I'm halfway done with two other posts, but am just too scatterbrained the last few days to finish them coherently. Instead, I'll confess some of the strange, perhaps even holiday distasteful foods, to which I am secretly devoted. I got to thinking about the subject while planning my Thanksgiving menu. Every year, the holiday season causes some of my funny obsessions to rear their embarrassing heads. What are these dishes of shame, these celebratory foodstuffs I anticipate each year?
Well, for one, Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. I adore that wiggly, ridged log of delightful sweet-tartness. I'm fond of cranberries generally, particularly in more respectable preparations, but that blue and white can holds a special place in my heart for reasons that go deeper than nostalgia. For one, the rich, butter-laden holiday plate needs a bright flavor note just to keep the palate awake. Of course, a well-made whole berry sauce can fill that role as well, but there's just something about that jelly texture that enthralls me. And of course, the whole point of cooking a turkey is to have leftover turkey sandwiches. My mom and I prefer ours on whole-grain bread with spicy honey mustard, a layer of cornbread dressing, and a thick slab of gelatinous cranberry goodness.
Even more humiliating, I love green bean casserole. Yes, the kind with the cream of mushroom soup and French's French-fried onions. Lord knows why. I learned to make béchamel specifically to use it instead of Campbell's cream of what ever in those kinds of old-fashioned recipes, and yet, I can't bring myself to tart up green bean casserole. It tastes perfect already, soft and creamy and salty, laden with those addictive crispy onion bits. Actually, those may be the secret of my devotion to green bean casserole. I have to buy the big can when I make it so I have plenty to munch on. They look funny, the coat the roof of your mouth, and yet, as I write this, I've developed a craving so intense my stomach just rumbled a little. I don't have the excuse of nostalgia on this one either. Since basically everyone in the world but me things this stuff is gross, I didn't really grow up with it. My grandmother makes it now, but I don't know that anyone but me eats it.
I enjoy these cool, drippy days when the winter rains finally come to the Bay Area; they give an illusion of changing seasons rare in our temperate climate. It's nice to put on my pumpkin-colored raincoat and tweed cap for the first time in months and head out to buy a new umbrella. It rains so infrequently during spring, summer, and early autumn, I invariably forget where I stored the previous season's umbrella and must replace it. I suspect that one day I'll open the right drawer or closet and find a mother load of previous season's parapluies.
While I'm out umbrella shopping, I'm also likely to pick up a few bunches of beets. For as much as I love eating adorable baby beets in the spring, I like them even better in the chilly days of autumn. The smell of damp earth and caramelized sugar while they roast seems to warm me from the inside. Plus, what better to counteract a damp, gray day than an intense infusion of beet pink?
Although I know it's possible to think of the pink as something of a menace, an infectious hue that must be segregated from all other foods until the last possible minute, I love that the color looks almost too intense to eat. That such a bright hue accompanies such rich, almost dirt-like taste always surprises me. Many of my favorite beet dishes take advantage of the pink, letting it bleed freely into the dish, and ensuring a truly dramatic presentation on the plate.
Tejal pointed out to me that, in my gushing about New York in general and wd-50 in specific, I forgot to mention a particular neat aspect of the timing of our dinner. We happened to dine just days after Alex Stupak, best known for, until recently, being the pastry chef Alinea in Chicago, started at wd-50. He was even in the kitchen on that quiet Sunday night, and from my seat I had a wonderfully discrete angle from which to watch him work.
Tejal said a few "trademark" items and techniques were familiar to her from Alinea, and we certainly had the opportunity to taste a wide range of his work. In addition to the pre-dessert and two desserts on the tasting menu, he sent out a third dessert to each of us, and a wonderfully bitter little chocolate birthday cake for me. That element of bitterness, or at least lack of intense sweetness, was present in all of his desserts. He also made wide use of other intense flavor notes like licorice, menthol, and chartreuse. Nothing was savory, but neither was anything so sweet that it dulled the tongue. Depending on what elements you got on the spoon, each bite would let one flavor pop while the others harmonized in the background.
It should probably not surprise you to learn that a few jean buttons were discretely undone in the taxi on the way back to Whitney's place. We'd only saved room for the two desserts we were expecting, but the sacrifice of a very full tummy was gladly undertaken.
