Niche

Sometimes when I go out for Vietnamese or Chinese food, I get really jealous of the people whose native cuisine it is that are eating there.

I want whatever they are eating. I am not always certain it is the same thing that is listed in the English section of the menu.

Unemployment is now at 12% in Oregon, and I have a great idea for a job. How about serving as a cultural and culinary liaison to those of us that don't know what we are ordering? A person could take a group of people out to dinner and order for them. In exchange, they'd get paid, eat a free meal, and maybe make some new friends.

I'm In Total Control

I am pretty excited about staying home for Thanksgiving this year, especially because it is our first, both in the new house, and with each other.

I normally get together with my extended family. Maybe it's because we're related that we always did it potluck style. I thought that was how it was done.

J. strongly disagrees with me on this one, believing that when you have people over, they shouldn't have to bring anything.

Making the whole dinner is going to be a lot more work and cost a lot more money. I think it has some perks, though, like designing the whole dinner to your own tastes.

I like most food, even brussel sprouts, but traditional Thanksgiving dinners feature a couple of things I am not crazy about...things that aren't awful, but I would be perfectly happy to never eat again: sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.

Maybe I haven't had them prepared the right way. I know for a fact I've had a limited experience with pumpkin pie. Several years ago, my Grandmother made a little spiral bound cookbook entitled "Grandma's Favorite Recipes" that she gave to everyone for Christmas. It includes a recipe for Libby's Famous Pumpkin Pie that she took right off of a can of packed pumpkin. I do have to say her pie crusts are exceptional, though I prefer a different filling.

Sweet potatoes just don't have any personality, and I hate the Thanksgiving version with melted marshmallows on top.

Needless to say, I won't be including pumpkin pie or sweet potatoes at my dinner. I hope people aren't as attached to them as I am to mashed potatoes. The first Thanksgiving I spent away from home my freshman year of college was with a family who didn't include them as part of their Thanksgiving dinner, and I called my mom in tears.

Our guests are a lot older than I was then. I don't think sweet potatoes or pumpkin pie will be missed because I'm making a couple of great extra things to make our vegetarian friends happy. And how could a pumpkin pie possibly trump a cranberry mousse?

Sweet

When I was a kid, my mom made her own bread, mayonnaise and yogurt. My family didn’t eat processed food, any vegetables that weren’t from our own garden, and we definitely weren’t allowed to eat dessert, other than on our birthdays or holidays. Maybe it’s because I didn’t eat much sugar growing up that I eat almost none now, although my sister claims it was the lack of sugar that created her sweet tooth.

I haven’t had a birthday cake in maybe fifteen years. Sometimes I enjoy ice cream, but I almost always have to throw the cartons I buy out before they are empty because I realize they are a year old. I enjoy making desert, though, and sometimes give pies and cakes away that I never even taste.

Maybe it’s because I know I can eat sugar if I want to that I don’t eat much. When I was a kid, and had little control over what I ate, I liked candy as much as any other kid. One Halloween when I was about twelve, I came up with a plan to make my candy last all year long.

I sped trick-or-treated, targeting specific blocks and houses that I remembered to be particularly lucrative. I came home with more candy than I’d ever gathered before, and then began sorting it by type. I then divided the candy into twelve equal piles, and put them in wax paper bags. In retrospect, I wonder if this Halloween pre-dated zip lock bags or if my parents were just being cheap. I labeled each bag for each month of the year, then put them in our extra freezer in the basement, where I thought they would be safe from my family. When I went down to check on my candy a month later, most of it was gone, and I’m not sure if was my siblings or parents who took it.

I’m also not sure why I had more self-discipline as a kid than I do now. I wonder where it went, and if I will ever get it back.

Comfort Zone

I've been eating a lot of really great food lately. The idea of turning 38 doesn't thrill me, and I've been trying to soften the blow by stretching out my birthday as long as possible. I've already had three birthday dinners, and two of them have been at places I've already been to before.

