Sunday Night Dinner

Good to be in the know

2009-03-04T22:35:00.010-05:00

What should a chef do when he has a bunch of new recipes to try out but has no normal outlet for the creativity? Obviously, he should invent a fictional persona - complete with Mexican wrestling mask - and gather his friends and relations at a café in the depths of Cambridge for an after hours underground dinner. Obviously.

Please meet Chef Delicious. He is not nearly as scary as he looks. In fact, he is rather lovable, especially after you try his food. Chef Delicious is a professional chef in the Boston area who cooks New American food with a focuses on local (to New England), seasonal, and sustainable ingredients. He knows the farmers in the area, he knows when and what the land surrounding Boston produces and more importantly, he knows how to use it all.

I had been looking forward to his Mexican-influenced winter feast for weeks. It was my second Chef Delicious dinner and I could hardly wait, having a good idea of the quality of the food in store for me. To put things in perspective, attending this dinner was so important to the Texan, that he shook off a fever in the middle of his bout with the flu by downing a mouthful of pills of various shapes and sizes and demanding to be brought along to the dinner. Against my better judgment (the Texan may know yeast, but I know viruses), the Texan came along. I didn’t have the heart to deny him a feast, Chef Delicious style.

The Texan’s suffering was well worth it. A group of about 18 people gathered at a café past closing hours (as a favor from the café owners) to mill about drinking tart margaritas, smearing toasts with a spicy chicken liver pate, and hovering over absurd amounts of Island Creek oysters. With at least half the available oysters safely housed in my belly, the time finally came to sit down at long, white tablecloth-covered tables decorated with grant silver candelabras. At one end of the table, sat Alex Whitmore of Somerville’s Taza Chocolate fame. At the other end, my close friends from grad school. I got my dose of celebrity and friendship all in one, topped off by a ton of oysters. The dinner was barely under way but I was already a very happy girl.

First course out consisted of giant platters piled high with large mussels with orange peel and cilantro, paired with a lightly hoppy pilsner. Normally, I hate hoppy beer, but paired with the citrusy mussels, both the beer and the mollusks were transformed, playing perfectly against one another. I only wished I could pour the mussel juice into a glass and drink it. For breakfast. Every day.

Next up, a smooth black bean soup, garnished with a small dice of sweet parsnips and carrots poled in the middle. The black bean soup must have passed through about 15 sieves – it lacked the body I would have liked to have in a winter soup. I heard quiet longings for a crouton or crumbled queso fresco from people on either side of me and I agreed with both. Something was missing. Overall, not my favorite course. And not the easiest to photograph – ergo, the empty plate.

The next course set everything right. Oh how very right. Oxtail mole with sauteed spinach, roasted mixed winter vegetables and roasted potatoes. I don’t have the words to describe this mole. The sauce was thin but packed with flavor, redolent of peanuts and sesame. The meat cooked till it came off the bone, making for a mouth-coating collagen-rich velvety sauce. I wanted to bathe in the mole, to rub it on like lotion every day for the rest of my life. That recipe shall be mine, mark my words. The sweet, juicy winter vegetables played very nicely with the mole love. I was getting happier by the moment.

Next, an aged goat cheese with super sweet red grapefruit sections and a green salsa style sauce with parsley, sesame oil, and perhaps a touch of mint. Building harmony where none was expected, the sum of the course was far greater than it’s parts.

To calm the overstimulated taste buds, a palate cleanser of a sweet lemon and chili sorbet, served in wine glasses.

As if that wasn’t enough to please and satiate, there were two courses of Taza chocolate-centric desserts, beginning with a creamy spiced hot chocolate, followed by a chocolate tart with a cacao nib-studded whipped cream. To say that the tart was rich would be an understatement. The chocolate was very dark and a little bitter, almost tannic in its intensity. I was approaching unconsciousness just two bites in. one bite later I had to admit defeat. Too rich for my blood and too late in the evening for my cranky post-doctoral body.

All that was left to do was to thank Chef Delicious profusely for a wonderful and intelligent meal (it's an odd to say about food, but Chef Delicious' preparations really are intelligent. His food is unusual and thought-provoking, with flavor combinations reminiscent of but not quite in line with the expected). I reminded him yet again that I am an excellent chopper and am happy to assist and any and all future Chef Delicious endeavors, thanked his lovely wife, brother, and sous-chef who helped prepare and serve the meal, and rushed to get home, to bed, to sleep, to digest… and to reflect on how good it felt to be surrounded by amazing people, great food, and to be the envy of all the folks staring at the elegant gathering inside the closed café, wishing they were invited to the party. Hehe. Life is good in the underground.

Want not, waste not

2009-02-11T21:16:00.007-05:00

Is that how the saying goes? I am not so good with English idioms. Regardless, you know how the garlic that you have kept around far too long starts to push out a little green sprout from every clove? The clove gives up all it's moisture and natural sugars, lending them to the sprout, leaving the clove not so good to eat. If you let the garlic sit around even longer still (say you are not so good with the housekeeping... not trying to self-incriminate here) the clove may even start showing you a little root.

So ok, I haven't been cooking much recently, which explains the copious amounts of sprouting, spawning garlic. Certainly have not been cleaning much. I don't know where my time has been going, I really don't. I am not too busy. I am not out every night. I feel like I am blanking a little, watching my life passing me by and only occasionally engaging. I have a few solid ideas as to why that's the case - having to jump back into herpes land has been about thirty clicks short of fun, for one.

I am in a holding pattern, waiting to see where I end up in another year, dreading the thought of remaining where I am. When the sprouted garlic clove that the Texan jokingly shoved into an empty flower pot (I haven't been so good at keeping plants alive either) took off, started pushing up with a serious sense of urgency, gaining as much as an inch in one day, I got a little jealous. Jealous of having some place to go and the means to get there.

Yea, that's where I am at. I am jealous of a garlic sprout. I am going to be keeping an eye on this garlic. I don't know the stages of garlic development and can't tell you what will happen to it next. When I figure out what happens to the garlic, and what happens to me, I'll let y'all know. In the meantime, if you guys could just fix up the economy a little bit so that I can get me real life grown up job, I'd really appreciate it. Thanx.

To-die-for bread

2009-02-07T00:27:00.009-05:00

I love that I have lived in the same place long enough to have developed traditions and habits. Some may say that’s a sure signal it’s time to move on, and they may be right. For now, however, I am enjoying the familiarity of Boston. I enjoy not getting lost very much. I enjoy being able to give (correct! I think) directions to people who stop me on the street. I like feeling at home and comfortable when I am in the city. I also love going to the same bakery every weekend, getting to know their specials and picking out my favorites.

I have to say in all honesty that this is one of the best bakeries I have ever been to anywhere. I am not saying this because of my love of Boston, or because everything I like has to be the best there is (although there may be some truth in that). I am saying it because Clear Flour blows my mind every time. Clear Flour is located in the middle of a regular neighborhood. There is a playground, some brownstones, lots of cute houses, but nothing that would indicate the presence of the best bakery in Boston. It’s a little hidden, and this makes it even better.

It’s usually pretty easy to find, however – just look for a line out the door and a smell that makes you want to get a cup of tea, a blanket, some snow, and a good book. That’s how good it is.

I always have to get the caneles when I am there – seemingly hard and burnt, the crispy caramel outside gives way to a custardy creamy inside filled with big air pockets and tons of vanilla. They are obscenely good.

A gorgeous canele

The black sesame garlic breadsticks are doused with a garlic herb butter. If I wasn’t pretending to be lady like I would lick the butter off before cracking into the breadstick. Incidentally, breadstick is really a misnomer for this creation – it’s more like a baby baguette, filled with crunchy black sesame seeds and garlic garlic garlic.

Canele, with a black sesame breadstick underneath, and Irish soda bread in the right bottom corner.

Though I don't have a picture (mostly because consumption of Clear Flour products begins in the car, way before the loaded bags make it home to the table and the camera), Clear Flour croissants are to die for. Really. I know people who would take a bullet for those croissants (my loyalty lies with the caneles). The croissants melt when bitten into, with the perfect combination of crunch and flaky butter. Not doughy, not crispy, not dry nor oily. They are the perfect combination of indecent amounts of butter, air, and flour. Nothing else.

All the things I have named thus far are always on the Clear Flour roster. They also have daily specials that appear once a week. Pick a favorite and show up on that day and come early, else they will sell out.

Last Saturday’s ritual pilgrimage to Clear Flour yielded a fennel and feta flatbread, garnished with thickly cracked black pepper and fennel fronds. I could have used some more fennel, but the feta was briny and light, not cream cheesy creamy, which I can’t stand.

Oh yea, and if you look closely at the very top picture in this post, the one through the bakery window, look closely. See the cakes on the right, labeled Chocolate Whiskey cakes? Enough said. This place is the greatest. It’s places like Clear Flour that make me a little less sad that I don’t have my dream job in my dream city. At least I have the best bread ever of all time. Things really aren’t so bad when there are caneles and baguettes around.

Cheese pizza, all grown up

2009-01-25T23:42:00.006-05:00

It’s nice to have a man who cooks for me. While I run around, stressing about the job I have, pining for a job I don’t, maintain 3 (three!) blogs and a sad semblance of a social life, I almost always know that I will have a good meal at the end of the day, even when I don't have the energy or desire to make it myself.

This particular meal, however, was a bit of a landmark for me. You see, about three weeks ago I applied for a job I desperately wanted. I thought it was the one, my true love, the job that will get me to London and I would live happily ever after. All the stars were aligned in my favor. Or so I thought. It was web publishing, it was science writing, I personally knew the person who posted the position, it was in London, and I made the mistake of starting to hope.

That was stupid.

I didn’t get the job. It was just between me and one another person and I didn’t get it. To say that I was bummed would be an understatement. I was probably more upset than I should have been. Thirty minutes after getting the phone call which unceremoniously crushed my hopes, I wrote to a lab head at my graduate institution. He had asked me earlier if I would be interested in re-joining his lab for a short term to conduct a set of experiments only I had the expertise to pull off. I gagged, threw up a little in my mouth, and said to myself, “only as a last resort.” And then it was, all of a sudden, time for a last resort. I emailed him and said I would start that following Monday. And I did. And here I am. Back in lab, a place I had sincerely hoped to avoid for the rest of my life. I am the sad loser-ish kid who moves back in with the parents after college, one who didn’t quite make it far enough on their own.

It sounds pathetic and it is, and I felt slightly pathetic (slowly getting over it now, by the way).

Needless to say, I was not much of a party the night after I didn’t get the job. The Texan, that brave (read: naïve) soul, knowing that I was pissy and cranky and decidedly unfun, said that he would come over anyway and make dinner. He came over with pre-made pizza dough from Whole Foods, cornichons, and a block of raclette cheese, determined to a) put up with me and b) re-imagine his favorite starter plate at Eastern Standard, raclette – a bowl of melted cheese with cornichons and fingerling potatoes, served with toasted baguette. When consumed with a beer, it’s in a word – perfect.

Pizza, being one of the Texan’s favorite things to make, seemed a reasonable way to turn raclette into an entrée without flying to Switzerland. He rolled out the pizza dough atop some cornmeal – while I whined – topped it with olive oil, a thick layer of grated raclette, boiled Yukon potatoes, sliced cornichons, a little bit of salt, and tons of freshly cracked pepper. He then popped the pizza into a pre-heated 550F oven until the cheese melted and turned brown on the edges and ridiculously gorgeous (about 10 minutes), while I, also ridiculously gorgeous, blew my nose and wiped my eyes in a completely pathetic manner.

When the pizza was ready, I was still grumpy, but ready to eat. And it was amazing. Raclette, for lack of a better description, smells very barnyardy. Slightly off-putting (if you’re a weeny), but oh so delicious once you taste it. The cheese is creamy, earthy, and very distinctive. It was punctuated by briny pickles and velvety, slightly sweet potatoes, held up by the crunchy chewy crust. It wasn’t much to look at, but wow was it good. I didn’t feel better right away (probably because I was on my sixth beer by the time dinnertime rolled around), but I was getting there.

The next day, I was still upset, but I had a fridge full of left over pizza. A person can only whine so much.

A German Photoessay

2009-01-13T18:07:00.016-05:00

Everyone should have a German in their lives. Those people know food. I recently had the pleasure of having a wonderful German friend cook a wonderful German meal - and not complain when I got in her way to snap tons of photos. She was even kind enough to write out the recipe.

What I present to you today may be one of a handful of vegetarian German recipes in existence – no pig, no cow, not even a lowly chicken thrown into the mix. Don’t mistake it for a healthy meal, however – it is made of equal parts white flour and cheese (are you drooling yet?), and it’s just so good. Spaetzle, little boiled beads of flour and egg, are a perfect winter food, a perfect hangover food, and perfect with beer (I don’t see a contradiction here, do you?). The Germans, they know a little something about all three of these things.

The secret weapon in making this German delight? No, not David Hasselhoff. It’s the spaetzle maker – kind of like a slide set on top of a large bore colander, in the picture at the head of the post. The slide is filled with batter, forcing drops of it though the holes and into boiling water as it is pushed back and forth.

Spaetzle can be browned in butter and served as a side dish to just about anything. Alternatively, the spaetzle can play the starring, entrée role when layered with ridiculous amounts of cheese and topped with fried onions, German lasagna style (if it's not against the law to call it that).

The following is a visual guide to the making of your very own German delight, provided you have a spaetzle maker handy. If this doesn't make you want to run out and befriend a German with kitchen access, nothing will.

Here goes.

German spaetzle lasagna
Pan fry roughly chopped onions in olive oil until deeply browned. Keep warm. Have a medium-sized pot of salted water boiling.

Count on 100 grams of all purpose flour combined with 1 egg per serving (My lovely hostess combined 300g flour with 3 eggs... I think). One cup is ~125 grams, so you can use it as a general guide for the amount of flour you need.

- Combine flour, egg(s), and salt in a bowl.

At this point, the spaetzle can be gussied up quite a bit. My lovely hostess defrosted and squeezed dry a package of spinach and mixed it in with the batter, under the pretense of off-setting the dietary nightmare that is two pounds of melted cheese layered with white flour and egg. Not that I complained, mind you. I asked for seconds. I can imagine a grating of nutmeg being really nice in there, or maybe even some mushed up peas, for a German-British fusion sort of thing… if that’s not against the law.

Mix the flour and eggs (+ additives of choice) and add enough water such that the batter drops slowly from a spoon in a thick ribbon – sorry that I can’t be more specific as I was just a spectator to this wonderful event. I can tell you that the batter is quite liquid.

- Place the dough in the spaetzle maker set over a boiling pot of salted water.
- Move the spaetzle slide back and forth over the grid, effectively “grating” the batter into the water. See the beads dropping into the water? Maybe? Stir to prevent the batter beads from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

- The spaetzle are ready when they float to the top. Remove spaetzle as they are ready with a slotted spoon and transfer to a dish.

- Layer spaetzle with big handfuls of grated Emmental and Gruyere cheeses – the heat of the spaetzle melts the cheese.

- Top with browned onions.

- To serve, scoop all the way from the bottom of the dish, and have fun battling the strings of melted cheese. Yum. Consume with copious amounts of red wine and a salad on the side. Note: salad is optional.

Cheese-O-Lantern

2009-01-12T23:37:00.009-05:00

Ugh, sweet lord, I have missed blogging. I really have. The last few months kicked my butt kind of completely. I applied for jobs which I did not get, ended my internship working on things in which I had no background nor education (and succeeding, shockingly, despite my own predictions of complete and profound failure), and avoided pondering my impending unemployment by running away to Rome, then Austin, then Philadelphia. Now I am back, unemployed (did I mention that I have no job?), with all the time in the world to blog and a back log of about a million pictures and stories that I had neither the time nor the physical and emotional energy to record before now. So here I go.

In the middle of all the work, and the job search, and the impending darkness of the 9-month long Boston winter, my little social circle suffered a terrible loss – one of my closest friends and inspiration for numerous blog posts on this very blog – left me, cold-heartedly, for three years in Paris. I am happy for her and all her baguettes and crepes, obviously I am happy for her. Meh. I am just sad for me.

Before she left me for Parisian cheese and wine (and can you blame her, really) we had one last hurrah at my place, a going away party with lots of friends, lots of booze, and of course, lots of food, close to Halloween. A momentous departure demanded a momentous dish. The Texan and I pulled off one of the more spectacular things that has ever come out of my oven – a whole pumpkin (picked with my own two hand at the same farm as the apples), hollowed out and stuffed with alternating layers of baguette, Gruyere, heavy cream and a tint of nutmeg, baked until the cheese and cream liquefied into a fondue, the pumpkin softened to a puree, the skin blackened and blistered.

The glorious party centerpiece, complete with rivulets of hot cream running out of the cheese fondue inside

The melted cheese and cream soaked bread, piled onto a plate next to a scoop of baked pumpkin flesh made for a picture perfect (and dramatic) way to bid good-bye (a temporary good-bye) to someone you love.

All hollowed out.

The recipe here.

Happy Birthday, Melissa! I miss you very much and am jealous, daily, of the newly Parisian you. And happy for you, of course.

Sweeter Than Candy

2008-10-21T23:03:00.012-04:00

Wooo, it’s been quiet on this little blog of mine. I am trying to figure out what I am going to be when I grow up, you see. This takes time. My internship is up in a month. If I don’t get a job before then, my butt is going to be a) unemployed or b) folding sweaters at the Gap. And I hate the Gap. I do, with a passion. The job applications and my current work are taking up all of my time, leaving nothing for sleep, much less blogging or the gym. My ever-tighter pants are testament to this. Sigh. They shrank in the wash, I swear.

Though I suppose that all the food related activities around New England in the fall could have something to do with my tightening pants. Autumn in New England is apple picking season. There are loads of farms around Boston growing multiple varieties of apples on short little mutant apple trees that you don’t need a ladder to pick from – standing on your tippy toes will get you to the top of most trees on these farms.

And these trees were loaded with apples. They covered the branches and spilled out on to the ground in a thick red layer. Apples on the ground were no better than banana peels in cartoons when it came to slipping and falling on your rear, but the smell they gave off was stunning, for a yuppie such as myself – like fresh, slightly fermented cider with a smell of grass and farm mixed in. It was intoxicating.

The apples themselves were marvelous. I can’t for the life of me remember which type of apples they were – either Macoun or MacIntosh. Alls I know is that thin bright red skin gave way to blindingly white, juice packed flesh. There is absolutely nothing like the experience of biting into an apple you just pulled off a tree. It's still alive and full of moisture and warmth from the sun and the tree. You can still see that the stem end is moist and green, still alive, still capable of pushing sweet fluid to the fruit from the tree. You don’t get freshness like this in stores. It’s an entirely different experience. The amount of juice in these apples was shocking, watermelon level juiciness, with the sweet juice running down your chin. Better, and sweeter than candy.

The apples weren’t as sweet as the apple cider donuts though, another mainstay of New England autumn. These donuts are spiced with cinnamon and apple cider. The ones at Boston Hill Farm were freshly fried, still warm and crisp, yielding to sweet and spiced on the inside. Unbelievable, New England fall taste.

Did I mention that most of the jobs I am applying to are in London? Yes, London. The UK kind. I will miss New England autumns, if I am lucky enough to make it across the ocean. My fingers, and my toes, are crossed.

Notes from Uzbekistan

2008-10-20T22:40:00.012-04:00

I have some pretty freakin' cool friends, I have to say. One of my many cool friends, Travis, whom I met while in grad school, also happens to have a supremely cool job. This job allows him to travel to parts of the world that most could not identify on a map, but happen to have extensive culinary and cultural histories. Having just gotten back from one such place, Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan), Travis wrote me a great long email telling me about all the food he ate while on his trip, pictures included. I was captivated. In addition to being totally cool and having an awesome job, Travis is also an eloquent and engaging writer. I asked his permission to repost his email here in the form of a guest post because a) it's wonderfully well-written and b) no one knows where Uzbekistan is, much less what is eaten there. I think this post will serve as education along with fascination. So without further ado - a cool post from a cool person with a cool job. Feel free to envy Travis (and me, for being his friend). Thank you, Travis!

