The pop culture satirical cookbook, Fancy Fast Food: Ironic Recipes with No Bun Intended, is finally here! Buy it on Amazon!

Sublebration Cake! (Fancy Subway II)
by Erik Trinidad of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Mark Trinidad and Cristina Frank)

It’s been long overdue, but the Fancy Fast Food book is finally here… it’s time to celebrate! For the occasion, we here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen have baked a cake — err, made a cake without baking — in the only way we do things around here. You guessed it, we’ve styled a Subway footlong sub into petit fours, those bite-sized confections you eat as a final course, along with espresso served in fancy cups that you hold with your pinkies up in the air. (Oh you fancy, huh?)

Sure, you can get pocket sized desserts at fast food chains (i.e. cookies, little apple pies), but where’s the gross out factor in that? We’re going to take fast food fancification to a new level (down, that is), by using mayo for “chocolate frosting,” and bologna as a “fondant.” Disgusting? You bet. But look how fancy it is! And you thought Subway called their employees “sandwich artists.” Pfft.

Ingredients (from Subway):

• 1 footlong Cold Cut Combo, on Italian bread with cucumbers and a ton of mayonnaise (ask that they don’t cut it in half)
• 1 cup of Coca-Cola

First things first; we’re going to need Coke reduction to use as a food coloring, so pour all the Coke in a non-stick skillet. Bring it to an aggressive boil, so all the water starts evaporating. Next, open the submarine sandwich. Hopefully your Subway “sandwich artist” put the layer of cold cuts with the salami and ham on top, so the mayonnaise doesn’t get all over the bologna, which we want to remain clean. Either way, scrape off all the mayonnaise and put it in a little prep bowl (and rinse of the bologna if there’s mayo on it). We really don’t need the textured slices of the ham and salami, so go ahead and eat them, feed them to your dog, or throw them against a window for fun.

Next, the bread. Using a sharp knife, cut about 3" off the end. Start sculpting this piece by cutting and shaving off pieces so that what you have left are little, even square slabs of bread, about 2" wide. If you mess up, you have the rest of the bread to use. In the end, you should end up with six pieces — two sets of three pieces for the two petit fours shown in this recipe. (Go ahead and cut out more bread if you want; there’s enough bologna to make four.)

Hopefully by now the Coke has reduced down to a thick syrup, which we are going to use as a food dye to make the mayonnaise look more chocolatey. Spoon Coke reduction into the prep bowl with the mayonnaise a little at a time as you mix it thoroughly. As soon as it starts to look the color of chocolate pudding, you’ve done enough. Take this “pudding” and spread it in between the three layers of bread for each of the petit fours you are going to make. Then stack them up, and clean off any extra “pudding” oozing out.

Now it’s time to be the disgusting “cake boss” you never thought you could be. Using bologna as a “fondant,” drape a slice over each of the little stacks of bread — make sure you do this evenly, so each side will get coverage. Fold over the corners towards one side, and fasten them in place with toothpicks broken in half. Do this again to the other side, and repeat the process for each of the petit fours you are going to make.

The little “cake” doesn’t look too fancy, so we’re going to decorate it. Unfortunately, we’ve used up all our mayonnaise, so we’re going to make the cucumbers look like icing. Using a sharp paring knife, cut off the green skin of a cucumber slice. Then, cut out a long strip of cucumber in a spiral fashion, so you can get the longest strand possible. Trim this strip down so it’s as thin as you can get it without falling apart. Repeat this process for as many cucubmer slices as you need.

Lastly, the plating. Meticulously place the cucumber “icing” onto each petit four so it looks like it was applied naturally. Then place the petit fours on a fancy plate. Cut one open to show off the inside layers. Let it sit out for a while; you’ll be amazed at what prolonged exposure to oxygen can do to it aesthetically; the sides of the bologna start to dry and form interesting shades of pink, and the “chocolate mayonnaise” will appear more thick. And there you have it: Sublebration Cake from Subway. It’s celebration time! Now go get yourself a Fancy Fast Food book!

Wendy’s Wonton Soup (Fancy Wendy’s Chicken Go Wraps)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

You don’t need to be in the People’s Republic of China to know that Chinese New Year is upon us; I mean, there’s at least one Chinese family in every American town running a take out joint who is celebrating. The Lunar New Year is the biggest celebration amongst the Chinese people wherever they are in the world, and it’s often observed with dancing lions, firecrackers, family time, and enough auspicious mandarin oranges to make more than a gallon of good luck orange juice.

We here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen will honor Chinese New Year in the way we do best, not with a bag of oranges, but with a bag of Wendy’s fast food. We’ve already transformed Wendy’s fare into Jewish celebratory cuisine, but in this Year of the Dragon, we’ll be inspired by the Orient. Hope that dragon likes soup…

Ingredients (from Wendy’s):

• 6 Grilled Chicken Go Wraps
• 1 JBC (Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger)
• 1 bottle of water

First, go and unwrap each Go Wrap, and extract the chicken and all the additional fillings of shredded cheese, lettuce, and honey mustard. Take a few of the half chicken breasts, plus a few strands of lettuce, and grind them in a food processor to make our wontons’ filling.

You now have six sloppy tortilla wraps left over; rinse each of them under the sink to really wash off any residual honey mustard or cheese. Then lay one wrap flat on a cutting board, and cut out a square in the center of it, about 5". Take the square and rinse it again on both sides. Then, hold it in one hand and use your other to grab a sizeable pinch of chicken filling to put it in the center of the square. Fold the square in half, and press the edges down as best you can so that they stick together. Fold the wrapper again, from the crease outwards, then flip the ends upwards so that a wonton shape is born, and seal it with a pinch. Do this with the five other tortilla wraps.

Next, the broth. Fill a pot with the entire bottle of water, and bring it to a boil. Add in some shreds of lettuce. Slice the bacon from the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger into little strips, and put them in the broth as well. Add Wendy’s sea salt to taste.

Lastly, the plating: ladle out the broth into a fancy bowl, and then delicately add the wontons to it. Finely chop the lettuce from the burger into small bits and use them as a garnish. And there you have it: Wendy’s Wonton Soup, fit enough for a dragon (or a snake next year). Happy Chinese New Year!

Chripotle Christmas Tamales (Fancy Chipotle Mexican Grill II)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Steve Ells and the folks at Chipotle Mexican Grill have been on a mission: to make “rapidly prepared food” (a.k.a. fast food) in the most socially responsible way possible for a nationwide chain of restaurants. While that’s respectable and all, Ells and his team forgot one thing: they’re claiming to be a Mexican grill, and they’ve done nothing to pay homage to Mexico – the country whose cuisine they’ve been inspired by. Perhaps this act of supposed cultural insensitivity is intentional, perhaps they just don’t care. Or maybe they’re just too busy enlisting Americans like Willie Nelson to cover Coldplay’s “The Scientist” for their anti-factory farm ad campaign, that they simply just forgot that “Mexican” is their middle name.

There are many customs in Mexico, particularly during the holidays. In terms of Christmas culinary tradition, tamales – that delicacy of meat wrapped in a corn flour dough and steamed in a corn husk – are traditionally prepared, served, and eaten during the season of Navidad. Why hasn’t Chipotle Mexican Grill embraced this?

Have no fear, Mr. Ells & Co., for here’s a Fancy Fast Food recipe that uses all your existing ingredients and repurposes them, so you don’t have to look like complete culturally-insensitive pricks. We here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen will take care of the tamales; in the meantime, try and get Willie Nelson to sing “Feliz Navidad” for your next ad campaign.

Ingredients (from Chipotle Mexican Grill):

• 3 Burritos with nothing but Carnitas and Roasted Chili & Corn Salsa
• 3 bags of chips with Red Tomatillo Salsa
• 1 bottle of water

First, unwrap each of the burritos and separate the ingredients. Hand pick out the shreds of pork and collect them into a bowl, and then scoop out and pour all the corn salsa into another bowl. Take each of the remaining tortillas and rinse them off in the sink, being careful not to tear them. Place them flat and let them dry with paper towels.

Chipotle Mexican Grill already marinates and seasons their pork, but we’re going to make it a little spicier for the Mexican palate. Put all the carnitas in a small saucepan, stir in some of the tomatillo salsa (to your liking), and let the two fuse together for 5-10 minutes over a low heat.

The main ingredient of tamales is masa harina, a corn flour made from a variety of corns. We only have two kinds – corn kernel salsa and corn chips – so we’ll have to make do. First, take the chips and crush them down into a fine powder. There are many ways to do this; you could use a food processor or coffee been grinder, but if you really want to get the chips down to a fine powder, grind them yourself with a stone mortar and pestle. Start slowly so you don’t get chips all over your kitchen counter, and gradually grind them down to a fine flour. Collect it all into a bowl.

The other type of corn is wet, so we’ll purée that in a food processor. As the blade spins, gradually spoon in some of the ground corn flour, and pour in a little water as needed, until it becomes a mushy dough. Masa!

We don’t have corn husks to steam our tamales in, so we’ll have to improvise using the big tortillas. However, we can at least make them look a little bit more like corn husks, by adding a fibrous texture to them. After much experimentation, the best way to do this is to lightly roll a pizza cutter up and down each tortilla. Score – but don’t cut – in one direction until it starts resembling the texture of a corn husk.

If you’ve made tamales before, the rest is familiar. Spread some makeshift masa into the center of the “husk.” Add a strip of carnitas in the center, and then fold over the “husk” – one side and then the other, and then fold the ends in. A real corn husk can be folded in a way that you need not tie it together before steaming, but in this case, we’ll tie each with kitchen string – they make them look like three little Christmas gifts that way (for each of the three kings, if you will).



Steam the tamales in a steamer, and then unwrap each carefully. Inside you’ll find a surprisingly decent tamale – one that actually tastes like a tamale – ready to serve for Christmas, may it be in Mexico, or in your nearest Chipotle Mexican Grill. Add some tomatillo salsa for garnish and an extra kick of spice, and have a Feliz Navidad!

Thanksribbing Dinner (Fancy McRib II) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

This Thanksgiving, we have plenty to be thankful for, like the fact that for two years in a row now, McDonald’s has given us the limited-time bounty of America’s favorite processed pork sandwich, the McRib! (In the northeast anyway, where Thanksgiving was invented.) Last Thanksgiving, we fancified a McRib Hawaiian style, but this year, we’ll stick to a more traditional dinner, with sliced turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. Fortunately, the processed pork from the Golden Arches can be molded into anything – even a “rib” patty that has no rib bones – which gives us more reason to celebrate the mechanically-separated harvest again!

Ingredients (from McDonald’s):

• 4 McRib sandwiches
• 1 large French fries
• 1 Caesar Salad (with croutons)
• 10 packets of Sweet ‘n Sour sauce*
• 5 packets of Barbecue sauce*
• 1 Vitaminwater
• 1 bottle of water

You’ve probably never thought of doing this before, but take each of the McRib patties from its bun, scrape off the pickles and onions, and rinse it under the kitchen faucet. Wash away that messy barbecue sauce and what you’ll have left is a slab of pork product, with one side having a texture of faux ribs. There’s no reason why this is; it’s simply ribbed for your pleasure.

Along the edges of the pork patty, you’ll notice that one side is more “ribbed” than the other. Cut that edge off; turkey doesn’t have that texture. Then, slice the patty in half the long way, so you have two slabs of meat that you’ll carve like turkey breast. Carve the patties at an angle so the resulting texture similar to turkey pieces; don’t carve the meat all the way to the perfect cut you made or else it will look really fake and you’ll break the illusion. Continue carving all the McRibs until you have a nice pile of Thanksribbing “turkey.”

Sides are always important at a Thanksgiving dinner – even if it’s fake and made for show. For mashed potatoes, simply take all the fries and put them in a food processor with a little bit of water, and then purée. To make the “gravy,” scoop out all the Sweet 'n Sour sauce packets into a saucepan, as well as enough of the Barbecue sauce packets to darken it to your liking. Add in a little water to thin out the blend so that it’s easy to pour when you put it in a gravy boat. Stir all the sauces and water together and let it simmer over a low heat for about five minutes.

For the other side dish, we’ll make a sausage stuffing. Thankfully the McRib is actually pork, not turkey (or at least some variation of it), so dice some of the extra McRib shavings down to a minced meat. To add to this, take the carrots and some greens from the caesar salad, and chop them finely. With the salad’s croutons, you now have all the ingredients to make a legitimate stuffing. Bring about a quarter cup of bottled water to boil in a small skillet, and then add in all the croutons. As they soak up the moisture, toss in the minced meat and vegetables and stir.

Finally, the Thanksgiving plating. Get out your nice tablecloth and bust out the fine China. Place slices of the faux McTurkey on fancy white plate, along with the mashed potatoes and stuffing. Ladle in some gravy into the potatoes, and garnish the top with some chopped greens from the salad. Transfer the McGravy into a gravy boat, and pour some over the meat slices. Garnish the stuffing by placing a couple of cherry tomatoes from the salad next to it for a bit of color. For a finishing touch, compliment the meal with faux wine by pouring some Vitaminwater into a fancy wine glass. Tada! Thanksribbing Dinner is served. Now say grace and give thanks for everything, especially the fact that while this turkey isn’t actually turkey, at least it’s not going to go dry.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mock Gỏi Mực (Fancy BK Onion Rings) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Despite Burger King’s new ad campaign that aims to highlight fresher ingredients – so fresh that they move in slow motion in TV spots, because that’s what fresh items apparently do – the onion rings are the same as they’ve been for decades. I’m not talking about the onions you may find in the Whopper; I mean the onion rings you can substitute for fries for – an option that has always kept BK unique against its French fry toting competitors. But have you ever peeled away the breading from one of those things? There’s not a ring of real onion inside; it’s this weird extrusion of oniony pulp, molded into a ring shape that sort of feels like squid. With that said, let’s play with our food and pretend they are, while being inspired by Vietnamese cuisine. Why not? As they say at BK, have it your way.

Ingredients (from Burger King):

• 1 large order of Onion Rings
• 1 Garden Salad with lite Italian dressing
• packets of ketchup
• PLUS: a banana leaf (for a presentation bed of irony)

To make this mock gỏi mực, or Vietnamese squid salad, we need our mock squid first. Using your fingers, peel away the breading from each of the rings, being careful not to tear the ring apart. It’s okay if you do though (it’s inevitable), but that’s okay; squid, fake or not, can be cut in different ways. Pile all the mock calamari rings and pieces and lightly rinse them in a strainer to clean off any residual crumbs. Don’t wet it too much or they’ll fall apart.

