The Matt Ng

10/16/2008

This is Matt's culinary masterpiece. He calls it the Matt Ng. It is 2 pieces of bread with the middles torn out and an egg put into the middle. The whole thing is fried with butter and flipped. Repeat till golden brown on both sides. It's a variation of eggs in a basket, something he saw in V for Vendetta and wanted to improve. And with that drive and a dash of creativity, he came up with something brand new.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

11/8/2008

How To Open A Bottle Of Champagne With A Sword - Watch more How To Videos

Once, Matt and I were trying to figure out how to open a wine bottle without an opener way back in the day. Of course, being of this age, we turned straight to the world wide web. After finding this video, we decided to try it. Results can be seen here. I don't think that was good for my knife.

A couple of night's ago, while sleeping at Pat's house, we decided we wanted some wine. Looking through a box of junk, we found the same bottle. Unfortunately, still no wine opener. It's been about a year now.

Baby Back Ribs

5/26/2009

This was probably one of the most intricate recipes that we've ever tried. Although we've made baby back ribs once before, this time we made sure to take enough pictures to show off.

About a month ago, we were lucky enough to go to a big sale at a local specialty market. They were selling filet mingon, ribs, chicken, and loads of other meats for extremely cheap. Filet mingon was 4.99 a pound.

This rack of ribs was the last of our stash. We dry rubbed it first and left it in the fridge for about 5 hours. Then we poured in margarita mix along with orange juice (supposed to give a tangy taste). After putting it into the oven for another 2 hours, we poured out the juices and turned it into a BBQ sauce.

The BBQ sauce was then used to glaze the meat (we brushed it on and broiled it several times). The meat was tender and fell off the bone. Overall time to make this was about 8 hours, but it was well worth it.

We pulled the recipe from Alton Brown's cookbook and I'll post up the recipe the next chance I get.

Justus' Last Meal

Yesterday night was one of our last nights cooking together. 3 of us, Justus, Pat, and me (Mike), have been staying at Pat's apartment. Since it was so late last night, we didn't have the choice to going somewhere for dinner.

We decided to have one last TCS assignment before Justus would leave the next morning. We made some kind of random soup, using mung bean noodles (glass noodles), we were originally planning on eating it with our egg omelette (mixed with fish sauce). Pat had the idea of turning the noodles into a soup. Using chicken bouillon, rock candy, sriracha, and gochujang (a Korean spicy pepper paste), we came up with a pretty awesome soup. We also threw in some shitake mushrooms for an extra nutritional boost.

I have to say, it was real good. Just the right combo of saltiness, sweetness, heat, and umame-ness. Everyone contributed with random ideas and it ended up being an excellent meal. Another great success for TCS, and a fitting sendoff for Justus.

MacGyver Cooking

So I was moving out of my apartment and Justus had been staying at my house. Since we had already packed most of our stuff, we made ourselves a macaroni and cheese dinner (courtesy of Matt). Of course, we only had the box kind. We substituted sesame seed oil for butter, which ended up giving a much more pronounced taste than the subtle flavor we were looking for.

It wasn't bad, though. With a little pepper, it tasted pretty good. We even threw in some dried shrimp, which made it seem more like a real more (instead of a Kraft box).

Welcome!

The Tulane Culinary Society was started in 2008 by a couple of Tulane Universtiy students who found a common interest: the culinary arts. We believe that our motto (drafted by one of our founding members, Justus Hammon) speaks volumes about the type of society we have created.

"Good food. Good friends. Applying intellectual curiosity to deliciousness."

Trading ideas and techniques, members acquire new skills in order to dazzle their friends and families. We are a close knit group that happens to enjoy eating and making food in the presence of good company.

Although our society has been around for a while now, our blog is brand new. We will be going back to add some info on our past culinary successes as well as the few culinary failures.

We hope that you will take part by cheering for our achievements and laughing with us during our culinary fiascoes. If you would like to join us, keep an eye out for our new members application for or email us at tulaneculinarysociety at gmail.com.

Bon appétit!