---
I returned from Uzbekistan last night. I am struggling with the jet lag, so I thought I would waste some time by sending you pictures and descriptions of a few of the dishes I had while in Tashkent.

First of all, I did eat a significant portion of my meals at small, street side cafes and chaikhanas (teahouses). Most of the food at these establishments is everyday Uzbek or regional fare but still tasty...and definitely cheaper than eating at larger restaurants and hotel chains. I would also argue that because of the turnover rate and hot soups, it is probably a little more sanitary as well.

I did eat plov on several occasions, but did not have my camera with me at those times... so the disappointment is no pictures of plov. Tashkent plov is a heavy affair... laden with mutton and sheep tail fat (the locals contend that several cups of green tea after the meal help the passage of all this fat through the system... call me not convinced). On top of the mutton is the ubiquitous slices of horse meat. Depending upon where you eat it, there is typically a boiled egg or two included (chicken or quail). At one place, they had apricots in the rice, which was quite nice. In Tashkent, the plov isn't an aromatic dish like you would expect from related South Asian rice dishes. The rice isn't as good as jasmine or basmati like in neighboring countries to the West and South.

OK, on to the dishes that do have photographic evidence. First, there are two main soups in Uzbekistan that you can get at just about any cafe or chaikhana: laghman and shurpa. Laghman has large noodles (think udon) in a spicy broth with large chunks of garlic, green beans, onions, and mutton. The actual contents vary from establishment to establishment and from day to day depending upon what fresh vegetables are available that day. Like most dishes in Uzbekistan, it is eaten with "non" (yep, very similar to the Hindi word naan for bread...but this bread is leavened). Shurpa is a little different than laghman in ingredients, but the broth is somewhat similar. Shurpa consists of root vegetable (potatoes, turnips, carrots, etc), onions, and, again, mutton (usually on the bone).

I also had a very common Kazakh dish called Besh Barmak (literally "five fingers" as it was traditionally eaten with the hands). It is a heavy dish consisting of diced horse meat and boiled noodles. Think of it as a horse stroganoff without the sour cream and mushrooms. Because the dish can get dry, it is generally also served with a steaming bowl of what can only be described as "horse consomme." If you are wondering about the flavor of horse just let me say it is somewhat "gamey" and very reminiscent of how the actual animal smells.

When the horse broth was being brought to the table before the main plate, the waitress was about eight feet away and I thought to myself, "yep, that definitely smells like horse." The odor completely filled your nose with a deep, musky animal scent. It was overwhelming. Usually on the side is a small container of yogurt that can also be mixed into the dish... thus almost completing the transition to a stroganoff-like dish. Few spices were used on the meat and probably consisted of mostly coriander... which I wasn't really expecting.

I also had the opportunity to eat at a really good Korean restaurant. Now you might be thinking, "what the hell?" when I mention Korean food in Tashkent, but you have to remember that after World War II, Stalin relocated vast numbers of North Koreans to Central Asia. Many of these communities still exist and there are still cultural, familial, and business relations with Korea. I ordered the bi bim bop as you usually cannot go wrong with that in a Korean restaurant. I wasn't disappointed.

Bi bim bop is one of those "some assembly required" Asian dishes that allows you to personalize the dish to your own tastes. In addition to the large, sizzling stone bowl containing the egg, rice, meat, sprouts, and spinach, there was a number of smaller dishes of "salads" (as the wait staff called them) to modify the dish. Central to this was the homemade kimchi. It was very nice, but not overwhelmingly spicy. As you can see in the photo, there were a variety of other salads to either have individually or mix into the bowl. I ate most of them!

I hope you enjoyed the descriptions... feel free to pass them along to anyone that might be interested in Central Asian cuisine... or just interested in novel foods.

P.S. I really hope I matched the correct picture to the description. If I didn't, please correct me Travis!

Yuppie cat nip

2008-10-12T18:05:00.020-04:00

I may whine about Boston every once in a while, but I love it. I love it especially now that I have a car. Riddled with scratches, cracked taillights, and other city kisses though it may be, it’s my connection to the many farms that surround the city. Now that it’s fall harvest season, the farms are kicking into over drive, pulling up millions of varieties of squash (only a slight exaggeration), potatoes, greens, and apples. I took advantage of both the car and the season to visit a farm, in true to type yuppie fashion.

Red Fire Farm, located in a teeny town about an hour and a half west of Boston, hosted a fall harvest festival this last weekend. Farm festivals are like cat nip for yuppies such as myself - interact with the farmers, spend a day outside, eat really good food, pretend to be in touch with nature - it makes for a good day.

The farm stand itself looks like nothing more than a regular house in a neighborhood. Walk through to the back though, past the tables loaded with garlic, squash, and locally produced milk, and the house opens up to fields with the backdrop of stubby mountains, turning leaves, and a quiet calm.

German extra hardy garlic, on sale at the farm stand

It was so quiet! Almost shocking to someone such as myself, used to the background buzz of the city. The smell all around was wonderful – heavy on cut grass, with slight tinges of natural fertilizer, if you know what I mean. Not in any bad way, but in a way that reminds me that I am never out in nature. Really, never. I am not much of a nature-girl. Which brings me to the mosquitoes.

Never in my life have I seen so many mosquitoes at the same time, at the same place. They swarmed. They conspired against me, I am certain of it. They could tell that I hadn’t been that close to “nature” in years. If it wasn’t for the kindly yuppies sitting next to me who gave me the kind and generous gift of a bug repellent wipe… well, I am not sure I would be sitting here typing now. I would be a giant, pink, itch-filled balloon praying for a swift death. I am itchy still, mind you, I just don’t want to die. Not at all. I keep remembering the evening and it makes me smile.

The harvest feast began with a squash tasting – butternut, carnival, spaghetti, two types of kabocha, and others I had never heard of. All grown on the farm, all cooked till sweet and smooth. It was really interesting to taste the range of flavors in one vegetable. The word squash all of a sudden seemed rather limited.

We made our way to the tables set in the farm fields under a tent, set with a small pumpkin, cider pressed on the farm that morning, and a hard cider donated by a local company. Everything we ate that night, save for the lasagna noodles, was grown on the farm. How incredible is that? The yuppie in me rejoiced. The repressed hippie let out a 'Yippee!'.

The meal began with small (biodegradable) bowls of squash and apple soup made by a local shop.

For the entrée, we were offered a choice of delicata squash stuffed with rice and topped with mozzarella, or a squash lasagna (my choice). The lasagna was stuffed to the brim with sweet and creamy squash, flavored with just a hint of sage and other herbs. The tender whole wheat lasagna noodles were barely perceptible amongst the mounds of squash, but lovely topped with melted fresh mozzarella.

The mixed greens salad was so crisp and fresh that I was shocked by the crunch. The roasted vegetables had sweet and white potatoes, red and golden beets, eggplant, cauliflower, and bell peppers, oh my. All sweet and packed with flavor, the kind of flavor you don’t get with vegetables that have lined supermarket shelves for an unknown number of days.

As if that wasn’t enough food, there was also home made pumpkin pie with freshly whipped cream. The pie (whole wheat crust) was super smooth and not overly spiced, nutmeg coming to the front. If I had any room in my stomach at all at this point (did I forget to mention the cider donut I had before the squash samples and the rest of the meal? Oh yea, there was a cider donut) I would have tried to whipped cream. As things stood, I barely dragged myself away from the table, stuffed to the brim and reluctant to leave the farm, with its crickets and bugs in the background and nighttime farm smells.

Parting shot of the tent on the farm. I was sad to leave, yet excited to get to my cortisone cream.

It could have been the romance of the farm and fresh air, or it could have been the crisp hard cider, but everything tasted so freakin' good. So fresh and alive, made with care by dirty hippie farmers, none older than me and all committed to the cause of local agriculture.

City Life

2008-10-06T22:31:00.005-04:00

I have to live in a city. I just have to. The sight of the strip malls and carefully spaced cookie-cutter housing developments of suburbia makes me itch and wretch, in that order. I was raised in a city, I live in a city, I’m a city-person through and through. I love everything about the city. Except…

... the absence of grilling. There is no grilling when you live in an apartment. No back yard, no grills in parks, no place to act out my love for all things grilled over a flame. You do what you can. You hop on a boat to an exotic and grill-friendly destination. You force your friends with the rare back yard and other adaptations to invite you over - and often.

You have to give in to the city, because it won't give in to you. You adapt, and you embrace. You stick a grill on your balcony, porch, roof, windowsill, whatever. It’s not entirely legal, it’s not entirely safe, but you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.

My grill, on my pseudo-balcony/fire escape/extended windowsill

It’s a piece of crap propane grill. I feel like I am in constant threat of explosion, even when the thing isn’t on. I would have preferred charcoal, but open flames are unsafe enough right outside of your apartment window - glowing embers that don't go out for hours are not the smartest thing in the world. It heats unevenly and weakly. I’ve hardly used the grill, but it’s there. It's not the best grill in the world (or in Target), but it’s comforting to know I can always turn to it at will to get that bit of char flavor I love.

As far as city adaptations go, this one ranks somewhere below keeping a dog in 600ft apartment and above accepting the fact that your car will be dinged and scratched within 10 minutes of being in the city. Feel free to contribute your own city adaptations in the comments, if you are so inclined.

Inspired by Bar Food

2008-10-03T23:17:00.003-04:00

It is rare that I find myself inspired by bar food. Regular, run of the mill, anonymous, non-fancy bar kind of food. Rare, but not unheard of.

I spent a horribly rainy afternoon in an Irish pub by my house, watching a British soccer (oooh, I mean futbol) match, drinking beer (like it’s abnormal to drink beer at 3PM on a Saturday. In a bar. Please.), and snacking on surprisingly good French fries. A lady who was quite obviously a regular at the bar (which is sad in its own right, for a Saturday afternoon) recommended I get a side of curry sauce for the fries, a British tradition I have never quite understood. However, when informed by a haggard-looking bar regular, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, that I should be eating my French fries covered in curry sauce, then that’s what I do.

And you know what? It was pretty good! I have absolutely no idea what was in it, besides copious amounts of cream, I am sure, but it was smooth and slightly sweet, it was perfect for dipping thin, crunchy fries. Not nearly spicy enough, but it never is. Right there, on the spot, facing the onset of tipsiness and autumn, I started to crave curried squash soup.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the next few days. I made it the first chance I could, with the autumn squash that has been arriving in my Boston Organics boxes as of late. Smooth and rich, with a bit of a kick and freshness from the herbs, it was autumn, right there, on my table. I am not entirely ready for autumn yet, but it appears I am ready for the food. It’s going to be soups and more soups from now until next June. Good thing I wasn't craving the potato skins. [Shudder].

Curried Squash Soup
1 med acorn squash and 1 med dumpling squash (though you could use one large butternut squash instead – it is fabulous with curry powder - or all acorn, whatever you have)
1 large onion
2 tbsp curry powder
chili powder, to taste
chicken stock or water
handful of fresh cilantro
3 or 4 stalks of green onion

- Preheat onion to 425F
- Cut squash open, quarter, and scoop out the seeds.
- Rub with olive oil, salt and pepper, place cut side down on baking sheet and roast until tender and browned. Try to stop yourself from tearing off all the brown, sweet, crunchy bits and eating them on the spot. You need them to make the soup sweet(er). Let cool and scoop out flesh. Or burn your fingers, if you’re me.
- Chop onion roughly and sautee in olive oil till soft and translucent, about 5 min.
- Sprinkle with curry and chili powders, stir about and allow the spices to toast for a few minutes.
- Add cooked squash, squish it a bit and stir around till you get bored. Then add chicken stock/water to cover the squash by about an inch.
- Add salt and simmer for about 20-30 minutes.
- Puree and thin out with stock/water to desired consistency
- Toss in herbs, season with salt and paper.
- Photograph aggressively.
- Eat on couch, blanket on lap.

Chicken soup for the rhinovirus-ridden

2008-09-22T20:42:00.003-04:00

It’s totally and completely sad (well, a little sad) that I, at almost 30 years old, call my mother for sympathy every time I get sick. I just have to. I feel like my Mom validates my illness, somehow. Until my Mom feels sorry for me, I am just whiny and annoying. After she tells me “Ooooohhh, you poor thing…,” all of a sudden I am sick, a patient in need of care and attention, completely justified in my whimpers and whines and validated in my illness.

So, if you haven't guessed, I have a cold (or a rhinovirus infection, as we science geeks like to refer to it). I spent the weekend in abject misery, swallowing handfuls of decongestants, which are worth less than their candy coating, as far as my sinuses are concerned. I was preparing myself for a slow and painful death by starvation and neglect (I get dramatic when I am sick) when the man-friend (did we decide to call him the Texan? Yes, let’s shall) swept in with bags of groceries, all set to make me chicken soup. All together now: Aaaawwww.

The soup he made, from America’s Test Kitchen cookbook, may have saved both my life and my mother from 10 more whiny phone calls. The soup was absurdly complex, beginning with a most peculiar recipe for chicken stock.

The recipe starts with a butt ton (technical term here, people) of chicken drumsticks (bones cracked with a cleaver for maximal flavor extraction) which one browns on all sides, in batches in a Dutch oven. The chicken is then allowed to sweat until it releases juices, a step which the cookbook says greatly decreases the simmering time necessary for full flavoring of the stock. After sweating, water is added and the chicken is simmered with bay leaf and sautéed onions. A little less than sixty minutes from the start of this lengthy procedure, the stock is strained and then, and only then, can one start on the soup.

Into the strained stock went big chunks of carrot, celery, onion, shredded chicken, dried thyme, an ear of corn, three handfuls of orzo pasta, and fresh parsley at the very end. Et voila, the most beautiful bowl of chicken soup my rhinovirus-dimmed eyes had ever seen:

The resulting soup was very rich - all the collagen from the chicken drumsticks made the broth thick and velvety. The soup actually set into aspic after a night in the fridge! The chicken itself was moist and flavorful, not rubbery and dead like all chicken coming out of a long-simmering broth. The vegetables though, the vegetables were the best part. The corn absorbed the copious amounts of chicken fat and became the softest, creamiest corn of all time, all while still retaining the snap of the individual kernels. It was divine.

I suspect the soup tastes best when someone makes it for you, unprompted and unselfishly, all the while you blow your nose loudly and whimper about how you are going to die imminently. Have someone make this soup for you next time you are sick. I am pretty sure you will feel better right away. Or at least you will feel your illness has been validated and you are being taken care of.

P.S. The recipe for this whole business is way too long for me to retype and really isn’t the point of this post, which is my feeling sick and whiny. So I won’t type it. Instead, I am going to sit on my couch and swallow more useless decongestants.

It’s all the same, just a little... not

2008-09-07T21:58:00.014-04:00

Laptop is alive, almost back to normal! Thank you for all the lovely thoughts and good luck wishes. I hope to recover from the shock of it all shortly. Should only take another couple of six-packs. Whew. Now let’s get back to business, people.

I just came back from a nine day stay in London. Unlike most of the trips I go on, I wasn’t ready to go home at the end. Not nearly. I really could have used another couple of days walking around the city, sitting in ancient pubs drinking excellent beer, and eating all manner of fried and sausage-related foods. I fell in love (again) with the enormous preponderance of fresh sandwiches, pre-packaged in neat, triangular boxes, ranging in filling from egg salad and cheese to prawn salad (eeek. Kinda sketchy), sold in every coffee shop and market in the city. It has to be the box. I love that triangular box.

Everything in London is familiar, but not quite the same as what I am most used to. It's off by just a couple of degrees. Men’s suits fit better, beer is less carbonated and tastier, the cars drive in unpredictable patterns at predictably high speeds – toward the end of the trip I took to checking right, left, up and down for cars, just to make sure I would not get flattened by a giant red bus of doom speeding from out of nowhere. It worked.

As I mentioned, I was in London for work… and work I did. While the man friend explored London and went to see the galleries I am pissed about missing, I worked. Beh. I did have the evenings, and made the best of them.

The evenings were made up of the obligatory pub fish and chips with mushy peas at a pub near city center (wherever that is), with a light and crisp batter. Fried overload.

Suspiciously green but wonderful – the pea-est peas I have ever had.

There was also traditional pork pie, bought in a stiflingly hot indoor market in Brick Lane, the Indian/Bengali part of town. As if I would skip the Indian/Bengali part of town.

The pork pie was intense – butter-laden handmade crust encasing a slightly gritty filling of ground up pork and spices. It was as the name suggested – pie shell and pork. Wonderful smeared all over with mustard.

Pork pie, the 'after' shot.

The hotel I stayed at served full English breakfast every morning – beans (which I am now addicted to), black pudding, bacon, every kind of egg, stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, sausage, kippers, and all sorts of yogurts, fruits, etc and oh my. The Brits know their breakfast, that is without doubt, but kippers? Really? That’s hardcore, even by my standards.

Unfortunately, I don’t have too many other pictures to share. Most meals were consumed in pubs and either the light was too low for photography, or I was one too many pints past taking pictures. Most often, it was a combination of the two.

The beer… the beer was fabulous. And the people were super nice, the tube was marvelous (yes, Londoners think it’s shite, but come to Boston for a week and then tell me your public transport blows. I think not). In my 9 days there I managed to pick up some sort of bizarre accent and now say “Cheers!” at seemingly random times, and “brilliant” at wholly inappropriate ones. I can’t wait to go back and pick up other Britishisms – preferably ones that don’t involve bad teeth and imminent alcoholism. Though I may be swayed toward the latter, with enough perseverance.

Losing the Will to Live

2008-09-05T15:20:00.003-04:00

What is the worst thing that could ever happen to a blogger, ever ever ever? How about a blogger who works in web publishing and uses her laptop more than she uses olive oil (and that's saying something)?

The worst thing ever? It's not internet outage. It's not breaking a hand. It's not even losing a hand. The worst thing is spilling water on one's most beloved of possessions - the laptop. I kind of want to lie down and die and I so wish I were exaggerating.

I spilled about 150mL of water on the keyboard. I turned the laptop upside down and removed the battery straight away. It dried overnight with a fan on it (as you can see in the picture taken with my phone since I NO LONGER HAVE A LAPTOP to load pictures onto), but still didn't start this morning.

On the laptop was a half written post about my trip to London (for work - just got back on Monday) as well as all the associated pictures and gobs and gobs of data, files, pictures, and well, my life. Please everyone cross your fingers for me. Cross everything you have. This is me not freaking out, by the way. It could get much worse.

I will try turning it on again on Monday.
Till then,
Breathlessly yours,
Trying not to freak the f out.

Battling Through Imprecision In My Love for Chicken Livers

2008-08-16T20:06:00.006-04:00

Chicken livers. How can something so good be reviled by so many people? I am convinced that when someone doesn’t like a particular ingredient or dish, it’s just because they have never had it done well. So many chicken livers come out overcooked, grainy, grey, and dry. They really can be gross. If done well, however, they can be amazing.

The best chicken liver I have ever had was at the The Spotted Pig in NY. The livers came out charred and crisp on the outside, but meltingly creamy and foie gras-like on the inside. They were more decadent than I thought humble chicken livers could ever be. The Bordeaux reduction sauce pooling around them may have had something to do with it, but the livers themselves were simply spectacular.

This chicken liver experience, combined with the fact that I love them love them on any regular day, made me crave it with a pang. I took the first opportunity to make chicken liver pate, following a recipe out of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen.

Here’s the thing about Jamie Oliver. He is all about the Naked Chef thing – simple food, un-fussed with ingredients, simple processes, great results. Turns out that translates into imprecise directions, and weird quantities like “a small bunch” of thyme, a glass full of brandy, and an onion. What do you mean, onion? Large? Small? Jumbo? Come on! I follow protocols. I need precise instructions. There is no “bunch” in my vocabulary. There are strict volumes and weights. I had total irritation.

