Execute.

For our next Handsome party tip and trick, we’d like to introduce to the Handsome faithful: The Handcake Party. As themed party ideas go, Handcake Party is almost elegant in its simplicity. So easy in fact, you can turn any simple get together into party city with handcake (the best party food idea). Handcake Party works as a 1st birthday idea, a sweet sixteen party, a bachelorette party, or a retirement party idea. All hail the handcake party.

The idea originated from a tradition Dirty Handsome’s brothers have each New Year’s Eve wherein they trek the 30 minutes in to town from the old family home to the grocery store. From there, you simply ask the bakery stooges to make a sheet cake that says “Handcake Party” on it. Once you’ve plowed through a few easy drinking games, simply bust out the cake and have everyone eat it sans utensils. Feel like kicking it up a notch? Decorate your own handcake and make it from a novelty batter like red velvet or funfetti.

Easy enough, but what is the real joy of a handcake party? The real joy is the fact that at any moment you can turn any lame occasion with a cake into a Handcake Party. How? By your unparalleled sheer force of Handsome will. Planning a Handcake Party is fine enough as your guests are certain to wait with baited breath until the handcake’s unveiling. However, if you ever find yourself at a gathering that’s dragging (like, you know, a wedding for instance) slide yourself up to the cake, ask coyly to your adoring public “is this handcake?”, and immediately begin the Handcake Party in earnest. What was not now is.

You have to sell it. You have to own it. In the end, everyone will remember that they attended a great Handcake Party (wedding?).

Yes, this is Handcake

Man Snacks, for Men

We’re back after a sizeable hiatus to see our family in Louisiana in honor of great religious holidays like Christmas and the Great Depression 2009. To hell with our detractors, we’re ready to make your 2009 as handsome as possible.

To kick things off, after recommending a trio of Handsome gifts we wanted to share one of the many excellent gifts received from our family and friends. I’m a handsome man, and I deserve some man snackies goddamnit. To that end, a dear friend gave us some odd Japanese snacks designed not just for anyone – but for men. Pizza, burgers, pot roast? Fuck no. We’re talking about chocolate dipped pretzel wonders called pocky. And not just any pocky – MEN’S POCKY. Throw in some Beer Pretz and some strange Men’s candies/lozenges/ruffies and you’ve got a funny, tasty, and poignant gift. Yeah I said it, it’s poignant.

Happy New Year!

Everyone loves fried turkey

Hope you had a Handsome holiday feast this Thanksgiving weekend. We had a lively gathering at Handsome HQ including our now infamous fried turkey (Dirty Handsome), a sampling of Beaujolais Nouveau, grilled veggies with thyme butter (Stoner Handsome), homemade mac-n-cheese (WASP-y Handsome), an as-requested chocolate pie (Dr. Handsome), and much much more. Los Angeles gave us a stunning day of fluffy clouds, blue skies, and warm temperatures. We truly had a lot to be thankful for.

Happy Holidays! Stay tuned to Big Handsome for some Handsome holiday gift ideas…

Prepare to meet/brine your enemy

Handsome faithful take note: Thanksgiving is just around the corner and Handsome Preparations need to be made immediately! For end-to-end instructions on our Cajun injection Thanksgiving turkey recipe and frying method, check our Big Handsome’s report from Sunset Junction here. In the meantime, time is ticking, so get your act together by doing the following:

• First and foremost – buy a turkey, damnit! They get scarce as the holiday approaches. Furthermore, turkeys are best this time of year because it’s easy to get a fresh (even free range) bird. These are far tastier than their frozen comrades, and much safer since they’ve never been frozen, so no need to worry about making certain it’s defrosted.
• Consider getting a backup bird. If you screw up baking a turkey you’re boned, but if something goes awry with the fry, you’re only out another 45 minutes. If all goes well? You’ve got tasty leftovers for all the football and basketball over the weekend.
• While you’re out shopping, be sure to refill your propane tank and grab peanut oil. Heaven forbid you get to the moment of reckoning only to find your propane tank is empty and you don’t have enough oil.
• Remember you can clean, inject, and brine in advance. A little work now means less stress later.
• If you can’t get your hands on a branded “injectable” marinade, remember that “injectable” isn’t just a shitty branding ploy – it isn’t even a word. Use a favorite sauce thinned with some salt water or a favorite salad dressing. Be sure to strain the latter in case there are any particles that could foul your injecting needle.
• If you’re a rookie, Friday is the last day to safely order an outdoor cooking set.Order now so you have enough time to assemble and test it before the in-laws arrive.