Next, pick apart the salad. Take the darkest of the greens and coarsely chop them. Slice the carrots sticks the long way until you have many more of them. Chop the tomatoes and the red cabbage. Toss all those ingredients, along with the mock squid, in a big mixing bowl with a little bit of dressing.

Finally, the plating: cut the banana leaf to the size of a fancy plate, and simply transfer the mock gỏi mực on top. Serve with a squeeze of chili paste-looking ketchup. Ăn ngon nhé!

Kitschy Galantine of Chicken (Fancy KGC) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

In recent years, KFC – Kentucky Fried Chicken – has jumped on the healthier fast food bandwagon by grilling their chicken – which is quite a feat knowing that the Colonel already has a lot on his To Do list, let alone getting his white suit all dirty with marinade. KFC blatantly promotes their Kentucky Grilled Chicken so much they have even come up with the acronym, KGC, which isn’t just three letters for conversation; it’s printed on all their paper cups, boxes, and buckets. However, the name of the fast food chain is still KFC, and any KFV (Kentucky Fried Virgin) may wonder what all this KGC business is about – it can stand for anything, like so many acronyms on the Internet. How about a fancy, yet Kitschy Galantine of Chicken? LOL

Ingredients (from KFC):

• 3 Kentucky Grilled Chicken breasts
• 1 small Coleslaw
• PLUS: organic watercress (for an added touch of irony)

The French preparation of a galantine is similar to that of a roulade, in that it is meat, stuffed, rolled up and then sliced into servings like slices of bologna. The main distinction that a galantine has over a roulade is that all the fillings and poultry meat are stuffed into the skin of the bird of which it came – which IMHO sounds like a twisted mad scientist joke, but hey, if it’s good enough for Jacques Pépin, than we can at least improvise with what we have to work with at KGC.

First, use a paring knife to carefully cut and peel away the skin from each of the chicken breasts. You’ll find that you may not get a full slab of skin, but as long as you can still extract a narrow piece that is the full length of the chicken piece, you should be okay.

Next, debone the rest of the chicken breasts, and put all the white meat in a food processor. Add in all of the coleslaw, including the liquid, and then chop it all until it becomes a smooth paté.

If we had a whole bird to play with, we’d be stuffing this mix into a bigger slab of chicken skin, but we’ll just have to scoop out enough for each of the strips of breast skin we cut off. Roll the mixture in the skin, and encase it all. Then use a sharp knife to cut even slices out of the makeshift galantine.

Typically, the slices that come out of a proper galantine are bigger, so what you can do is press in some more of the paté into each of the slices until is expands outwards. Use your fingers maintain the circular formation while keeping the skin around the edge. After you’ve made enough to serve, stick it in the fridge for a while; galantines are typically served cold. BRB

Arrange your slices of Kitschy Gallantine of Chicken onto a fancy white plate, and then garnish with some ironic watercress. Voilà! KGC, meet FFF. OMG! WTF?

McBibimbap (Fancy McDonald’s VI)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Emily Feinberg and some assistance from Hong Choi)

On a trip to Seoul, my Korean friend pointed out that many young Korean women are obsessed with taking pictures of “food porn.” Wherever we went out to eat, I saw evidence of this; in every restaurant, at least one Korean girl would have a big SLR camera and shoot pictures of her food, like some sort of paparazzo. Granted, the food in front of the lens was something of a stylish meal; Korean food, like Japanese food, has a certain aesthetic in its presentation – only it takes a lot more table space because those assortment of little banchan side dishes seem to take up every available bit of room.

Here’s a meal that Korean women would probably dare not take a photo of: a McDonald’s combo number 6, with a couple of salads, and two breakfast sandwiches – unless it was transformed into a mock bibimbap (a bowl of meat and mixed vegetables over rice, topped with a fried egg) the Fancy Fast Food way. Here’s how:

Ingredients (from McDonald’s):

• 1 Angus Mushroom & Swiss Burger
• 1 Egg McMuffin
• 1 Bacon Egg & Cheese Biscuit
• 2 Premium Caesar Salads
• 1 large fries
• 1 bottle of water
• 1 soft drink of your choice
• packets of Hot Picante Sauce
• packets of ketchup

First, shave off all the sesame seeds of the burger’s bun; we’ll use that for garnish later. Take apart the burger and scrape off all the mushrooms into a strainer or colander. Rinse them all under a sink to wash out the mayonnaise. Peel away the Swiss cheese – we don’t need it – and take a knife to the burger patty. Bias cut it into diagonal slices and set it aside.

McDonald’s doesn’t exactly serve rice, but they have plenty of starch in their famous fries. Chop the fries into small, rice grain-like pieces, and pile them up. Mince them down a little more to reduce their hard corners and then put them in a steamer and steam them for about 10-15 minutes. This will soften it up and give it a surprising texture of brown rice.

To make a mock kimchi (Korean spicy pickled cabbage), pick out all the lighter leaves of lettuce in the salads. Pour in a tiny bit of water, plus packets of the hot sauce and a couple of ketchups. Stir it all up until it looks like kimchi, complete with the occasional speck of red.

There are only so many carrot shreds found in a single salad, so pick out all the carrots from both salads. Slice them into strips the long way, so you have a nice pile for the dish when we plate it.

Scoop all the fake McRice into a fancy black bowl. Then place your items on top in a aesthetically pleasing way, in sections: the slices of beef, the mushrooms, the sliced carrots, the mock kimchi, and some of the darker greens from the salads. No bibimbap – fake or otherwise – is complete without a fried egg on top, and with McDonald’s lack of one on their menu, we’ll have to improvise.

Take the cooked egg from the Egg McMuffin and slice it in half along its side; it is mostly white and we’ll use that part for the egg white of our fake fried egg. To make the yolk, take the yellow scrambled egg from the breakfast biscuit. It’s not exactly the same hue of a yolk – but the cheese is, so pile that on top. Microwave it for 15 seconds so it melts down, and spread a layer over the egg. Then take a tablespoon to cut and carve out an almost perfect yolk-looking semi-bubble. Place that on the egg white and it’s a bit convincing – those Korean girls might not even be able to tell the difference!

Finally, garnish the top with some spicy gochujang-looking ketchup and the sesame seeds from the bun. Serve with the remaining mock kimchi on the side and your beverage of choice. 잘 먹겠습니다!

NASAlmon Soufflé (Fancy Space Food)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Maurice Murdock, plus Sara Mitchell, Maggie Masetti, Lynn Chandler, and Vickie Kloeris of NASA)

For the milestone 50th “recipe” on FancyFastFood.com, we’ve gone beyond the realms of fast food, to make food fancification boldly go where no bun has gone before! Now that the U.S. manned space program is going on hiatus, we’ve teamed up with some folks at NASA to try and convert some “leftover” freeze-dried astronaut food and make it look fancy – but not before having fun touring around NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as seen in this video:

Ingredients (from NASA’s Johnson Space Center):

• 1 pack of chipotle snack bread
• 1 pouch of outer-space-ready Chicken Of The Sea pink salmon
• 1 package of freeze-dried asparagus
• 1 package of freeze-dried vegetable quiche
• water

First, make sure you turn on the gravity if you’re in Zero G; otherwise keep your items from floating away with the velcro patches that are found on all the unopened space food packets. (You can stick it to your socks if you want.) Next, open the packet of freeze-dried asparagus and put the contents in a sealable container; add in 50 ml of hot water and cover it to let it hydrate for five minutes. Do the same with the freeze-dried vegetable quiche, but with 100 ml of hot water.

The chipotle snack bread needs no hydration, so tear it into smaller pieces and put it in a food processor. Add in the contents of the Chicken of the Sea pouch, followed by the hydrated asparagus – saving 3-4 pieces for garnish – and the vegetable quiche. A proper soufflé on Earth uses eggs, so the quiche suffices for that, even though it’s not going to rise properly – although it might in Zero G.

Blend everything down to a consistent dough and then scoop it into a fancy ramekin. Bake the faux space soufflé in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes at 477.594 Kelvin (400°F), and then let it cool.

Garnish the top with the extra pieces of green asparagus for a touch of color, and then 3… 2… 1… blast off! (Note: May not necessarily taste good on Earth, but may taste better in orbit.)

Quiznoa Salad (Fancy Quiznos)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Susannah Masur)

In our recent food obsessed culture, foodies strive to find new foods that they enjoy, mostly so that they can blog or tweet about it later. One of these recently “discovered” foods is quinoa (pronounced KEE-noaah), a grain-like vegetable from the Andean countries of South America so great in flavor, texture, and above all nutrients, that vegans just won’t shut up about it. And although it looks like a grain similar to couscous, it is technically not a grain – an ambiguity that even some rabbis exploit, deeming it an acceptable food to eat during the grain-abstaining days of Passover. Truly, quinoa is one exceptional food, and you don’t even need to be a vegan, an observant Jew (or both) to partake in its goodness.

However, according to a New York Times article, the problem with quinoa is that due to its increasing popularity in rich North American and European countries, the prices have driven up the cost in the poorer nations they come from, like Bolivia. Richer nations’ hunger for quinoa is actually stripping away the nutritious food that Bolivians have been consuming for centuries. So what is a socially-conscious person to do? One suggestion: fake the quinoa using fast food. Here’s how:

Ingredients (from Quiznos):

• 1 Veggie Sub without guacamole or cheese on Italian white bread
• 1 cup of water
• condiment cups of banana peppers and pickles

First, scoop off all the vegetables off the bread and put them in a mixing bowl. We’ll deal with that later. For now, we are going to transform the bread into our grain-like super vegetable. We here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen have tried doing this using a food processor with different blades, and even a hand grinder, but nothing quite gave the bread the proper round shape of quinoa. The only method that works – as tedious as it is – is to roll each individual piece by hand.

Because Quiznos prides itself on toasting their subs, we’ll have to moisten the bread. Pour all the water into a skillet and bring it to a boil. Place the pieces of bread – toastier side down – in a steam basket, and let them moisten and soften up before handling them. Then, pinch off a little bit of the bread’s insides, and simply roll it around with your finger until it becomes a small ball. Now repeat this process about a hundred times (or as long as you can stand it).

Dice the sliced tomatoes and put them in the mixing bowl with the rest of the vegetables. Add in the banana peppers and pickles. Then fold in the faux quinoa, and toss it all together with a big fork or rubber spatula.

Voilà! Quiznoa Salad! (pronounced KEEZ-noaah SA-lad) Now try and substitute this for quinoa in either a rich or poor country, so that the food demands can be met!

Chicken Mock Pie (Fancy Raising Cane’s)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Cheryl Triviño)

Raising Cane’s, a nationwide albeit lesser known fast food joint with locations from Vegas to Boston, doesn’t have a varied menu like McDonald’s or Wendy’s; they stick to the one thing they do best: chicken fingers. While this may be common knowledge to those who live near a Raising Cane’s, what one may not know is that the establishment is named after the founder’s dog, “Raising Cane” (both words, not just Cane).

With a dog having so much influence on this chicken finger chain, we here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen left it up to our canine friends to help envision a fancy meal derived from Raising Canes – they barked at us in a very Lassie-like way.

What’s that boy? Uh huh… You say we have enough ingredients to make a mock chicken pot pie? But is that really that fancy? (more barking) What’s that boy? Uh huh… Yeah? Uh huh… You say chicken pot pie is in sophisticated food magazines and that the only people who would look down upon it are chichi elitist food snobs? Okay, good boy… Thatzha got boy…“

Ingredients (from Raising Cane’s):

• 1 Box Combo with:
• 4 chicken fingers
• 1 order of crinkle cut fries
• 1 piece of Texas toast
• 1 side of coleslaw
• 1 cup of water

First, peel the breading off the chicken fingers to expose the meat inside. Cube them with a knife and put them aside. Do the same to half of the fries. Combined with the coleslaw, you now have the basic ingredients for the mock pot pie filling – there may not be peas, but at least there’s some green in there for color, plus carrots. The only thing we need to fake is the gravy that blends everything within the pie, so we’ll have to improvise as always.

First, put the remaining uncut fries in a food processor and add some water. Blend it to a pulp. Next, strain the coleslaw over a skillet so that you extract all the watery mayonnaise. Add the potato pulp and some more water, cover it, and simmer on a low heat until it all blends together to a starchy "gravy.”

Put the cubed chicken, potatoes, and coleslaw into a mixing bowl. Fold in the “gravy” with these ingredients until they are blended well, and then scoop it into a ramekin.

As for the crust, we’ll also have to improvise. Break apart the Texas toast and blend it down with a little bit of water in a food processor. Knead the resulting “dough” and then roll it flat on a piece of wax paper with a rolling pin. Cover the ramekin with his mock crust, pinching the edges to seal in the moisture. Add textures to the edges with a fork.

Bake this “chicken mock pie” in a pre-heated oven at 400°F for 10 minutes, then use a fork to break through the crust to get to the filling inside. Be careful; it may not be a real chicken pot pie, but it sure steams up like one! (Woof!)

Chinese Cheemai Cheemai (Fancy Cheeburger Cheeburger)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Melissa Roach)

In Hong Kong and the Cantonese regions of southern China, food trolleys piled with steamy bamboo trays make their way around the tables at dim sum restaurants, serving everything from tripe to chicken feet. However, unadventurous Westerners who’d rather not put feet in their mouths usually favor one particular delicacy: the little dumpling known as shumai, usually filled with a filling of ground pork, shrimp, mushrooms, and/or chives.

You don’t have to travel halfway across the world to have shumai though; you only have to go as far as a selected airport, where the nationwide burger chain Cheeburger Cheeburger usually has a location. (Alternatively, you could just go to your local Chinese restaurant, but where’s the fun in that?) Just make sure you pack a good set of chopsticks, along with some creativity and culinary imagination – it’s going to take a little make-believe for this Fancy Fast Food mock recipe to seem passable for the real thing.

Ingredients (from Cheeburger Cheeburger):

• 2 Semi-Serious Cheeburgers (with onions, bell peppers, chopped garlic, and sautéed mushrooms, plus the signature olives on top)
• 1 small order of onion rings
• 1 medium Sierra Mist

It’s fitting that Cheeburger Cheeburger, that burger joint with the repetitive silly name, has a mid-sized burger called “The Semi-Serious” because we’re only going to be semi-serious about this mock recipe. Fancy Fast Food is all about styling food for looks over taste after all, and we’re going to make a couple of silly hamburgers look like shumai.