He also makes everything sounds easy breezy – bang it in there, slap on some of this, bake off for a minute. Whatev. He uses hard core French techniques just like every other big important chef. The recipe called for the prepared pate to be passed through a sieve twice to make it smooth. After spending 20 minutes huffing and puffing over the first sieve pass, I said no more. It was smooth enough for my peasant tastes.

I quit with the sieving I portioned out the pate into eight ramekins, topped with a fried sage leaf, and sealed the top with clarified butter, to prevent gross dried out pate from peaking through the top. As you may be able to tell from the pictures, I didn’t do so well with that part.

I did do very well with the pate consumption, however. I think I ate my body weight in chicken liver pate that evening. Breaking through the clarified butter top to reach the silky pate was deeply satisfying. The pate was not too rich, with a subtle liver flavor. I had hoped for more of the brandy and thyme to come through, but without precise measurements (I am going to blame the directions, not the execution) I think I was slightly off and did not add enough of either.

While the recipe is neither precise nor terribly straight forward, it is still worth a try. I know I will be making it again very soon.

The menu below was adapted from the original. I took out all the annoying “get yourself a frying pan” bits, and made it as precise as I could, while adding in a few of my own modifications. Stop thinking about liver as liver and think iof it as something wonderful. There. That's my last plug for chicken liver.

Chicken Liver Pate

Serves 6 (though I would say 4, depending on the size of your ramekins/serving dishes)

1 ¾ cups softened butter
olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1lb chicken livers, trimmed
1 sm bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked ad chopped
1 lg wineglass of brandy
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a few sage leaves

Melt 11 tablespoons of butter over very low heat. Pour off the yellow butter (or ghee), leaving behind the white milky solids. Set aside.

Fry onion and garlic in olive oil over medium low heat for 5-10 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent. Remove the onion to a bowl, wipe out the pan, turn up the heat to med high, and add more olive oil.

Add chicken livers and thyme (I really should have dried the livers thoroughly before dropping them in the pan. I didn’t, and they steamed instead of frying. Oops). Cook the livers in one layer until they are colored, but still pink in the middle. This is the absolute key – overcooked livers are tough, grainy and chewy. Don’t overcook! I kept poking mine with a knife to see what they look like inside. You don’t want them to be bloody, but never grey.

Pour in the brandy and cook off the alcohol. You can simply wait for the alcohol to burn off, or decide to be a badass and set the pan on fire with a lighter. That was a fun column of flames all the way to the ceiling, tell you what.

Sautee livers with brandy for a minute. Take off the heat and add to a food processor with the onions and garlic. I left all the liquid behind in the pan so as not to thin out the pate.

Puree until smooth, then add the rest of the butter. Season with salt and pepper. Divide into ramekins.

Push through a sieve – once if you’re sane, twice if you’re bored.

Fry sage leaves in olive oil and drain on a paper towel. Place leaves over the pate in whatever artistic fashion strikes your fancy. Pour clarified butter over the top to seal. Let cool in fridge for at least an hour.

Serve with toasted bread and good red wine.

Breakfast at Verrill Farms

2008-07-28T22:30:00.001-04:00

One of the coolest things about Boston is how easy it is to get out of. You can get on a boat, or you can get in the car. Either way, you can reach a fabulous someplace in just half an hour.

Verrill Farm is borderline fabulous place, and is located just about half an hour outside of the city. Verrill supplies a bunch of Boston area restaurants with fresh produce. They also hold events throughout the summer to highlight various fruits and vegetables coming off their farm. Since I am a dork and therefore, on the Verrill Farm mailing list, I found out about a blueberry pancake breakfast to be held on the farm on a Saturday morning.

And off I went, in my car (nope, AC just won’t work unless I am going 80 mph). It was me and the rest of the yuppies leaving the comfort of their Saturday beds for the pursuit of something local, something good, and something with bacon in it.

Oh yes. There was bacon.

I realize that the event wasn’t called a “bacon breakfast” (how good would that be though!), but that’s the part I would like to describe first. The bacon, if you haven’t guessed, was awesome. Really thick and slightly chewy, not too greasy. Being compulsive, I pulled off the big chunks of fat under the misapprehension that I can’t (shouldn’t?) put an piece of obvious fat in my mouth. Oh silly me. That fat was the best part. It was a weird combination of light and rich, crunchy and melty. Delicious. Pig fat tastes good.

Obviously, the yuppies and I were onto something. The pancakes were great. Freshly made, griddled in bulk out of a cartoon-sized batter dispenser, sprinkled with copious amounts of fresh blueberries. The pancakes were tender and not too sweet, the heated berries exploding when bitten.

Toward the end of the breakfast, the Verrill people brought out trays of blueberry pies (all baked on the premises) for a real live pie eating contest (the citified yuppie in me felt all sorts of country and small-town for a brief moment). People got good and dirty eating the pies without using their hands. Blueberry juice ear to ear. The winner licked the tin clean. It was amazing. I gagged.

A walk around the farm and farm shop revealed that the farm wasn’t yet producing very much. For Boston, July is still relatively early in the season. The corn was not quite ready to be picked, the tomatoes still a couple of weeks off. The little farm shop had the same stuff as Whole Foods, likely from the same suppliers. Weird. It was a big city version of a small town farm. The illusion held long enough for me to leave happy, relaxed, stuffed full of bacon, and hot as all sin from the blasting sun. I then sat on my couch in front of the AC and drank beer the rest of the day. Is that not a perfect Saturday for a yuppie such as myself?

It Makes a Difference

2008-07-21T22:06:00.003-04:00

Y’know how all the time you hear about grass-fed, free-range, organic, free-willed, cage-free, hormone-free, happy sunshine cows or chicken or people, for that matter. Every once in a while you stop and ask yourself, does it really make a difference? Does it seriously taste soooo much better than the regular stuff sold at the fluorescently-lit and warehouse-like grocery supermart of your choice? Y’know what? It does. It does taste better.

I had the luck to try out some burgers from Roseda Beef. First, Roseda farms offered to send me burgers to try out. Meat by mail? No thanks. I was ready to say no. Then I read further. They said they are a family-run business, they said they raise and breed their own Black Angus cows, they said the cows are grazed on grass and that the meat is dry-aged before it’s ground into burgers. Then they mentioned they are located in Maryland, close to where I grew up in Northern Virginia! Who says no to that, I ask you. Not I.

I said yes. I said yes, and I got eight ginormous burgers in the mail to try out and comment on here. So here’s my comment – Yum. These people don’t fool around. The burgers are shipped frozen (d’oh! Wish I could have been in MD to pick them up myself) along with a bunch of instructions and neat background on the company. The instructions said that you don’t have to thaw the burgers before cooking, just throw them onto a hot grill or pan. I was skeptical, I have to admit, but it worked.

The instructions suggested cooking the burgers for a total of 14 minutes, flipping them from side to side in a carefully-controlled choreographic manner. Fourteen minutes is enough time to take even a frozen burger far past well-done. That, combined with the fact that I was completely starving and not willing to wait and coordinate my choreography, led me to cook my burger for a total of about 8 minutes on the stovetop (three minutes on each side, followed by another minute or so on each side), in a well-heated and heavy pan. I got crusty, juicy, medium to medium well burger that hardly shrank in size with cooking. It remained as ginormous and pretty as it was before the cooking.

Not sure my pictures do it justice, but this is one good burger.

I ate the burger plain at first, just so I could taste the meat. It was so… beefy. There is no better way to describe it. It had more beef taste than a lot of burgers I have had. It wasn’t packed too tight, yet didn’t fall apart. You could tell that it was good stuff, not the run of the mill pre-packaged burger. In this case, as in many others, attention, care, and quality really made a difference in the product. I was happy that a family-run business is doing well, I was happy they are turning to bloggers to spread the word for them, and I am happy that my dinner took 8 minutes from start to finish.

Beef. It's What's for Summer

2008-07-17T23:36:00.006-04:00

New Yorkers have to put up with a lot: a lot of people, a lot of funny smells, a lot of gum on the sidewalk, and not enough fresh air. New Yorkers are resilient people – they can take a lot on. That’s why when the Big Apple BBQ came to town in 95F weather, New Yorkers were not deterred. They came out in droves to stand in line for hours. No awnings, no shade, no pool to jump into… and at the end of the line? Hot meat, from the best BBQ joints from all over the country – brisket, ribs, short ribs, sausages, slaw, and all the rest.

Turns out that my composition is nowhere near as strong as a New Yorkers. I lasted through one line for just one vendor (and that with downing two bottles of cold water, constant fanning, and copious complaining). That vendor, Salt Lick from TX, must have been the best one of them all because everyone and their mother was standing there with us. My friend Neha assured me that they serve the best beef brisket she has ever had in her life. In fact, she eats beef just once a year – when the Big Apple BBQ comes around and the Salt Lick tent offers up with it’s Texas-style brisket. A forty minute wait was worth it after that intro.

Or so I thought. I blame it on the heat, on my inherent crankiness, or perhaps on my white T-shirt, which quickly became a see-through white T shirt from all the smokey sweat that it was absorbing (how’s that for appetizing?), but this brisket was just alright. Not mind-blowing, not life-changing, but good. You could see the pink smoke ring on the outside of the meat, indicating the amount of time it spent in the smoker.

You could see the crust of spice rub and char on the very outside. I could have used a bit more of both. The meat itself was flavorful and meaty, but a little on the tough side. While I myself and everything around me was melting, the meat did not. That was ok though. The cole slaw slayed me. It was dressed very simply, with vinegary dressing full of celery seeds. It was a light, crunchy, acidic counterpoint to the heavy and warm meat.

Next time I’m in NY for the BBQ fest (and I will be back, there is no doubt), I am going for the ribs. They looked amazing – blackened and charred and ginormous. I will also be wearing as little as possible, will have a beer in each hand, and someone to fan me while I wait for the food. A girl can dream, can’t she?

P.S. Crap. I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. This new job of mine... turns out I have no more time now than I did when I was in grad school. What's up with that? You mean the real world isn't any easier than the academic one? Who would've thunk it. I promise to do better. From now on.

Aging Isn't All That Bad

2008-06-17T23:15:00.006-04:00

Man, I just can’t seem to catch my breath. First writing, then the defense, and finally the graduation ceremony. Now my new job is starting to kick my butt. More on that later. First, guess who our commencement speaker was. Just guess.

You will never guess because it’s too awesome and amazing.

Give up?

It was J.K. Rowling! I have never been so happy. So happy, in fact, that my parents, my man-friend and I had a bottle of vodka after the ceremony, a bottle of wine with our ultra-authentic French dinner, and for dessert… for dessert we had a bottle of 1955 Vintage port.

My parents have been saving this bottle for my defense. It was supposed to be something really special, something to mark the occasion and to accompany dessert. It was such a great plan. There was only one hitch - they should have kept me sober.

Opening the bottle while most of the way to drunk was a challenge in itself. The bottle neck was sealed in a weird glass-like substance, which shattered when hit by a knife. Showering the floor with the black glass-like shards revealed a cork sunken deep in the neck of the bottle. I was shocked how far in the cork had slipped in the port's 50 years. The cork was so old that it crumbled with every touch. Slowly, piece by piece, I extracted the cork from the bottle. I smelled the cork, which normally does nothing for me except making me look unnecessarily snooty. Not this cork though – it was potently piney. Really piney and musty and not at all fruity or sweet.

Next drunken step before consumption? Explaining to my Father why in the world I don’t own a ceramic bottle top vintage port filter. Five guesses again on why I don’t own a ceramic 50-year old port filter. Is that because port that needs to be filtered is typically half my rent? A coffee filter had to step in and save the day… as did a flower vase that stood in for a decanter. Yes, I am a frat boy.

Luckily, my poorly appointed kitchen did not seriously affect the taste of the port (I hope). The wine was woody and leathery, smooth and rich but not heavy. It was so much more complex than any other port I had had before. I am certain I would have enjoyed the port much more had I not passed out cold on the couch after just a few sips. Can you really blame me? All that excitement and all that alcohol in one day? Not surprisingly, when I woke up the port was all gone. I have a pretty good idea what happened to it. The guilty/no-longer-drunk parties know exactly who I am talking about. My parents have another bottle of the 1955. If I need another PhD to get at it… well, there is no more port in my future.

A Spectacle

2008-06-05T01:27:00.010-04:00

I am having a tough time deciding which view is more beautiful. Is it the view of Boston Harbor’s outer islands, as seen from the top of Spectacle Island...

...or is it the view of a fully loaded grill, stacked with potatoes, marinated skirt steak and chicken breast, and an odd pork sausage or two?

I just don’t know. I can’t decide.

The beginning of every grilling season marks the beginning of sailing season for me. each one is a thing of beauty on its own, certainly, but combine the two and you have the foundation of the most perfect day possible.

Here is how that perfect day goes: Sail to an uninhabited island. Marinate meats in sealed bags on the sunny deck of a rocking sailboat. Breathe in the salty air, smear on the sunscreen, chug Coronas one after another, and feel like a total badass for sailing to an ISLAND for a cookout.

Start the prep work on the boat, so that when you alight on land, all you have to do is start up the grill, pop open more beer, and toss the food on the flames. Make the best grill-top potatoes you will ever have (thanks for the idea, Melissa!) - Make vertical slits in a medium sized baking potato, bring careful not to slice all the way to the bottom. Stuff thin slices of onion in the slits, toss some slices on top. Salt and pepper generously, top with a hefty slice of butter (1/2 tbsp should be fine), wrap tightly in foil and drop onto a hot grill. Flip a couple of times and check to see if they are done (by seeing if a knife passes through the potato easily) after about 20 minutes. The onions melt into the potato almost as if they were never there. The bottom of the potato becomes caramelized and crisp, the rest steams to a perfect flaky doneness.

Oh and the corn. Repeatedly slather freshly shucked corn with salted butter while on the grill, keep it on till it’s charred black all over, and it will turn out so sweet and so perfect.

Toast crusty bread with butter till crisp, grill the sausages, cook the skirt steak minimally, just still done on both sides (leaving it medium-done on the inside), grill the chicken, and have the best cookout/pig-out, eat till it hurts. And to make the Coronas a little more special? Squeeze in lime juice, a heavy shot of hot sauce (not Tabasco, though! It’s too vinegary for this), a pinch of salt, and enjoy an instant Michelada. Awesome.

We did all those things. After we had about a six-pack of beer and three tons of food per person, we went on a walk around Spectacle Island, and sat in a gazebo on one of the highest points. It may have been all the beer or the good food or the perfect weather and lovely company, but that day, that moment, summer began for me and so many worries of the last months and years began to fade. Looks like there is life after grad school.

View from the Spectacle Island pier, where we set up the gas grill the park ranger provided (for a modest fee, including docking our boat).

Marinated* skirt steak
count on ½ pound of skirt steak per person

Place steaks in a zip lock back with:
- juice of a couple limes
- handfuls (proportions of each don’t really matter) of green onion, sage, marjoram, cilantro, or whatever other herbs you happen to have on hand
- a finely chopped fresh jalapeno
- a handful of thinly-sliced white onion
- red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper
- a glug of light-colored beer if there is not enough liquid to carry all the flavors into the meat

1) Marinate at room temperature for a couple of hours, or until you are a) too hungry to wait any longer or b) have reached the island of your choice.
2) Grill until deep grill marks appear on both sides, remove to a plate. Skirt steak is thin and really easy to overcook, so try your hardest not to. Unless you like your meat well-done… in which case I really don’t understand you.

* The same exact marinade worked wonderfully for chicken, making really tender and almost creamy chicken, with a hint of lime and herbage.

Highs and Lows

2008-05-22T23:39:00.006-04:00

I went to New York with two goals – to eat at Mario Batali’s Babbo and to stuff myself silly with the best street food that NY has to offer. I think I did pretty well on both fronts, straddling two extremes of the gastronomic spectrum.

Babbo was as great as I remembered it (I went there for the first time about 4-5 years ago). They serve some of the best octopus I have had to this day, simmered in white wine and charred on a super hot grill. It is so creamy and soft, so full of flavor, and so impossible to reproduce or find anywhere else. I had my very first squab, which to my surprise and delight was cooked to medium rare and tasted exactly like a dense calf’s liver. Totally bizarre, incongruous, and un-bird-like, but also wonderfully delicious.

We ate in good company – besides my friends Kanchan and Shariff, who were celebrating their newly-acquired marriage license (though not yet the marriage itself) we had REM’s Michael Stipe sitting at a table on our left, and Jim Nelson, the editor-in-chief of GQ, sitting on our right. I was feeling very VIP that evening. We totally spent the whole night drinking with Michael Stipe and then Jim Nelson gave me some women’s clothes that had been bumping around the GQ stockrooms… you know, some Prada, some Miu Miu, nothing special. And then I woke up from my octopus-induced coma and realized I should probably stop staring and/or drooling over the famous people.

The rest of the weekend was spent in the pursuit of less refined, though no less complex street food. 1) Pizza at Lombardi’s in SoHo – thin crust (wish it had been more charred), nicely melted mozzarella, anchovies on one half (my half), not too much sauce, way too many tourists with fanny packs;

2) A beautiful skirt steak sandwich at a flea market in the depths of Brooklyn (perhaps my new favorite place). The steak was well-marinated and tender, topped with a spicy aioli and stuffed into a crusty ciabatta roll.

It was horrifically messy, left everything orange and slightly sticky, yet completely happy. The grilled corn on the side though… oh the corn. It was candy sweet and charred from the grill, every kernel so full of juice that it felt like little balls of caviar exploding with every bite. It was amazing and bordeline dessert-like.

Oh but that’s not all. There was also 3) a NY street hot dog (meh), 4) a street cart soft pretzel (meh), 5) some fresh canoli (yay), 6) bison jerky from the Union Sq farmer’s market, and so on and so forth. I think I have only recounted 1/10th of everything I ate in those three days. I am still in recovery from all the eating, but I still love eating vacations. You can get the high-end and the everyday, and each tastes awesome and unique in its own way.

P.S. Next on my NY list – really good Mexican tacos, Chinese dumplings, and hot chocolate form Jacques Torres. Oh, and a really good Rueben, Cubano, a decent margarita would be nice…. And I could go on. My food fantasies tend to run amok.

It's Over. It's Finally Over.

2008-05-12T00:35:00.015-04:00

So… I am done. That’s it. I am now Dr. Anna, for whatever that is worth. Not a lot, really, but it’s still something. Now I have to re-write my blog profile blurb and I have no idea what to say. Before, I was a long-suffering grad student, trying to take the edge off a painful schooling experience by eating wonderful things. Now, I am just a person who eats a lot. I am in need of a new niche. If y’all come up with something, let me know. I am feeling dramatically unspecial right now. Boohoo me, right? Not really. I am also immensely relieved and excited to move on, and to get back all the sleep I lost and re-grow all the hair I pulled out in the last two months of dissertation writing and defending. That might take a while though.

One thing that I knew for sure all along is that I would not have made it this far or anywhere at all without the help (and tolerance) of my friends. They came out in force to keep me sane and keep me fed throughout the entire process. One evening, my friend Melissa brought her kitchen to mine. She came over with her favorite Dutch oven, pre-measured ingredients, and a recipe for chicken goulash with sour cream biscuits (from Bon Appetit? Gourmet? Don’t recall. I don’t remember a lot of things from the last month). I tried to help her with making dinner, but have a serious suspicion that I was in her way more than anything else. Turns out I am useless with a pasty cutter and even worse at handling raw chicken. Luckily, I am an excellent eater. No complaints from anyone on that end.

The goulash was a thing of beauty.

Chicken Goulash with Sour Cream Biscuits
2 lbs skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 ½ cups flour
5 tbsp cold unsalted butter
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp baking powder
2 ½ cups chicken stock
1 cup sour cream
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp hot Hungarian paprika
2/4 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp thyme

- Preheat oven 425F
- Dust chicken with flour
- Melt 1 tbsp butter and olive oil in Dutch oven. Brown chicken on all sides and remove to plate. (may want to add a little bit more flour at this point if you like a thicker stew)

Meanwhile, make biscuits:
- Pulse flour, baking powder, ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper in a food processor. Add 4 tbsp cold butter and pulse.
- Whisk ½ cup chicken stock with ½ cup sour cream and add to flour mixture. Pulse until dough forms. Form into 10-12 round biscuits.