I was really happy with what I ordered at both of these places the first time I ate there there, and despite wanting to explore the menus further, I was afraid of not liking something else as much as what I'd liked before, and ordered the same thing

This reminded me of a game I made up awhile ago that I have yet to pilot. It would be best to play it with at least four people. Everyone would go to a restaurant, and all parties would write their names down on slips of paper, and indicate if they were vegetarians or had any food allergies. The names would be put into a hat and everyone would draw a name. When the server came by to take orders, everyone would order for the person who's name they had drawn, without sharing the name of the person they were ordering for with the group.

I like this game not only because it forces people out of their comfort zones, but also because it could be played on a variety of levels. There is the option to be a little obnoxious and order something sketchy for someone else, or to order what you think is the best thing on the menu.

Conscious

When I was four, my family moved from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. Regrettably, it has since become a suburb; even ten years ago it was impossible to get a salad for under $10 in one of the numerous restaurants that have sprung up in the town of Winslow.

In the mid ’70’s, Winslow was a tiny town with one traffic light. I loved the Scotch Broom Parade that went down the main street every year, and was really excited the year I got to be part of it, riding in the back of a truck filled with hay and throwing candy at the crowd. There was a little diner my family used to go to occasionally, The Lemon Tree, and I wanted to be a waitress there when I grew up.

The only other restaurant I remember was The Island House. My parents would go there for their anniversary, and it was on one of those anniversary dinners they got the call from my babysitter informing them that I had stuck a peanut up my nose and couldn’t get it out.

The Island House saved buckets of leftovers for our pigs, who always had the same names: Sausage, Bacon, Ham and a name I can’t remember. We got four pigs every year. They were cute when they were young and ran all over the garden, which took up an acre of the property. When they got older, and the garden no longer needed rotatilled, we moved them in to a much smaller pen. Retrospectively, this seems unfair; while they were small they had a ton of room to run around, and when they became bigger, we stuck them in a really confined space.

I didn’t think about this at all at the time. By the time they had been moved to the smaller pen, I hated them. They were much bigger than me, made a lot of noise, and were really intimidating.

I remember the slaughtering days as really exciting. We got to stay home from school and invite a friend over to watch. I have no memories of ever knowing I was eating our own pigs. It was something that if my parents talked about all, they did it when they were alone.

We moved back to Seattle when I was nine and our pigs, chickens, rabbits and horses were replaced by a series of Springer Spaniels, all of whom were named Sam.

I’ve dabbled with becoming a vegetarian for a month or week or day at a time off and on occasionally as adult, but I always come back to meat. I don’t eat a ton of it but sometimes I really love a medium rare steak and there is nothing like the combined smell of bacon and coffee in the morning.

When I was in Vietnam last winter, I had a couple of experiences that made me again question my animal consumption. The first was seeing the baskets of live puppies and rabbits for sale as dinner in the markets in Hanoi. From Hanoi, we headed out to Halong Bay to stay on an island for a couple of nights, and I began to seriously envy my vegetarian brother and mother. We weren’t able to order food, it was all served family style and we were divided into carnivore and vegetarian groups. Each lunch and dinner for the meat eating crowd included whole grilled frogs. Maybe if it had just been the legs it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I just couldn’t do it, and longed for the greasy vegetarian alternatives being served at the next table.

As soon as I returned to Portland, I dismissed my brief flirtation with becoming a vegetarian. I didn’t even think about it until a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Tillamook and visited a couple of cheese factories that won't stop haunting me and makes me question the orgin of everything that I eat.

The first was the Blue Heron, which I have recently learned is the state bird of Oregon. The Blue Heron has a petting farm of goats and visitors don’t actually go into the cheese factory, just a little store full of seasonal decorations, a deli, and a cheese tasting counter. I really enjoyed their smoked brie.

