I believe it was the great philosopher Immanuel Kant who never got much further than 10 miles from his place of birth, yet he held the whole world in his mind and managed an intellectual and social life so rewarding that the rest of us, though arguably better traveled, would undoubtedly envy it.
I am thinking of Kant lately because I took some time off from work recently and was, for a number of reasons, unable to travel very far for a traditional American “spring break”.
While there weren’t suntans and just-caught shellfish in the cards for me on this particular spring break, I feel that, like Kant, I have had the whole world in my head and have managed a pretty rewarding social life. This has been a week of meals with friends: Friends no longer present, celebrated in memoriam. Friends who haven’t been seen in 20 years, here again before my overjoyed and disbelieving eyes. Old friends and coffee, catching up without skipping a beat. New friends and the breaking of bread, not being afraid of the real scatter-fests most of us are underneath the façade.
These meals with friends have been fantastic but I think most people would speed on by the venues we’ve chosen. None of the restaurants we selected this week have been particularly chic.
I cook for a living and I love, love, love great meals. It’s great fun to sample the handiwork of a well-publicized chef. But great meals, for me, go way beyond the stuff on my plate. Really, I don’t care if a restaurant has five stars or no stars. I don’t care if they publicize their intelligent and sensitive food politics on the menu. I don’t care if they charge a week’s salary for an entrée or just a few humble bucks. I don’t care who decorated the place, who contributed to the menu, or what rising star worked the hot line that night…the most important factor that defines a great meal is one’s dining companions. Food is never better than when it is shared with a friend.
Just give me real ingredients (however simple and humbly prepared), shared with real people (simple and humble are fine with me here, too) and you have just given me manna in some faraway pantheon.
Ah, but here I am, not 10 miles out of Cleveland, and even my thoughts on food are sort of Kantian: it is impossible, really, to be truly objective at the table when the totality of the moment is so influenced by the others that are so much the center of the experience.
And I am grateful for that skew in my world view. Friends and family, I love you so and am glad to be here with you.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
I Dunno...Pho?
I'm on a Pho kick. I've been making lots of Pho-style soups both at work and at home. I can't get enough of the stuff. "Pho" (pronounced "fuh") is a Vietnamese soup/stew meal chock full of rice noodles, raw veggies, and often, rare beef. Of course, my Pho is far from traditional. I'm not much in a beef mood lately, so I'm riffing it as I please (with whatever vegetables are on hand, whatever noodles are on hand, tofu, poultry, even smoked turkey stock), but my goodness, the concept of Pho makes a delicious and healthful meal.
Here's more or less what I did for an outstanding Pho-esque experience this evening. Again, it's a bit off from traditional, but nobody at the table seemed to mind:
TURKEY PHO (8-10 servings)
4 cups of vegetable stock
4 cups of diluted turkey stock or light chicken broth
12 oz of brown rice noodles, spaghetti style
3/4 to 1 pound of thin turkey cutlets, sliced into narrow strips
2 T soy sauce or fish sauce
1 t sea salt
1/2 C thin-sliced radishes
1 bunch of scallions, cut crosswise
1 C sugar snap peas
small can of bamboo shoots, drained
1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
2 eggs, beaten
juice of 2 limes
1 T hot sauce (I used Frank's Red Hot)
1/4 C of rough chopped cilantro (or to taste)
Bring the stocks to a gentle boil. Break the noodles in half or in thirds (for more manageable slurping when you dine) and add to the stocks. Also add the turkey. When noodles are just about done (10 minutes or so), add the sugar snaps along with ginger, salt, soy or fish sauce, lime juice, and hot sauce. Cook another minute or so. Add the egg and bamboo shoots and cook for 30 seconds to a minute. Add the scallions, radish, and cilantro just as you are serving, so they still have that fresh snap.