It's also worth noting that Wylie was in the restaurant that evening, having a casual dinner. It's always nice to see chefs actually eating in their own restaurants, chefs who are involved in the experience, instead of just designing a menu and disappearing into the mist.
I could say I went to New York because Stephen and my mom sent me there to celebrate my birthday. I could say I went to spend some quality dress-oogling time with the ladies who will, in the not to distant future, be in my wedding party. I could even say I went in hopes that a bout of jetsetting would snap me out of my prolonged period of useless moping. While all these things are technically true, the real reason I made the trek was to eat.
If you're the sort of person who travels on her stomach, you could hardly to better than five days in New York with Whitney and Tejal. There are few people in the world more enthusiastic about a rigorous schedule of cocktails, dinners, further cocktails, and midnight snacks than those two.
We kicked off Star Chefs Rising Stars Revue, a pretty fantastic to-do hosted by the people at Tejal's new job (which I think she'll talk more about later). I put on red lipstick and dangly earrings, then Whitney ane I up met up with Tejal at an enormous club called Crobar.
About every five minutes, someone would ask, "Have you tried the foie gras hot dog? It's awesome!" I did; it was indeed awesome, as was the tuna sashimi with wasabi ice and sweet soy reduction. The latter wasn't the most literal example of "street food," but the sweet, icy burn had eyes rolling in pleasure all over the room nonetheless.
We continued on to the after party at Bed. In route we were soundly hooted at by two guys driving a garbage truck. Which is every bit as flattering as it sounds. At Bed we partied like rock stars and learned two very important lessons. One: everyone looks sexier lounging on cushions.
Once we spied people passionately smooching, we learned lesson number two: it's better not to think about what you might see staining those cushions if the lights were on.
Ten weeks ago I got a once in a lifetime invitation to eat my way around Southeast Asia in the company of the most extraordinary person. It's amazing, really, how it all came about. See, I was on the plane coming home from Nashville, and you'll never guess who was sitting in the seat next to me!
Okay, not so much. That would be a much better excuse for my absence than the truth. The truth is that my real life, the life I live outside of this cozy cyber nest where my biggest concern is whether or not the yeast will bloom in warm water, kicked my butt recently. For a variety of icky, personal reasons I spent the last few days, weeks, months, forevers (it seems) moderately depressed and basically useless. I couldn't bring myself to post here pretending to be witty and sunny, pretending everything was fine. I also couldn't bear to post the truth. Day after day of "Didn't get out of bed today. Ate nine fun-size Kit-Kats. Ordered Chinese again," hardly seemed worth it. At a certain point, the fact that I wasn't posting began to feel like a failure in and of itself, one more reason not to get out of my pajamas.
Thankfully, the worst seems to be over. The gears seem to be turning again. I'm cooking, nothing worth noting, but it's nice to feel like I'm finding my feet.
I thought about turning up here again, apologizing in passing for my time away, and continuing without further comment. When you live part of your life on the internet, there's always the question of how much of yourself to reveal. It's more fun to show the cocktails and nibbles part of me than the unwashed hair, red-rimmed eyes, and pizza delivery part. In the end, I decided to address it largely because I kept getting e-mails from people wondering where I was, if I was okay, and whether or not I'd been eaten by a bear or something. At the time, I didn't really know what to say to those people (Hi Sean! Hi Payal! Hi Whitney!), but it made me think that something did need to be said.
Some years ago, Stephen gave me an acoustic cover of "Here Comes the Sun" by a folk singer named Richie Havens. The first time I heard his version, I realized it was actually a rather sad song. When George Harrison sings it, it sounds like everything bad is in the past. Richie Havens sings like all his troubles are very much in the present. He sings with a desperate hopefulness, like he believes, must believe, that he's finally seeing a sign that everything will eventually be better. He says, "I feel that ice is slowly melting;" I think I know what he means.
This is the first meal I've ever documented this way. First reason, obviously, it's El Bulli man. Second reason, it's my birthday weekend extravaganza in Barcelona with Glyn and he's given me a pretty sweet little camera (I love you baby, thank you!). A couple are blurry, dark, or too close because I was fooling around with all the exciting, new buttons. Oh, but they're not all bad...