I headed to the Tillamook Cheese Factory next. I walked into the factory in a great mood that took a nose dive as soon as I started the tour. I was horrified that the workers were entirely visible to the public, that the glass wall that allowed us to observe the cheese making and packaging process put the people who worked in the factory on display, as if they were in a zoo. I was incredibly saddened to be confronted of the full reality that goes into cheese making. It requires the factory workers to spend the whole day on their feet doing monotonous tasks like placing blocks of cheese into slicing machines. I was so depressed by the time I left the factory that I couldn’t even eat the ice cream cone I bought on the way out.

Mine

The other day one of my co-workers was talking about her will.

I don't have one, mostly because I don't really have a lot to give away. I should find a good home for my shoe collection, but I don't know anyone else who can fit into my shoes.

I do think it's a good idea to have a living will, and I thought about having a living will party while the Terri Schiavo situation was getting so much publicity. No one I knew had a living will, and I thought having a party to make them would make the process a little bit less of a downer. I imagined we could all be each other's witnesses.

I have put more thought into my funeral than I have into my will. I think I would like to have it catered. Not a sit down formal dinner or anything, but some nice rustic Italian food. I would definitely like some tomato salads. Here is one of my favorites.

Sicilian Tomato Salad

8-10 tomatoes
1 cup olive oil
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup cold water
1-2 cups dry ricotta (ricotta salada)
fresh oregano, basil
salt, fresh ground pepper

Cut the tomatoes into wedges into a flat dish. Add oil, vinegar, water, oregano, and basil (2 to 1 oregano to basil), salt, pepper to taste. Garlic powder optional.

Sprinkle coarse grated ricotta salada throughout. Gently fold and mix, adjust ingredients to preference. When balance has been established, sprinkle hearty layer of ricotta over top, covering salad. Chill at least 1/2 an hour. Serve with warm, crusty Italian or French Bread.

That's a friend's old family recipe...here's my two cents: the garlic is important, I don’t view it as optional. And use the real stuff, not powder.

This salad is really soupy, that’s the point. Serve it in bowls and use the bread to soak things up. I think it tastes best if it’s been getting to know itself for at least 2 hours before serving it.

Anyway, thinking about tomato salads made me realize that if the ones at my funeral are going to be any good, I will need to die in the peak of tomato season.

I was telling some friends about this last night, joking about how when I get really old and my health is fading, I will grow my funeral tomatoes. My friends thought this was a great idea, that it ought to be a short story or on This American Life, and one of them said he would write it. I told him, no, that it was my idea and sick fantasy. If anyone is going to write about it, it should be me.

I thought that was the way things worked, that people get first dibs on their own ideas. If it's not the case, I need to get out of the habit of telling other people about the latest crazy thing rattling around in my head.

Cheater Pants

I got a chain email from B. the other day.

Normally I don’t respond to that type of thing, but this was a recipe exchange chain. It seemed like a good opportunity to get back into cooking. It has been so long since there was anything in my fridge but olives, capers, yogurt, cheese, half and half, nine rolls of film, and that giant jar of bean salad my mom got me a year ago.

I know it’s not going to be as easy to just pick up a falafel or burrito for dinner when I move. I have to get my act together, and the recipe exchange seemed like a great motivator. I passed on my recipe to the top person on the list within an hour of receiving the email.

Here’s the recipe I shared:

Cauliflower Gratinée in Honor of MFK Fisher

From Pedaling Through Burgundy Cookbook

"I put some fresh pepper on the top, and in a way I can't remember how the little tin oven heated the whole thing and melted the cheese and browned it. As soon as that happened we ate it. The cream and cheese had come together into a perfect sauce, and the little flowers were tender and fresh. We cleaned our plates with bits of crisp bread and drank the wine, and Al and Lawrence planned to write books about Aristotle and Robinson Jeffers and probably themselves, and I planned a few things, too." The Gastronomical Me

1 medium head cauliflower
1 cup mascarpone cheese
sea or coarse salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of cayenne pepper
4 ounces of gruyere cheese

Preheat the over to 375. Butter a shallow, 1 and a half quart round or oval
gratin dish (I think I've sometimes used just a glass pie pan if I can't find
anything else).

