5 Foods On the Naughty List You Need To Eat

Chicken and waffles from OMG Cafe in Richmond.

Maybe it's me, but I am plenty sick and tired of being blasted by yet another article featuring a how to eat healthy during the holiday season diatribe, especially those touting a personal listing of "foods to avoid". It's Christmas/Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa (a.k.a. Festivus) time for god's sake. You're supposed to eat too much, drink too much, and generally not give a crap about your waistline for the next couple of weeks only to pull a 180 on January 2 and hit the gym while starting your new found power smoothie breakfast kick. Once that ends approximately two weeks later, it's back to the french fries and ham biscuits (not necessarily together, but food for thought) so I see no reason to try to bunk the natural course of things as they are meant to be. Save the salad greens and steamed tofu for bathing suit season. That's a far more important time of the year since you can no longer hide your ass under a wool coat.

In the meantime, to help you stay on course, I've assembled a tasty list of some of my favorite high caloric goodies that should help you to pack on at least a fiver by the first of the year.

Pimento Cheese: Frankly, there aren't many foods that offer such a deliciously mayonnaisy combination as this ubiquitous dish. However you like to make it is totally up to you, but the fact is, you're eating spoonfuls of mayo and shredded cheese mixed together all creamy and gloppy. Up the ante of this dish and stuff some pimento cheese into a burger or slather a couple of slices of white bread in butter and make a pimento cheese grilled cheese. Here's my family's recipe, which is a good, basic version to get your started.

Meat: Ladies, nothing tells your man you love him more than a big, fat, marbly steak, and nothing makes me happier than sitting down to a big plateful of juicy meat with him. My personal go-to's are the NY Strip or the Ribeye which offer up plenty of meaty goodness, fatty charred ends and beaucoup forkfuls of tender bites. If it's too cold outside, pan sear your meat in a cast-iron pan and top it with a compound butter like a rosemary, shallot and salted butter mix. Pair it with a big pile of roasted garlic mashed potatoes to seal the deal.

The Big-Ass Breakfast: No evening of overeating is complete without consuming a giant pile of pork products, high cholesterol eggs, caffeine, and ideally a Bloody Mary or two the following morning. Hence, the big-ass breakfast. Whether you want to do it up Southern-style with biscuits, grits and country ham or U.K.-style (pictured above) with bacon rashers, sausages, blood-laden black pudding and perhaps a grilled mushroom or tomato for good measure, I'm a firm believer in eating big, especially in the morning.

Fried Food: I can think of no other way to completely derail any stretch of healthful eating than by sitting down to demolish a platter of fried seafood, buttery bread, fries and mayo-laden tartar sauce, except if you add in a pitcher of Miller High Life to wash it all down. There's something totally irresistible about battered food, any food really, from deep fried Twinkies to the glorious corn dog, so I declare this 2011 holiday season to be the year of the deep fat fryer.

Nitrates: So apparently nitrates, which are found in most forms of processed meats including hot dogs, pepperoni, salami, even that mystery meat in a can known as Spam, apparently aren't so good for you. Sure, there are some studies out there touting that digesting any meat goods with artificial red coloring can lead to cancer, and this may in fact be true, but let me offer you another nugget of non-scientific info, this dude has been sucking down massive quantities of hot dogs for years and he's still with us. Moreover, he has zero percent body fat, so perhaps these so-called "studies" need to be revisited. In the meantime, I suggest making a Chili Slaw Dog for lunch and stop worrying about it.

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Buttermilk Fried Sugar Toads Recipe

Fried Sugars from Arnest Seafood in Manquin, Virginia

It's that time of the year again in foodie land, where all the big-time food mags predict what trends will take off in 2012. Epicurious.com recently posted their take which included everything from the revitalization of hotel dining to the use of fennel pollen. Also, listed front-and-center was "fin to tail" eating or what the rest of us call eating a whole fish (??) To be honest, as someone who does a lot of fishing, I don't really get this as a so-called trend, since whenever I catch something, which isn't all that often, I do my best not to waste one smidgin of  "fin", but what the heck do I know?  Seems moonshine is also trending in 2012, yet according to plenty of my Appalachian kin, illegally distilled booze has been trending steady for about 150 years.