- Saute vegetables in Dutch oven until softened, scraping up chicken bits.
- Return chicken to the pot add spices and toast for a couple of minutes.
- Add remaining of chicken broth and sour cream.
- Place biscuits on top of stew.

Into the oven

- Bake for 20 minutes covered. Remove cover and broil for 2 more minutes to brown the biscuit tops.

Melissa’s recipe substitutions and notes – Melissa used white breast meat instead of thigh meat to cut down on the fattiness of the dish (much appreciated) and half regular paprika and half hot paprika to moderate the heat. It was still seriously hot, mind you, and I am not a spice wuss. One final recipe note – make double the number of biscuits. Seriously. They were so good I wanted to hug them. A little tangy from the sour cream and so smooth and creamy. They were perfect with the hot and spicy stew beneath. Oh, and the next day, the flavors in the stew meld together and the liquid soaks up into the biscuits to make bready flavor bombs. Ridiculously good.

If you don’t have a friend like Melissa, I suggest you go find one immediately. It will be worth your while. It was mine.

Appetite of Champions

2008-04-28T21:53:00.008-04:00

You know what’s so completely unfair and annoying? My appetite. Many people, when they are upset or terribly stressed, can’t eat. They lose weight in all sorts of graceful, stressful and sorrowful ways. At least they have something to show for the shitty time they are having, right? Me? Nope. I am just the opposite. I eat. I don’t know what it would take for me to lose my appetite. Not illness, not stress (hello, dissertation), not heartache (not to sound dramatic). Those things just make me eat more, and eat with abandon. So now, after all the dissertation-writing nonsense, not only do I have a dent in my couch and a corresponding flat spot on my butt, I also have some gym time ahead of me.

Lest you think that I was dying a slow death by Cheetos the whole time I was writing… well, I sort of was. But this death was punctuated by episodes of food bliss. Among those, my new favorite breakfast – a breakfast sandwich. My favorite is not just any breakfast sandwich. This is THE breakfast sandwich, prepared by the supervisor himself. It makes waking up worthwhile, even if it’s already 11AM when you are out of bed.

So here is what you do. Take some good sliced bread and toast it. Fry eggs (a one-egger sandwich for me, a two-egger for those with bigger appetites and/or hands big enough to hold the ginormo sandwich) to over-medium in olive oil. You want the yolks still runny, but starting to thicken just a little. Layer eggs on the bread with slices of cheese (I can’t force you to use smoked cheddar, but I can tell you it won’t be THE breakfast sandwich without it), basil leaves, some form of breakfast pig product, like sausage or bacon (although I think prosciutto is the way to go), and top it with the key to the sandwich, almost as important as the smoked cheddar (or more so, if you listen to the supervisor himself) - tomato slices. Longest sentence ever? Check.

Now that you have assembled the king of all breakfast sandwiches, you have to eat it. This process involves a ritual of its own. Here’s the thing, the yolk is still liquidy (do it, it’s awesome) and when you squeeze the sandwich or bite into it, the (hot) yolk breaks and runs all over your hands and the plate. That’s the best part. Here comes the ritual. The rules are: 1) you can’t put the sandwich down once you start (because it will be an even bigger mess than the one you have in your hands) and 2) you dip the entire sandwich into the pooled yolk on the plate. Don’t be a sissy like me and tear off a piece of the bread to dip into the yolk or the supervisor will scold you, like he did me. I was ashamed. And then I went to the gym.

Like Butter on Crack

2008-04-24T11:08:00.011-04:00

My dissertation has been turned in! I can hardly believe it. It has been hanging over my head inconspicuously for seven years and aggressively for two months, and now it is done. The word relief doesn’t seem to do my present state justice.

I now have some time to describe my diet of the last two months. In a word: eww. Picture everything and anything that is not nailed down in one’s pantry or refrigerator. Picture those food stuffs consumed in no particular order or ritual, just for the sake of being consumed with the hope of keeping my meager attention span tuned to my work for just another little while longer. Yes, I have eaten everything in my house. I can’t say I enjoyed it because frankly, I can’t remember it. It was like sleep eating. One thing does stand out from this past month of bleary-eyed dissertation hell. It takes a bit of a story to explain fully, so here goes.

I ran away to the Tavern with the supervisor one evening to get a break from the soul-numbing dissertation writing and to get out of the house. Here is what I learned that evening – three drinks in one night are ok, but not if they are red wine, vodka on the rocks, and beer, in that order. That was not smart. It might also explain how we (ok, I) wound up picking up a stray French cook at the bar and bringing him home with the promise of good foie gras. I don’t know how it happened, so don’t ask, although it's fair to assume that it had something to do with my ill-advised booze trifecta.

That's whole duck liver, for the non-Francophiles. The ingredient list is brilliant - Foie, booze, salt and pepper. I don't know what else one needs for complete contentment.

If I ever get a tattoo, it will be of that little duck, somewhere private and personal. Because that's how I feel about foie gras.

And the foie gras? It has been teasing me from the back of my fridge with its yellow duck fat and crack cocaine-like addictive contents. I have had it stashed for over a year - my parents brought it back from Paris for me. So to make a long and boring story short, we brought the stray Frenchman home and had drunken foie gras at three in the morning. We huddled around my kitchen counter because the rest of my house was covered in an even layer of dirty mugs and papers papers papers, eating big chunks of foie on toasted bread with olives and salty roasted fingerling potatoes and cold beer. It was perfect, drunken, and decadent. The foie was unctuous and melty, supported by the crunch of the bread. Like a pale beige butter with a slightly animal quality to it. I could have easily finished the entire jar by myself. Luckily, I was too drunk to stay up long enough to accomplish that not-at-all-challenging feat.

Yes, I have been living in grad student dissertation squalor for the last month. It wasn't pretty. Didn't smell that great either.

And when all the foie is gone, the yellow duck fat will remain, to make for amazing meals of eggs and potatoes fried in duck fat. Browned mushrooms sauteed with duck fat and thyme. Toasted bread smeared with duck fat. Oh yes. Duck fat = crack.

Mmmmm... duck fat. Drool.

Chips and salsa after a long night out? I don’t think so.

I really hope I manage to con the Frenchman into cooking for me someday soon. He is suspiciously (perhaps, wisely) not replying to my emails...

I Can't Wait to Be Done

2008-04-16T14:02:00.006-04:00

The list of things I want to do once I am done with this defense business is growing longer. I can't wait.

An update

Non-Mexican Breakfast Tacos

2008-04-01T00:01:00.005-04:00

Ok, ok, so I am totally cheating. I think the vote for the last Choose Your Own Adventure post was evenly split between my grandmother’s spectacular blini and my own, somewhat less striking, breakfast tacos. Here’s the thing. I am painfully short on time these days. I will write about the tacos first because they are, well, tacos, and therefore easy. I will leave my grandmother’s blini to another day, which will hopefully be soon!

So. The breakfast tacos. The inspiration for these was part my newfound love of home made tortillas and part a brunch that Awesome Archna and I had at a wonderful Mexican place, Tu Y Yo. Archna ordered scrambled eggs with chorizo and they were wonderful. The sausage was ground up and mixed in with the eggs, coloring the whole business a burnt orange color (sigh, I am such a girl) and infusing the eggs with the oily chorizo loveliness.

I wanted desperately to make these eggs for one of my Battling Brunches with Maiya, which I have fallen so behind on (stupid thesis). I have long since stopped trying to wow her because that’s not really possible. This is after all, the woman who deep fried poached eggs in front of me. I wanted to make something that would taste simple and simply good. This turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

It appears that there are a few types of chorizo out and about – Mexican and Spanish/Portuguese. Mexican chorizo, like the stuff I had at Tu Y Yo, is sold raw, out of the casing, as basically a big pile of ground, spiced meat. The Spanish chorizo, on the other hand, is fully cooked and sold in links. I couldn’t find the Mexican stuff anywhere. I tried so hard. I even went to a butcher shop, but even they would only sell me the prepackaged, fully-cooked stuff.

With a heavy heart, I dragged my non-Mexican chorizo home to make faux Mexican breakfast tacos. The cooked chorizo tasted like a spicy kielbasa, which was really not the flavor I was shooting for, but beggars can’t be choosers. I fried chunks of the sausage in a little bit of olive oil till they became brown and crispy (oy yum. I could really just eat an entire plate of fried chorizo chunks). I then tossed in beaten eggs into the same pan, to scramble them in the chorizo oil. And uh, that was it. The end of the super un-complicated breakfast taco procedure.

The eggs were creamy and suffused with the chorizo oil, and when topped with fresh avocado and pico de gallo, and all wrapped up in a fluffy and slightly chewy flour tortilla, they were pure, non-Mexican taco breakfast beauty. I was happy with them, if not awed by their complexity. Sometimes that’s ok too.

Deflation

2008-03-21T12:53:00.007-04:00

Forgive this break from our regularly scheduled programming, but I just had to bring you this:

From my horoscope today, courtesy (or dis-courtesy, as you will shortly see) of Google -

"Everything isn't as rosy as it appears, so don't be fooled just because others seem to support you. It's not a good idea to relax and let down your guard, for it's likely that you don't have the whole picture. Building a relationship on promises won't work now, so get to the bottom of what's going on before a little problem grows into a much larger one."

What. The. Crap.

I want to go back to bed now. What is the purpose of deflating people so throughly?? I read my horoscope about once every 6 months. When I do read it, I like be told that I am wonderful, smart, irreplaceable, and am about to have the bestest day ever. Honesty, if honesty it be, has no place in horoscopes! Gah.

Choose Your Own Adventure: A Photoessay

2008-03-18T22:18:00.007-04:00

'Tis time for another photoessay. I am totally short on time and cannot write a proper post at the moment. I also have a massive backlog of photos of the things I eat (I take pictures of close to everything that passes my lips, much to my very patient friends' chagrin) that never sees the light of day. That's just not right. And while my cooking has slowed down as of late, it has not stopped entirely.

So here is the theme for the current photoessay: Homemade Adventure. You tell me which picture speaks to you the most. Not necessarily the prettiest picture or the best composed plating, but what you would want to eat most. Tell me what makes your stomach grumble and that shall be the subject of my next post, provided I don't blow an aneurysm in the next week from dissertation stress. Stranger things have happened.

Help me out. Make the decision for me - tell me what to post about! Please vote by leaving a comment with the name of the dish/picture. Vote with your stomach, less with your eyes (I really do suck at taking good pictures).

Mark Bittman's short ribs, braised with red wine and coffee; lemon risotto, and the supervisor's honey and vinegar glazed carrots.

Breakfast tacos: scrambled eggs with chorizo and avocado, in home made tortillas (a Battling Brunches entry).

Baked cod, breaded with homemade buttered bread crumbs and smoked paprika, with balsamic drizzled avocado (an American Test Kitchens test recipe! They send you a recipe, you test it and tell them what you think. It's neat to be a part of the "test" in Test Kitchens, even if in a small part).

Yellow tomatoes with fresh basil, balsamic, and good olive oil. Simple and summery. (Guess now you know how long that picture has been the depths of my hard drive).

Blini - this one is a bit of a cheat. My grandmother actually made these Russian-style crepes, stuffed with ground beef, onions, and other secret grandmother ingredients that make this wonderful, delicious, and near impossible to replicate. If the blini are selected for the next post, I will beg her for the recipe and try to write it up, although please don't expect the product to taste nearly as good as these did. It's not possible, because you are not my grandmother. (Hi Lina!)

No-knead bread - no work, all the pay-off. It really does taste like it's straight from a bakery. Spread with pepper-blueberry preserves.

Breakfast the morning after - samosa insides fried as potato cakes and fried eggs. Part of the post New Years recovery program. I highly recommend it.

Irish soda bread with pecans and raisins. No kneading, no waiting, slightly sweet and super dense.

Quinoa salad, courtesy of Amanda at What We're Eating, with a thyme and lime vinaigrette.

Living Vicariously

2008-03-13T23:02:00.006-04:00

If I didn't have my dissertation lodged half way up my, ahem, yea... If that wasn't the case, I would likely be attending this festival at Northeastern University. The good causes are mutilayered and all rewarding. The official cause and the reason for the fundraiser is ALS Therapy Development Institute, an organization right here, in Cambridge, MA.

-----
From the organizer:

One week from today (oops, I was slow in posting this), on March 14, from 6-10pm, we will be hosting an International Food Festival at Northeastern University's Alumni Center in Boston to raise money to support the ALS Therapy Development Institutea Cambridge MA based organization that is dedicated to developing treatments and ultimately, a cure, for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). The event is a "Running a Business" component of our full time MBA program at Northeastern, and we will feature a live jazz band, food donations from many restaurants in the community, a cash bar, and a silent auction with items that include a $1300 brand new treadmill donated by Reebok and delivered to the winner's home, $500 Red Sox tickets, a chartered boat for the day, ski gear, hundreds of dollars in gift certificates to local restaurants, and more! 100% of the profits will be donated to the ALS TDI, and as many of you know, it is a research group that I have supported since a good friend of mine, Steve Saling, was diagnosed with ALS in the past few years.

We are asking for a $30 donation from non-students and a $15 donation from students to be a part of the event, and please take the chance to follow the link below to learn more about the event and purchase tickets online. We will also accept cash and checks at the door of the event if that is easier for you - please do let me know if you plan to attend and will be making your donation at the door so that we can get a good idea of the number of guests. *** Please note: this event is 21+. ***

INFORMATION AND TO PURCHASE TICKETS: http://geocities.com/food.festival/

To learn more about my friend Steve and perhaps understand how I have found his attitude to be very inspiring these past few years, I invite you to spend some time exploring his MySpace site - http://www.myspace.com/smoothsaling

I hope you choose to support our event, and even if you can not attend or might not be able to make it, purchasing a ticket (or a few tickets) to show your support would help us to make this event a success. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you might have.

Best regards,

--
Chuck McNamee
Northeastern College of Business Administration
MBA Class of 2009
781.248.5834 (cell)
mcnamee.c@neu.edu

-----

The second reason to go to this event, and the one most relevant to the theme of this here food blog, is to celebrate the international restaurants of Boston (please don't call them "ethnic". That word makes me twitch). Cuban, Indian, Mexican, they will all be represented at the event.

Help ALS, help Boston area restaurant, it's a win-win. If you go, tell me about it so that I can live vicariously through you.

Now if I could just get rid of this stupid dissertation...

Round 2

2008-03-09T23:15:00.006-04:00

I got tagged! Lovely Leena, who I would force to be my bestest friend ever if she lived on the same continent, tagged me for a meme. I sort of kind of have already done a meme like this, so consider this Round 2. Way waay more information than you needed to know about me.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. I love pickles in every form and shape. I have no fewer than three different jars of pickles in my fridge at any one time. I am still looking for my dream pickle brand. If you have any suggestions/preferences, please let me know. My parents tell me that when I was little I loved sweetened tea and pickles. Together. Don’t know how a five year old could have the food cravings of a preggers lady, but there you go.

2. I have only been in one physical fight in my life. And by that I mean that I got picked on hard core when I was in seventh grade. Picture a girls locker room. Scratch that. That’s wrong. Don’t picture a girls locker room. Picture me, with a soon to fade Russian accent, perm, glasses, and braces – oh yea – in a head lock by a girl who is not only smaller than me, but also has uglier hair (I didn’t even think it possible). It sucked. Courtney Wergely (don’t remember how to spell her name) - I hope your hair is still ugly. Mine rocks. It’s occasionally hot pink. So ha! I win.

3. I have a super duper fancy pants camera and absolutely no idea how to use it. I am all about excess.

4. I am now, and will forever remain, a brand label whore. I am unrepentant, I have no intention of weaning myself off, I don’t care if people think it’s bratty. You get what you paid for and I firmly believe this. If I have the choice between CVS brand toilet paper or no toilet paper at all, I will not buy toilet… Err, ok, I will buy CVS brand, but only if I really really have to.

5. I don’t watch TV, hardly ever. I used to be able to hold up normal conversations about pop culture – even if I had never seen the show, I would have usually heard of it and knew what it was about. No longer. I don’t even know what people are talking about most of the time! I have never seen Arrested Development (yea, I know, shut up), I am not entirely sure what Lost is about, I recently heard about the Wire. It’s terrible. I don’t know when I turned into one of those people that is completely isolated and out of the way of popular culture. Kids these days…

Ok, I am pretty sure that is way more than anyone wanted or needed to know about me. I am done now, and have to go to bed. Another fun filled day of vomit-inducing dissertation writing is ahead of me. Lord almighty, I want to be done already!

Now that I am done, I can pass the torturous torch on to other people so they can reveal their deepest and darkest to the world wide internets.

Scott, One Food Guy, soon to be fresh from India, full of great food no doubt.
JC
Allen (Green Armadillo)
Naveen (you have a blog outside of JoVE, right?)
Michelle, who knows the pain of dissertation writing all too well.

Under Ground

2008-03-03T23:51:00.003-05:00

I am completely buried. I defend my dissertation (...I think I just threw up a little) on May 6. This means that my dissertation is due to my executioners, ahem, examiners, on April 22. That gives me about 6 weeks to write a 200 page document that technically, is supposed to make sense and make me sound all smart and PhD-like. I don't know how this is going to happen.

I just want to play, eat, and post on the blog! Alas, that is going to slow down for the next month. Suck. Wish me luck. Also wish for someone (you know who you are) to keep me from eating myself sick with Cheetos and other crappy studying food.

A New York State of Mind

2008-02-23T21:14:00.018-05:00

The story I am about to tell starts on an up note and ends in a bit of a fart, to be completely blunt. Here is how it went.

I went to New York for a job interview. I was bright eyed and not at all bushy tailed. Actually, I was pretty well-groomed. I was really intent on landing the job in question, I had spent an entire week on preparing for the interview (instead of writing my dissertation. Oops), and tossing and turning all night because I am just compulsive like that.

I arrived in New York with a Boston chip on my shoulder. While I usually have an ok time in NY, I am very happy to get home to Boston – clean, unsmelly, comfortable Boston. Well, this time was a little different. This time, I walked the streets constantly trying the city on for size and summing up, trying to decide if I could live there, for real. This time was different in that I loved it.

The Hudson

I don’t know what changed. I loved New York best when I was walking around the city by myself, most of the time with very little idea of where I am. I loved all the shops and all the little (and big) streets, the amazing food, and the people. Aaah, the people. I, for one, don’t need strangers to smile and say hello to me. It weirds me out.

Well, if this preamble hasn’t been foreshadowing enough, let me cut this short by saying that the whole job business crashed and burned (no, I am pretty sure I did not get the job. No, I do not know what/who I am going to be if/when I grow up). Herein lies the fart of this story. It has got to be the peak of irony that the moment I become completely excited about moving to New York is the moment where my chances to do so fall through. I don’t get it. Bah.

I do have some awesome food to remember New York by, however. Kalustyan’s was the result of lone city wanderings, carried out on approximately 5 hours of sleep after closing down a couple of bars the night (ok, morning) before.

The little Middle Eastern spice shop is packed to the gills. There is practically no air left inside. It’s filled with spices and ingredients I have only read about and never seen. Huge raisins in clear glass bins, teas made of barely distressed whole tea leaves, and something like twenty different sugars. OMG. There is a teeny café upstairs with just three tables lining the window.

Even the salt n pepa shakers were adorable. Film-covered, worn, and beaten, yes, but adorable and antiquey, like they came over from the old country along with the owner/cook.

I ordered a baba ganoush sandwich and kibbe, sat by the window for a couple of hours reading another rationing of Jane Austen (Persuasion, this time), thinking about the city and trying not to think about the next couple of months. It was serene. The sandwich was amazing. Such unremarkable ingredients (pale tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, ordinary pita) blended into the best wrap I have ever had, ever. Home made hot sauce of incredible depth and complexity of taste drowned the anemic tomatoes and spilled onto the smoky, creamy baba ganoush and cooling, crunchy lettuce. It was by far the best baba ganoush I have ever had.