Trim the cauliflower and break it into bite-size florets. Steam the cauliflower over boiling water until cooked halfway through, 3 to 5 minutes; remove from the heat immediately. Season the mascarpone with the salt, white pepper, nutmeg and cayenne. Add the cauliflower and mix it gently but thoroughly into the mascarpone. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish.

Grate the gruyere as finely as possible. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the top of the cauliflower (I think I've used more gruyere and mixed some up with cauliflower, as well as on the top). Bake until bubbling and golden brown on top 40 to 45 minutes. Serve at once with a baguette and a good bottle of wine.


B. was worried the chain would break before she got any recipes, and requested that we email her our recipes, in addition to the person on the top of the list who was really supposed supposed to receive them. I thought this was a great idea, sent her the above recipe, and asked the ten friends I sent the chain to to do the same thing for me. Less than an hour later, I got this response from J.


Noooo…

That's cheating ... and, you know it ....

You can't share in the bounty of the person at the top of the list ...
Or everything will be ruined.

Sorry Pal.

J.


Wow. I had obviously struck a nerve. I actually really hadn’t realized it was cheating, I was just trying to do a nice thing for myself, just find some new recipes to tempt me back into to cooking.

As much as I usually respect J.’s advice, I wasn’t fully convinced that cheating on the chain was a bad thing. I even thought about sending the chain out again to out to ten totally different people, just to increase my odds of getting recipes.

While I was in the middle of contemplating this, a recipe for curried chicken sandwiches was sent to me. It gave me hope…maybe I’ll try to play by the rules after all. I'll let you know what happens.

Meanwhile, I am still looking for new recipes….please send them my way. You can post them as a comment. It’s not part of the chain. It won’t be cheating.


Projects_,Bon Appetit_

Words That Embarrass Me

bI’ve been really easily irritated this week. It just doesn’t take much to get me worked up about things that really aren’t a big deal, like words that make me cringe.

My guess is that we all have words we don’t like to say, and that many of us share an aversion to the same words, like fanny, pantyhose and slacks. Am I right?

Of course there are words for foods that really get on my nerves, like home fries. That word and concept emerged out of the blue and onto the breakast plate sometime maybe in the early 90’s, replacing the perfectly respectable hash brown. They aren’t bad, they just aren’t as good as hash browns. And since they’re only served in restaurants, they’re inaccurately named. If I order a breakfast and home fries are one of the options I can choose from, I avoid saying the word and say that I’ll have the potatoes.

Then there are smoothies. Saying that word out loud makes me feel gross. It’s a sleazy word, when you think about it. Additionally, smoothies are guilty of being part of a food trend, though the trend has fortunately already seen its peak.

A food trend still going strong is the panini craze. I saw an ad for a panini sandwich the other day that made me crazy. Panini means sandwich! Panini sandwich is redundant. And panini isn’t even the right word, unless you are referring to more than one. We should really call a panini a panino. But why can’t we just call it a grilled sandwich? We aren’t in Italy and the ingredients in them are rarely classically Italian.




Judgments_,Bon Appetit_

Picky Eater

Ever since I learned to like cilantro, I've had a theory that anyone can learn to enjoy any food they initially dislike.

I'm sure other people can relate to my original stance on cilantro. I knew I had to get over it, though, because it was in too many things that I otherwise would have loved. I came up with a strategy, to try it in as many things as possible. I spent two years trying out everything I could think of that had cilantro in it. It wasn't until I ate a peanut, cilantro and garlic sauce over noodles that I found a recipe that I liked. Just as I suspected, once I found one recipe that worked for me, I could eat it in anything. About eight years ago, when A. and I were working on the cookbook that I hope we will one day finish, I outlined a chapter on this method of overcoming disliked foods. I was going to call it "Break On Through".