Imagine it in Spanish: it's evening in Roses, and the French (because everyone here is French) are walking their tiny, well groomed dogs and plying their whingy kids with ice-cream cones. Outside the decent, but rather shabby Hotel Marina, is a taxi stand:
"Good evening! We're going to El Bulli, do you know where that is?" I ask.
"El Bulli? Ah, well, it's my first day actually..." The driver makes a quick and lispy phone call during which he is obviously being given directions. "Oh-ho! You meant El Boo-yee" He says, folding up his phone. And we begin the ten minute drive up that winding, narrow road along the ocean. It's beautiful here, but more importantly, you don't pronounce those l's in El Bulli--two l's make a y. Because it's Spanish, after all. And despite the French occupation of Roses, this is Spain. And not just Spain, but Catalunya, the graffittied ruins that whizz past remind me, and the revolution is coming.
This certainly isn't a newsflash, but all Mexican food is not created equal. I mean, of course the Chevy's I've occasionally resorted it is an inevitable disappointment, but even what passes for reasonably respectable Mexican food in a lot of places can be pretty horrific. Boston, in my experience, has terrible Mexican food. I spent four years there essentially twitching in desperation for something resembling a decent taco. In our freshman year, Stephen and I went to a restaurant that came very highly recommended. They actually managed to make a quesadilla nearly inedible. We went back one other time, hoping we'd just been on a bad day, but the food did not improve.
The problem, of course, is that cities without many visible Mexican people rarely have excellent Mexican food. Forty years after the race riots in Roxbury, Boston is still a surprisingly white city. In addition to the problematic social and cultural implications, this means the odds of getting decent guacamole are pretty slim.
The Nashville of my earliest years was a similar city. Back in the years before salsa was the best-selling condiment in America, my understanding of Mexican cuisine went no farther than Chi-Chi's, and it went there infrequently. When my mother was pregnant with me, a friend of hers was the manager of a Chi-Chi's, and he treated her to an all-she-could-eat pseudo-Mexican feast. The hours she later spent throwing up put her off the idea for some time.
Over time, that aspect of Nashville's culinary landscape broadened. Slowly at first, immigrants arrived, and the food in the Music City changed for the better. I know a lot of people there who have some militantly angry feelings about immigration in general. Many of them are the same people who have forgotten a time when they didn't even know what cilantro was, let alone whether or not they thought it tasted like soap. I, for one, am nothing but enthusiastic about this recent cultural shift.
The lid slide off the small cooler as Stephen hoisted it into the overhead compartment. He'd had to lower the locking handle to fit the cooler in, so a gentle bump was all it took for the lid to fall and bonk the gentleman in the aisle seat. Stephen apologized numerously and with genuine repentance, but the man was not placated. Later, as Stephen passed by on his way to the bathroom, the man elbowed him in the hip.
This is proof of a few things: one, that Stephen really loves me. Two, that I really, really love barbecue. We'd taken turns toting the cooler containing just under three pounds of pulled pork and six small, styrofoam tubs of sauce through the airport. He doesn't love barbecue the way I do; his mouth doesn't water when he thinks of tender shreds that mingle porky unctuousness with a perfume of smoke. Still, he took his turns carrying the cooler, even letting me slip the lid aside to catch a smoky whiff. Useful, that boy.
I realize I should go back a bit, begin at the beginning. Barbecue, a word so loaded with history and etymology, regionalism and secrecy, it both demands explanation and defies it. Lovers tend toward an intolerable snottiness when they explain it to the uninitiated, so I'll do my best to be brief. Barbecue, as a verb, means to cook a piece of meat oh so very slowly over an indirect fire, to braise it in smoke, until incomparable tenderness is achieved. Questions of seasonings, dry rubs and sauces, have evaded more serious barbecue scholars than myself, so I'll stick to technique. Hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks, portobello mushrooms, chicken in sticky sauce, any of that cooked on a grate over coals was grilled, not barbecued.