Good luck! Send us your stories and photos from your Handsome fry. Stay tuned for more tips as the holidays near. We’ll be dropping three birds this year and are very much looking forward to it.

Serene... until the agents arrive

Recently Dirty Handsome had the pleasure of dining at the Tom Colicchio restaurant Craft in Century City. The steak restaurant is infamous in Los Angeles for being run by a recent Top Chef contestant, being a great New York transplant, having wonderful food, and enduring a mild douchebag crowd courtesy of the CAA talent agency, whose Death Star headquarters looms over Craft’s beautiful, warm, spacious-but-not-overwhelimg space. We were excited that our recently-former boss’ wife swung us a reservation and were even more excited when we figured that someone else would probably be picking up a tab. We live Handsomely, but we’re hardly Old Man Moneybags.

Half our reservation was late, so we started lunch with an Elderberry Collins, one of Craft’s specialty cocktails. It was a spruced up version of a traditional Tom Collins, but with elderberry liquer and a splash of lemongrass soda. It was top notch, and it meant having booze in the afternoon. These are good things.

We started lunch off with an appetizer selection of raw oysters and a delicious fennel salad. The restaurant was an excellent example of how access to the best fresh ingredients can overshadow cooking prowess, technique, and inventive dishes. The salad was a traditional combination of sliced raw fennel and citrus, the oysters were entirely raw with no garnish. Lunch continued with a little more flair and style. I had a flatiron steak (the Niman Ranch steak was on the menu but woefully unavailable) that was so soft and succulent only a fork was necessary to eat it. Complimenting our lunch was a small side of balsalmic glazed heirloom carrots in a few variations of purple and orange. I had no idea heirloom carrots existed, but after eating them I recommend you grow your own and eat the hell out of them. Smugly.

I had a great glass of red wine that was near Cab Sav in intensity but was a varietal I’d never heard of. Foolishly, I forgot to write it down and didn’t take a picture. I blame the Elderberry Collins on an empty stomach. Service was excellent.

Verditct: highly recommended – an excellent meal

Tip: go only when someone (or some company) is paying for it

This is the safe result you're looking for

As we alluded to in our first post, few things are more handsome than frying turkey. Below is our step-by-step recipe for cajun fried turkey. Of all the Thanksgiving turkey recipes out there, we promise that this one will impress relatives and be one of the easiest Thanksgivings you’ll ever have (…or tailgates, or parties, or whatevers).

Now I know what your wives, girlfriends, and (in our case) Handsome Association members’ girlfriends and wives will be all complaining and concerned about things like “safety” or “fire” or “a bobbing smoking turkey causing a cascading tide of oil spilling on your flesh.” Of course frying a turkey is dangerous and extreme. Why? Because everything awesome is DANGEROUS AND EXTREME. Like Powerthirst, for instance. There are 2 very simple steps to ensure that the process is as safe as lifting and basting a 20lb turkey in a 400 degree box. Recipe (with pictures from our Sunset Junction street fair fry!) after the jump.

Step 1: Face down your enemies

The preparation for fried turkey is similar to baking one, except of course that it’s MORE EXTREME. In addition to removing the neck and giblets (if you’re real bayou, save these for later! yum!), you need to remove the metal binding around the turkey’s legs. You’ll need open access to the cavity and if you leave the metal binding on it will cause the turkey to cook strangely (hot around the metal, no crispy awesome on the inside of the legs). Also, be sure to get a smaller bird – think 12lbs to 14lbs.