Today I had an experience that challenges this whole theory. I went out for dim sum with one of my co-workers and she ordered chicken feet. I thought I might as well try them. My co-worker told me they tasted just like the rest of the chicken, you just had to spit the bones out.

Once a foot was on my plate, I got a little nervous. I didn't like the way the toes looked, but it seemed too late to change my mind. I tried them, and yes, they do taste just like the rest of the chicken. It was spitting out the bones and knowing I was eating a foot that prevented me from enjoying them.

I guess for years I've been so caught up in the successful implementation of my overcoming food dislikes theory that I forgot a key component that's applicable to all things, not just food. In order to overcome anything, you have to want to. I don't want to get past the low level of nausea I experienced eating a chicken foot. There are better things to focus on.

Bon Appetit_

Julie and Julia and Juliet

Julie and Julia has received a lot more criticism than it deserves. The book documents the year in Julie Powell's life she decided to make every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about the experience. It’s been criticized both in terms of its structure and content. When I was trying to decide whether I should buy it or get it out of the library, I asked a bookseller for his honest opinion. We had an interesting conversation about blogs that become books, and structural problems that the format can create. This makes more sense to me hypothetically than practically. I found I loved the format, and that the sometimes uneven narrative mirrored Powell’s feelings about the project and created more of an opportunity for her personality to come across than if it had just been a regular book of essays. The book has also been criticized for not being enough of a cookbook. Who cares? I think people are missing the point, that it’s as much about giving birth to an idea as it as about the food.

Ever since I embarked on my endeavor to become a dating consultant for geeks, I’ve been thinking about the life of an idea. I get ideas all the time that I never act on. I invented The Real World in my mind years before it debuted. I never got further than a rough plot outline of the young adult gay novel I was going to co-author with J. I invent restaurants all the time with my friend R., my favorite being “The Other Side of the Tracks”, where you are arbitrarily seated on one side of a restaurant or the other. The food, service and atmosphere are great on one side. On the other, your server chooses your food off a limited menu, table legs have different lengths, you are seated with strangers, and there is no toilet paper in the bathroom.

I think how seriously you take your own ideas comes down to how much you need them. I don’t think my geek consulting idea is that much different than a lot of other projects I’ve dreamed up, I just needed something new in my life. It’s not that big of a step to actually try out an idea instead of just talking about it, but getting there can be a long process.

I can completely understand Powell's singular focus on her project; we need these things to entertain ourselves, to add structure and meaning to our lives. She hated her job and she was bored with her life. She built community and became a minor celebrity. How can you not admire her project, honesty, foul mouth and drive?

It was great to learn about Julia Child along the way. I’ve got a couple of her cookbooks, but had mostly just thought of her as the crazy old lady on PBS. She lacked the glamour and artistry of M.F.K. Fisher. I had no idea she worked for what would become the CIA and that she didn’t learn how to cook until she was 37. She did so out of boredom, when she her husband had just married and moved to Paris and she didn’t have enough going on in her life to fill her time. I love that she used money from the G.I. Bill to pay for her tuition at the Cordon Bleu.

Hats off to you, both Julie and Julia! You inspire me.



Books_,Projects_

Masculine Food

For some reason, the term "masculine food" popped into my head today. Maybe it was the Super Bowl. Who knows?

Generally speaking, masculine food requires very little preparation. It’s unhealthy and beer is always the perfect accompaniment to it. The following foods can be grouped into that category: chips, corndogs, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, ribs, and Vienna sausages.

Masculine food is generally meat based, which is why barbecuing is typically done by men. Actually, this a great way to teach a man to cook. I got an old boyfriend The Barbecue Bible for Christmas one year and it changed his life. He went from only knowing how to make deviled eggs to becoming a really accomplished cook, and made a successful transition from the grill to the kitchen.