Barbecue, as a noun, can refer to any cut of any animal cooked in such a way, but typically the word is shorthand for something specific, depending on where you're from. In Texas it means brisket; it's ribs in Kansas City. Where I have family in North-western Kentucky, they tend toward mutton. I'm from Nashville, and in Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Alabama, if you say barbecue with no modifiers, you probably mean smoked, shredded pork shoulder. We eat those other things too, I've seen everything from whole pigs to elk legs thrown in a smoker, but the barbecue closest to our hearts is pulled pork.
Hey, kids, I've been back for a week now and all is well. I've got a couple of posts stored up, but we left our camera in Nashville, and I sort of wanted to wait to post when I got it back and could include pictures. But now I'm tired of waiting, so that's that; I'll go ahead and start getting them up.
Chicago is brain-warpingly hot. Today I drove a mini-van through the leafy green suburb of Naperville, settled in 1831, with the air-conditioning on high. Shiny children passed by on their bicycles, squinty men in shorts dragged brown paper bags full of trimmed branches to their garages, and my cat hid in the shadows under the deck, panting for what might well be, the first time in his life. My aunt's mini-van slid around the corners on invisible tracks, the drizzle steamed.
It's melt into the tarmac hot, and if you've seen An Inconvenient Truth and passed a cool June in San Francisco, this sort of heat might seem worrying. You know, the end of the world is nigh and it's basically all my fault, sort of thing--although ditching my twelve year old VW in Portland with my brother and becoming a pedestrian again is a step in the right direction, there's nothing like finding out about how wasteful and excessive you are, to make your life suddenly feel wasteful and excessive. This last part is especially true if you're unemployed and eating with the fortitude of a seasonally starved female penguin.
I wonder how to negotiate the pleasure and the guilt of consuming so much and in such luxury, when there are both the proverbial and actual starving children in (insert whichever place your parents used to say, India for me), when there are bigger things happening near and far. Around me, the polar ice-caps are melting, husbands are kissing their wives good bye and heading to front lines, and my greedy eyes are fixed on dinner. Alinea to be specific. That greystone in Chicago's swank Lincoln Park neighbourhood, so unassuming I drove past it twice before I noticed it, all shining glass and steel, all dark wood and red lilies, and I almost forgot about the horrifying, haunting image of a bare, snowless Mt. Kilimanjaro. Such is the power of a good dinner--takes the edge right off the end of the world, so to speak.
When you've been married twenty eight years, as my parents have, or fifty three, as my grandparents have, there are bound to be arguments. For example, what is the best sort of long grained rice to pair with my grandfather's lamb kofta curry? When should you add the garam masala to your masala? Is beer good for a cough?
On my parents twenty-eighth anniversary, incidentally, Bastille Day, I had a crisp buckwheat crêpe folded with melted Emmental and smoky ham at the Chez Machin Crêperie in Hawthorne for breakfast, did a tour of the Marmite scented Widmer brewery, tasted an Indian Pale Ale, a Hefeweizen and crossed the magical street the pipes of bubbly beer run under. We wobbled home in time to do a bit of prep for the next evening's tapas dinner before showering and heading downtown to Higgins, on the recommendation of Oregonian passenger 2C who sat next to me two years ago when I flew to Portland from London for my brother's wedding.
So we reached Portland in the noisy Jetta with our bags of Japanese snacks and mini bags of funnions after twelve hours of mountains, the air gradually getting heavier and warmer till we reached the narrow, daisy lined drive of my brother and sister-in-law's cottage in Portland. The first real meal we planned was a tapas evening to match twenty or so beers selected and paired by my brother. Another of Ximena's "recipes" suited the occasion perfectly: melon soup with candied jamon--we used yikes, one made in America. Portland to be specific. In fact, it seemed everything we've been eating and drinking has been from Portland. Glyn put together some goat cheese beet raviolos garnished with all the tiny herb flowers from the garden, and spicy arugula also from their garden.
At New Seasons, where we did the grocery shopping to supplement the homegrown goods, a group of twelve or so teenage girls followed a rather good looking nutritionist around the produce aisles. "These are fresh raspberries," he grinned, "they're organic and grown right here in Portland." The girls tasted the little fruits, keeping their eyes fixed on the handsome nutritionist. A girl with long blond plaits referred to her questionnaire, and asked about the history of the organic movement in the NorthWest. One gets the feeling that Portland is raising a generation of conscious, smart eaters.