The kibbe was warm and moist, like a little fatty meat foil to the creamy baba ganoush sandwich. It was perfect and perfectly New York.

I may have missed my goal of relocating this time around, but I hope to my way over there eventually. Luckily, Boston is a pretty close second. I am happy here, for now.

P.S. HTML has gotten the best of me yet again. Sorry that the font looks weird. I ran out of patience while trying to fix it.

One of Those Nights

2008-02-17T23:20:00.017-05:00

Every once in a while I have one of those meals that sticks with me. I don’t mean on the seat of my pants or the front of my shirt. I mean in my memory and subconscious as an event. A meal that sticks out as a true experience, one to be savored slowly and for years to come over and over again. an experience perfectly balanced and refined, fun and comfortable, masterfully executed and obviously, wonderful to eat. I recently had another meal that fits that description. Unfortunately, this one was a four hour flight away from my house.

Vail is not only the best place to ski in this country (in my honest and uninformed opinion) it is also one of the best places to eat. The number and caliber of restaurants in what could otherwise be a dinky ski village is dizzying. The meal of note I speak of was at Osaki's.

Osaki’s is absolutely teeny. The fact that the servers can maneuver at all makes one wonder how masterful they are on the slopes. Run by a husband and wife, Osaki's is so far beyond the spicy tuna roll that it’s almost laughable (they do have the standard sushi joint staples of course and they are wonderful, but they are not the reason I am writing this).

The proper way to enjoy Osaki’s and push the chef to exercise his imagination is to make a reservation and request omakase ahead of time, giving him the opportunity to pull together the practically unheard of ingredients that will soon come together into a meal you will remember for a long time, even after you stop grinning about it.

There were a number of things about this meal that I found striking. First and foremost, I saw (and ate) freshly grated wasabi. I was certain that I would live a long and unfulfilled life never experiencing real wasabi. I find that a lot of people are aware of the fact that the ubiquitous bright green paste included on all sushi platters in this country is little more than reconstituted colored horseradish. It is not wasabi. Real wasabi is a stout (and rather expensive) root that is not widely grown in this country.

The root in the picture is from Oregon. The piece you see was quoted at a price of $40-50. Here is a short pop quiz on wasabi root preparation. In accordance with tradition Traditionally, the root is ground and peeled on a a) metal grater, b) ceramic grater, c) the chef’s 5 o’clock shadow, or d) a shark skin grater. Contrary to your first instinct, the answer is not c. The answer is actually d, of all things. Wasabi root is traditionally finely grated on shark skin stretched over a slightly curved piece of wood. The skin ( I got to touch it!) is shockingly sharp and rough, almost as though it were studded with teeny industrial diamonds.

Next on the rarities list were real live yuzu lemons. I have never seen an actual yuzu before. I have seen the juice in stores, I know that it is used as the base for ponzu sauce, but I have never actually seen a yuzu fruit. There are a number of varieties of yuzu lemons, all small and knobby looking citrus fruit, some green, some yellow, full of little seeds. The taste is markedly acidic but much more flavorful and nuanced than straight lemon juice. It is floral and complex, like a more self-involved and less orange-tasting Meyer lemon. Combined with the sweet lobster meat, the yuzu lemon flavor will not be easily forgotten.

Broiled lobster tail with yuzu and yuzu-based sauce

Here are the rest of the dishes we had that night. While each of them warrants a couple of paragraphs of descriptions, explanations, and reactions, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I am still thinking about this meal.

Tempura – crab claw, sea urchin in seaweed with really crisp minty/basil-like leaf; shiitake mushroom and something else

Sweet shrimp, scallops, ginko nut, mountain peach, shallot shavings

Trio of tunas with fresh wasabi

Golden eye red snapper, Red snapper, fluke with black caviar

Torched kobe with radish sprouts
Unagi (fresh water eel) – with yuzu zest or green tea salt

House made mochi – red bean, green tea, raspberry (too sweet and acrid-tasting)

Looking over it all now, I cannot believe that I managed to eat it all. Although leaving anything behind on the plate was simply out of the question, practically against my religion.

Things You Can Learn from Cheetos

2008-02-10T13:13:00.000-05:00

The following is a cross post from my sciency blog. For whatever reason, I felt the need to expound upon my love of Cheetos (which I have already done once).

---

I like to eat healthfully, generally make sure that my food is indeed made out of food and not supremely processed, over-salted and preserved food-like substances. I love lentils and brown rice and have put away a fair amount of tofu in my time.

But then there are Cheetos. I cannot explain my love for Cheetos. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Maybe it started at the vending machine in high school which provided my daily kick of the neon orange glow sticks. I got hooked. They are so good in such a bad way.

The last time I splurged on the dietary horror that is a bag of Cheetos, I did what I have long since trained myself not to do – I looked at the ingredient list. Oy vey. If I brought Cheetos to inorganic chemistry class in college, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten a C – they would have been a great cheat sheet.

I want to know what all that chemical garbage is doing in my food. Why is it there? What role does it serve? The internet came to the rescue of this miniature chemistry lesson.

The following is the (almost) complete ingredient list from a bag of Cheetos, annotated by yours truly:

Enriched corn meal, with all usual vitamin supplements

Vegetable oil

Salt – the third ingredient on the list – no wonder I love Cheetos.

Maltodextrin – polysaccharide produced from starch (rice, corn or potato); easily digestible and absorbed as easily as glucose.

Sugar

Monosodium glutamate – an amino acid that acts as a potent flavor enhancer. MSG triggers the umami taste receptors, making food taste more savory.

Autolyzed yeast extract – often contains free glutamic acids and is, for that reason, used as a supplement to MSG. “…consists of concentrations of yeast cells that are allowed to die and break up, so that the yeasts’ digestive enzymes break their proteins down into simpler compounds.”

Citric acid – Used for tart flavor and as an antioxidant.

Artificial color – apparently, neon orange doesn’t come easily – Cheetos are colored by no fewer than four food dyes

Partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil

Hydrolyzed soy protein – ”...Soy protein is used for emulsification and texturizing. Specific applications include adhesives, asphalts, resins, cleaning materials, cosmetics, inks, pleather, paints, paper coatings, pesticides/fungicides, plastics, polyesters and textile fibres.” Ok, I am sure that soy protein isn’t as scary as that passage just made it sound, but it sure does give a girl pause.

“Cheddar cheese” – I am sorry, I couldn’t help putting cheese in quotation marks.

Whey – “Whey proteins primarily consist of α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin. Depending on the method of manufacture, whey may also contain glycomacropeptides (GMP).”

Onion powder

Whey protein concentrate – often used in body-building supplements, this is basically pure, milk-derived bioactive protein. Why it is included in my most favorite of bright orange “foods,” I can’t seem to figure out. It doesn’t sound terribly sinister, so I will forgive its inclusion.

Corn syrup solids – sweetener and thickener, dried corn syrup consisting mostly of dextrose. “Corn syrup contains no nutritional value other than calories, promotes tooth decay, and is used mainly in foods with little intrinsic nutritional value.”

Natural flavor – huh?

Buttermilk solids – analogous to dried milk as far as food additives are concerned. “Buttermilk is the liquid remaining from the cream after the butter has been removed from the churn. (This buttermilk should not be confused with the fluid buttermilk sold to consumers, a cultured lowfat milk that resembles buttermilk.)”

Garlic powder

Disodium phosphate – “Disodium phosphate is a sodium salt of orthophosphoric acid and is used as an antioxidant synergist, stabiliser and buffering agent in food. It is also used as an emulsifier in the manufacture of pasteurised processed cheese. Disodium phosphate is added to powdered milk to prevent gelation.” Note: harmful if ingested in quantity. Oooook, limiting Cheeto intake starting…. Now.

Sodium diacetate – basically vinegar in solid form, this additive is used as an antimicrobial/preservative and to add a tangy flavor to foods.

Sodium caseinate – milk protein conjugate used as a binder, emulsifier, or thickener, likely used in the “cheese” in Cheetos.

Lactic acid – ”...fermented from lactose (milk sugar), most commercially used lactic acid is derived by using bacteria such as Bacillus acidilacti, Lactobacillus delbueckii or Lactobacillus bulgaricus to ferment carbohydrates from nondairy sources such as cornstarch, potatoes and molasses. usually either as a pH adjusting ingredient, or as a preservative (either as antioxidant or for control of pathogenic micro-organisms).”

Disodium inosinate – disodium salt of inosinic acid. That clarifies everything, huh? Used in concert with MSG to trigger the umami taste receptors.

Disodium guanylate – “… often added to foods in conjunction with disodium inosinate; the combination is known as disodium 5’-ribonucleotides. Disodium guanylate is produced from dried fish or dried seaweed and is often added to instant noodles, potato chips and snacks, savoury rice, tinned vegetables, cured meats, packet soup. ...The food additives disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are useful only in synergy with MSG-containing ingredients, and provide a likely indicator of the presence of MSG in a product.”

Nonfat milk solids

Sodium citrate – sodium salt of citric acid, added for tartness and to balance pH.

Carrageenan – obtained from seaweed, indigestible large protein used as a thickening, stabilizing and gelling agent.

Whew.

What I found most interesting in this chemical roster is the amount of MSG and MSG analogs – no fewer than four separate chemicals to trigger that sought-after umami flavor. Cheetos also contain a fair number and preservatives and stabilizers, all chemicals with natural derivations, but chemicals nonetheless.

My conclusion? You probably won’t die from eating a bag (or eight) of Cheetos every once in a while, perhaps it’s best not to make a habit of it.

A Calming Effect

2008-02-03T02:12:00.001-05:00

The most complicated and seemingly stressful undertakings can sometimes calm me down. It is the strangest thing. Most people, when embroiled in writing a dissertation, 18,000 blogs and doing lord knows what else, don’t think that making a massively involved dinner on a Friday after a full day of work is a particularly bright idea. Luckily, I never said I was bright.

There I was, having lived through a full day of procrastination, writer’s block, and lack of productivity, running manically from grocery store to liquor store to prepare a Spanish-themed dinner for the awesomeness that is my friend Kanchan. Kanchan was kind enough to give me a wonderful Spanish cookbook for my birthday, a Spanish equivalent of the Italian Silver Spoon. The ginormous and gorgeous book is filled with recipes that have quickly become house specials for me. Dates stuffed with almonds and wrapped in bacon? Umm, yea.

Really though, the dinner was all about paella, the most Spanish of all Spanish dishes. Here’s the thing with paella. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass. It involves all kinds of stocks and infusions and just, issues. I totally punked out of making the cookbook version of the paella, which boasted no less than two pages of directions (in small font), and opted instead for a recipe I pulled off Epicurious.

Still, it was a production, but one that I found calming me half way through the procedure. I started breathing a little slower and panicking a little less (still cursing just as much though. The cursing doesn’t seem subject to change). Even though my pan wasn’t the right size, even though I read snow peas when the recipe quite clearly stated sugar snap peas, even though I bought some Chernobyl-sized clams that refused to open even after extended cooking, instead of the little dainty clams I was meant to buy... Despite all that I felt more collected than I had the entire day.

Out of the oven the paella came, fragrant with saffron, shellfish and smoky spice from the chorizo and smoked paprika. It was great. We put as big a dent as two people could into a giant pan full of rice and seafood. We finished with some traditional crème caramel (the caramel portion of which may stay with my stove top forever. Caramel is a persistent bugger), poured the last of the second bottle of white wine for the evening and sat back. Because it hurt. Miraculously, I was calm and collected, having just run about like a chicken with my head cut off two hours prior. I don’t know if it was the bottom of the second bottle of wine, the cooking or the company, but I felt so much better. Stress can't compete with such a roster of pleasures.

Southern Belle at Heart

2008-01-24T23:13:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has ever been to Northern Virginia (where I grew up) can attest to the fact that it is an entity on its own, completely unrelated to the rest of the state. While the whole of Virginia is considered to be the South, Northern Virginia is most certainly not. It is as Northern, Yankee, metropolitan, and progressive as a suburban area could ever be. It is not the South, dammit. It’s different.

Please consider the evidence - there is no Southern food in Northern Virginia. None at all. There is New Mexican, Peruvian, French, French, French, and Italian, but no traditional Southern food. And yet, I somehow managed to fall in love with cornbread, greens, hushpuppies… I love it all.

There is no marked Southern accent, certainly not one as defined as you would hear in Central or Southern VA. And yet, I use “y’all” in every day speech. My friends from home make merciless fun of me for it, but I still say it.

Perhaps Virginia seeped its way into me. Stealthily, it leaked through the Silicon Valley that is Northern VA, dripped through the massive malls with parking lots that look like Benz dealerships. Somehow, there is a little bit of the South in me.

Northern Virginia ain’t got nothin' on North Carolina (for the uninitiated, that’s pronounced Noth Caralahynah) when it comes to being the South. I had the pleasure of visiting NC for the second time this year, this time for a science blogging conference. Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know I was a giant dork? Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

There is some seriously good Southern food to be had in NC, along with people with a completely awesome Southern drawl that I could listen to all day. After the conference, at which we were served excellent pulled pork from Bullock’s and Locopops (if you have never had a Locopop, I feel very sorry for you. Check them out the NPR podcast about Locopops) my new blogger friend Aaron and I went in search of good Southern food. And we found it, at Crook’s Corner.

Nothing says Southern food like a pig up on a pole. Inside though, Crook's Corner was way more arty and urban than I predicted from the wall of hubcaps outside.

I must have stared at that menu for a good twenty minutes before deciding on shrimp and grits. I think I made the right decision. Huge shrimp, bacon, mushrooms and scallions were piled on top of cheesy, creamy grits. The grits were just stupid good. This may be because they were about 60% butter and cheese, 40% creamy white corn. Not a bad ratio.

There were also giant cheddar jalapeno hushpuppies that were just eh (innocuous cornbread more than hushpuppy) and a giant biscuit, as big as my head.

I also can’t forget to mention the infinitely polite server who looked like he had a mother of a hangover, and did I mention the giant pig on a pole? It was awesome.

There may be a bit of the Southern belle in me yet. Just don't expect me to bat my eyelashes. Or wear pastels. Or giggle. And really, I am not that friendly. So ok, maybe it's just the Southern y'all and the food that I love. I am ok with that.

Boston Winter, Texas Heat

2008-01-15T21:05:00.001-05:00

My butt hurts.

An unconventional start to a food blog post, I know, but it hurts! I was shoveling my car out from yet another mountain of compacted snow when I slipped and fell. I don’t know how I managed it, but I fell exactly and precisely on my tail bone. Not on my side, not on my behind… Nope, directly on the tail bone. Ouch. I flailed on the ground in a dramatic fashion hoping someone would come by and help me up, or maybe even shovel my car for me out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah. So that didn’t happen. After a couple more loud groans (ok, curses) I got up and finished the job. My butt still hurts though.

As much as I love winter - sledding, skiing, snowball fights, fur trimmed hoods, and all that - I hate hate shoveling my car and hate falling even more. Boston winters are not for ninnies. Boston winters are, however, for all day stews, chilies, and mugs of hot tea to squeeze while watching the snow wreak havoc on all those unfortunate enough to be caught outside.

My saving grace at the end of a long day of hobbling around with a sore bum and a cranky demeanor, was a bowl of chili that had bubbled happily away all of the previous Sunday. While I realize that the chili wasn’t true, conventional Texas Red (it had beans in it. Three kinds of beans, even. Gasp), I did have a real live Texan assisting and directing the chili-making. Does that count? Do I get some cred back, JC?

Chili, in process

We basically put every manner of chile and spice into the pot that we could find. The Hatch green and red chiles that I brought back from San Antonio eons ago? Toss them in. Chile powder from my masala dabba? Sure. A can of chipotles in adobo sauce? Sounds good. Luckily, the searing heat of the chili mellowed during the cooking to a rather bearable, but still runny nose-inducing spiciness. The smokiness of the chipotles and roasted dried chiles combined with the other spices into a really complex and multi-layered taste. I can say with some certainty that it is the best chili I have ever tried. And it came out of my kitchen! And it made my butt feel better. Or maybe it just helped me forget, as I was happily wiping my nose and drinking cold water.

Dry roasting red Hatch chiles from Mesilla, New Mexico. These gave off the richest, smokiest, most intense smell. Inimitable.

Texan-directed three bean chili

1 red onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
5 roasted chiles, such as Hatch (if you are fortunate enough to have a few stashed in your freezer) or poblanos, seeded, peeled, and chopped. I used a mix of hot and mild Hatch chiles.
2 dried, ripe (red) Hatch chiles or other New Mexican chiles
1 can chipotles in adobo sauce, pureed
1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 can black eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1 can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
42 ounces of whole canned tomatoes (that’s one big can and one small can), crushed roughly by hand, liquid reserved
1.5 - 2 lbs beef chuck, 85%, cut into 1 to 2 inch cubes (we actually only used 1 pound but would have liked more. I upped the amount of meat for the recipe)

1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground chile powder
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried epazote (I don’t actually have any idea what this tastes like on its own. Smelled pretty good though – a little minty).
3 sprigs fresh thyme (why thyme, you ask? Because it was in my fridge)

1) Preheat oven to 325F.
2) Roast dried chiles in a dry skillet until slightly darkened and fragrant. Cover in
boiling water to rehydrate for about 30 minutes. Strain liquid and reserve.
2) Salt and pepper the beef aggressively. In a heavy, oven-safe pot, brown meat in batches over high heat for a couple of minutes on each side, until a brown crust develops. Remove meat from pot to be added back later.

3) Lower heat. Add onion to same pot and sauté, scraping up the browned beef bits from the bottom. You may need to add oil at this point if the meat didn’t let out enough fat. Add garlic, dried spices, and thyme. Sautee for a couple more minutes to toast the spices and soften the onion.
4) Add bell pepper, Hatch chiles, rehydrated chiles, and chipotle in adobo puree. Swish around for about 5 more minutes to make sure the chiles are making friends.
5) Add tomatoes and their liquid, beans, reserved liquid from rehydrated chiles, and the browned beef. Season with salt and ground black pepper. Bring to a boil. Remove and throw away the scary, atomic rehydrated red chiles.
6) Transfer giant, heavy and hot pot to the oven and let it be for 4 hours or so, until lots of the liquid has evaporated, the flavors mellowed and beans softened, and most importantly, until the meat is falling apart. It should melt under the slightest touch. OMG.
7) Serve garnished with cheddar cheese, scallions, cilantro, fresh lime, and tortilla chips.

Please consider this recipe as a submission to Leena’s virtual chili cook-off. Hope the Texan presence during the chili making isn’t considered an unfair advantage.

Do a Good Deed

2008-01-14T01:21:00.000-05:00

I have a special pot of pity reserved for all grad students world wide. Grad school is hard, it takes forever, and requires more patience than you ever thought could fit into your body. For this reason (and because she is seriously awesome – a Master's degree in Gastronomy? The very definition of awesome), I am posting a link to a survey that Leena, at Leena Eats, has to administer for her dissertation on food blogs (awesome again). Her dissertation, folks. This is serious.

Help a fellow student out. If you are a US resident (sorry to exclude) spend 10 minutes of your time sometime between January 14 - 28th clicking away on a survey about food blogs. It’s a mitzvah.

Take the poll HERE.

Fantasy Fulfilled

2008-01-08T21:23:00.000-05:00

I am bound to get some pretty interesting hits from that title, ain’t I…

Have you ever day dreamed (or night dreamed) about walking into a restaurant and ordering every last thing on the menu, just to try a little bite of everything? To have a big long table covered with every manner and variety of food? If you have, let me know. We may have to be friends.

This long held gluttonous fantasy of mine just came true and I couldn’t be happier about it! World events conspired to make it happen. My friend Allen and his fiancée are planning their summer wedding. Minor snag in the plans, however – Elizabeth is in the Congo. Yep, the Congo. Thanks, State Department.

So what do you do when you have to plan the menu for your wedding dinner and your fiancée is in a war-torn African nation until the end of the month? Why, you procure a surrogate fiancée, of course! One that's a good eater, preferably. That’s where I come in.