First, disassemble the burgers, saving the insides for later, and rip apart the buns into pieces. Put them in a food processor and add about 3 tablespoons of Sierra Mist so that it blends down to a semi-dry doughy mass that can be kneaded. Knead the dough and divide it into three equal parts for the three dumplings we’ll make. Using a rolling pin, roll one part of dough flat over a piece of wax paper. It should be spread out enough to cut out a circle using a bowl five inches in diameter. Then use a sharp knife to cut the perfect circle into an imperfect decagon; make sure you slice through the wax paper as well. Do this process two more times with the other two pieces of dough.

For the filling, take the remaining burgers and all the toppings (minus the olives a few pieces of green peppers) and put them in the food processor, along with some extra onions you extract out of the fried breading of the onion rings. Push the button and grind it all together.

Hold one of the faux, 10-sided shumai wrappings in your hand, and spoon in a small amount of the ground filling. Bring your fingers in to wrap the filling, creating a dumpling shape – the wax paper should keep the outsides from clumping together so you can make a nice folded texture. Peel away the wax paper when you have a decent looking “cheemai.” Repeat this process for the other two wrappings.

For garnish, mince the leftover green peppers to put on top of each of the “cheemai,” then serve them on a fancy white plate. And since each Cheeburger comes with an olive in a toothpick, you might as well put that in a martini glass and pour in some Sierra Mist to complement your faux meal with a faux cocktail. Now use your imagination, and find your inner Chee!

Valentine Culvoutis (Fancy Culver’s)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with help from Allison Jaffe and Stephanie Etkin)

Centuries ago, when the French came up with the baked dessert called clafoutis, little did they know that at a glance, the word looks like it might be a venereal disease. (“Merde! J'ai la clafoutis!”) However, the word actually refers to a sweet and buttery pastry baked with black cherries on top, originally from the Limousin region. Traditionally, clafoutis is baked and served in a round pan, but you can always improvise by using a heart-shaped one – so that you can make this V.D.-sounding treat for another V.D. (Valentine’s Day). You can further improvise à la Fancy Fast Food and make the entire thing from items from Midwestern fast food chain, Culver’s.

Ingredients (from Culver’s):

• 3 Original ButterBurgers
• 1 dish of frozen vanilla custard with cherries
• 2 extra cups of cherry topping
• 1 cup of water

First, remove all the cherries from the top of the custard. We won’t need the custard for the rest of the recipe, so go ahead and eat it before it melts. When you’re done, take those cherries, plus all the extra ones, and cut them into halves. Then rinse off all the sticky syrup using a colander.

For the buttery batter, we’ll use the buns from the ButterBurgers. Break them apart with your hands and put them in a food processor. Add a little water and blend it down until it becomes a nice doughy substance. Mold this dough into the bottom and sides of heart-shaped baking pans; add in cherries as you fill the inside. Bake them in a pre-heated oven for twenty minutes at 400°F, then let them cool before serving under candlelight for your special Valentine. And when V Day is over and your special someone wants more – even begging, “Pretty please with a cherry on top” – you’ll know just what to give them: indigestion.

Tacoliatelle con Pesto di Frito (Fancy Beefy Crunch Burrito)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with some assistance from Alexandra Jamieson)

It’s been twenty whole months since we here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen have fancified something from Taco Bell, and now that 2011 is well under way, we’re going to party like it’s 2009. We’re going to make another pasta dish out of burrito, this time with inspiration from a recipe we found on the internet for Tagliatelle with Corn Pesto – a recipe which “re-imagines” pesto sauce by substituting corn for basil. Well, we are going to “re-re-imagine” this corn pesto sauce by using corn chips instead of actual corn. Never mind the recent news reports that question Taco Bell’s beef; what’s more important is that they now put spicy Fritos in their latest burrito offering! Let’s head for the border…

Ingredients (from Taco Bell):

• 1 Beefy Crunch Burrito (combo with:)
• 2 crunchy beef tacos
• 1 fountain drink with blend of Sierra Mist, Mountain Dew, and Tropicana Fruit Punch
• packets of Border Salsa Verde sauce
• PLUS: whole organic basil leaves (for an extra touch of irony)

Before you leave the borders of Taco Bell, be sure you make your fountain drink look like the faux white wine you will be serving with your dish at the end. Pour in about three-quarters clear Sierra Mist and then squirt in some Mountain Dew. The color may be too florescent, so offset the hue’s intensity with a splash of red Tropicana Fruit Punch. Go back and forth with the Mountain Dew and fruit punch as needed. If the color doesn’t turn out just right by the time the cup is full, just pour it all out and start over (preferably without a stingy manager looking over).

Once you’re in your kitchen, unwrap the Beefy Crunch Burrito. You won’t really need the rice for this pasta dish, so discard it (or eat it away), and then put the rest of the filling – including those Flamin’ Hot Fritos – in a mixing bowl (minus half of the beef since you won’t need it all). Now that the tortilla is empty, rinse it in the sink and pat it dry with a paper towel.

Slice the tortilla in two and then crank each half through a pasta cutter with the broad noodle attachment. In the end, you’ll have perfectly formed faux tagliatelle pasta. Collect it all in a big mixing bowl.

Next, the sauce. Cut open 15-20 packets of the Border Salsa Verde, squeeze them into a small skillet, and warm it up over a low heat. Meanwhile, take the lettuce and cheese from the two tacos and chop them into smaller pieces. While you’re at it, you might as well chop up some of the corn taco shells so our re-re-imagined corn pesto is extra corny. Add all of this to the bowl with the burrito filling and mix well.

Fold in the Border Salsa Verde into the big mixing bowl with the pasta. Then add in the filling mixture. Toss the pasta in the added ingredients until it is smothered.

Finally, the plating. Don’t scoop the pasta out in one heap and transfer it onto a plate (it will look like a messy glop); instead, transfer the pasta to the plate one or two noodles at a time with a pair of tongs. Garnish with ironic basil leaves to give homage to the pesto gods, and serve with your fountain drink blend in a wine glass! Buon appetito!

Santa’s McStrudel & Cookies (Fancy Happy Meals)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with some assistance from Phil Langer, Mark Trinidad, Amanda Albergo, Megan Quinn, and Jarrod Spillers)

It’s that time of the year again, when that jolly old fat guy sweeps down chimneys around the world, bearing gifts to those who are not naughty, but nice. And for some, it’s a Christmas tradition to leave an offering for Santa Claus — typically a sweet treat of cookies and milk — in an attempt to bribe him for the really good toys, like Mattel’s Sing-A-Ma-Jigs and XBox Kinects, which elves apparently know how to make. This season, unless you’re in an area were the local government has banned Happy Meals like stuffy, mean grinches stealing Christmas, you can follow this Fancy Fast Food mock recipe derived from McDonald’s popular kids meal, for a Christmas treat for Saint Nick made entirely out of fast food items. (Why not? He’s obese anyway.)

Ingredients (from McDonald’s):

• 2 Happy Meals with:
  • a hamburger (x2)
  • a pack of Apple Dippers and caramel dip sauce (x2)
  • a bottle of milk (x2)
  • a toy (x2)
• 1 extra hamburger
• 1 fruit and walnut salad
• 1 bottle of water

Santa Claus’ origins come from the Germanic peoples of northern Europe, so it’s only fitting that we make him a Germanic treat from that region: apple strudel. Sure we could just easily buy him McDonald’s strudel-like apple pie (or their baked cookies for that matter), but where’s the artistic integrity or fun in that?

First, take all the buns from the hamburgers and wipe away the ketchup with a paper towel. (Save the burger patties for later.) Then break apart the bread into small pieces and put them in a food processor. Add a tiny bit of water and blend it down to a solid, yet flexible dough. Knead the dough and roll it flat with a rolling pin. Trim the edges off so you have a straight edge when you fold it.

Before folding the strudel, we’ll have to fill the strudel with sweet goodness, i.e. sugar and spice and everything nice. Use a rubber spatula to evenly spread the caramel dip sauce on the top third of your dough sheet. Chop some walnuts from the fruit and walnut salad and spread them over the caramel. Then take some apple slices and lay them in a row across the width of the dough. It’s so easy, even an elf could do it!

Roll the strudel carefully until the filling is completely wrapped. Pinch the sides to encase it and then cut out some steam vents on top. Then bake the McStrudel on a cookie sheet in a pre-heated oven for 30 minutes at 400°F. When it’s done, let it cool for ten minutes.

For the icing, scoop out the yogurt from the fruit and walnut salad and place it into a cake decorating bag. There’s no need to add sugar to the yogurt to make it sweet like icing because McDonald’s elves have done that for you already. Squeeze the icing over the strudel into a decorative zig-zag pattern.

If you’re an American traditionalist, you could still leave out cookies for Santa too – or at least things that look like cookies: burger patties! (Rinse them first.) McDonald’s hamburgers already have the size, texture, and shape of actual cookies, but to take it a step further, push in some chopped walnuts into the meat so they look like chips or nuts. Voila! Beefy McCookies!

Lastly, the most important part: the plating. Santa isn’t going to give up the good stuff if you don’t present his treat in a nice way. Place the McStrudel on a plate and cut in the middle to expose the steaming apple goodness inside. This will definitey put you on The Nice List. Put the cookies behind the McStrudel to downplay them; one bite into those and you’ll be put on The Naughty List. Don’t forget to serve your treats with milk on the side! And while you’re by the tree, go ahead and fasten the Happy Meal toys as ornaments. Now get ready… because Santa Claus is coming to town!

Hawaiian Thanksgiving (Fancy McRib and Filet-O-Fish)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with some support from Miz Stacecoaster)

Ah, another Thanksgiving is here, and this year we have plenty to be thankful for – most notably the return of the McRib! Yes, America’s favorite processed pork rib sandwich is back! No need to wander the different corners of the country looking for it, like in that Simpsons episode where Homer and a band of “Ribheads” go on tour following their favorite pork sandwich’s limited regional availability; the McRib is now available nationwide after a hiatus of a long sixteen years! Let’s celebrate the mechanically-separated Thanksgiving harvest!

Last Thanksgiving, we here at the Fancy Fast Food kitchen teamed up with Wired to reshape a corn dog and sides into a traditional “Franksgiving Dinner.” This year, we’re going to celebrate our beloved national holiday in these United States by being inspired by the last, but certainly not least state to enter the union, Hawaii.

Ingredients (from McDonald’s):

• 1 McRib sandwich (with extra onions)
• 1 Filet-O-Fish sandwich
• 2 side salads
• 1 large fries
• 1 McCafé Wild Berry Smoothie
• 1 bottle of water
• packets of salt
• PLUS: a natural banana leaf (for presentation and a touch of irony)

The centerpiece of any Hawaiian luau – other than the girls dancing in hula skirts – is the Kalua pig, traditionally prepared in an underground oven until the pork is slow-roasted to juicy, tender perfection. While that is ideal, we just have the McRib as our pork source so we’ll have to improvise. First, remove all the onions from the sandwich and set those aside for later. Then take the processed pork patty and run it under a faucet to rinse off all the barbecue sauce. What you’ll have left is an oddly-shaped pork product with fake rib shapes that you can use for your imagination to pretend that there once might have been bones there. (It’s supposed to simulate ribs after all.)

No matter about the lack of bones; bones always get in the way anyway, and really, who needs them? You should be thanking McDonald’s for getting rid of the most annoying part about eating ribs: the actual ribs. In fact, take it a step further and use a knife to get rid of the ribbed texture by slicing off the top layer of the pork patty. Then flip the patty over and slice off the upper layer as well until you have a completely exposed slab of the other “other white meat.”

Cutting the long way, thinly slice the sides of the pork patty so you have strands of what should start resembling shredded pork. We need to do this because the McRib isn’t pork in its natural form (surprise surprise), so the meat isn’t going to shred naturally along lines of muscle tissue fibers. Slice the patty until you have long thin strips of “rib meat,” and then slice those into thinner and thinner strips so that the collective pile looks like a nice serving of shredded roasted pork.

Kalua pig will be the main dish, but another traditional Hawaiian recipe is lomi-lomi salmon, which we’ll make in a more realistic way, substituting the pollock in the Filet-O-Fish for salmon. First, scrape off the tartar sauce and slice off all the breading of the Filet-O-Fish square, and then crumble the resulting fish filet into a mixing bowl. Add a packet of salt since a real lomi-lomi recipe calls for salted salmon. Then, take the four cherry tomatoes from the two side salads and dice them into small pieces. Take all the onions from the McRib sandwich, rinse them in a strainer, and then chop them along with some greens from the salad – another improvisation for the original recipe’s call for green onions. Put the tomatoes, greens and onions into the bowl of salted pollock and mix everything together in the traditional way: with your hands.

So we have Kalua pork and lomi-lomi-o-fish, but what’s a luau without poi, that pasty, starchy purple dip made from taro? Of course we don’t have taro, but plenty of starch in our box of french fries. Put those fries in a food processor, add some water, and give it a purple hue by way of 2-3 big spoonfuls of the Wild Berry Smoothie. Blend it down until it’s the consistency of yogurt, and tada… McPoi!

Lastly, the plating: serve the “shredded” Kalua pork on a banana leaf, the lomi-lomi-o-fish on a fancy bamboo plate, and the McPoi in a small wooden bowl. Pour the rest of the Wild Berry Smoothie in a tropical cocktail glass, and then decorate with cocktail umbrellas, leis, and a dashboard hula girl if you have one – and the Fancy Fast Food Hawaiian Thanksgiving is served! Aloha!

Chicken Pizza Masala (Fancy Pizza Hut) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

With the overwhelming success of Slumdog Millionaire a couple of years ago, Indian entertainers are no longer constrained to Bollywood. Indians are becoming more prominent in the American entertainment scene, from director M. Night Shyamalan to comedian Aziz Ansari, and of course Apu from The Simpsons. Nowadays, NBC even has a sitcom that takes place in an Indian call center, and let’s not forget about those wacky MetroPCS commercials with those two Indian dudes.

With more and more Indians in the American pop culture landscape, it only makes sense to reciprocate and take something from the American pop culture and make it Indian – from a fast food perspective of course. White Castle already has associations with Harold & Kumar, so let’s go get a pizza.

Ingredients (from Pizza Hut):

• 1 medium Hand-Tossed Style Pizza with chicken, onions, and tomatoes; extra sauce, but easy on the cheese (unsliced)
• 1 order of buffalo wings (6) with blue cheese dressing (2)
• 3 orders of mariana sauce
• 1 bottle of water
• organic coriander (for garnish and an extra touch of irony)

First, pick the chicken, tomatoes, and onions off the pizza pie with your hands, and then scrape off the cheese or any extra topping pieces with a fork. Put all the toppings into a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Stir in all the marinara sauce, followed by all the blue cheese dressing. Pour in water as needed to give it a smoother texture. When it’s all mixed together, it should start to resemble the orange hue of a masala sauce. Add in the chicken wings and smother them so they are well-coated. Let it simmer for about ten minutes on a low heat.

