note card in time for the shipment.

No bother to me, really, other than the fact that campo seco and cerveza seca were somewhat similar in both look and flavor. Cerveza seca was a bit leaner, however, while campo seco had large blobs of delicious fatty white spots throughout – most of which were surprisingly tender.

The chorizo was good. Not too potent and garlicky, as some can be, and it had a mild heat to it that didn’t overpower.

The clear winner by far, however, was the “trufa seca” truffle sausage. It was coated with a sea salt and was vibrantly flavored with that earthy and robust truffle flavor. Absolutely delicious. I’ve never tasted something so unique in this kind of product.

I highly recommend purchasing meat from this supplier, which was Charlito’s Cocina. And if it isn’t obvious, I am a big fan of Carnivore Club. This box alone would cost WAY more if all items were purchased separately, so you’re getting a good deal along with such great service. I let Carnivore Club know about the swapped sausage issue for #4, and they insisted on sending me the salami picante even over my protestations. Good people!

Recipes

Satan’s Fried Chicken Sandwich

June 16, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

Satan’s Fried Chicken Sandwich is a recipe I concocted for usage of Saint Lucifer Spice during my review of their product. If you can’t get your hands on their delicious shit, then substitute for some other pepper like cayenne powder. But I highly recommend their habanero garlic blend. It just works better.

What do you need, and how do you do it?

1) Grab a pack of thinly sliced chicken breast from the grocery store.

2) Crack a few eggs into a bowl and mix/scramble.

3) Create a breading mixture using a combination of Italian breadcrumbs, panko and a teaspoon of Saint Lucifer Spice.

4) Drag your chicken filets through the egg dredge and batter them with the spicy breadcrumbs.

5) Fry your chicken to golden brown in hot oil.

6) Hit your still-hot chicken with some more Saint Lucifer spice to lock in the seasoning after they come out of the fryer/hot oil.

7) As the chicken cools, quickly prep some lettuce, tomato, onion and sliced apple. Maybe some cooling cucumber as well, if you feel like it. As an alternative, you can do this step before you start cooking, but then the apples may bruise up and oxidize – unless you know to hit them with some lime juice to prevent that brown bullshit from happening.

Note: This step is for adding additional crunch and a little sweet juiciness to cut the spice. If you happen to have coleslaw laying around, you could simply use that. And if buying an apple is too much work for your lazy fucking ass, you can also use the pickles that have been sitting in your fridge, floating around in murky water like a shit that never got flushed.

8) Mix a few shakes of Saint Lucifer spice into some mayonnaise.

9) Apply some of that spiced mayonnaise onto each half of a potato bun. A soft, sweet bun is key, like Martin’s or King’s Hawaiian.

10) Assemble sandwich and eat.

If you’re ambitions, you can make some “conundrum fries” to go with this sandwich on the side: sweet potato french fries spiced with a few shakes of Saint Lucifer, once they come out of the oil. Do it, and then eat them with the remainder of your spicy mayo mixture from above. Why? Because fuck ketchup, that’s why.

Flash Deals, Italian, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Cara Mia

June 16, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My wife and I have walked by this place many times. So when I saw a Groupon that offered $25 for $50 worth of food, I jumped on it. Not only that, but I also used a coupon code on top of the deal, so it was technically even cheaper by at least $5.

Our first appetizer was a fennel, endive and pancetta salad. It wasn’t really dressed with anything. Still tasty, but I think some added citrus would have made it better – orange in particular.

For our second appetizer we had the roasted calamari and mushrooms. This was really delicious, and both this and the previous app were large portion sizes. With the squid roasted instead of sautéed or fried, it made a big difference in the depth of flavor. That great roasted garlic was present without being too overpowering, and the rings of calamari were perfectly cooked. They had a good, tender snap to them without any chewiness whatsoever. The mushrooms were porcini and portobello, lightly cooked off with butter. The addition of lemon really made this dish pop with brightness.

Our first pasta was a pappardelle with mushrooms in garlic and olive oil. This was very similar to the app above, with porcini and portobello mushrooms, but here the sauce was olive oil instead of butter and lemon. I actually thought the app had a more robust flavor. The pasta was perfectly cooked, however.

Our second pasta was supposed to be strozzopreti (long, thinner cavatelli shape) but we were served cavatelli. This came with braised wild boar. It was delicious; heavy, but super flavorful. I wonder if this cavatelli was truly made in-house, as the menu suggested… They were all very uniform, and I noticed the tell-tale doughy, pillowy one that often shows up in quantities of one or two per pack of the store-bought cavatelli that my mom always used. Not a big deal, still delicious, and my favorite kind of pasta to boot… but it could just be that the restaurant ran out of strozzopreti and decided to run over to the nearby grocery story for some substitute cavatelli or something.

Anyway, we ate every last bite of these fucking things. Everything was delicious, so we will probably be back to try some more stuff.

CARA MIA
654 9th Ave.
New York, NY 10036

Jerky, Press Reviews, Product Reviews

Halo Diablo Jerky

June 16, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This product is an incredible collaboration effort between the Saint Lucifer Spice Company and the Righteous Felon Jerky Cartel. The Saint Lucifer folks sent over a complementary package of this jerky when I queried them for a sample of their spice for review.

This is high quality dry style beef jerky seasoned with their incredible garlic habanero spice. I reviewed Saint Lucifer HERE, so make sure you check that out as well.

The jerky was non-malleable and almost dry or brittle (for lack of a better word) to the touch, but it wasn’t too chewy or tough to get through with your teeth. The meat was actually very tender and flavorful, with a nice robust smoked beef taste. The more I ate, the more I craved.

I actually enjoy a dry style jerky as opposed to some of the wet, sticky and messy jerkies that are out there on the market, so don’t get the wrong idea about my comments above. The spice level was just right, I thought. It had enough potency to let me know it was there, but not too much to the point where I needed a break from the heat. Nicely balanced.

Johnny Prime

Monthly Archives: June 2015

Chicken Legs and Broccolini

What The Fuck Do You Need?

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

Gallow Green

Burger Heaven

“Homemade” Pizza

What Do You Need?

Directions:

Hinata

The Johnny Prime Burger

Carnivore Club

Satan’s Fried Chicken Sandwich

Cara Mia

Halo Diablo Jerky

carnivore connoisseur

What The Fuck Do You Need?

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

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What Do You Need?

Directions:

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carnivore connoisseur