Allen and Elizabeth’s catering company, Tastings, is run by a husband and wife team - she bakes and he cooks (could you imagine anything more perfect?). Tastings held a mass, well, tasting for all of their clients. They made cold and hot appetizers, entrees, sides, starches, cakes, candies, and dessert bars, a complete list of which is too long to reproduce here. Their clients had the chance to try a little (or a lot) of everything to decide what they would like to serve at their event.

From front to back: meatballs in Sam Adams sauce, speared with pretzel sticks, Boursin rosettes on pear slices, farmhouse shrimp with bacon and aged Parmesan, smoked salmon with dill creme on a cucumber round.

Not everyone there was planning a wedding – some people were working on Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, which made me laugh because my Bat Mitzvah party was at my house and I think we ordered pizza, which I enjoyed that waaaay more than all the stuffy black tie affairs I attended as a thirteen year old. Seriously. Thirteen years old and wearing a prom dress... There is simply no need. But I massively digress.

Mixed baby greens with mandarin oranges, jicama, red onions, and toasted almonds in herb vinaigrette

Besides poor Allen being traumatized by my being addressed as his fiancée, the evening was a complete and utter gluttonous blast. We were served some of the very best catered food I have ever had, blowing every wedding I have eaten my way though out of the water. There were numerous break out hits, including cocktail olives wrapped in puff pastry as a hot hors d’oeuvre (a brilliant idea that I am absolutely stealing for my next party), pork tenderloin with an apricot bourbon sauce, cooked to a prefect medium rare, as well as surprisingly good Teriyaki flank steak. I was expecting the normal American sugar-spiked sauce soy that passes for teriyaki, but it was subtle smoky and delicious. Hollowed out strawberries filled with cheesecake and covered in graham cracker crumbs were a stroke of genius. Oh, and the black and white chocolate cake - tall, airy and just sweet enough without being cloying, won our unanimous support.

The aftermath of two trips each to the entrée and dessert table (to get a taste of everything, not for sport) was extensive. Other than complete sensory overload from tasting about 60 different items in one evening and my pledging allegiance to a diet of brown rice and steamed vegetables for the next twenty years, the evening was marked by the birth of a draft version of Allen and Elizabeth’s wedding menu. I love milestones.

And I love it when life finds funny ways of giving you what you want, of fulfilling your fantasies.

In Allen's own words, "Oh, the carnage!"

A Party, by the Book (Almost)

2008-01-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

New Year’s was a party. A paaaarty. I will not go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that my guests consumed almost all of the hard liquor in my house, and that's saying something. Yeeaaah. I think all I have left is some Triple Sec. I am glad that things didn’t reach the Triple Sec level of desperation. As it was, the end of the evening was not pretty. No offense to pediatricians, but their dispassionate treatment of various body fluids is borderline inhuman. I am not now, nor will I ever be a pediatrician. (My unbudging distaste for children helps nothing in this regard). Make of that what you will.

Besides the astronomical alcohol consumption, the New Year's party was set apart by the fact that I prepared pretty much every item from a recipe, most from cookbooks. This is rare for me. I have a house full of cookbooks but can rarely be bothered to use them. Something about forethought and planning that gets in my way. I made a concerted effort to make things out of books this time around and I was not disappointed.

The menu for that fateful (and booze-full) evening:

Crudites with hummus (perfunctory raw veg. Completely perfunctory)
Almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon (these were crack cocaine, I kid you not; from 1080 recipes)
Melon wrapped in prosciutto
Walnut halves with gorgonzola dolce and red grapes (Deen Brothers cookbook)

Baked brie with dried cherries and almonds (recipe posted here)
Samosas with cilantro chutney (specialty Chez Archna)
Mushroom caps stuffed with bread crumbs and prosciutto (1080 recipes)
Mixed mushroom and goat cheese tartlettes (recipe from my Mom. Need to ask where she found it).

Lemon tart (I have made it before and it was as gorgeous on New Year's as it was the first time, from Silver Spoon)
Fudge brownies dipped in chocolate and topped with chili powder, red salt, or walnuts (for the wimps) (brownie recipe adapted from Gale Gand’s Chocolate and Vanilla. The freaky toppings were my special flourish).

Archna’s homemade samosas stole the show. Starting from scratch, she made the dough, the filling, folded the samosas (with help), fried them, and made a cilantro chuntey that could make a toilet seat cover taste like haute cuisine. I may have to beg her to tell me the recipe beyond: "Garam masala, to taste." Whose taste? Taste what? Measure, woman! Measure!

The alcohol gluttony was out of hand, the food consumption was a close second. For me, anyway. You know, they say (and by they I mean my grandmother) the way you spend New Year’s eve is the way you will spend the rest of the year. By that measure, I will spend the next months eating great food, drinking with my friends, and dancing on chairs to Salt ‘n Pepa’s Shoop. Old school, baby.

Too Perfect

2008-01-01T23:00:00.002-05:00

I just couldn’t resist.

New Year’s pedicure polish color: Vodka and Caviar.

How perfect is that??

Wishing all a Happy New Year, filled to the stomach-expanding brim with good food, good drinks, and of course, Vodka and Caviar.

I've Met My Match

2007-12-29T00:32:00.000-05:00

Damn. I let myself down at Sichuan Village in Chantilly, VA. I finally showed my whiteness.

Wonderful, food-loving Ben took me to his favorite Sichuan-style Chinese restaurant in Virginia. He took good care of us, ordering five dishes for three people and earning a respectful (or perhaps incredulous) stare from the nice server lady. By the way, don't bother going without someone who can order off the Chinese menu, else you will be eating those beloved Chinese-American classics, chicken fried rice and lo mein. Vomit.

The first to arrive was a cold appetizer of sliced tendon, tripe, and stomach in a Sichuan chili sauce with spring onions, and peanuts. The sauce is the reason I dream about Sichuanese food. Made with dried and roasted chilis, not ground but crushed into small pieces that retain their texture, the heat and flavor of the chilis leached into the oil, coloring it red. And red is my favorite color. We were meant to be, don’t you see? Toasted, flavorful, moderately hot, with a dry crunch, the oil was painfully addictive. I could – and did – eat it with a spoon. Oh yeah, and the tendon, tripe, yeah whatever. They were good, but they were not confused. The sauce was the star of the show.

Then came the dry fried green beans, a la Shanghai Gate (perhaps even more delicious). There was also fried fish and steamed tofu, and a giant, bone-in pork shoulder with a thick fatty skin and meat so melted and tender that Ben cut it up with a spoon. A spoon, people! The rather imposing pork shoulder was surrounded by baby bok choy, reconstituted dried mushrooms, and curiously, squares of ham in a thick sauce. Forget the ham. Forget the sauce. You can most certainly forget the cabbagey bits when staring at sweet, fatty, cotton ball-soft pork that pulls away from the bone with no pressure from the chopsticks. Make sure to fight for the skin. I would have, if I had assurance I wouldn’t explode from eating too much.

Salty, garlicky, crispy green beans

Fried white fish and tofu in a chili sauce

Pork shoulder with ham squares and baby bok choy

I was so happy. So happy! We were all doing so well, happy, eating, talking… and naturally, this was around this time that it happened, that I failed. One of the chief reasons I forced Ben to take me to this place was the promise of blood tofu – congealed pork blood steamed and cut into squares. Try not to read too much into my dying to try this particular delicacy. Just let it go.

I was expecting something tinny, metallic and derr, blood-like. It wasn’t. The blood tofu was very mild. It hardly had any taste at all, with a consistency of hard tofu - creamy and silky, but drier. It was good. The blood tofu swam around with bamboo shoots and wiggly chunks of pork intestines.

Scary. Just... scary

The pork inside bits? Not so much. Without going into too much detail, they tasted just like the substance it is their job to convey. Yep, they had a certain tint of poo. And here’s the thing. You can’t really bite through a chunk of pork intestine. You kinda have to take the whole piece given into your mouth and pray that it stays there as you work on it, with pained focus and rigid concentration. I know that not everything I ate after the poo conveyor tasted the same, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t looking for that flavor in every subsequent bite. That's an acquired taste if I ever experienced one.

I totally failed. I thought myself all kinds of badass. I was psyched about the blood tofu, the tendon and stomach frankly rocked (and rocked hard). The poo conveyor, however? It almost did me in. My whiteness got the best of me. I deduct ten badass points from myself. Sigh.

Sichuan Village
14005 Lee Jackson Highway
Chantilly VA 20151
(703) 631- 5888

Just Like Water, But Better

2007-12-23T22:12:00.000-05:00

Some stereotypes are true. Russians really do know their vodka. Swedish vodka is fit only for degreasing engines, French vodka plays in the minor leagues, at best, but the Russians… Russians are the studs of the vodka world. They do it right.

There are a two key factors which determine the quality or smoothness of vodka. 1) The purity and quality of the water. Water in Russian is voda. Vodka - voda... get it? Except they drink way more vodka than water over there.
2) The amount and quality of wheat or rye. Contrary to popular belief, it’s only the Polish that make vodka from potatoes - the Russians always use grain.

Russians are very particular about how they drink their vodka, following a strict ritual that distinguishes their vodka drinking from all the other sissy vodka practices on the planet (why on earth would anyone dilute their vodka with fruit juice? Unless they are drinking Swedish vodka, that is).

So here’s what you do if you want to drink like a Russian. This procedure is not for the faint of heart, I warn you.

To drink like a Russian:
- Take a shot glass (real Russians fill a normal glass half way up but I don’t expect that level of devoted alcoholism out of normal people) and fill it to the brim with vodka which you just took out of the freezer.

- Pick up the shot glass with one hand, a dill pickle with the other.

- Toast to the health of your friends (hopefully, you are not doing this all by your alcoholic lonesome).*

- Exhale strongly to get all the air out of your lungs. Quickly take the shot and bite the pickle, neither stalling nor breathing between the swallow and the bite. [Getting rid of all the air prevents the burn of the vodka as it comes back up.]
*Update - my father has requested a correction to the above point, lest one of you actually attempt to stuff a pickle into your mouth without breathing, choke, and then sue me for all I am worth (which is really not all that much, although I do have some nice earrings). You are supposed to exhale once more after swallowing the shot and then bite the pickle. I guess I do it (and many other things) without thinking.

- Rinse and repeat until the desired doneness. Err, drunken-ness.

Up until recently, I thought that Grey Goose was the cat’s pajamas (whatever that means). That is until my father brought back a bottle of Marusya** from his last trip to Moscow. The vodka, in its elegant, narrow-necked 500 mL bottle, is not currently exported from Russia and not terribly easy to come by while there. This stuff, people… This stuff left me speechless. It’s so good that the makers recommend drinking it at room temperature, which is unheard of for vodka.

With Marusya, all the rules and rituals go out the window. You really don’t need to chill it to take the edge off – there is no edge. It is smooth and velvety. You don’t need a pickle chaser to take the burn off – the vodka goes down without a hitch. There is no kick back, no diesel-like fumes punching up into the nasal passages after the swallow. There is no taste, no after taste, no trace of engine cleaner. It’s like buttah. It made for a memorable Thanksgiving and I hope it does the same for this coming New Year’s eve.

I cannot wait until this stuff is sold in the U.S. Or at least until they get a freakin website. Until then, I have to rely on my Dad’s frequent business trips to Moscow for my supply of Marusya. Man, that stuff is good.

* Russians toast with “Za vashe zdorovye,” to your health. Not to be confused with “Na zdorovje”, which is a Polish toast. We take this very seriously, in case you couldn’t tell.

** Marusya, a pet name for Maria, is a very Russian name for a very Russian woman.

Gefilt-oy Fish

2007-12-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

The raw materials:
Carp – the cheapest fish on this earth, full of teeny bones and a fatty skin (occasionally referred to as “crap”)
Beets and carrots, for color and sweetness
Onion
Clean, dry onion skins (no one ever accused Jewish cuisine of being wasteful)*
Bread
Oil
Eggs
Pepper, salt, and sugar
About five hours, five helpers, a couple of bottles of wine and a ton of patience.

That’s all it takes to prepare my grandmother’s gefilte fish (from here on out referred to as gefilt-oy fish, so named for the obscene amount of time and labor that goes into its preparation).

Do not be fooled by the short and basic ingredient list – this is not a trivial recipe. It is probably the least trivial cooking event I have ever been a party to. And a party it was, by the way – one that started with wine and ended with vodka. We had to celebrate the fish, did we not?

I wish I had concentration enough to snap a photo of the final, plated fish, but by that time all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. I can tell you that my grandmother’s gefilt-oy fish is very sweet, smooth, and light. I loved making the fish with my entire family and closest friends around me, crowding around my Mom’s kitchen island. I loved looking at the fish, drinking to the fish’s well-being, eating the fish, so on and so forth, but will I ever make it myself? NFW. Email me if you need me to decipher that acronym.

The following recipe is more of a guideline than a hard-set protocol. I am writing it up less to encourage anyone to undertake this lengthy (read: pain in the ass) procedure but to give you an idea of just how much of a pain in the ass it actually is. Unless you have your whole family crowded around you. Then it's fun.

My grandmother's gefilt-oy fish

For 3-4 kg of carp (whole fish):
1) Boil the carp heads, tails, and fins (excluding the gills!) for 30 minutes to make a fish stock. Strain the stock and keep hot.

Crappy carp

2) While the stock is boiling happily away in a giant pot on the stove, slice the fish vertically into “steak” pieces. Make an incision (pardon the medical terminology) along the spine of the fish on both sides. Slide the knife under the skin and cut out the knob of fish flesh between the ribs (are they actually ribs? Pardon my cursory knowledge of fish anatomy) and the spine, being careful to keep the skin attached.

Keep the bones! They are key players in the many many subsequent steps.

The scene of the massacre

3) Grind the fish flesh, onions, and two pieces of white bread soaked in water in a meat grinder. Mix in two raw eggs, a tablespoon of canola oil, black pepper, salt, sugar, and some cold water to a grandmother-sanctioned consistency. What that consistency is, I cannot say.

4) Adjust seasoning. And by this my grandmother meant taste the RAW fish and egg mixture, all the while assuring your family that you are not going to die of carp/crap poisoning because we eat sushi right? It’s the same thing, right? (Umm, no. Actually it’s not the same thing, not at all. Last time I checked, toro didn’t cost 99c per pound.)

An elephant apron and hairy knuckles really help with the chopping.

5) Stuff the ground fish back into the fish skin. This step is totally key and I totally failed. I was not able to make a single piece that met my grandmother’s stringent requirements. I either put in too much filling or too little, either too far in or too far to the side. It wasn’t pretty. Oy.

6) Layer thinly sliced raw, peeled beets, sliced onions, and clean onion skins on the bottom of a heavy pot. Layer fish pieces on top, adding vegetables/onion skin between each fish piece and between each layer to prevent the fish from sticking. Drizzle each layer with canola oil.

This cauldron-esque pot made the trip from Moscow with my grandmother. Apparently, my inability to pack lightly has a genetic component.

7) Pour hot fish stock down the side of the pot (so as not to break up or otherwise disturb the already tormented fish) until the top layer of fish is almost covered, but not quite. Bring to a boil over high heat, lower heat and cook covered for 1 hour and uncovered for 2 hours, shaking the [hot, boiling, heavy, scary] pot occasionally to prevent the fish pieces from sticking to each other. [Please don’t sue me for damages if you, I am assuming drunkenly, decide to try this for yourself.] Every once in a while spoon some cooking liquid over the top layer of fish to prevent it from drying out.

8) Carefully transfer the cooked fish to a platter and pour some of the strained cooking liquid over the pieces to give them a gloss.** Cool completely in refrigerator before eating.

Recipe notes:
* Oddest ingredient prize? That belongs to the onion skins. The skins are largely responsible for the yellow/orange hue of the final gefilte fish product.

** The fish stock, after boiling with the vegetables and gefilt-OY fish, is rich and gelatinous. My grandmother recommends boiling potatoes in leftover stock. I imagine it would also make an amazing base for some form of soup.

Herbanites

2007-12-17T18:04:00.000-05:00

WooHoo! Another issue of the Fletcher Ledger is up, with an article from yours truly. I was hoping to have the above sad image of desolation included in the article, but alas, that was not to be. It will make sense in context, I promise. The death and disease in the shot above is to this very day parked on my windowsill. Why I haven't yet tossed it, I can't say. I may still be in mourning.

I Love My Friends

2007-12-12T18:04:00.000-05:00

Long blogging absence, even longer graduate school career that Just. Won't. Die. In other words, I have yet another committee meeting tomorrow which has slowed my blogging activities to a crawl. BUT seeing as how I am here to entertain, and since I am a comment whore, I thought I would pass on this excerpt from an email from a dear friend. I think you will quickly see why he and I get along.

In response to my previous post about Christopher Kimball's low opinion of Rachael Ray:

"I haven't really watched Rachel Ray. I think I saw a portion of one show. She has this nice round bottom, but not much going on in the chest area. The two halves don't match. That has nothing to do with her cooking ability... just an observation. I think I have seen her more on Dunkin Donuts commercials lately...which I found odd because I thought she supported some healthy eating initiative."

A Step Away from Greatness

2007-12-02T22:31:00.000-05:00

“Thank you for calling WGBH. May I please have your first and last name?”

Boston’s WGBH was one of the first pubic radio and TV stations launched in 1951. It was the home of Julia Child’s French Chef. It is now the home of Christopher Kimball and America’s Test Kitchen. WGBH puts on periodic pledge drives, asking for viewer support and contributions. Pledges can be made online, of course, but it seems that a lot of people are really either uncomfortable with computers or they simply prefer the minimal personal interaction that speaking with a phone operator affords.

This is where I came in. This past weekend I volunteered to take a four-hour shift as a phone pledge-collector. It was a slow day. A really slow day. In those four hours I received four phone calls. Two of those were nutjobs and two were very nice (and very ready to spend – one caller pledged $250, the other, $125).

One of the main reasons that I signed on for the job - besides the good karma vibes of course - was the likelihood of encountering Christopher Kimball, a badass in his own right. He really does wear a bow tie all the time, and not ironically. He is also likely the only man who can pull it off. He is wickedly funny. He hates Rachel Ray with a burning passion (and has little respect for the rest of the Food Network).

I was very happy to have the opportunity to sit behind Mr. Kimball’s back as he asked for donations on live television (you just may see me on PBS if you live in the Boston area – I am the nervous-looking blond girl trying to avoid the camera). I had the chance to speak with him and really wanted to, but totally chickened out. I was also completely pinned behind my desk - I had no idea that 40 people could be stuffed into 5 square feet of floor space, give or take. I did find out that America’s Test Kitchen sends recipes out to home cooks for testing, to get an idea of how real people cook and you can sign up to be a test cook on their website, somewhere.

Turns out, there are some very stupid real people. Apparently, one chicken recipe came back with a poor review. In the comments section of the review, the test cook had written something along the lines of, “ I didn’t have chicken, so I used shrimp. It really wasn’t good.” Wow. I really hope he didn’t cook the shrimp 5 minutes on each side as you would with chicken.

P.S. Should I ever actually graduate, I will absolutely look up how to be a test cook. I am a real person. More often than not, a stupid real person, but still... I can do it.

A Russian Thanksgiving

2007-11-27T23:11:00.000-05:00

The internet is rife with bloggers' accounts of their turkeys and stuffings. You don't need me for that. Yes, my family had dinner. Yes, we made turkey (and it was transcendent, beyond-turkey wonderful), and two kinds of stuffing, and two kinds of cranberry sauce. Yes, there was an excess of food and lots of family and lots of fun. However, as I am sure you can judge from the photo above, Thanksgiving in my family tends to be a little different from the norm. How so? We drink. And I mean, we drink. Every once in a while we play true to type (Russians), and we drink vodka. And we enjoy it.