Hopefully you ordered the pizza unsliced so that we can make some fake naan. Take the empty crust, flip it over, and flatten it further with a rolling pin. Then fold it in half, and then into a quarter; when you fold it, it sort of looks like naan, which is the perfect accompaniment for the dish.

Finally, the plating: spoon the chicken pizza masala in a small serving dish and garnish it with some chopped ironic coriander. Serve it with your fake naan, and enjoy. Namaste!

Beef C'Arbysscio (Fancy Arby’s)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with some support from Lana Price)

The Raw Foods Movement may be getting plenty of attention these days in our modern food-obsessed culture, but it’s actually been practiced by people for millennia – from the first caveman who bit into an uncooked, prehistoric McRib before fire was invented, to celebrity raw food diet-endorsing Demi Moore, who has been munching on raw vegetables since before Ashton Kutcher was invented.

The fast food chains haven’t really embraced raw foods (other than their salad offerings) but that doesn’t mean you can’t pretend things are raw. For this mock recipe, we are going to close our eyes and pretend beef is raw when making a beef carpaccio – and what classier place to get our freshly sliced beef than the fast food home of roast beef sandwiches.

Ingredients (from Arby’s):

• 1 Super Roast Beef Sandwich
• 1 Roast Turkey and Swiss Sandwich
• 1 order of Jalapeño Bites
• 1 side salad
• 1 medium fruit punch
• packets of Arby’s Sauce and Horsey Sauce

First, take apart the roast beef sandwich and discover what we already know: that the roast beef isn’t raw; it’s roasted after all, and it’s brown-colored. Raw beef is supposed to be red, so we’re going to have to dye the beef. This is where the fruit punch comes in. Pour the fruit punch in a non-stick skillet and bring it to a boil so that it starts reducing. We want the red syrupy goodness to thicken before putting in slices of the roast beef. Coat both sides of the meat until it soaks up the red liquid, and then place the meat on a fancy white platter.

The red syrup will almost immediately start to dry out, so use a pastry brush to reapply the syrup as needed. For extra redness, you can brush on some packets of the reddish Arby’s sauce as well.

Meanwhile, skin the jalapeño bites, and slice them the long way into strips; then use it to garnish the plate. While you’re at the cutting board, cut the Swiss cheese from the turkey sandwich into smaller pieces; use this for garnish too. For added flair, drizzle some Horsey sauce on top with a squeeze bottle. Finally, top the meat with some greens from the side salad and, if you want, slice the bread and buns into smaller pieces to serve it on the side. Presto! It’s so easy, even a caveman could do it – or Demi Moore, if she ever felt like it.

Baja Bouillabaisse (Fancy Baja Fresh)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Bouillabaisse is a traditional (and inherently fancy-sounding) fish and seafood stew prominent in the Provençal province of southern France, a culinary classic from the seaside city of Marseille. The best bouillabaisse is made with only the freshest seafood, but since we are going to play by our own rules and only source ingredients from the realm of fast food, we’ll go to the chain that labels their food as such (even if it’s inspired by Mexico and not France): Baja Fresh. With their available sea-faring fast food fare, we’re going to boil up a “Baja Bouillabaisse” that will not only appease the Fancy Fast Food kitchen’s penchant for alliterations, but be candy for the eyes – and maybe even tantalize a taste bud or two, if you can believe that.

Ingredients (from Baja Fresh Mexican Grill):

• 1 BFF Fire-grilled Burrito (with langostino lobster)
• 3 MahiMahi Tacos (grilled)
• 3 Original Baja Tacos (with grilled shrimp)
• 1 Garden Salad
• 1 Chicken Tortilla Soup (without charbroiled chicken)
• 4 condiment cups of Pico de Gallo
• 1 condiment cup of chopped cilantro

First, pour the chicken tortilla soup into a medium saucepan; this will be the savory stock of our seafood stew, even if it’s based on terrestrial poultry. Add tomatoes and onions to this base via the pico de gallo – but don’t throw away the condiment cups just yet since we’ll get creative with them later. Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer over a low heat.

Next, the main ingredients: the seafood. For fish, we have the strips of grilled mahi-mahi from the tacos; add those to the saucepan and let them stew until they are tender enough to cut into smaller chunks with a mixing spoon. Also add in the grilled shrimp from the other tacos. That leaves just one seafood item left, the shellfish from your BFF (“Big & Full of Flavor”) burrito: lobster. Take note that it’s not “lobster” but “langostino lobster,” that controversial crustacean in the restaurant industry that isn’t a part of the true lobster family at all; it’s actually more related to hermit crabs. This langostino lobster may be labeled by copywriters as such for its ambiguity (and perhaps its appealing alliteration), but it’s all we have to work with. Pick the pieces of “lobster” meat out of the burrito and add it to the saucepan. Cover and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Sally may sell seashells by the seashore, but we’ll get by with our Baja Bouillabaisse without her business on the beach. Images of a real bouillabaisse often include the shells of clams or mussels, but we’ll improvise with a little creativity and the empty condiment cups. Using a pair of kitchen shears, cut the black condiment cups along the sides to make long oval shapes. When they curl, they will resemble mussel shells – especially when you cleverly position them in a serving bowl. But first, add them to the saucepan so they get immersed in the stock; this will help prevent them from looking like plastic.

Finally, the plating: use a ladle to transfer the seafood stew into a fancy bowl. Place the mock mussel shells in and around the morsels of fish and seafood, and then garnish the top with the chopped cilantro. Voila! You’ve just made Baja Bouillabaisse, a fun, fancy, and French-inspired feast formed from fresh fast food!

Osso BuKko (Fancy BK Fire-Grilled Ribs)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with some support from Lana Price)

Let’s face it: as authentic as Burger King claimed their limited-time-only “Fire-Grilled Ribs” to be, they didn’t exactly look pretty. Sure they looked amazing on the commercial with the magic of television, and on the posters with the magic of photography, but out of the box they just looked sloppy, like they were defective rawhide dog bone chew treats. (No offense to companies out there that make rawhide dog bone chew treats.)

We here at the Fancy Fast Food kitchen wanted to work a little magic of our own and transform the King’s legitimate ribs into something more legit-looking. Given that these fast food ribs did in fact come on the bone (unlike that on-again/off-again limited-time-only sandwich at the Golden Arches), we decided to make an osso bucco, that Italian dish where bones – and the marrow inside – are a part of the recipe, if not the most significant ingredient since the Italian name literally translates to “bone hole.” How much marrow we would actually get out of these “B-holes” was indeterminable, but the ending visual sure looked fancy – in the end, it’s all about how good it looks, remember?

Ingredients (from Burger King):

• 1 order of BK Fire-Grilled Ribs (6)
• 1 order of Onion Rings
• 1 order of French Fries
• 1 Garden Salad
• 1 medium Dr. Pepper (with ice)
• packets of barbecue sauce and ketchup

First things first: strain the Dr. Pepper into a saucepan, saving the ice for a later use. Bring the Dr. Pepper to a boil so that it starts reducing; that carbonated prune juice flavor will be the base of our makeshift osso bucco sauce.

While that’s going, prepare the other ingredients: debread the onion rings and expose them for their onion mush extrusion; these will be the onions in the sauce. Chop the baby carrots and the stalky parts of the lettuce from the salad. Slice the cherry tomatoes into halves.

Once the Dr. P has reduced to a syrupy consistency, add in the barbecue sauce and ketchup and stir. Add in the onions, carrots, and chopped greens, followed by all the ribs. Reduce the saucepan to a low heat and let the whole stew simmer covered for 10-20 minutes. It is during this time that some of the marrow in the ribs’ bones should magically ooze out into the sauce; how much really depends on how stubborn those bone holes want to be. B-holes!

Melt some ice back into water and use it in the magic food processor to blend the french fries into a mashed potato consistency. Scoop some potato onto the center of a fancy plate; this will be the bed for your stewed ribs. Finish the plating by garnishing the dish with some sauce, cherry tomatoes, and some finely-chopped lettuce from the salad (the darker leaves). Presto! The King’s ribs are now “Osso BuKko” and they look better than they did on television! How’s that for magic?

Coq Au CheerVin (Fancy Bojangles’)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with assistance from Jessica Bellamy and Lilit Marcus, using items from a fast food chain suggested by Bon Appétit’s Andrew Knowlton)

If you’re a hungry carnivore spending any amount of time in the Carolinas, you will undoubtedly be stuffing your face with signature dishes like Carolina pulled pork or deliciously greasy fried chicken. And while you may enjoy an ice cold Carolina Pale Ale with your meal, the most cheerful way to wash it all down is with a nice glass of Carolina-born Cheerwine. For all you Yankees who aren’t privy to this sweet southern concoction, Cheerwine is a sweet and bubbly cherry soda unlike any other, with a deep burgundy color resembling a fine Pinot Noir. Cheerwine is a popular soft drink in the south that is more “cheer” than “wine” (and more “cherry” than “cheer”), but we’re going to pretend it’s that Pinot – it looks like that when you pour it into fancy stemware anyway.

What better way to pair a Carolina dish with Carolina Cheerwine than to fuse them together in a mock recipe for Coq Au Vin – that French dish where chicken is braised in red wine? And so, we present the Fancy Fast Food recipe for “Coq Au CheerVin” (pronounced kohk oh sheer vaehn’ if you want to sound all Frenchy):

Ingredients (from NC-based fried chicken chain Bojangles’):

• 1 two-piece Fried Chicken Dinner (leg & thigh) with:
• 1 Biscuit
• 1 side of Cole Slaw
• 1 side of Dirty Rice
• 1 side of Green Beans
• 1 large Cheerwine
• packets of salt, pepper, and hot sauce

First, let’s get the pretend-Pinot-Noir Cheerwine simmering; pour the liquid in a saucepan – saving some to pair with your meal afterwards – and bring it to a boil. In lieu of the unavailable ingredients for a proper coq au vin (mushrooms, onions, lardons), we are going to spice our stew with our packets of salt, pepper, and hot sauce.

Next, slice the biscuit in two, and bake it in a pre-heated oven at 400º until it becomes hard and crusty, like your grandpa who’s still mad at General Sherman. Let it cool before pulverizing it down into bread crumbs with a blender or food processor. We will use this to coat our chicken pieces as well as add a little thickness to the stew since it is entirely made of starch and fat.

Skin the two pieces of chicken, and then bread them with the breadcrumbs in a big mixing bowl. Once they are coated, drop them into the saucepan and let them stew for a while, until the meat absorbs all of the red cheery and cherry goodness.

In the meantime, rinse the cole slaw and add it to the dirty rice so you can stop referring to it as “dirty,” and start calling it rice pilaf. Arrange the cut green beans on a plate back into the form of the whole string beans they came from, and only refer to them as haricots verts from now on.

Finally, plate your fancy dish: add the Coq Au CheerVin chicken pieces to the pilaf and haricots verts, along with some sauce. And remember to pour some of the remaining CheerVin in a wine glass… Clink! Finally something a little classy to serve during that next Carolina/Duke game!

Soniccian Borscht (Fancy Sonic)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Ralph and Nata Trinidad)

Unbeknownst to most of the world is the tiny Eastern European nation of Soniccia, a country whose traditions have carried on through the ages, even before the bleak days of the Soviet Union. So small that it is barely mentioned as a former Soviet republic, Soniccia strives to sustain a unique national identity in the post-Cold War era, much like its sibling nations – including Latvia, Ukraine, and Georgia. This distinction of national identity is most evident in Soniccian cuisine; while other former Soviet republics’ variations of the staple, beet-based soup of borscht remain in the savory category, Soniccia’s palate is bit more on the sweet side.

Ingredients (from Sonic):

• 2 large Cherry Limeades
• 2 orders of Apple Slices
• 1 Fresh Banana (from the Everyday Value Menu)
• 1 Vanilla Dish (ice cream)

Obtaining the above ingredients isn’t quite as easy as it is in most parts of the modern Western World. Soniccian culture still hasn’t evolve from some of its former Soviet routines; one can not simply buy these fast food goods off the shelf or by ordering them from a person behind a counter. Instead you must order the items the old-fashioned way, by pushing a button on an antiquated intercom system while inside your vehicle. (At certain times during the day, there are often long waits in a long queue of other vehicles.) This ordering process is prevalent in Soniccia; even if you wish to go on foot and walk to the food establishment to buy goods, you must still push a button and order from the old intercom system. Only when your order is confirmed over the speaker does a person bring you your items – sometimes (but not always) using vintage roller skates from the early 20th century. Present day Soniccia is truly a unique nation with its cultural idiosyncracies.

Anyway, once you have the ingredients and bring them home, you can start preparing the borscht. First, strain the two cherry limeades to extract and pour the red liquid into two separate pieces of cookware: a saucepan and a non-stick skillet.  Save the wedges of lime as you will use them for garnish later. Bring both the saucepan and skillet to a boil with high heat. While waiting for them to start bubbling, prepare the other items.

Slice the apple wedges with a sharp knife, following the curve of each apple wedge’s shape when it’s laying flat on a cutting board. (This will make them resemble shreds of cabbage.) Once you have a favorable amount of apple shreds, add them to the boiling pot of cherry limeade. Reduce to a low heat and let it simmer, allowing the apples to absorb the dark red color.

The contents of the skillet should boiling by now, but let it continue to boil, uncovered. This will eventually be reduced down to a thick red syrup. In the meantime, slice the bananas into smaller chunks. When the red syrup is ready, infuse the banana with it so that the chunks resemble beets.

The Soniccian borscht is almost ready for plating, but first let’s prepare the all-important green garnish. Slice the rinds off the lime wedges you saved from before and then chop them into smaller pieces.

Finally, assemble your sweet Soniccian delicacy: ladle out the apple-stewed soup into a fancy bowl and then add some beet-looking banana chunks. Instead of serving it with sour cream as they do in Russia and Poland, add a dollop of vanilla ice cream, and then garnish the top with the chopped lime zest. And there it is! Perfect for a hot summer day, whether you are in Eastern Europe or not!

NOTE: In case you hadn’t figured it out, this mock recipe is a work of fiction; the country of Soniccia doesn’t actually exist, and Sonic, “America’s Drive-In,” isn’t necessarily a part of, or endorse anything related to the former Soviet Union, Communism – or the Republican opinion of Obama’s healthcare plan, for that matter.