But, I digress.

One thing I do know is that out of all the posts I have done on this blog for the past year none has garnered as many hits as my bit on sugar toads by way of Arnest Seafood, an unassuming out-of-the-way joint near Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, where in addition to steaming up some of the best blue crabs in the area, also pan fries some mighty tasty sugar toads.

Sugar toads taste even better with a cold Budweiser and fried crab chips

To set the stage properly, here are some sugar toad basics from my original post:

"Sugar toads. They're not what you think, so put those images of deep fried frog outta your head. Sugar toads are what we coastal Virginia folk call the Northern Puffer fish, which is a seasonal bottom-dwelling fish unique to the Chesapeake Bay. Sugar toads primarily feed on shellfish, and have earned their nickname due their less than Vogue-worthy appearance.  For many years, puffers were considered as nothing more than an annoyance that needed to be thrown back until several well-known (and high-end) restaurants began serving this sweet, flaky fish with the unusual name to rave reviews. Sugar toads, like all puffer fish, have ability to fill their stomachs with water as a defense and puff up, making them a not-so-easy to digest prey.  From a culinary standpoint, it must also be noted that Chesapeake Bay puffers are completely non-poisonous, and unlike their Fugu brethren, pose no threat to those who eat them."

My prediction is that by 2013, sugar toads will be making quite a few top ten food trends lists. I've been seeing them more and more on local restaurant menus around Richmond including The Roosevelt (they were excellent FYI) and at Mamma Zu's. Then, there's Chef Jimmy Sneed's new venture BlowToad set to open any day now, which one would assume will be serving some version of these tasty puffers? Local RVA'ers haven't exactly taken to Sneed's choice in restaurant names, but it seems that Sugar Toad (which is a much user-friendly title, and is also where Sneed used to be chef in Naperville, Illinois) is no longer up for grabs. So, BlowToad it shall be.

In the meantime, I suggest hitting up your local fishmonger to see if you can score some of these little guys yourself. Even better, if you're sea-worthy, go freeze your butt off on the Chesapeake Bay and try to line-catch your own cache. Apparently, Chesapeake Bay sugars love bloodworms, and while more plentiful in the spring, they also have a winter season, so theoretically you can catch them all year long. Some fisherman have been known to brag that they've caught upwards of 100 at a time since sugar toads often travel in large groups.

Here's a basic recipe for sugar toads, which like most fresh fish is best served up fried in cast iron pan.

Buttermilk Fried Sugar Toads with Homemade Tartar Sauce
Serves 4

If you don't have experience cleaning sugar toads, have your fishmonger do the job since their skin is very tough to remove and has a sandpaper quality to it. Sugar toads are best eaten by hand much like a piece of fried chicken.

1 pound Atlantic Pufferfish (a.k.a. sugar toads), cleaned with skin/fins removed
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning
Pinch of black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
Oil (or Crisco) for frying

Preheat oil to about a 1 1/2 inch depth in a cast-iron skillet until a thermometer reaches 375 degrees. Meanwhile, in a shallow dish mix together cornmeal, flour, Old Bay, and peppers. In another small dish, whisk together egg and buttermilk.

Pick up sugar toads by the tailfin and dip them in the buttermilk mixture and then dredge in flour mixture. Fry (being careful not to crowd the fish) in hot oil until lightly brown and crispy. Drain on paper towels or a wire rack set over a sheet pan. Lightly sprinkle fish with sea salt. Serve with tartar sauce and garnish with lemon wedges.

Homemade Tartar Sauce
Makes 1 cup

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons onion, minced
2 tablespoons sweet pickles, minced
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (or more, to taste)
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce, more if you like it spicy
Pinch of Cajun seasoning or Old Bay seasoning
Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients well in a small bowl. Cover and chill.

©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission Pin It Now!