At the beginning of the evening, I ran to fetch something from the kitchen. Upon my return, I found that I had already been served - a slice of bread (home-made, naturally) and a shot of superb vodka (a brand that not imported into the States, straight from the ex-motherland. Not really my motherland per se, but I am sure it is someone's). I think my plate summed up a lot of things about me pretty well. Aaaah, my parents know me well.

P.S. We ran out of vodka half way through dinner (I may never let my father live this one down) and had to move on to Patron. My grandmother liked it! Lick, shoot, bite, the whole story. She was a champ.

Shanghai Gate

2007-11-23T20:31:00.000-05:00

My friends tell me that the surest way to tell if a Chinese (or other variety of Asian) restaurant is any good is to assess its Asian Quotient (AQ), otherwise known as the number of Asian diners. If the number of Asian diners far outweighs the number of white ones, it is a safe bet that the restaurant knows what they are doing. If however, the restaurant is full of plain old white people, there is a high chance that it is as authentic as the Italian food at Bertucci’s. Which is to say, not at all.

This past week I had the marked pleasure and honor of being one of four white people at Shanghai Gate (very high AQ). Notably, the other three white people happened to be sitting at my table, even more notable was the fact that one of the above mentioned white people was a fluent Chinese speaker that spends a large part of her time working and living in China and Taiwan (she also happens to be Elizabeth, the perfectly lovely fiancée of a perfectly lovely friend and lab mate, Allen. Say hi, Allen).

Elizabeth took up the reigns and ordered for all of us (in Chinese, natch) impressing both myself and our servers in equal measure. The double take the server did when addressed in perfect Chinese was something to behold. Made me feel all important too. I would have never known to order the stuff she did because I would have no idea.

Twice fried green beans in garlic sauce – salty, crunchy, a little spicy, and fried. Mmm.
Lion’s head casserole (in the background) - very finely ground pork meatball spiced with soy sauce and sherry, in a deep brown broth and baby bok choy. I did not know why it is called that – Elizabeth had no answer for me. It doesn’t look like a lion’s head. I think it is safe to assume that it doesn’t taste like one either. Apparently, the name is derived from the fact that its accompanying cooked bok choy or napa cabbage looks like the mane on the meatball lion head. I admit that I failed to see the resemblance.

Black bean chicken wraps – minced chicken, sweet perfectly balanced with sour, set off by the fresh crunch of the lettuce.

Yu Xiang Pork – shredded pork in fish sauce with bamboo shoots, served with steamed bread. The bread was light, slightly sweet, and kinda sticky on the outside, making for an airy, fishy pork umami bomb of a sandwich (way better than it sounds).

And the thing that I was most excited about. The thing that made my long, shit day seem just a little bit shorter – soup dumplings (photo at head of post). The most brilliant invention of all time. Soup inside a dumpling. Bite through the wrapper for a giant gush of super hot broth and a small pork meatball. The key is catching the dumpling at the correct temperature – cool enough that it won’t burn the first eight layers of flesh off your mouth but not so cold that the broth begins to congeal.

Standing out in a room had never tasted so good.

---
Shanghai Gate
204 Harvard Avenue
Allston, MA 02134
(617) 566-7344

Sin City Tortillas

2007-11-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

I am way too visually stimulated. Scary movies give me nightmares. Not even movies that others consider scary - I saw stupid stupid Outbreak and could hardly sleep for two weeks. I am so completely unhip.

A couple of years ago, everyone was telling me about Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City and how utterly fabulous it was. I, knowing full well that I should not, went to see it. I walked out of the movie theater in a practically catatonic state from discomfort, carrying a general feeling ickiness. I was not a happy camper.

A year (or more?) has passed and Mr. Rodriguez has made it up to me. You see, he is a badass. The DVDs of his movies (for sure Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Sin City, not sure about others) had short cooking videos as a bonus feature. How awesome is that?? The first video had him making puerco pibil, the same dish that Johnny Depp’s CIA agent killed cooks for when he found one that he particularly enjoyed. The second video at the end of the Sin City DVD has Mr. Rodriguez making breakfast tacos with homemade flour tortillas. The egg breakfast taco part of the video was nothing terribly remarkable. The tortillas, however, were stunners. Fluffy, with round brown spots from the hot skillet, they looked nothing like the plastic-enclosed stuff you buy in a grocery store.

He, being the badass that he is, looked like he was born with tortilla dough in his hand (that’s actually kind of gross. Sorry). I had some ethnic and cultural shortcomings to overcome in attempting to make tortillas, but I think it did a passable job. There was room for improvement, certainly – my tortillas wound up oddly crunchy on the edges and not exactly circular (umm, if you squinted just right they sort of looked like circles), but it wasn’t bad for the first try.

Absent was the odd chemical aftertaste of store-bought tortillas (at least the ones sold on the East coast) as well as the rubbery, gummy texture. Instead, there was warmth, freshness, fluffiness, and softness. If I could make tortillas large enough to use as blankets, I would. Alas, as that is currently not a possibility, I had to make do with regular sized fresh tortillas, but they perfect for holding skirt steak fajitas with adobo seasoning and green bell peppers. One day, long in the future, I may approach badass-hood. Not holding my breath though.

The following is my annotated transcript of the YouTube video of Robert Rodriguez making tortillas.

Sin City Tortillas

2 cups flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup butter
½- ¾ cups warm water

- Cut the butter into the flour in a food processor, stand mixer, pastry cutter, or just two forks (the trick is to incorporate the butter without melting it from the heat of your hands). The flour will have a course, almost cornmeal-like consistency.
- Add water until the dough holds together but is not sticky (Mr. Rodriguez is descriptive and vague all at the same time on this point).
- Knead the dough for about 2 minutes.
- Separate dough into 8 – 10 golf-sized balls.
- Wet a towel with warm water, cover the dough balls and allow them to rest for about 20 minutes.
- Squash the dough balls into disks and roll out (I floured my board rather heavily. Mr. Rodriguez did not. I am not half the badass he is).
- Plop tortilla dough onto heated skillet over hot heat. Cook on one side ~8 seconds and flip over (if the tortillas are coloring too quickly, turn down the heat). Cook about a minute – the tortillas should start bubbling, indicating that the baking powder is doing its job. Flip them over again and press on the edges a little with a spatula to keep them in contact with the cooking surface.
- Cover with towel to keep the tortillas warm until ready to eat.

Consider yourself a badass for making your own tortillas. I do.

What Next?

2007-11-13T11:29:00.001-05:00

This is getting out of hand. I am not creative enough to keep up. Every week, Maiya ups the brunch stakes. Every week, she pulls out something so completely fabulous that I spend the next seven days digging through my brain-bound food catalogue, trying to come up with something equally stunning and impressive. I thought I was doing pretty well.

Take my last brunch, for example. I made a fennel and carrot salad (on a mandoline, no fingers sliced open, thankyouverymuch) substituting oranges for tangerines and arugula for watercress, apple sausage patties (so-so), slow-scrambled eggs, a la Gordon Ramsey (beware of YouTube link), a giant German pancake, and no-knead bread.

While the German pancake looked all kinds of impressive and sophisticated, I quickly realized that the Germans went and pulled a misnomer. It’s really way more breakfast soufflé that pancake. Yes, it’s topped with lemon juice and powdered sugar but it still tastes like pouffy eggs with tang and sweetness, not like a doughy, gorgeously carbohydrate-laden pancake. It was quite pretty though, and crunchy on the bottom from the healthy (or desperately unhealthy, as the case may be) dosing of butter.

German pancake (aka breakfast souffle)

The slow scrambled eggs were the silkiest I have had, with no texture besides that of a bright orange, silky custard, no eggy curds to mess up the experience. The bread was, well… fresh baked bread and that can hardly ever be bad, and the salad was fresh and crunchy.

So you can see why I was feeling confident in my brunch abilities. And then I went to Maiya’s house. Do you know what she did? You will never guess. It was crazy. I was stupefied beyond words and pictures. I had to resort to video to do the process justice!

Perfect poached eggs

Maiya in action, dipping poached eggs in more egg and panko bread crumbs (something deeply un-Kosher about bathing poached eggs in beaten eggs. A bit of boiling a kid in mother's milk, if you ask me. Yum).

Draining deep-fried eggs

The woman made deep-fried poached eggs and served them on top of creamed spinach and fried ham. Really. She did. But being Maiya and being completely awesome, she swapped out the fried ham for fried Spam, which I had never had before but thoroughly enjoyed in all of its salty glory. Oh but that’s not all. There was also a salad with goat cheese and a pomegranate vinaigrette, and black pepper and cheddar bread from Hi-Rise Bakery. And mimosas. And I didn’t eat for the rest of the day (which I suppose is the whole point of Sunday brunch).**

The deep fried eggs were insane. Just insane. Crunchy on the outside with perfectly set whites and liquid yolks which spilled all over the already rich and creamy spinach, making my eyes cross in brunchy bliss. Oh but I left something out - the ginormous pan-sized hash brown with herbs and Parmesan, so handy in soaking up the yolk overflow.

Oozing deep-fried poached eggs and Parmesan hash brown

How am I supposed to follow that one, people?? I have no idea. Help me.

** Ok, so that's kind of a big fat lie. What I should have said is that I had no business eating again on Sunday but instead made fajitas, fresh flour tortillas, and guacamole with the supervisor. And it was all so good.

Muttar Paneer

2007-11-06T01:08:00.000-05:00

So Archna and I made paneer. Well, that’s not really all we did. It was a Saturday to be remembered. We got up at about 9:30AM… I had my first beer by 10:30. It all went downhill from there and it wasn’t pretty. Picture two people splayed out on a couch in front of a TV blaring the Food Network, the coffee table in front of them littered with cheese, bread, and newly emptied bottles of wine. We managed to capitalize on our sporadic moments of motivation to extricate ourselves from the siren call of my couch to push on in making the paneer and engineering its starring role in one of my favorite dishes of all time, muttar paneer.

It went a little something like this:

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, grated (I grated both the ginger and the garlic on a microplane. You could also pulverize the garlic in a food processor if making a large batch to store).

½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp chili powder

1¼ cups water
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tomato, chopped (we used about 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
A pinch of sugar

Fried paneer (really don’t know what amount to give… as much as you would like to add? Not very scientific, I know. I think our half gallon of milk yielded 1 – 1½ cups of paneer and we added it all in).

- Toast the cumin seeds in canola oil until they turn pink and begin to release fragrance.
- Add onion, ginger and garlic, sweat until the onion softens.
- Add the ground spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder), cook for another 3 minutes or so.
- Add water, bring to a boil.
- Add tomatoes and simmer on med high heat (a fairly potent simmer) about 10 minutes, mushing up the tomatoes slightly to homogenize.
- Add frozen peas and fried paneer.
- Add more water if necessary to cover the paneer.
- Cook another 10 minutes to infuse the paneer with the spices.
- Add a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peas, salt to taste, serve over rice.

Oh it was wonderful! The paneer was tasted like the essence and soul of milk, condensed into a resilient fried nugget. It was creamy yet firm, with a fresh taste that you can only get from farmhouse milk still warm from a cow. Totally gross description, I know, but having experienced it, I find little else to compare it to.

The paneer was luscious and rich but had the little squeak of a fresh cheese curd. The heat from the chili powder, sweetness from the peas, acidity from the tomatoes and slight punch from the ginger were all in perfect balance with each other and generally got on famously. The pops of the peas, the squeaks of the paneer, and my grunts of approval harmonized beautifully.

I would have been happy to eat the fried cheese all by itself but felt we should have something more involved to show at the end of our day of Gluttony and Sloth. And we did. We had muttar paneer and we had Pride. It was a great day.

End of the Line

2007-11-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

The last installment of my restaurant reviews for Nature Network Boston has been posted. As I predicted, I have eaten myself out of a job. I covered all the areas around major research and convention centers, a scientist’s natural habitat. There is nothing left for me to explore.

On the positive side, I can now eat at restaurants that I want to eat at, as opposed to where I think other people may want to eat. I no longer have to dictate where we go when out to dinner with friends (they are all so wonderfully patient but I can see it getting irritating).

Writing and eating for these reviews has been so much fun. It also taught me a whole lot about writing for a major publication. I got a taste (pun intended) of food writing as a profession and I have to say, I liked it. I want more.

Paneer : A Photoessay

2007-11-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

There is no use in fighting it. Some (crappy) people may deny it, but the truth is that everyone on this earth is the same on the inside (except maybe Clive Owen. He is better). Let's use cheese as an example. Every culture and cuisine has their version of a fresh cheese. There are variations within the genre, just as with people, but the founding principle is the same. Russian people have have fresh farmer’s cheese (tvorog) – cow’s milk that is cultured overnight, then drained. Italians have mozzarella (pulled or stretched curd cheese) and ricotta, re-cooked from whey. Mexican people have queso fresco, Indians have paneer. Both of these are acid set cheeses, meaning that the milk is curdled by the addition of an acid. The resulting curds are separated and drained, and sometimes pressed (as in the case of queso fresco and paneer) to get rid of extra whey.

So you see? They are all the same at heart, and they all taste reeeaally good.

I got a hands-on demonstration of this unifying theory of mine when my old old old (15 years and counting) friend, Archna, came up to Boston for another visit. Seeing as how we were/are both stressed and tired, nothing seemed more appealing than sitting on a couch for hours on end and cooking something that takes ages of waiting but minutes of work. Enter paneer, the main component of one of my most favorite Indian dishes, muttar paneer (peas and paneer).

After multiple phone consultations with Archna’s Mom, and many assurances from her that we will never be able to make it properly we, remarkably, did it. I can’t say that we made it properly, but we made it. And it was delicious.

The basics of paneer making are as follows:

Heat milk (2% or whole milk) slowly over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to boil. Don’t let it boil vigorously or you will have hours of stove scrubbing to look forward to - it always boils over. Always.

Turn off the heat and curdle the milk in one of two ways, either with the addition of vinegar or buttermilk. Buttermilk will make a richer, creamier paneer but vinegar may yield more curds. Add the buttermilk or vinegar until the milk curdles. For half a gallon, we used two cups of buttermilk (approximate vinegar equivalent would be ¼ - ½ cup).

Let the milk rest undisturbed, partially covered for two hours.

Then:

Drain the curds into a cheese cloth set in a colander. Either suspend the bundle from a faucet to drip the whey into the sink or, say you are kinda clumsy and let the cheesecloth slip open, leave the curds to drain the colander for one hour.

Remove the curds onto a high tech, sophisticated paneer pressing machine. This marvel of technology (my own invention) consists of a cooling rack atop a large pot or bowl...

... topped with a plate and a bottle of wine for a press. Preferably Chablis, preferably chilled, although this portion of the instructions may be modified to suit your individual taste.

Allow the paneer to drain for another hour.

Remove the paneer from the cheesecloth and transfer it onto a plate. Slice into biggish cubes.
At this point, the paneer may be refrigerated or frozen, or it can be fried straight away.

Brown in the paneer on both sides in vegetable or canola oil, drain on a paper towel, and use in your preferred recipe. My recipe of choice, muttar paneer, is forthcoming.

The Humanity!

2007-11-01T09:52:00.000-04:00

There is no use in denying it – autumn has descended upon Boston. The leaves have changed color and are swirling down to the ground into messy piles, the squirrels have gone crazy and spastic getting ready for the next nine months of winter… and the nutjobs have come out to dine. That is not necessarily an indicator of a change in seasons, but it has come to my attention.

There I was, sitting in a perfectly cozy subterranean Italian restaurant in Beacon Hill (for an NNB review) when I happened to glance over at the next table… and gasped. Loudly. I then proceeded to stare and shoot threatening looks at the woman at that table, trying to make her aware of her incredibly inappropriate and disturbing behavior.

What was she doing? Dancing on the table? No, but that would have been cool. Flossing her teeth with her hair? Nope. Completely revolting, but not unheard of. You know what she did? Get ready for this. She poured ice water into her glass of RED WINE. She really did. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I was floored. I may have been the only one at my table to have such a violent reaction, but that's beside the point.

Look, you don’t have to like red wine, or wine at all for that matter. I mean, I probably won’t have much respect for you, but it’s still ok not to like it. You don’t have to order red wine with dinner. Have a beer, a vodka martini (or four), a Shirley Temple, anything!, but do not order a glass of red wine and proceed to defile it by adding water (especially ice water). I can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin something complex, alive and breathing, beautiful and warming than by diluting and chilling it with ice water.

You know what the lesson here is? Embrace your tastes, your likes and dislikes. At dinner, order a drink you will enjoy, one that will enhance your meal and your evening, no matter what that drink is. But don’t, for the love of all that is holy, order a glass of red wine simply because you think that you should, because it’s the grown-up thing to do, or because everyone else is doing it and then humiliate that wine in front of ardent and emotional fans such as myself. That’s just wrong.

Rant over. Thank you for your attention.

All Over the Place

2007-10-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

My thesis work has received yet another blow, slipped one more click past my attention and leaped three steps past my caring. I have one more happy thing to distract myself - I am now a guest columnist for the Fletcher Ledger, the newspaper of the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University. I am all kinds of cultured like that. Take a look at my inaugural article, if time permits.

P.S. I make no claims on the stock photographs. No clue on those.

Oystahs

2007-10-18T23:17:00.000-04:00

I can’t imagine living far away from a coast. Landlocked states like Nebraska terrify me – they feel claustrophobic and desiccated. I need to have access to the water, I need to see and smell the ocean, to be reminded that there is a great big world outside of my lab, outside of highways, hustle, tussle, and spazzola of every day life. I find the ocean therapeutic. It calms me down, slows my thoughts. The smell of the ocean alone is soothing enough, the sound is even better, being rocked by the waves is the ultimate sensation for inner peace.

The ocean is one of the main reasons I love Boston as much as I do. There is the city ocean, hemmed in by docks, ocean walks and water front restaurants, and there is the nature ocean stretching outside of the city, bordered by wide beaches, sand dunes, and forests. The nature ocean is on the Cape (that’s how we Bostonites refer to Cape Cod. THE Cape. There is no other Cape for us). The pro-Cape Cod propaganda in books and movies is spot on – it is a heavenly spot with great food, gorgeous views, and the kind of quiet stillness that is so sharply lacking in the middle of a city.

A two hour-long mini road trip brought me to Provincetown and Wellfleet at the tip of the Cape. The former is full of adorable gay boys and girls, the latter is teeming with fresh, local oysters (that’s oystahs to us Bostonites). The annual Wellfleet Oysterfest was the reason for the mini-holiday. The festival celebrates the eponymous oysters raised on farms in Wellfleet. The mild tasting, lightly briny Wellfleet oysters were everywhere, sold by local restaurants and oyster farmers - shucked oysters, unshucked oysters, grilled oysters, oyster stew, even an oyster shucking competition (which sounded waaay more exciting than it proved to be).

Maiya took an expert turn at shucking an oyster, while I shied away for fear of losing a finger. I don’t do well with knives.

The warm weather and shockingly blue skies were a great complement to gorging on fresh seafood and plastic cups of locally brewed Octoberfest. This most perfect festival day continued with a cranberry picking expedition and a bonfire on a deserted beach under a star-riddled sky, with potatoes and corn caramelizing in the embers. I can’t think of a better argument for living on a coast… or for eating your body weight in fresh oysters.

Green Eggs and Ham

2007-10-09T00:20:00.002-04:00

I have a fear of yeast (the baking kind, not the lab kind). I never make recipes that involve yeast, rising, proofing, kneading or any other equally intimidating words. They bring up images of rolled up sleeves, beads of sweat forming on the forehead, and of little cups full of breeding, breathing, scum colored yeast. Blech. I cannot tell you why I have such a strange and powerful aversion to an organism that has served mankind for centuries, but I do.

I am here to tell you that I have made a small step toward conquering my yeastophobia. Under strict and patient supervision, I assisted in making my very first homemade pizza, complete with a made-from-scratch, yeast-leavened crust. It was scary, I won’t lie. But I made it through, ate pizza, and lived to tell the tale.