Long John Ceviche (Fancy Long John Silver’s)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Elaine Acosta and Katy Garibay)

Avast, me hearties! Aye, there be no fast food chain that makes ye want to talk like a pirate more than Long John Silver’s – even if ye be walkin’ de plank. However, we are going to class up their pirate-themed fried seafood fare, and style a fancy ceviche dish that will appease the eyes of any landlubber.

Ingredients (from Long John Silver’s):

• 1 Two Fish and Eight Shrimp Platter
• 1 side order of corn*
• 1 side order of coleslaw*
• 1 soft drink of your choice
• a strip of organic lime zest (for garnish and a touch of irony)

This Fancy Fast Food mock recipe is fairly straightforward; the first step is to shave all the fried breading off the shrimp and the fish. Once the fish fillets are exposed, chop them into small bite-sized morsels. Do the same with five of the eight shrimp, making sure you cut off and discard the tails as well. Put all the seafood morsels in a mixing bowl, rinse the cole slaw, and then add it in along with the corn.

A proper Ecuadorean/Peruvian ceviche is prepared with raw fish “cooked” in a marinade of acidic citrus juices (which reduce the bacteria). Raw fish isn’t exactly available to order at Long John Silver’s, but they do have lemon juice packets. Add to the bowl plenty of lemon juice, as well as a few packets of malt vinegar to taste, and mix it all up with a rubber spatula. You can marinate this concoction in the fridge overnight if you want, but hey, this is a mock recipe that’s all about looks, so you don’t necessarily need to bother. (Also, the fish has already been “cooked” in a “marinade” of frying oil.)

Finally, let’s get fancy with the plating and serve our Long John Ceviche in a martini glass. Scoop out enough of the fishy mix to fill the glass just under the rim, and then garnish the top with the three remaining shrimp. Curl the strip of ironic lime zest, and now you have – shiver me timbers! – a gourmet-looking ceviche that looks good enough to eat. Remember to ring the bell, if ye did well! Yarrr…

Chicken Chipotlioli (Fancy Chipotle Mexican Grill) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

So everyone’s up in arms about this whole food movement thing, huh? Supermarkets and restaurants are all on this kick to be more sustainable, natural, and organic – even fast food chains are jumping on the bandwagon. One of the chains leading the charge is Chipotle (Mexican Grill), whose self-proclaimed “F.W.I. (Food With Integrity)” philosophy drives them to buy items only from environmentally- and natural-conscious farms. However, no matter how much effort they put in behind the scenes and strive for sustainable ingredients, the end result still looks like plain ol’ fast food. This is where Fancy Fast Food comes in…

Ingredients (from Chipotle Mexican Grill):

• 1 burrito with grilled chicken, fresh tomato salsa, cheese and lettuce (no rice or beans)
• 1 condiment cup of tomatillo-red chili salsa
• 1 soft drink of your choice
• organic basil leaves (for garnish and a touch of irony)

First, unwrap the burrito, stuffed with all that Food With Integrity, and then separate the ingredients: tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and grilled chicken. Chipotle founder Steve Ells prides himself on serving food that isn’t processed, but now it’s time to get processin’…

Put the chicken in a food processor and grind it down to a paste-like substance that we can stuff into raviolis. We’ll need to make the raviolis by hand, starting by rinsing the empty tortilla. Then, using a ravioli stamp, cut out the first piece of “pasta.”

Scoop out a small amount of ground chicken and place it on top of the tortilla where you will cut out the other side. Place the first side on top and then cut through to the other side with the ravioli stamp. Pinch the edges of the ravioli closed with your fingers to seal in the chicken. (The tortilla should still be moist enough from the rinsing that it should fuse easily.)

Repeat this ravioli-making process until you have enough, or until you run out of tortilla.

To make a spicy sauce (with integrity), chop the tomatoes down to a pulp, and then add it to the tomatillo-red chili salsa and mix well. While you’re at it, chop the lettuce down into small pieces to use as a garnish.

Finally, plate your meal and make it fancy: carefully place the raviolis on a nice-looking plate, top it with the sauce you made, the chopped lettuce, and some cheese. Garnish it with ironic basil leaves and voila! It’s F.F.W.F. (Fast Food With Fanciness)!

Paella Yoshinolla (Fancy Yoshinoya) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

This Valentine’s Day, spice up your gastronomic love life with a little shichimi-togarashi (Japanese seven spice chili powder) – you can find some at the Japanese-imported fast food chain Yoshinoya! And while you’re at the The Original Beef Bowl eatery, you might as well pick up some items to tweak à la Fancy Fast Food and make a romantic-looking dinner – assuming you don’t mind giving that special someone the gift of acid reflux. (Better tell Cupid to pack the Tums.)

Ingredients (from Yoshinoya):

• 1 Beef Short Rib and Chicken Plate
• 1 Grilled Shrimp Bowl
• 1 miso soup
• 1 chicken vegetable soup
• 1 side order of steamed vegetables
• 2 condiment cups of shichimi-togarashi (seven spice chili powder)
• 2 condiment cups of beni shoga (pickled ginger)
• 2 soft drinks of your choice

For this romantic-looking dinner, we are going to be inspired not by Japan, but by Spain – the passionate and amorous country that brought us the sensuous dance of flamenco and the aphrodisiacal delicacy of paella. In fact, we are going to fake a paella from our Yoshinoya ingredients.

First, take all the rice from your bowls and plates and spread it evenly at the base of a pan. Add the broth from the soups and simmer over a low heat. Then collect all your vegetables from the bowls and plates and add those to the stewing mixture as well.

Since we don’t have the traditional coloring spice of saffron, we are going to spice things up with the colorful Japanese chili powder. Distribute it evenly so that it infuses with all the rice and broth, and stir – it will look like you are actually making a real paella (convincing enough for any request to “kiss the cook.”)

There are as many styles of paella as there are types of fillings in a box of chocolate bon-bons, and for this “yoshinolla” version we’re going to add chicken, shrimp, and chorizo. Of course we don’t actually have Spanish sausage, so we’ll have to improvise and cut the beef short ribs into sliced sausage shapes. Slice the chicken while you’re at it, and butterfly the shrimp. Chances are you’re not getting the freshest shrimp money can buy, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Transfer the rice to a proper paella pan and garnish the top with your three meats, as well as some strips of pickled ginger for an additional splash of color. Then break out the candles or turn the lights low to set the mood. Pour your beverages in fancy wine glasses and tada!: a romantic-looking Valentine’s dinner for you and your loved one. It should go without say that it’s probably not going to be the best tasting “paella” you’ve had since you faked it – and faking it in the kitchen might lead to faking it in another room in the house – so make sure you have some backup reservations somewhere…

Beef Strog ‘n Off (Fancy Steak 'n Shake)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Bill Massey

Cold winter got you down? Warm up as the Russians do – with a little old-fashioned Beef Stroganoff – before attempting to make this fake, albeit fancy version of it.

Ingredients:

• 2 Grilled Portobello 'n Mushroom Steakburgers
• 1 Classic Vanilla Milk Shake
• 1 side order of onion rings
• 1 side order of cottage cheese
• organic dill weed (for garnish and a touch of irony)

First, remove all the mushrooms and onions from the steakburgers. Since we have a side of onion rings, we might as well debread those and add those to the pile as well. Take them all and start stir frying them up on a skillet. Next, take the beef patties and chop them into smaller bite-sized pieces. Add those to the skillet as well.

Stroganoff is traditionally made with sour cream, but due to the lack of that one important ingredient, we are going to improvise. It’s Steak 'n Shake after all, and we’ve already added the steak to the skillet – so why not add the shake? It sort of looks like sour cream, and if you didn’t already figure it out, this site is all about the looks, folks. The melted ice cream is obviously not sour, which is why cottage cheese should be added to the mix as well. Mush and smooth out the cottage cheese curds, and let the whole thing simmer on a low heat.

To make the noodles, let’s start by converting the buns back into dough: break apart pieces of the bread and put them in a food processor. Add a little shake or cottage cheese whey to give it a little liquid, and then blend. You now have a wad of dough that you can knead, fold, roll, and run through a pasta maker with the fettuccine attachment.

Put your freshly made pasta in the center of a fancy bowl, and then mix in your beef Strog 'n Off concoction. Garnish with ironic dill and serve – hopefully your stomach will be “strong enough.” Chances are this dish will not exactly sit well with you on a cold winter day, which is why you could also just do another thing the Russians do, and get yourself a shot of vodka. Na zdorovia!

Honey Apple Glazed Christmas Holiday Ham(-burger)
(Fancy BK Quad Stackers & Croissan'wiches)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Jarrod Spillers

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except for the Fancy Fast Food Chef stirring apple filling and honey mustard in a saucepan for a traditional Christmas dish!

We are talking about the traditional holiday ham, the centerpiece at many a Christmas dinner, which is unfortunately an item that fast food restaurants don’t sell (the whole ham anyway), so we’ll have to get creative as usual. First let’s make a list and check it twice, and find out which ingredients are naughty or nice:

Ingredients (from Burger King):

• 8 BK Quad Stackers
• 3 Double Croissan'wiches (each with double ham and no cheese)
• 1 BK Kids Meal (with Burger Shots and a FurReal Friends toy)
• 3 Dutch Apple Pies
• 3 juiceboxes of apple juice
• 1 Garden Salad (with honey mustard dressing)

First, marvel at the fact that you just purchased eight BK Quad Stackers. Do the math: 8 x 4 = 32 patties of greasy goodness. Stack them high – it’s like Jenga, but with meat!

The stack is obviously too big and tall to put in a food processor all at once, so cut it all down into smaller pieces. Then put some chunks of all the beef, bacon and cheese in a food processor, and push the magic button. Repeat this process until all the meat is ground up, and collect it all in a big mixing bowl.

You now have a wad of meat and filler that you can mold into whatever you want – a meatloaf, a snowman, a life-sized figure of Baby Jesus if you want – but we will remain focused and mold it into a ham. Once you have the ham shape, score the back in a diagonal grid as cooks often do with real hams. To continue the façade of an actual baked ham, sear the outside with a kitchen torch.

What you have now almost looks like a ham, so start slicing it like one. It should be no surprise that once the knife carves out the first slice, there is no ham inside. This is where breakfast comes in.

Take all the ham out of your Croissan'wiches and fit slices over the side of your wad of meat. Use toothpicks to keep them from falling, then pinch the edges so the meat wad and ham slice look seamless. Place the additional slices of ham in front of your creation and pretend that it was all carved from the same place. If you can believe in Santa Claus, you can believe this.

The final touch is the glaze. Bring all the apple juice to a boil in a non-stick skillet and start to reduce it down. Add in the apple filling from the pies, and then the packet of honey mustard from the salad. Stir it on the night before Christmas, or whenever it’s convenient for you. Once it’s all blended together, brush the glaze over your mock ham.

Finally, the plating: place your ham-like creation on top of a bed of lettuce on a fancy white platter. Garnish the sides with tomatoes, carrots, and more honey apple glaze. Look at it with awe; it’s a Christmas miracle!

To go a step even further, take your BK Kids Meal FurReal Friends toy and make it into an ornament. Roll a straw wrapper into string and loop it around the doll. Looks great on a tree!

Now have a Merry Christmas and a Fancy New Year!

Bubbe Wendy’s Hanukkah Latkes (Fancy Wendy’s Hash Browns)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Lilit Marcus of Jewcy and Save The Assistants

Hey everybody, it’s Hanukkah! It’s Chanuka! No matter how you spell it, it’s time for the Jewish festival of lights – eight crazy nights of dreidels gone wild, a time when latkes are as abundant as old yentas around a mahjongg table. But you don’t need to be Jewish to partake in Hanukkah traditions, particularly the gastronomic treat of latkes (or lattkes). No matter how you spell it, “latkes” is Yiddish for fried pancakes, typically of the potato variety – making it oddly similar to McDonald’s hash browns. However, Bubbe Wendy has guilted us into using her Fancy Fast Food recipe (“If you just want to use McDonald’s hash browns, then I guess that’s fine by me…”), so here goes. Oy…

Ingredients (from Wendy’s):

• 8 orders of hash browns (for the eight nights of Hannukah)
• 2 baked potatoes (with packets of sour cream and “Buttery-Best Spread”)
• 2 orders of mandarin oranges
• 1 small soft drink
• 1 bottle of water
• packets of Sweet & Sour Sauce
• packets of sugar
• packets of salt and pepper
• a pinch of Jewish guilt (may be substituted with Catholic guilt)
• organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Latkes are traditionally served with apple sauce or sour cream. We already have the latter, so we’re going to have to make the apple sauce. Unfortunately, Wendy’s sells no apple products whatsoever, so we’ll have to get creative.

What are apples? They are a kind of fruit that are sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and so naturally we will start with Sweet & Sour Sauce. To add a fruity pulp to it, we’ll add the mandarin oranges – but that’s fine; Bubbe Wendy moved down to Boca.

Put the manadrin oranges in a food processor and purée them, then strain out the extraneous juice. Mix this pulp in a bowl with the Sweet & Sour Sauce. The color is a bit intense to look like real apple sauce, so scoop out some baked potato (minus any chives) and mix it in – the French call potatoes “pommes de terre” (apples of earth) so we’ll go with it. Mush and whisk it all until it sort of looks like apple sauce; add sugar until it’s as sweet.

Next, the latkes themselves. Take all the mini hash brown nuggets and mush them with your hands. Touching them, you’ll realize they are all too greasy for things to stick together, so we’ll need to make a batter to work as a binding agent.

Put one baked potato, minus the skin, into a food processor and add about a quarter cup of water. Hit purée and voilà: batter! Add this potato batter to your pile of hash browns and mix thoroughly in a bowl. Add salt and pepper as desired.

In a large non-stick skillet, melt a few packets of Wendy’s “Buttery-Best Spread;” there’s enough oil in it for a fry-up. Slice the top of your beverage’s paper cup and use it as a guide when forming the batter into pancakes in the skillet. Fry each evenly on both sides until it becomes crispy and golden brown. Argue with Bubbe Wendy that they do in fact, resemble McDonald’s hash browns now – but let her win the argument; she’ll try and make you feel guilty for never calling her anyway.

You are ready to serve the Hannukah latkes, but wait! You can use your fancy kitchen tools in continued preparation for the holiday: use a fondue fork to clean out the old waxy build-up in your menorah; use a kitchen torch to light the new candles.