Anyway, after awhile I started to wonder if I was clever enough to have coined the phrase masculine food or if someone had beaten me. I nosed around online and learned that of course the term was already in existance. I also learned that Playboy used to have an article featuring masculine foods in almost every issue from the 1950’s to the early 1970’s. Thomas Mario, who often wrote this column, considered the oyster to be a really masculine food.

I can imagine bachelors of the past wearing smoking jackets and eating oysters. I really doubt today’s bachelors sit around at home alone eating oysters. I’d like them more if they did.


Bon Appetit_

Oh Comfort Me

The results are in. Thank you to everyone who participated in my top ten comfort foods survey. The winner is...Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Honorable mention goes out to mashed potatoes and the grilled cheese/tomato soup combination. Please note there was a tie between homemade tomato soup and Campbell’s.

Many contributors wanted to know if beverages counted. Yes. I had been thinking about that while listening to The Splendid Table. There was a segment on a town in Italy where wine is always served in bowls because it's considered a food not a beverage. This answered the question for me.

For ease of viewing, I have broken the nominations into the following categories: breakfast, soups and sandwiches, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, beverages and other, for the those hard to place cravings.

Breakfast: biscuits and gravy, corned beef hash and eggs, Egg McMuffin, grits, hash browns, oatmeal, poached eggs with cheese on an English muffin, waffle with an over easy egg on it

Soups and sandwiches: arroz caldo, chicken and rice soup, chicken noodle soup, clam chowder, chowder in general, french onion soup, grilled cheese sandwich (some classic, some with chutney), peanut butter on a toasted english muffin, pho, potato soup, Rueben sandwich, split pea soup, tomato soup (both homemade and Campbell's), turkey sandwich made with Thanksgiving leftovers, veggie burger with chipotle mayo

Main dishes: chicken adobo, chicken and dumplings, chili over rice or corn bread, corned beef hash with bbq sauce and Parmesan cheese on top, enchiladas, filet mignon, fish sticks, fried chicken, General Tso's chicken, macaroni and cheese (both Kraft and homemade), noodle casseroles, pasta, pizza (regular and frozen), quesadilla with green chiles, sesame noodles with peanut sauce, sushi, tacos, white trash casseroles with made with cream of mushroom soup

Side dishes:baba ganoush and pita, baked potato w/toppings, bread and cheese, carrot sticks, cheese fries, Cobb salad, collard greens, cornbread, crispy eggplant, fries with tartar sauce, fries with mayo, green apples,pear/walnut/blue cheese salad, mashed potatoes, rice with black beans, salt and vinegar potato chips, tator tots

Dessert: banana split with hot fudge and toasted almonds, brownies, chocolate, Chubby Hubby Ben and Jerry's ice cream, Chuckles Candy, Coffee Crisp candy bar, cookies, doughnuts, ice cream (any kind),Hostess Sno-balls, Mexican chocolate and coffee milkshake, M & M's, peanut butter cups, pumpkin pie

Beverages: beer in general, English tea, Green River Soda, Guinness, hot chocolate Jarrito’s Lime Soda, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, peppermint tea, wine

Other: hollandaise sauce, peanut sauce

There's a lot of food on this consolidated list that really surprised me and got me thinking about what comfort means to different people. The only common thread I can see is how specific cravings are. Participants in my survey included the brands of the foods, the restaurants they needed to be eaten at, and the mood they needed to be in when they ate it. I'm sorry to not have included some of the specfics.

Interesting Facts:

Women had longer comfort foods lists than men and their lists were less sweet.

My own personal list only includes foods that are white, yellow, orange and tan.

Chicken appears to be more comforting than beef.

There's not a lot of contemporary cuisine on this list. There is a clear connection between comfort food and childhood, either foods we ate as children, or would have if our parents had let us.

Evel Knievel endorsed Chuckles Candy. It didn't ring a bell for me until I looked at the packaging. Now it seems familiar, like something that was sold in movie theaters in the 1970's.





Lists_,Bon Appetit_