My kind supervisor added yeast to a warm water and sugar bath to wake up the little buggers and coax them into eating mode (I could not be trusted with such a key step). After the yeast solution was added to flour and salt it came time to knead the dough. For five whole minutes. Yeah, I know! Five minutes is a lot! I kneaded, I grunted, I got tired and whiney but it was worth it - the dough rose beautifully. I got to punch it down with a disproportionate amount of glee (and a little vindictiveness), after which it was rolled out by my attentive and generous supervisor (I still hate rolling pins and had to defer). The rolled out dough was covered in a thick, deep green Greek olive oil, a home-made tomato sauce with tons of browned garlic, and then it was time for the toppings.

I really have no self-control. Practically the entire contents of my fridge made their way onto this pizza. I roasted a red bell pepper and three Anaheim chiles, sliced green zebra heirloom tomatoes (note that all the vegetables were green…), tore prosciutto di Parma, cut rounds of fresh mozzarella, and what the hell, plopped a raw egg into the center. I am sure I could have found something else to sprinkle, layer, or shower on top (capers were up next … but they were vetoed) but the crust had to go into the oven before it became soggy.

Twelve minutes in a 600F oven, no pizza stone, no fancy equipment, just crossed fingers and a few bated breaths and there it was – a crunchy crust baked all the way through to the center, bubbling cheese, crispy prosciutto, melted tomatoes, and creamy, oozing egg in the middle. And let me tell you, it was fantastic – the taste of the pizza no doubt enhanced by the flavor of my victory over yeast, but delicious nonetheless. What lies ahead in my journey with yeast – cinnamon buns? Bread? Panettone? Who knows. But it all sounds a little less scary now.

Cooking Class, Revisited

2007-10-03T20:27:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has ever spent time around me can attest to the fact that I make an ass of myself on a regular basis. Recently, I have started making an ass of myself on a much more grand (and public) scale. By that I of course mean this blog.

I went on a bit of a tirade about a class I attended at Williams-Sonoma (aka my crack den). I was not a fan, and I was rather vocal about it, at which point the above-mentioned ass-making took place, blogger style. [I keep hoping that one day I will, miraculously, wake up having learned to hold my tongue. I'll let y'all know when that happens.]

Through the wonder that is the internet Jo, a chef, food blogger, and instructor at W-S happened upon the post. Irked by my experience and reaction (and being the kind person that she is) Jo invited me to sit in on one of her classes* at W-S.

It was such great fun! Jo is wonderfully well-spoken, fun, full of knowledge, skill, and interesting factoids. She gave the history and background of the ingredients (complete with taste tests), explained and demonstrated each step of the recipes, and offered short cuts, alternatives, and funny stories along the way.

The theme of the class was dishes that can be started one day and finished the next. In under two hours, she managed to prepare and serve five fantastic dishes, slightly tweaked following her own expertise and taste. I may be hooked.

- Pasta Rustica with chicken sausage and three cheeses – Three cheeses, melted together. ‘Nuff said.
- White Chili
- Pasta Salad with grilled tuna and roasted tomatoes
- Chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce – Gorgeous enchilada sauce with oven roasted chiles and tomatillos, and the most amazingly light and fresh queso fresco.
- Polenta casserole with meat sauce – Polenta layered with a red wine-heavy meat ragu, topped with cheese and baked. Brilliant!

Lesson learned: I do not live and write in a vacuum. Thoughts do well when filtered. I have lots to improve on (Snarkiness : 1, SND/Anna : Nil). I am hoping that my ass-making will decrease, if not disappear, in the time and blog posts to come.

Thank you, Jo ( and the managerial staff at the Burlington, Mass. Williams-Sonoma) for allowing me to sit in on a wonderful class. It was thoughtful and generous of you. W-S is my friend and crack den, as ever.

* As a disclaimer, cooking classes such as the ones taught by Jo are not free ($50 each). I did not know of their existence (shockingly enough). Had I known, I would have had more realistic expectations of the free technique class offered by W-S. The store is not a charity, public education is not their main occupation, nor their responsibility. It's pretty cool that they offer free classes at all.

On the Road to Improvement

2007-10-01T21:54:00.000-04:00

On the road to Durham

A week ago I listened close to my gut instinct and took in its constant scream of, “Science ties me up in knots, get me out of here!” I took three days off lab, rearranged and rebooked travel plans and attended a food blogging event in Durham, North Carolina, organized by the wonderful folks at BlogTogether. A food blogging event alone would have been enough to send my instincts into convulsions but with Michael Ruhlman as the guest of honor/speaker/author/blogger idol, I had no hope of resisting.

The first part of the event was a book reading at the Regulator Bookshop. Michael Ruhlman read an excerpt from his book, talked about writing books and blogs, the direction of American cuisine, cooking, eating and generally enjoying life to its fullest. He then signed books for a line of eager blogger worshippers such as myself, taking time to chat with every one of them.

When my turn came I was awkward and tongue tied, due no doubt to stress and science (I blame everything on science these days). Happily, Bora covered by saying that I am shy. Thank you! We bloggers need to stick together. [As an aside, I may be a great many things but shy I am not. Inarticulate and unsociable at times, yes. Shy? Not so much.] I did manage to squawk out a bit about my own blog and food writing, which Michael sat through with all his composure and obscene patience.

The next day was spent in anticipation of dinner at Piedmont. Chefs Drew Brown and Andy Magowan based practically the entire dinner on one heirloom pig that was raised on a local farm. I don’t know if it was the knowledge that all the ingredients save for the olive oil were born and raised in locally or that the execution of the dishes was flawless, but the food was rich, alive, fresh, simple, and cared for. In other words, it was great.

First
Housemade charcuterie and local cheeses: pate, lomo, rillette, head cheese, new moon, chevre camembert and accompaniments
Le Colture Fagher Prosecco

Second
White sweet potato puree with pancetta
Pierre Henri Chardonnay 2006

Third
Arugula salad with cherry tomatoes, pickled oak-grown shiitakes and herbs (basil, tarragon, fennel fronds and dill were all I could pick out)

Fourth
Pork loin with butternut squash polenta, braised chard and jus
La Gironnere Cotes do Bordeaux 2003

Fifth
Scuppernong* granita with moscato d’asti, cookies

---------

Michael took a look at my blog and was kind enough to give me his opinion on how I can improve. I have to be more me, he said, have to give the reader a better sense of my voice minus the snarky, to which I am massively prone. Good idea? Yes. Easy to execute? Nope. I’ll be working on it, over the next 20 years or so.

Pictures from the dinner here, courtesy of Anton Zuiker.

*Don’t know what scuppernong is? I didn’t either. It’s a large grape with a thick skin that is grown in NC and is used to make a sweet wine. The granita was pale green, smooth, and almost creamy. The taste came forward in stages – sweet at first, perfumey and floral last.

P.S. Impressions? Michael Ruhlman is a pretty neat (and tall!) guy - well-spoken, attentive, with a barely concealed edge (always the best part of a person) which I unintentionally coaxed out at dinner. I have a tendency to do that. That’s another bit of me that may need to be kept in check.

Classes and Jars

2007-09-24T12:16:00.000-04:00

I think my love for Williams-Sonoma has been made amply clear. How disappointed was I when my beloved slipped, losing an entire 10 points on my obsession scale!

Imagine my surprise when I walked into W-S expecting a tutorial in braising as part of their weekly technique classes, and received an extended QVC-type plug for their line of prepared braising sauces! Ick. Why on earth would I go to a class to learn how to open jars? Never mind my disappointment in the instructor who had difficulty distinguishing between a braise and a stew.

I am sorry to be snarky about the entire undertaking considering that the majority of my cooking know-how is gleaned from books and television, but come on! Demonstratig a recipe for chicken cacciatore that consists of step 1) brown chicken, and step 2) open jar of sauce seems like talking down to the audience. But maybe not… the fact that half the people in the room visibly gagged when the instructor began dismembering a whole chicken should have been sign #1 that the audience, and perhaps the class, were not my scene. Were they not aware that the shrink-wrapped blue-ish bird bits they pick up at the supermart come from an actual, gasp, chicken? Irritation embodied, that.

Perhaps I need to finally suck it up, quit my whining (and grad school) and take a real cooking class.

P.S. I am only (mostly) joking about quitting grad school. I think.
P.P.S. Don’t worry, I still love Williams-Sonoma. It will have to earn back the points it lost, however.

Duh

2007-09-19T22:36:00.000-04:00

I am a bit (more like huge) of an airhead. I forgot that the whole point of a meme is propagation, so to speak. Here goes, with a slight delay.

What five foods are you ashamed to love?

Leena - Leena Eats
JC - Nobody Cares What You Ate for Breakfast
Hillary - Chew On That
Nitasha - Bloomers & Buns
Who says you have to have a blog to participate in a meme? I object to such blog-centricity. Therefore, Aimee, take it away.

Brutal honesty is best.

Edible Skeletons in Kitchen Closets

2007-09-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

I was tagged for a meme. How exciting is that? I feel all bloggerly and validated. Someone out there in the great big bloggy world cares to know what 5 foods I am ashamed to love.

It’s a neat concept for a meme, but one that I have a bit of a problem with. I don’t need to add to my reputation of food snobbiness. I think there is equal beauty in a perfectly ripe, sweet and juicy plum with a crackly, taut skin and a masterfully prepared complex dish with 50 ingredients and 30 garnishes. I don’t like to judge food on anything beyond its merits.

That said, I will now release all my nasty food habits out into the open. Let them run around and make friends with one another.

1. This skeleton may already be out of its closet, but I love Cheetos. I do. I love them. I don’t really know what they are or what they are made of, nor how they get to be knobby, crunchy, and day-glo orange, but I love them. I love how the neon-colored fake cheese gloms onto your fingertips. I love scraping it off with my teeth once a thick enough layer has accumulated. So good and so bad all at the same time.

2. I love burnt cheese. You know when you’re making mac and cheese or baked brie, and just a little bit of the cheese spills its way onto the baking sheet and gets fried into a hard, slightly bitter and massively salty cracker? That’s the bit I love. I will stand there picking at it, chipping it off the metal sheet, shard by crispy little shard. The mac and cheese is a poor consolation prize after all the burnt cheese is gone.

3. Ok, it’s now time for scary “ethnic” stuff. [As an aside, I find the word “ethnic” to be one of the most cringe-worthy in the English language and borderline offensive. It’s a remarkably efficient way of setting someone apart, making them feel different and left out. Speaking as an “ethnic” person, of course.] I love pickled herring. I know I am fulfilling about 15 different stereotypes by saying so, but I do, I love herring. Russians serve it doused with vegetable or sunflower oil, with sliced white onions and occasionally minced dill on top. My hands smell of fish for a whole day afterward, but I don’t mind. I guess I am just ethnic that way.

4. Every five years or so, I find enough time to make my own chicken stock. I really like doing it. It makes the house smell good and it reminds me of my Mom’s cooking. She used to buy chicken drumsticks for stocks (now she bad-assedly dismembers whole chickens for the purpose… I have a long way to go before I can even pretend to do that). I loved, and still love, to eat the resulting plain boiled chicken, with some mustard or horseradish. It’s not a particularly bad or disgusting food habit, but it is a really boring one. It’s boiled chicken. Period. But it reminds me of when I was little. More than anything else I cook for myself, boiled chicken drumsticks (possibly the most un-photogenic food in all creation) send me back home.

5. Last one. I should make this one good, right? The grand reveal? The complete gross out? Ok then. It’s not so much a food as an approach to food. I hate utensils. Really, I do. I cannot stand forks, spoons are ok, knives are instruments of dining torture. All the pomp and circumstance and watching where you put what and how you hold it in your hand, blah blah blah. I may be rebelling against my old world upbringing or embracing all the Indian food prepared by my best friends and their Moms over the many years (close to two decades!) of our friendship, but I think food tastes better when you eat it with your hands. You get to feel its weight, its texture. You taste more of it because it’s not scalding hot… And frankly, it’s more fun.

So there you go. When no one is looking, I am eating Cheetos, herring, and boiled chicken with my bare hands, while picking at burnt cheese. How’s that for attractive…

Review Time

2007-09-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

It is that time of the month again. My reviews of restaurants around Kenmore Sq/Fenway Park are up for Nature Network Boston.

I have a really bad feeling that I am about to eat myself out of a job. These reviews are supposed to cover restaurants around major research sites in Boston. Not surprisingly, research sites are far more limited than the restaurants ... In other words, I am almost out of research areas. If anyone wants to come over here and start a new institute/research facility so that I can eat all around it, please do! I don't know what I am going to do with all my free time if I don't have these reviews to write!

Note the Audubon review. I went public with my love for Audubon. Sigh. Now everyone knows.

The Chef Show

2007-09-05T23:04:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, I have a really great dinner. I mean the kind of dinner that reminds me why I love to eat out, to think about food, look at food. Every once in a while I have a meal that leaves me with a grin on my face.

Food alone is not enough to achieve this level of culinary euphoria. It requires a combination of factors, sensations, and experiences. It depends on the staff of the restaurant, its ambiance, lighting, smell, decor… When all those things click into place, I am left sated and re-energized in my devotion to this hobby of mine that is beginning to take over my life.

Obviously, I wouldn’t be rambling on about this if I didn’t recently have just such an experience. I did, at Ten Tables in Jamaica Plain.

Ten Tables is a misnomer. They have delusions of grandeur – it’s seven tables, max. There is just one server (because frankly, there is no room for another one) and two chefs in the tiny kitchen. The food philosophy at Ten Tables is simple – use the highest quality ingredients, organic and sourced locally, whenever possible, prepare them simply, without fuss and pretense in order to showcase the ingredients, not the chef. In other words, they don’t mess with your food.

Kanchan and I got to sit at the chef’s table. Again, this is a misnomer. It’s not a table so much as a narrow bar with two very tall bar stools quite literally in the kitchen. It was awesome and voyeuristic. There was no rushing, no yelling, no frenetic movement or apparent stress in the kitchen. There was calm quiet, logic, and calculated movement. When the chef set out to do something so simple as slice an heirloom tomato, he looked at it from all angles, found the spot to cut that would showcase the tomato to its best advantage, and cut slowly, deliberately and precisely. It was amazing to watch.

The whole meal - a four course chef’s tasting menu, in our case - was prepared in much the same fashion. Calmly, respectfully, and dare I say it? Lovingly. The chef did something I have never experienced before – Kanchan and I were not served the same dishes during the tasting menu. Confused, we asked why. The answer was so simple and obvious that it made me wonder why every tasting menu isn’t done this way – the chef said that it allows us to taste more, to experience more. Obvious and genius.

So that was it, my glimpse of a professional kitchen, of a person who loves what he does, who gets to have his hobby be his work. Curious concept, that.

P.S. Some of what we were served:

Heirloom tomatoes with white anchovies and arugula

Poached hake with farro risotto and sweet pepper relish

Perfectly salted, crusty coulotte steak with a truffled white bean puree, shaved fennel, and paper thin radish slices (my favorite course, by far)

Battling Brunches

2007-09-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

This may come as a shock, but there are a bunch of Boston-haters out there. Yes, it’s true. Most of them have spent some time in New York (the city, not the vacuous state). They compare, compare, compare Boston to omnipotent and irreproachable New York, and declare it to be inferior. “Well, in Noo Yohk, you can get a hot dog, with foie gras, on a carousel, at 4AM. Can you do that in Boston? Noooooo.” Fine, you’re right. You can’t. That sounds gross anyway.

In all seriousness, I love Boston. I made the conscious decision to come to here. I could have gone to grad school in any major city, but I chose Boston. I, gasp, chose Boston over New York. Consciously, rationally, happily, I chose Boston. I love this city. Boo to the Boston-haters.

But. [Why oh why is there always a but?]. I will concede to the New Yorkers on one point. That point? Brunch. Boston is not a brunch town. There is nothing like Norma’s, nor Café Orlin, no place that can provide a memorable start to a weekend of delightful inactivity. Restaurants in Boston tend to serve brunch as an after thought, foods that are somewhat uninspired, routine, boring, and either dry or greasy… or both.

So what’s a self-respecting brunch-lover such as myself do? Stay at home. I made brunch for my friend Maiya one week, she reciprocated the next. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful tradition.

My menu was approximately five orders of magnitude less interesting than what Maiya's masterfully prepared (with a couple of hints from Mrs. Child).

Take a look at my menu:

- Sweet corn and zucchini frittata
- Breakfast chicken sausage from Whole Foods (quickly dubbed “meat candy” by Maiya for its potent nutmeg and cinnamon overtones)
- Heirloom tomato salad
- Big, fat toast
- Vanilla-blueberry crumbcake
- Lovely bottle of Belgian ale, courtesy of Maiya

Now compare that to Maiya’s menu:

- Oven-baked eggs with watercress, maitake mushrooms, and lots of heavy cream
- Some type of a cured pork product (no clue what it was, except salty and delicious)
- Potatoes pan fried in DUCK FAT (genius)
- Heirloom tomato salad with a rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil dressing (not pictured, sadly).

- Apple crostata with cinnamon and cranberry honey
- Bottle of champagne for kir royales, courtesy of me

Yeah. It was good.

Who needs Norma’s anyway. I have Maiya. And Melissa. And Kanchan… I have people who feed me well.

P.S. Forgive the gratuitous tomato porn:

For Everything Else, There Is... Take-Out.

2007-08-31T08:54:00.000-04:00

Time to first use of mandoline since purchase:
- approximately 17 days.

Time to cut finger:
- approximately 15 seconds.

Realizing that you may be too scatterbrained to safely cross the street, much less feed yourself?

TIMELESS.

The Politics of Pans

2007-08-29T21:51:00.001-04:00

I shall title this piece “A Jackson Pollock Moment.” Look for it at your friendly neighborhood Sotheby’s.

My Jackson Pollock impersonation is a top view of the buttery, buttery (did I already say buttery?) vanilla-blueberry crumb cake from Gale Gand’s new cookbook. Now that I have come to the firm realization that science makes me gag, I have been spending a lot more time doing what I want to do, and much less time doing what I am supposed to do (the point at which this will bite me in the ass is rapidly approaching, I am sure). So I have been cooking, and baking, and reading, and watching TV, which I haven't done in years... and I have to say, relaxation is worth the hype.

Anyway, the cake I made: it was pretty to look at, pretty to eat, and pretty to photograph. The cake was smooth and luscious and lovely (but not after two pieces. Two pieces just make you feel sick, take it from me). A bit of brown sugar in the dough gave the sweetness dimension it would otherwise lack. The butter gave it... well... everything else. I may need to find a way to squeeze a little more vanilla into the recipe. Vanilla sugar instead of plain granulated, perhaps?

The part of the recipe that I thought absolutely inspired (and the reason why I will make this cake again and again) is removing a cup of dough for the crumb topping before adding the full amount of flour. Brilliant! The topping, light on the flour and heavy on the butter, turned out crunchy and light, not doughy. The crisp, crumbly top was a much needed textural contrast to the fresh blueberries that melted into jam and the silky smoothness of the 48 pounds of butter in the dough. Overall, a great recipe.

Crispy, crunchy top made the cake.

But. There is a but. I have a bone to pick with Ms. Gand. The pans she calls for throughout the book are not standard size! This particular recipe calls for a 9-inch square cake pan. I don’t have a 9-inch square cake pan. Eight inch square pan is the standard pan size for people who don’t have professional kitchens at their disposal (no matter how hard they try). Eight, Gale! Not nine! I baked the cake in the too-small pan a little longer and it turned out just fine - a little underdone in the center, just how I like it. So, ha. I boycott the 9-inch cake pan. You can’t make me get one, Gale Gand, y’hear? Y’can’t. It’s a matter of principle.

See that Gale? That right there is an 8-inch pan. Eight. That's what it looks like. Take note.

Whew. That may be the sugar rush talking. Ok, yelling. Judging by the accent, I turn into a drunk West Virginia farmer when I am angry. Curious. Learn somethin’ new every day.

P.S. I wish to add the disclaimer that just because I have never owned a 9-inch square pan doesn't mean that many many other people don't either. However, I don't think 9-inch is nearly as common as eight.

P.P.S. If I have offended any drunk West Virginia farmers in this post, I guess I sort of apologize... Kind of.