Garnish the latkes with organic chives (for that extra touch of irony), and then have a Happy Hannukah, courtesy of Bubbe Wendy and Fancy Fast Food! Now spin those dreidels until we figure out what we’re going to do for Christmas…

Seared Pollock Cake with Southwest Ramalan Sauce (Fancy Filet-O-Fish)
by Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur

Since BurgerBusiness and Eat Me Daily broke the news about McDonald’s Portugal having a similar “fancy” promo contest – as well as McDonald’s Australia (which FFF creator Erik Trinidad recently brought up in a segment on Australia’s Weekend Today morning show) – we here at Fancy Fast Food have continued to encourage our readers to submit their own recipes and photos of fast food fancifications. Here’s the latest contribution from guest chefs Devon Knight and Jason Isch of Cornerstore Restaurateur, in their words:

Ingredients:

• 1 Filet-O-Fish sandwich
• 1 Premium Southwest Salad (with packet of Newman’s Own Southwest Restaurant Dressing)
• 1 medium soft drink
• packets of salt and pepper

Carefully free that little “Alaskan Pollock and/or Hoki” (from Wikipedia) fish filet from its buns. Remove all tartar sauce from the fish and buns, and set it aside. Toast the top half of the bun and set that aside.

Carefully cut the breading off of the fish – but don’t throw the breading out, since we’re going to use it later. Take some time to absorb the fact that yes, McDonald’s does indeed use real fish for their Filet-O-Fish. After star-gazing a while at your quaint fish square, delicately flake the fish apart and place it in a bowl.

Grab that salad and get to dissecting; we’re going to take out the tomatoes, scallions, and a small amount of corn and throw them in the bowl with the flaked fish. GO GREEN! Do yourself a favor and eat some of those greens left behind by your salad dissection.

Take your warm, toned, toasted bun and grind it up in a food processor until it is the consistency of, well, bread crumbs (funny how that works out). Place the bread crumbs in the fish bowl along with a packet of salt and about a half a packet of pepper. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl until it is a sticky, fishy goop. Cut off the bottom of your (empty) soda cup to form a mold for the fish cake, and then put your goop in to mold it.

Take your packet of Southwest salad dressing and strain it into a frying pan over low heat; we want to warm it, not cook it. Take the discarded fish breading and rub it on the bottom of a separate frying pan. The grease from the breading will give you just enough oily coating to sear the fish cake – yummy. Heat the pan until grease is gently smoking, then flip the cake mold over the hot pan and sear the fish cake on both sides.

Finally, the plating: pour the warm salad dressing into a dish and daintily place your fish cake on top. Garnish your little fish puck with some of the contents of your salad.

Franksgiving Dinner (Fancy Nathan’s, Take Two) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (using some of his techniques as featured in the November 2009 Wired article by Erica Westly)

Ingredients:

• 1 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog (with chili)
• 1 Corn Dog on a Stick
• 1 order of Crinkle-Cut French Fries
• 1 small fruit punch
• organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

This Thanksgiving, we could have easily gone to Boston Market for a quick, traditional American Thanksgiving meal, but where’s the fun in that?

To get started, use a kitchen torch to sear one side of your corn dog so that it has a few burn marks – not too much, just enough to give the exterior an appearance of being roasted. Then flip the corn dog over and cut an incision so that you can extract about two-thirds of the interior hot dog. With that solid mass removed, you can easily mold the remaining cornbread batter into a shape that resembles that of a turkey leg.

Next, remove the hot dog from its bun, leaving the chili. Scoop the chili into a skillet, and then chop the remaining bun into small pieces. Mix the bun pieces in with the chili – crushing the beans in the process – until it’s blended and looks like stuffing. To make the mashed potatoes, simply stick some fries in a food processor and blend. (Nathan’s fries are inherently moist, so there’s no need to add water.)

To make some faux cranberry sauce, bring the fruit punch to a boil in a non-stick pan until it’s reduced down to a thick red syrup. Toss in some bread pieces to soak up the syrup and make a chunky paste of fruity flavor.

Finally, the plating: place your “turkey leg” and all the sides on a welcoming round plate; garnish the potatoes with organic chives for that extra touch of irony. Now give thanks, and have a Happy Franksgiving!

Chicken with Pineapple Mango Salsa, with Beef & Mushroom Risotto
(Fancy Jollibee)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with assistance from Slim

Ingredients:

• 1 two-piece Chickenjoy meal (with rice and gravy)
• 1 Amazing Aloha Burger
• 1 Burger Steak (with rice and mushroom gravy)
• 1 Pandesal with Corned Beef
• 1 Peach Mango Pie
• 1 soft drink of your choice
• organic Italian parsley (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Canada’s Tim Hortons was the first non-American fast food chain import to be fancified on this food humor blog. This time we go to the Philippines’ big fast food chain Jollibee, with several American locations in New York, Las Vegas and California.

First, skin the breading off the two pieces of fried Chickenjoy, and then cut the meat off the bones into pieces as big as you can get them. (The thigh and drumstick should yield one big piece each.) Next, take the slice of pineapple out of the Amazing Aloha Burger and chop it into small chunks. Chop the lettuce from the burger as well. Slice the Peach Mango Pie laterally to expose the inside, and then scoop out its filling. Mix the three ingredients in a bowl to make the pineapple mango salsa.

Pour the gravy from the Chickenjoy into a skillet, and then add the gravy and mushrooms from the Burger Steak, along with the rice. To make things meatier, add the corned beef hash from the pandesal roll, and then mix it all up under a low heat.

And now, the plating: place the two pieces of chicken next to each other on a fancy white plate, and then top it with the pineapple mango salsa. On the side, place down some beef & mushroom risotto, and garnish with some ironic parsley. Serve the soft drink in a wine glass, of course. And there you have it: chicken, fruit, gravy, mushrooms, rice, luncheon meat and all! It’s a Filipino taste explosion! Masarap!

READ MORE: Fancy Fast Food creator Erik R. Trinidad’s experience in the Philippines

Carlbonade Flamande (Fancy Carl’s Jr.)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Chrissy M. and Kelly B., plus Julie L. of Carl’s Jr. (Las Vegas)

Ingredients:

• 2 Six Dollar Burgers
• 1 order of fried zucchini
• 1 order of onion rings
• 1 large root beer
• organic thyme (for garnish and a touch of irony)

First, take the beef patties and onions from the burgers, and add them to rest of the ingredients you’ll be using: the zucchini and the onion rings. Slice the burger into smaller morsels, and take the breading off the fried onion rings. Put the combined onions in a skillet, followed by the Angus beef.

The original recipe that has inspired this one is a Flemish stew from Belgium that uses beer as the base. So, add the root beer to the pan. Let it boil, then simmer for a while so the beer really starts to breakdown and infuse with the meat.

Meanwhile, steam the fried zucchini so that the fried batter loosens up, then expose the green vegetables inside. Use these zucchini slices as garnish when you do the plating: pile your beef and (root) beer carbonade in the center of the white plate, and garnish it on top with a sprig of ironic thyme. Voila! Wonder what Carl would think of this…

Del Spaghetti Arrabbiata (Fancy Del Taco)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Chrissy M. and Kelly B.

Ingredients:

• 1 Del Classic Chicken Burrito
• 1 order of jalapeño rings
• 1 cup of water
• packets of assorted hot sauces
• packets of ketchup
• organic basil leaves (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Here’s a Fancy Fast Food dish that’s fairly simple to make, provided you just so happen to have a handcrank pasta maker around. First, unwrap the burrito and empty the filling. No need to separate the ingredients inside because you are just going take it all and put it in a saucepan with a little bit of water, and place it over a medium heat. Next, add plenty of ketchup and hot sauce from the packets. Del Taco hot sauces come in Mild, Del Inferno, and Del Scorcho; you may use what suits your taste – but keep in mind that “arrabiata” sauce, derived the Italian word for “angry,” was meant to be spicy. To make it even hotter than Scorcho, you can slice up some jalapeño rings, chop them, and add them to the mix. Let the sauce simmer for a while, stirring occasionally.

To make the pasta, rinse the tortilla and then cut the sides off so it has the width of your pasta maker. Crank the tortilla through the pasta cutter’s spaghetti attachment; making Italian spaghetti from Mexican ingredients couldn’t be easier! Pile the resulting pasta on the center of a fancy white plate, and then add the arrabbiata sauce on top. Garnish with ironic basil leaves and presto! Just because you make fast food fancy doesn’t mean you have to skimp on spice!

Beef Wellington, Animal Style (Fancy In-N-Out Burger)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Chrissy M. and Kelly B.

Ingredients:

• 3 In-N-Out Hamburgers, Animal Style
• 1 order of French Fries
• 1 cup of fountain water
• salt and pepper packets
• a sprig of organic thyme (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Ordering a burger “Animal Style” may not be such a secret, but psst… did you know you can make Beef Wellington out of In-N-Out Burger items? First, take the buns from the three burgers, scrape off all the Animal sauces and toppings, and put them in a food processor. Add a litle bit of water and blend until it becomes a smooth, doughy mush. Using a rubber spatula, spread the mixture onto a large non-stick baking sheet; spread it evenly on the entire sheet. Then put it in a pre-heated oven at 400°F for 5-10 minutes, depending on how moist it is. You’ll know it’s done when it starts to develop a light, flaky crust.

Meanwhile, take all your Animal Style toppings (the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, sauce, and onions), plus a little salt and pepper to taste, and chop them all together into a chunky, delicious spread. When the flaky crust is done, let it cool for a bit so it’s easy to lift off the pan with a spatula. (Don’t take the crust off the pan yet; just test it.) Use a rubber spatula to evenly distribute a layer of the Animal Style Spread over the crust.

Cut the burger patties into smaller chunks and put them in a food processor. Blend until it’s a consistent ground beef. Using your hands, mold the beef into a small meatloaf in the shape of a nice cut of beef tenderloin, and place it in the center of the baking sheet. Then carefully wrap the loaf with the crust by folding over all sides until it’s completely covered.

Finally, the plating: slice the crusted loaf into serving portions; use two per plate. Mash some potatoes by blending fries in a food processor with a little water, and serve those on the side. Garnish with an ironic sprig of thyme. Tada! Beef Wellington, Animal Style! We’ll keep the secret, if you can…

Chick-sat-A (Fancy Chick-fil-A) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Cheryl T.

Ingredients:

• 1 order of four Chick-n-Strips
• 1 order of Waffle Potato Fries
• 1 Carrot & Raisin Salad
• 1 Walnut Fudge Brownie
• 1 soft drink of your choice
• packets of various Chick-fil-A dipping sauces
• an organic banana leaf (for presentation and a touch of irony)

Here’s a little treat that fuses Southeast Asia with a Southeast American-based fast food chain. First, debread all the Chick-n-Strips to expose the pieces of real chicken breast inside. Rinse the pieces in a colander, and then cut them down into eight smaller pieces.

To get the grill marks, you may fire up an actual hibachi or George Foreman grill, but you can also just fake the grill marks – just like many fast food chains do anyway. Take each morsel of chicken and carve two grooves in each of the sides; these will help define the grill marks when you take a kitchen torch and burn in the dark lines. Afterwards, let the chicken cool down before skewing them with bamboo skewers.

Next, the sauce. Satay is typically served with a peanut sauce, but with the lack of peanuts at Chick-fil-A, we are going to improvise and use walnuts from the Walnut Fudge Brownie. Pick all of them off, and then finely chop them. Blend various dipping sauces into a mixing cup (the darker the better) and then mix in the chopped walnuts. Pour the resulting satay sauce in a small fancy bowl.

Finally, the assembly: cut the banana leaf down to the size and shape of a fancy platter, and then place it down. On top, place the satay sauce and the chicken skewers. Garnish with a Waffle Potato Fry and some Carrot & Raisin Salad, and serve with your beverage in a nice glass. And there you have it! Southeast Asia meets Southeast America in this chicken dish that will sure make you – and the cows – happy.

Penne Grande (Fancy TacoTime)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Sean Keaner of BootsnAll.com

Ingredients:

• 1 dozen (or more) Original Crisp Burritos (with chicken)
• 1 Casita Burrito
• packets of various TacoTime hot sauces
• organic parsley (for garnish and a touch of irony)

So as long as this blog changes the perception of fast food, we might as well play with the perception of scale (at least this time around, since we’ve misjudged the actual size of TacoTime’s Original Crisp Burritos).

First, diagonally cut each of the Crisp Burritos on both ends, so it resembles the shape of piece of penne pasta. Then, using a chopstick, empty out the chicken filling, saving it for the sauce. Repeat for each of the burritos until all of your “penne grande” is hollowed out. Place the big faux pasta on a big fancy white platter.

Empty the packets of hot sauce – more red ones than green – into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Afterwards, add some of the chicken filling, tomatoes and sour cream from the Casita Burrito. Stir together under a low heat.

Finally, the assembly: spoon the sauce over the penne grande, and then garnish with a big piece of ironic parsley. (When you take a photo, it almost looks like normal-sized pasta, until you put a fork in the picture.) Presto! A dish that makes you wonder: with penne this big, how come they don’t have TacoTimes in Texas?

Chicken Mole Frostano (Fancy Spicy Chicken Sandwich & Frosty)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, by suggestion of Ray Vazquez (and as seen on ABC’s Nightline)

Ingredients:

• 1 Spicy Chicken Sandwich
• 1 small chili
• 1 Chocolate Fudge Frosty Shake
• packets of hot sauce and ketchup
• organic mexican cilantro (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Disassemble the Spicy Chicken Sandwich into its elements, saving the lettuce and tomato for garnish. Skin the chicken breast filet, but save some of the spicy breading. Grind the breading down to a powder in a food processor; you will use it as a spice for the sauce later.

While the word mole (rhymes with “olay,” not “bowl”) is merely Mexican Spanish for “sauce” or “concoction,” it has come to be associated with the classic chocolate-based spicy sauce from the Mexican state of Puebla. We will start by using a tomato base from the chili. Using a strainer or a rubber spatula to hold back the solid ingredients from the chili container, pour tomato sauce into a small saucepan. For the chocolate flavor, add about six tablespoons of the Chocolate Fudge Frosty into the mix. Add a few pinches of your pulverized breading spice, then add Hot Chili seasoning sauce and/or ketchup to your liking. Mix it all up under a medium heat, then let it simmer so all the contrasting flavors get fused together.

Take the lettuce from the sandwich – whether it is limp or crispy – and place it in the center of a fancy white plate. Place the skinned chicken breast on top of this bed of lettuce, then generously spoon your mole frostano sauce on top. Garnish this with chopped tomato (from the sandwich), and some chopped Mexican cilantro – the certified organic kind, if you want to add that extra touch of irony. Serve and enjoy! ¡Olé!

Jack in the Bento (Fancy Jack in the Box)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Noelle R.