Since you’re clearing everything out, this is the best time to perform the first very important safety step: make certain that the turkey is completely, absolutely, unequivocally defrosted. Any – ANY – ice could cause the grease to expand rapidly enough to boil the oil over (in an EXTREME fashion!). WCS: you check the outside and it seems fine, stick her in, and ice in the cavity expands and the turkey bobs of the spit to the surface. Fast. Think of the cascade we mentioned earlier.

Step 2: Inject your turkeys

Injection is the best method for marination because it’s fast, it disperses flavor throughout the bird, and it’s ripe with euphemisms and sophomoric jokes. The first few times we fried we used Cajun Injector brand marinade and the injector included in the pack from the marinade or the outdoor cooking set we use. We ran out and in a pinch last week for Sunset Junction bought some tasty-sounding salad dressing, sieved it to get the particles out, and injected away. Be sure to inject evenly, slowly, and deeply.

Step 3: Brining the turkey

Brining the turkey ensures that your injected marinade will soak in and that your turkey will be moist and delicious. The process is simple – soak your turkey in room temperature water. The brine can be made all sorts of ways: simple salt and water, a near-vegetable broth, or our preferred method: Zatarain’s seafood boil. This mix of spicy seasoning and salt will give your turkey the boost it needs to beat out bland, buttered turkeys. Let the turkeys brine overnight. Don’t sweat it if you have to do it at room temperature; as our fried turkey guru Larry Harrell once told us “if anything lives through 45 minutes in boiling oil it’d have killed you on the counter before you started.”

Since you’re submerging the turkey in liquid, this is the best time to perform the second very important safety step: measure the amount of liquid the turkey displaces. This will be certain you have just enough oil in the pot, but not enough to spill over when you put your first turkey in (back to the flaming cascade). We brine in our cooking pot; you can line it with a garbage bag if you’re concerned about salt water being in contact with the pot. Put the turkey in the pot, pour brine so that it covers the top of the turkey by about one inch, pull the turkey out, and mark how high in the pot the liquid is. Simple volumetric science has now protected you and proved you’re better than everyone who said you’re an idiot for frying turkey. They don’t get any.

Step 4: EXTREME sophomoric joke

D-Day. You’re ready to fry. Pull the turkeys out, pat them dry, grab a beer/snacks/water, and stretch. Place hte first turkey on a spit run through the cavity of your totally no second thoughts stupidly defrosted turkey.

Here we go. Pour your peanut oil into the pot up to the mark you made the evening before. Peanut oil is best becuase it has a high smoke point and no flavor. This means pure, unadulterated bird (unless your turkeys stumble into it themselves – see above). This should go without saying, but choose a spot outside where you will not have to move whatsoever for at least 3 hours (more for multiple turkeys). Think ahead – you’ll need a chair, some shade, and potentially some company. Heat the oil to 325 degress, not 350 or above; this will keep the turkey from burning and only slows you down by an extra minute or so (hat tip again to Larry Harrell on this one).

Step 5: Deep frying your awesomeness

As you can see, the process of boiling a few gallons of oil and the smell of deep frying fantastic will draw a crowd. If you’re tailgating or throwing a party, you’ll want to socialize and grab a few beers. I mean hey, you know us, we love to drink and party.

Whatever you do, do NOT follow your instincts to get bored, drink heavily, and wander around, no matter how EXTREME! you need your next brewski. You are to diligently watch the temperature, counteracting the warming turkey by tweaking the burner setting. You are to vigilantly guard the giant pot of boiling oil with your dinner in it from looky-loos and curious idiots. You are to fastidiously monitor your watch closely so that your turkey comes out exactly 3.5 minutes per pound of turkey later.

Step 6: Remove, consume, rejoice

After the roughly 45 minutes (do the math, lazy Pomona kids), slowly pull the turkey out and place it on a platter. We find the best way to do it is hold the bird up with one hand, and use a protected second hand to pull the bottom of the spit out of the turkey, threading the bird onto a serving platter.

Carve and eat shortly after removal. Relish in the sounds of your friends savoring every bite. Be sure one of aid jerkoff friends remembers that you can’t remove yourself from the boiling oil area and are probably frying another turkey, macaroni and cheese, or other things that are tasty when fried (potatoes, twinkies, cellphones, whatever).