Ingredients:

• 1 Chipotle Chicken Ciabatta with Spicy Cripsy Chicken
• 1 Steak Teriyaki Bowl
• 1 side salad
• 1 large Coke

This Japanese adaptation of American fast food items calls for Coke reduction, so get that started first by pouring about half of the large Coke in a non-stick skillet and evaporating out the water. Then disassemble your items to get the separated ingredients you need: ciabatta bread, steak pieces, a chicken cutlet, rice, broccoli, lettuce, carrots, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes. You will not be using the bacon found in the sandwich, so you may go ahead and just pop that deliciousness in your mouth.

Rinse the rice in a colander and then dry it out with some paper towels. Let it sit out and get sticky for a bit while you prepare the “nori sheets”: thinly slice pieces of the ciabatta bread, and then dye it dark in the syrupy Coke reduction when it’s ready. Let them cool so that you can handle them, but don’t let them completely cool and dry out. When it’s okay to touch, place the darker side down, and top it with rice. Roll it as best you can, then cut off the ends to even it out. Slice some cucumber and insert a piece in the center of the maki roll piece, along with a strand of carrot. Do this at least two more times for more pieces of sushi.

Dice down the steak pieces until it almost becomes a paste. Then place it in the skillet with the remaining Coke and bring to a boil. You’ll want this concoction to be the thickness of a katsu curry sauce, so add torn pieces of bread as needed to dissolve and give the sauce some density. Stir it until everything become consistent.

Cut your spicy chicken cutlet into pieces about ¾ inches wide. (Amazing that it looks like chicken katsu already, just by doing that.) Finally, the assembly: in a bento box, place the rice in one compartment, pat it down, and garnish with a cherry tomato in the center; place the makeshift maki rolls in another compartment; pour a layer of “curry” sauce in the main compartment, then top it off with the chicken katsu and a garnish of broccoli; and place the lettuce and the remaining carrots in the salad compartment. For an extra touch, take some squishy broccoli and mush it with your fingers into a ball so that it looks like a wad of wasabi paste. And there you have it: the answer to the age old Japanese question, “Can Jack in the Box become fancy by replacing the box for a bento?” Hai!

Whataroulade (Fancy Whataburger)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with support from Stephanie E. and suggestions by Sarah D.

Ingredients:

• 1 Whataburger Triple Meat & Triple Cheese, plus add bacon
• 1 medium fries
• 1 medium soft drink (with ice)
• 1 side order of sausage gravy (available between 11pm and 11am)
• 2 whole jalapeño peppers
• packets of fancy ketchup
• organic thyme (for garnish and a touch of irony)

This fancy heartstopper requires water from melted ice, so make sure you’ve got a full cup. Drain out (or sip away) the soft drink and let the ice sit out and melt while you prepare the other items. As always, first start by disassembling the burger to get the ingredients you will use: three burger patties, slices of bacon, and all the other veggie toppings. There’s no need to separate out the tomatoes from the lettuce and onions; simply chop them all together for they will collectively be a part of the filling.

Next, steam the burger patties so they become moist and pliable, and then place them in a row on a sheet of plastic wrap with each one overlapping the previous, like three fallen rounded dominoes made of beef. Top the meat with your chopped vegetables, and then the slices of bacon (the long way). Cut the stems off of the two jalapeños and place them in the middle of the bottom-most burger patty.

Using the plastic wrap to hold things together, slowly start rolling your row of burgers and filling. (The jalapeños that will eventually be in the center, help maintain the roulade’s shape.) As your roll it, keep the plastic wrap from getting caught within the roll, otherwise everything will come apart when you take it away. When you’re done rolling everything, you should have a cylinder of food; if it’s not cylindrical, continue to roll and tighten it by holding onto the plastic wrap ends. Then, to really retain the shape of the roulade, wrap everything in aluminium foil, and let it cool down and harden in the refrigerator or freezer. (You’ll know it’s ready when you touch it and it’s slightly chilled.)

Remove the roulade from the aluminium and plastic, and then carefully slice it into pieces to serve. For the side, make a potato purée by blending fries and melted ice in a food processor. For the sauce, mix some sausage gravy with some fancy ketchup. Finally, assemble it all: place slices of the Whataroulade in the center of a fancy white plate. Place some potatoes on one side; garnish with some slices of jalapeño on the other. Drizzle the meat with the sauce and garnish with ironic thyme. And voila! Who says Texans can’t be fancy?

Whop Perguignon (Fancy Whopper & Steakhouse Burger) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, as seen on Australia’s Weekend Today show

Ingredients:

• 1 BK Combo Meal: Whopper with added bacon and mushrooms (have it your way), onion rings, and a bottle of “XXX” Vitaminwater
• 1 BK Combo Meal: Mushroom Swiss Steakhouse Burger , french fries, and a bottle of “XXX” Vitaminwater
• 1 Garden Salad
• 1 bottle of water
• packets of salt, pepper, and ketchup
• organic parsley (for garnish and a touch of irony)

This recipe is a “slight variation” of Julia Child’s classic Boeuf Bourguignon recipe. First, disassemble the burgers to extract the ingredients we’ll need: bacon, onions, mushrooms, the burger patties, and the buns. Using a paper towel, dry off any oil, ketchup, or mayonnaise from the buns, and then toast them in a toaster (or toaster oven or conventional oven) until they become hard and crusty. Once cool to the touch, grate the bread down into breadcrumbs. (This will be used later on.)

Next, cut the beef patties into uneven square shapes, and then slice the bacon into “lardoons” about a quarter-inch-wide and an inch-and-a-half long. Sauté these small strips of bacon in a saucepan for a bit, and then add in the beef. Sauté the meats together until they start to sizzle, and then pour in about two-thirds of a bottle of the burgundy-colored Vitaminwater. Once the beef has been moistened, take each piece with a pair of kitchen tongs and bread it in the breadcrumbs you made earlier. (This will help thicken the sauce, and make the burger squares look more natural.) Add in the baby carrots from the Garden Salad, a packet of ketcup, salt and pepper to taste, and stir. Then cover the saucepan and let it all stew for at least twenty minutes under a low heat.

Meanwhile, use a paring knife to peel the breading off of the onion rings. Add the oniony pieces to the mix of the other onion forms and the mushrooms, and rinse them all in a colander. Then sauté these mushrooms and onions in a small skillet. Finally, put the french fries in a food processor with 1/3 cup of water, and blend until it becomes a mashed potato-like substance.

And now the assembly: place morsels of your beef stew on a fancy white plate. Top it with the sautéed onions and mushrooms, and garnish with chopped organic parsley. Put some mashed potatoes on the side, and then pour some gravy from the saucepan over the meat and potatoes. Serve Vitaminwater in a wine glass. And voila! A Julia Child-inspired beef stew fit for a King! (It’s not so hard, Julie.)

Chocolate Mousse & Quenelles Vanille (Fancy Mister Softee)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food with Chrissy a.k.a. “Miss Softee”

Ingredients (from a Mister Softee truck):

• chocolate soft ice cream
• chocolate syrup
• waffle cone
• whipped cream
• chocolate sprinkles/jimmies/shots
• vanilla soft ice cream
• strawberry topping
• organic mint leaves (for garnish and a touch of irony)

For an end-of-summer treat, you can make your Mister Softee fancy! To make the chocolate mousse, first put some chocolate ice cream in a mixing bowl and add plenty of chocolate syrup. (Adding anything thinner than syrup will turn the soft ice cream into a milkshake.) Whisk it until it has the texture of a mousse, then pour it into a fancy martini glass. Garnish the top with a swirl or drizzle of chocolate syrup, followed by some whipped cream, a piece of a waffle cone, chocolate sprinkles (or “jimmies” or “shots,” depending on what you call them in your region), and some organic mint leaves (for that touch of irony).

Onto the quenelles vanille: put some vanilla ice cream in a mixing bowl, then shape it into a quenelle with two spoons. Put some strawberry topping in the center of a fancy white plate (they come in plastic too), and add the quenelle on top. Garnish with chocolate syrup and some ironic mint leaves. Voila! Now serve it to people on the street – even FDNY firemen – courtesy of Monsieur Softée!

You can follow Miss Softee at twitter.com/miss_softee.

Fancy Fast Food video by Sarah Lohman:

Five Dollar Farfalle (Fancy $5 Footlong) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food
(as seen in the syndicated news article by The Associated Press)

Ingredients:

• 1 Subway $5 Footlong (Oven Roasted Chicken Breast on Italian bread with double tomatoes, olives, green peppers, and onions)
• 1 bottle of water
• organic basil or parsley leaves (for garnish and a touch of irony)

After disassembling your sandwich down to its ingredients, break some pieces of bread into a food processor. Add about a ¼ cup of water, and then blend it down until it turns back into a doughy substance. We are going to mold this dough into bowtie shapes, but it will most likely be too moist and sticky to play with. Dry it out by placing the wad on a non-stick baking pan and baking it for 10-15 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 350° F.

While that’s drying, chop your tomatoes down into a chunky pulp, and start stewing them in a small pot with some water. Chop the rest of your vegetables, and then add them to the pot. Let all the ingredients of the marinara sauce simmer for a bit before slicing some chicken and adding that to the mix as well.

The wad of dough should be dry but still moldable by this time. Let it cool to room temperature before rolling a small piece of it flat with a rolling pin. Then, using a 2" x 2" ravioli stamp, cut out a serrated square. Pinch the center of the square until it looks like a bowtie. Repeat this process until you have enough farfalle for your dish.

Place all of your fancy-looking farfalle pasta in the center of a fancy white plate, then top it off with the chicken marinara sauce. Garnish with organic basil or parsley and serve the rest of the water in a wine glass. Presto! How do you like that, Jared?

Tiramisu di Timio (Fancy Tim Hortons) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 1 dozen Canadian Maple Donuts
• 1 small box of Chocolate Glazed Timbits
• 1 large coffee

First, slice a few of the Timbits in half, like they are cherry tomatoes. Then, place them flat-side down on a non-stick baking sheet. Put them in a pre-heated oven at 400°F for about 15-20 minutes until they start to get hard.

While that’s going, shuck the Canadian Maple Donuts like they are oysters, and extract their creamy fillings into a bowl. You now have a pile of empty donut “shells;” cut them down into rectangular “lady finger” shapes.

Pour some of Timmy Ho’s (Timio’s) coffee into a bowl and then, dip each lady finger in it; make it moist enough to mold, but not fall apart. With each moistened lady finger, build a layer of cake in a mini-bread pan. The next layer of the tiramisu is the cream, so add a layer of that on top of the lady fingers, and then flatten it down before adding another layer of coffee-infused lady fingers and one more layer of cream. When that’s done, let it chill in the refrigerator for a while. (You may speed up the chilling process by using a freezer.)

Once chilled, take the soon-to-be-fancy dessert out of the pan, cut it into smaller servings to your liking, and place each on a fancy white plate. Garnish the top by grating the hardened Chocolate Glazed Timbits into a thin layer of powder, and serve with coffee. And presto! An Italian dessert by a hockey player! It’s sort of like Canada meets Italy, eh?

Le Chicken McConfit (Fancy Chicken McNuggets) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (as seen on Citysearch’s The Feedbag)

Ingredients:

• 1 ten-piece order of Chicken McNuggets
• 1 large French fries
• 1 medium Coke
• 1 Fruit & Walnut Salad
• 1 Barbecue sauce
• 1 Hot Mustard sauce
• 1 Sweet ‘N Sour sauce
• 2 bottles of water
• organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

By definition, a confit is prepared when a meat is slow-cooked in its own fat. For this Fancy Fast Food recipe, we will consider the fattiest part of the McNugget to be its breading. So after sorting out your ingredients, skin the McNuggets with a knife until you have a pile of McNugget skins. Put the McSkins in a food processor with about half a bottle of water, and blend it down to a fatty-looking mush. Pour the McMush into a non-stick skillet, add some more water, and bring it to a boil. Once it is bubbling, simmer it down and place the McNugget meat in the skillet. Cover and let it stew for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, clean out your food processor and then add the fries. Blend it down, adding water as needed, until it all becomes a soft potato purée. Then take some apple pieces from the Fruit & Walnut Salad and slice them into thinner slices with a knife. By the time you’re done with that, the McConfit should be ready. Take the McMeat morsels and let them cool. Finally, mix the three sauces in a measuring cup and stir until it has a consistent color.

Now, the assembly: put the potato purée in the center of a fancy white plate, then top it with a layer of apple slices. Butterfly cut your McNuggets-turned-McConfit pieces and then place them on top of the apple slices. Drizzle the sauce around the plate, and then garnish with some chopped walnuts. Top it off with some slices of organic chives, and serve your soft drink in a wine glass. It’s McNifique!

Fondue du Sept-Onze (Fancy 7-Eleven) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

While 7-Eleven is a convenience store that has groceries available, we are going to limit ourselves to using only their classic, branded fast food items for the ingredients:

• 1 pack of 7-Eleven White Corn Nachos with melted cheese (make sure you pour as much cheese as you can on the bottom of the plastic container, then put the nacho chips on top)
• 2 7-Eleven ¼-Pound Big Bite Hot Dogs
• 1 Big Gulp with ¾ 7-Up, ¼ Coke (mix it up so it looks like a white wine)
• 1 bottle of 7-Select Spring Water

Remove the nacho chips from the plastic container to separate the chips and cheese. Carefully pour out the cheese into a ceramic fondue bowl. Then, over a fondue set-approved fire (like one that uses Swiss gel fuel), stir in a little water to thin out the mixture, and let it simmer.

Next, place the nacho chips in a steamer and let them soften up. Meanwhile, slice your two hot dogs two ways: one should be cut diagonally into long slices; the other should be cut into thirds, then into halves, and then into halves again. Take each piece and wrap a softened nacho chip round it, and fasten it with a toothpick. Place your “sausage” hors d'oeuvres on a fancy white plate.

Cut the hot dog buns into bite-sized squares, and place them in a fancy bowl. Pour your Big Gulp soft drink mixture into wine glasses, and serve them along side the sausage, bread bowl, and fondue pot. Unexpected guests showing up for a soirée at your house? Oh, thank heaven that you can make fondue from 7-Eleven!

Nathan’s Not-So-Famous Faux Foie Gras (Fancy Nathan’s Hot Dogs)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food, with suggestion from Brokelyn

Ingredients:

• 6 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs (2 with sauerkraut, 2 with pickle relish, 2 with onions in sauce)
• 1 medium or large lemonade
• packets of mustard
• 1 sprig of organic rosemary (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Remove the condiments off the hot dogs and separate all the ingredients onto small plates. Pull apart the buns to separate the tops from the bottoms. Using a knife, trim the crust off the sides, then cut each subsequent strip of bread into thirds. Finally, round the corners of your bread pieces and flatten the lopsided ones with your hand. Place all the “petits toasts” onto a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 350° F for 3-10 minutes (depending on your preference of crustiness).

Next, place all the hot dogs into a food processor, and blend it down until it becomes a pâté. On another baking sheet, mold two scoops of this minced meat into loaf-slice shapes or circles, and then brown the sides with a kitchen torch so it doesn’t look too much like it just came out of a can of Spam. Using a spatula, transfer the slices of faux fois gras to your serving platter, and garnish it with green relish and the sprig of organic rosemary.

The petits toasts should be ready by now, so let them cool down before you spread the remaining pâté on top of each of them. For some of them, garnish the top with a dollop of mustard, using a cake-decorating bag and star-shaped metal tip. The rest you can garnish to your liking, using the other condiments: the sauerkraut, the onions, and the relish. Place all the hors d'oeuvres on the platter with the faux foie gras, and serve with lemonade in champagne flutes. Voilà! Now serve these at a fancy dinner party and intellectually discuss how many of these Joey Chestnut or Kobayashi could scarf down.

Boston Krème Brûlée & Fruit Tart (Fancy Dunkin’ Donuts) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 8 Boston Kreme donuts
• 3 Strawberry-Filled donuts
• 1 Vanilla Kreme donut
• 1 bottle of water
• 1 cappuccino
• packets of sugar
• organic mint leaves (for garnish and a touch of irony)

Using a bread knife, cut open each of the dozen donuts to expose its filling. Scoop out all of the custard filling from the Boston Kreme donuts into a fancy ramekin. Then, even off the top and let it chill in the refrigerator for a while.

Time to make the fruit tart… Place some donut halves into a food processor and add about two capfuls of the bottled water for every two full donuts. Blend it all down until it becomes a doughy paste. Mold the dough into a mini tart/quiche pan, then bake in a pre-heated oven for ten minutes at 425° F. After it cools down to room temperature, scoop out all the strawberry filling from the Strawberry-Filled donuts onto the tart crust. Top it off with a dollop of vanilla cream from the Vanilla Kreme donut.

Once the ramekin of custard is chilled, sprinkle a layer of sugar on top. Then, using a kitchen torch — man, they are awesome — carmelize the sugar until it becomes a brown shell. Garnish it with the organic mint leaves, and voilà! With the fancy fruit tart and the cappuccino served in a fancy cup, now America runs on crème brûlée! Ouais!

Wendy’s Napoleon (Fancy Baconator Combo) by Adrian Fiorino of Insanewiches.com

Ingredients:

• 1 Wendy’s Baconator
• 1 large fries
• 1 small Coke
• 1 botte of water
• 2 little cups (or packets) of ketchup
• 12 sugar packets

Disassemble the burger. The cheese may not separate from the meat, but that’s okay. Place the bun in a food processor with 2 tbsp of water and pulse until it resembles couscous. Set aside. Do the same with the fries until it becomes a paste.

Chop the burgers (cheese and all) into pieces with a knife. Place in a food processor and pulse until they look like pate.

To create the Napoleon, cut the french fry container so the top is level. Pack alternating layers of the minced meat, the mashed potato paste, and the bun-turned-“couscous” into the container until it is full. Invert over a plate and wiggle until it is loose.

For the spun sugar garnish, empty twelve packets of sugar into a heavy-bottom saucepan with ¼ cup of water over medium heat. While stirring, cook mixture until it is a deep brown color (10-15 minutes). Remove from heat and allow to sit 1 min. Over foil, gently flick the sugar back and forth to create a strand-like design.

To make the sauce, put ½ cup of Coke and the ketchup into a pan over medium heat. Reduce for five minutes.

Next, crisp up the bacon in a pan for two minutes over medium heat before chopping it into little pieces.

To assemble, gently separate sugar garnish from foil and stick it in the top of the Napoleon. Pour sauce around the Napoleon and then form 4 little piles of bacon around the edges of the plate.

Pour some of the remaining Coke in a wine glass, and there it is: a Fancy Baconator Combo that you might think is waaay better than the original!

The Colonel’s Chicken Corn Chowder (Fancy KFC) by Erik Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 1 KFC Original Recipe two-piece Breast & Wing Meal, with biscuit and additional sides:
• 1 corn on the cob
• 1 order of potato wedges
• 1 order of cole slaw
• 1 large beverage of your choice
• 1 bottle of Aquafina water*
• organic chives (for garnish and a touch of irony)

* Aquafina, the branded bottled water of PepsiCo (former parent company of KFC), may not be available at all restaurants. You may substitute it with water from the self-service fountain tap.

Empty the bottle of water into a pot and bring to a boil. Once it is boiling, crumble in the biscuit little by little. Let it simmer under a low-medium heat for a few minutes so that the starch from the biscuit thickens the chowder base.

Meanwhile, prepare the other ingredients. Chop the potato wedges into smaller pieces. Skin and bone the chicken breast and wing, then chop the meat into small pieces. Using a knife or corn stripper, remove the corn kernels from the cob. Rinse the cole slaw in a colander.

Once all of the biscuit has dissolved into the water, stir in all the other ingredients. Then let it simmer on a low-medium heat for about 10-15 minutes. When it’s done, serve the chowder in a bowl and garnish it with cut organic chives. Serve with your beverage of choice in a nice-looking glass. And voila! The Colonel may have a recipe with eleven herbs and spices, but he didn’t have this one!

Dao Mi Noh Chow Mein (Fancy Domino’s Pizza) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food with his brother Mark

Ingredients (for vegetarian option):

• 1 large Domino’s American Legends Pacific Veggie Pizza (default order customized with light cheese, green peppers added, and no provolone, parmesan, or feta cheeses)
• 1 two-liter bottle of Diet Coke

This Fancy Fast Food dish requires “hoisin sauce” derived from the dark syrup of Diet Coke, so first pour 1 ½ cups of it into a wok. Place on medium heat and let the water evaporate as you prepare the other items.

Pick off all the vegetable toppings from the pizza pie. While you don’t have to separate all of them by type, make sure you separate out the spinach, as it will be used for the garnish. Next, using a pizza slicer, slice thin strips of crust to make the “noodles.” Gather them all and rinse in a colander. Place them in a pile onto a white plate.

When the Diet Coke is evaporated down to about 2-3 tbsp. of “hoisin sauce,” add the green peppers, red peppers, olives, mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes to the wok. Sautée and stir fry all the ingredients until they’re all mixed together, then spoon them over the noodles. Garnish with spinach and serve with chopsticks and Diet Coke in a stemless wine glass. And there you have it, Dao Mi Noh Chow Mein in thirty minutes or more!

BK Quiche (Fancy Croissan'wich & Biscuit) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients (for two mini quiches):

• 1 Burger King Croissan'wich (with ham) meal, with hash browns and a coffee
• 1 Burger King Ham, Egg & Cheese biscuit meal, with hash browns and an orange juice
• 1 bottle of water

Disassemble the two breakfast sandwiches into its ingredients: eggs, bread, and ham. (The cheese will probably be melted and stuck onto the bread or ham, but that’s okay.) Break apart the biscuit and croissant into smaller pieces and put them all into a food processor. Add about 2 tbsp. of bottled water and blend; it will soon turn back into a doughy substance. Mold the dough into non-stick quiche pans.

Next, place all the eggs in the food processor, plus ham and hash browns to your liking. Blend that down to a scramble and then fill the crusts. Bake for 10 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 350°F, or until the crust becomes a golden brown.

Let it cool, then serve the quiche with coffee in a fancy cup, and orange juice in a wine glass. Why have it your way, when you can have it the fancy way?

Tapas de Castillo Blanco (Fancy White Castle) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 1 White Castle Sack Meal #1, with cheese and bacon (four bacon cheeseburger Slyders, a box of french fries, and a medium Coca-Cola)
• 1 White Castle Sack Meal #8 (two chicken sandwiches, a box of onion rings, and a medium Hi-C Poppin’ Pink Lemonade)
• 1 order of fried clams
• packets of tartar sauce and ketchup
• parsley (for garnish)

Separate the ice from the soft drinks and let it melt to water; then pour the pink lemonade into three wine glasses. Add enough Coke in each glass to darken the color enough to make it look like a nice rosé wine. Then bring the remaining Coke to a boil under medium heat in a non-stick saucepan and evaporate it down to a dark, sweet syrup.

Next, deconstruct everything and separate them into separate plates: french fries, onion rings, fried clams, beef patties, buns, cheese, bacon, and chicken. Using a paper towel, squeeze and dab each bun dry of its oil and ketchup. Then place all the buns on a baking sheet and bake them for ten minutes in a pre-heated oven at 400° F.

Meanwhile, using a food processor, blend the french fries into a pulp with a little water. Do the same with the beef (no water necessary) until it’s ground and moldable. Hand-roll the ground beef into meatballs, then pan-fry them until they start to brown.

Next, strip off the breading from the fried clams, steam them for a few minutes in a steamer, then wrap one strip of bacon around a bundle of three clam strips. Do this two more times. Strip the breading off the chicken, then cut the two breasts into four halves. Save three halves, then chop the remaining one into smaller pieces.

By now the bread in the oven should be dried out and crusty on both sides. Grate the buns with a grater to make a bowl of fine breadcrumbs. Crush any big chunks into a powder as well. Now go back to the potato mush and roll it into six balls. In three of them, stuff the middles with the chopped chicken; in the others, stuff them with cheese. Once they are stuffed, roll them in the bowl of breadcrumbs until they have a generous coating. Melt the remaining cheese in the microwave, and use it to top the three cheese croquetas.

Mix four packets of tartar sauce with four packets of ketchup to make some Thousand Island dressing. You will use it as you start to assemble each of the tapas dishes: onion rings draped with a dollop of the dressing, the cheese croquetas, the clams wrapped in bacon, the chicken papas rellenas (served with a dollop of dressing), the meatballs (served on a drizzle of Coke syrup, as well as brushed with some), the remaining bacon (a.k.a. jamón) garnished with parsley, and the chicken breast, also garnished with parsley after being brushed lightly with sweet Coke syrup.

Add toothpicks to the dishes, and then serve them with the glasses of “rosé.” ¡Buen provecho! ¡Es lo que quieres!

Spicy Chicken Sushi (Fancy Popeyes Chicken) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 1 two-piece Popeyes Bonafide spicy fried chicken dinner (breast and wing), with a biscuit, a side of cole slaw, and a large Coke (no ice)
• 1 Loaded Chicken Wrap
• 1 large order of red beans and rice
• packets of Popeyes Louisiana hot sauce
• wasabi paste (for garnish)

This Fancy Fast Food dish requires the dark syrup from Coca-Cola, so first pour the Coke into a non-stick saucepan. Place on medium heat and let the water evaporate as you prepare the other items.

Unwrap the Loaded Chicken Wrap and remove the chicken tender. As best as you can, separate the rice from the red beans remaining in the wrap and place the two items into two separate bowls. Add to these bowls the rice from the red beans from the large side order as well. Rinse the rice in a colander and pick out the remaining red beans. Dry the rice in a paper towel and let it air out for a while. Rinse the tortilla wrap, and then cut off its rounded edges to make a rectangle.

Next, cut the tip off the chicken tender (about 2"), then skin and bone the rest, along with the chicken breast and wing. Using the biggest masses of white meat from the chicken tender and chicken breast, cut out four little slabs of chicken. Then take all the remaining chicken and chop it finely. Add the chopped chicken into the bowl of red beans; add hot sauce from the packets to your liking. Mix it all into a consistent paste.

Once the Coke has been evaporated to a thick syrup, place the wrap into the saucepan to dye it a darker brown. When enough of the syrup has infused with the wrap, place it face down on a bamboo sushi roller. Then add a layer of rice on top of that, followed by a strip of the chicken/bean mix in the center of the wrap. Roll the wrap into the shape of a maki roll, cut off the ends, and then cut the roll into six equal parts - you have just cut “mocki” rolls! A lot of the syrup coloring may have rubbed off during this process, so re-apply the coloring to each piece with a pastry brush.

Cut the edges off the buttermilk biscuit, then cut in half to make to rectangular pieces. Slice those two pieces laterally to make four rectangular pieces of about equal size. Place the four pieces of chicken on each of the four biscuit pieces. Drain and rinse the cole slaw in a colander.

Now assemble the presentation! Place the six cut “mocki” rolls on the platter. In one of them insert the tip of the chicken tender, like Japanese chefs do with the end of a shrimp tempura or spider roll. Accentuate the center of each roll piece with a bean and more hot sauce. Place the four chicken and biscuit “sushi” pieces onto the platter, then drizzle and glaze them with more of the Coke syrup. Garnish with a pile of cole slaw and a dab of wasabi paste, then serve it with chopsticks. Love that sushi from Popeyes!

Tacobellini (Fancy Burrito Supreme) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 2 Taco Bell Burrito Supremes (beef)
• 1 beef soft taco
• 1 large Sierra Mist
• packets of mild, hot or Fire sauce (to your liking)
• parsley (for garnish)

Think outside the tortilla. Carefully unwrap the Burrito Supremes and soft taco, and extract their stuffings in a bowl. Carefully rinse off each of the tortillas, and then briefly steam them in a steamer to soften and moisten them. Then lay each tortilla on a cutting board and cut circles in it using a small circular cookie cutter, or simply an empty tin can measuring around 2 ½" in diameter. Take the filling and put a small amount in each small tortilla circle, then fold it in half and pinch it into a tortellini shape. The moisture should keep it sticky enough to stay put. Pile the tortellinis on a plate. Next, cut open and pour the contents of the sauce packets in a measuring cup, then generously drizzle the sauce over the tortellini. Garnish with parsley and serve with Sierra Mist in a wine glass.

McSteak & Potatoes (Fancy Big Mac) by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Ingredients:

• 1 McDonald’s Big Mac Extra Value Meal (#1) with a large fries and large Coca-Cola

First deconstruct the Big mac into its parts: (sing along now) two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun… plus the french fries, ice, and Coca-Cola. Dice the cheese, cube the middle and bottom buns, and extract the sesame seeds from the top bun. Take the french fries and some pieces of bun and purée them in a food processor with water (melted ice), then top it off with the diced cheese. Rinse the onions and lettuce in a colander and garnish it with “croutons” made from cubed bun pieces. Slice the beef patties, and then garnished it with sesame seeds and top it off with slices of pickles. Serve on a white rounded square plate with a dollop of Thousand Island dressing (the special sauce); serve the Coca-Cola in a wine glass.