Step 7: Thou shalt know that mine is Handsomest.

Update for Thanksgiving: Check out our last-minute shopping list here. Good luck!

We concur - the lamb was succulent and adorable.

Using the less-than-kind (but justified – FACE!) subhead “3 stars in Glendale?” LA Times food critic Irene Virbila gave Palate Food + Wine three stars. To put this in perspective, critical favorite AOC has three stars and the insanely popular newcomer Fraiche only has two and a half. As we noted in our Handsome review, we were nothing short of enthusiastic about Palate Food + Wine and wish the chef and crew their the best.

Also remember – only two weeks left for their complimentary tasting Saturdays from 2-5pm.

A view from the table at the bar up front

Last week a dear friend was in town going through the grueling process of taking the bar.  As Handsome gents we can always use more lawyas around, so to celebrate the end of the bar exam we had dinner at Palate Food and Wine in Glendale. We’d heard about Palatte from a few sites on the internets and I took the initiative to try something new that was close by (which isn’t to say we’re not anything but delighted by Canele down the street in Atwater).

Palate has a few things going for it – take chef Octavio Becerra for instance. We support talented folks getting an opportunity to prove themselves; Octavio is a Patina alum breaking out on his own. And he does it well – the wine store in the back of the restaurant is well curated, I love the idea of the communal tables, and the main dining room is just classy enough without being stuffy.

We were seated about 20 minutes late, but everyone on staff (especially the guy who looks like The Dude) were very pleasant. We started with three cheeses from three different animals and some champagne to celebrate the end of the test. My colleague had the bacon wrapped rabbit – an amazing very unkosher expression of awesome – and I had the lamb, which was succelent and tasted just as cute as I’d imagined. All in all, we covered five different mammals and four wines – in your face you goddamned hippies. Everything was top notch, including the service, the crispness of the white table cloth, and the vast feeling of superiority from enjoying fine wine and multiple animals at once.

Verdict: recommended

Tip: free wine tastings at the wine bar in back every Saturday from 2-5pm through August

A selection of reds from the Palate wine store

The lamb at Palate - succulent, tender, adorable

For better or worse, this is on Valentine's Day

Taco Zone in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood has certainly been covered, debated, reviewed, and discussed ad nauseam both online and on the skinny lips of skinny hipsters.  That’s fine, but was any of this noise Handsome? Probably not Handsome enough, so here’s our take: We. Love. Taco. Zone. 

Does ‘the Zone’ have it’s drawbacks? Of course – the lines just seem to get longer, the patrons are getting more annoying, they run out of carne asada late at night (which borders on tragic depending on how inebriated you are), and once on Thanksgiving night when we were absolutely starving and dying for food and everything was closed the truck wasn’t there. A well deserved break, but we had been on such an amazing journey it’s tough to forget. 

But Taco Zone still has a few very important strengths: it’s delicious, it’s cheap, the service is always friendly, and the crowd really isn’t as annoying as someone would suggest (we’re waiting for some hipster to remark that they ‘liked Taco Zone’s earlier work better’). I usually opt for a burrito, but the tacos and quesadillas are all equally delicious.

Also, the anecdotes and stories are too great:

• Late one night I got nearly run down by a very drunk junior associate lawyer from some firm downtown – I’ve never seen anyone with a more impressive Asian glow or talk so fast so drunk
• I took the Canadians there after we got back from a raucous bachelor party
• My little brother almost gave up Taco Bell for good after eating there for the first time
• A close friend and I sat in the plastic folding chairs and pounded 24oz cans of Miller something-or-another waiting for a show to start at the Echo. The whole time these three teenagers made disparaging comments about how many white people there are in Echo Park now and how gentrification is ruining their neighborhood. After all that they asked us to buy them booze, we declined, and they sped off in a new VW Beetle. 

So give it a shot – give into the Zone.

Taco Zone

1342 N. Alvarado St (occasionally is inside the Vons’ parking lot)

Los Angeles, CA 90026

7pm-2am (weekdays) -3am (weekends)