Here's more or less what I did for an outstanding Pho-esque experience this evening. Again, it's a bit off from traditional, but nobody at the table seemed to mind:
TURKEY PHO (8-10 servings)
4 cups of vegetable stock
4 cups of diluted turkey stock or light chicken broth
12 oz of brown rice noodles, spaghetti style
3/4 to 1 pound of thin turkey cutlets, sliced into narrow strips
2 T soy sauce or fish sauce
1 t sea salt
1/2 C thin-sliced radishes
1 bunch of scallions, cut crosswise
1 C sugar snap peas
small can of bamboo shoots, drained
1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
2 eggs, beaten
juice of 2 limes
1 T hot sauce (I used Frank's Red Hot)
1/4 C of rough chopped cilantro (or to taste)
Bring the stocks to a gentle boil. Break the noodles in half or in thirds (for more manageable slurping when you dine) and add to the stocks. Also add the turkey. When noodles are just about done (10 minutes or so), add the sugar snaps along with ginger, salt, soy or fish sauce, lime juice, and hot sauce. Cook another minute or so. Add the egg and bamboo shoots and cook for 30 seconds to a minute. Add the scallions, radish, and cilantro just as you are serving, so they still have that fresh snap.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Happy Padraig (War is Over)
This winter in Cleveland has been especially difficult. There was more snow than we've seen in years. Winter started earlier than usual. And winter seemed to want to end later than usual. The annual "January Thaw" was a bit of a joke. The good attitude I strive to maintain during the cabin fever months had to be burned away, just to keep the heat on in this old place.
Today looked a little like Old Man Winter got his backside handed to him by Good St. Pat. He drove the snakes out of Ireland and he drove the winter out of Cleveland. It was 60 degrees and sunny today.
I was jubilant. I jogged. I baked. I baked whole wheat bread. As long as St. Patrick, or Dick Goddard, or Mother Nature or whomever controls the weather in this town looks favorably upon us, I swear I will live like an almost unbearable health nut. I am reminded of some passage, now fuzzy from all these years since my last reading of it, from Russian literature, where everyone turns out into the St. Petersburg streets, near-manic with joy, when the warm sunshine finally returns after a wretched, cold winter.
But I do have this renewed enthusiasm, to make every food decision flawless, to celebrate everything that is fresh and light, to stretch my muscles, to breathe in deeply all that is good and clean.
Strangely, I cannot get John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas song, "War is Over" out of my head. Though the season is wrong, metaphorically, it feels right today:
"War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now...."
Winter is over. Oh, how I want it. Now...to life!
Today looked a little like Old Man Winter got his backside handed to him by Good St. Pat. He drove the snakes out of Ireland and he drove the winter out of Cleveland. It was 60 degrees and sunny today.
I was jubilant. I jogged. I baked. I baked whole wheat bread. As long as St. Patrick, or Dick Goddard, or Mother Nature or whomever controls the weather in this town looks favorably upon us, I swear I will live like an almost unbearable health nut. I am reminded of some passage, now fuzzy from all these years since my last reading of it, from Russian literature, where everyone turns out into the St. Petersburg streets, near-manic with joy, when the warm sunshine finally returns after a wretched, cold winter.
But I do have this renewed enthusiasm, to make every food decision flawless, to celebrate everything that is fresh and light, to stretch my muscles, to breathe in deeply all that is good and clean.
Strangely, I cannot get John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas song, "War is Over" out of my head. Though the season is wrong, metaphorically, it feels right today:
"War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now...."
Winter is over. Oh, how I want it. Now...to life!
Monday, March 14, 2011
Heinen's Irish Soda Bread
I've had flour, yeast and a mixing bowl sitting out on my counter for 2 weeks. Mind you, I'm a neatnik. I don't just leave things out. But I've been trying to remind myself that I need to bake bread. NEED to. Not want to. There is not a carb in the house. But I've had a truly challenging couple of weeks and though baking bread is not hard to do, I just haven't been able to get to it.
So, when I ran into Heinen's yesterday to pick up a few things and saw a table of Irish Soda Bread on display for St. Paddy's Day, I scooped up a loaf.
Yes, there's some Irish heritage in my background, but no one ever rallied around the Irish-ness enough for me to be intimately familiar with all the cultures and traditions of that warm and gregarious people. I did spend 3 days in Dublin once and learned, in 3 days, that Ireland is pretty darn awesome and I could easily get used to it.
While I was there, they fed me a most welcome cup of decent black coffee (welcome because I was previously in England where I couldn't get a potable cup of coffee to save my life) and a piece of dense brown bread at breakfast. I assumed the brown bread was this "soda bread" the Irish are famous for. Anyway, it was a most likable breakfast.
The soda bread I got at Heinen's and the soda bread I see pictures of on the internet are nothing like the heavy brown bread I had for my Dublin breakfasts, but whatever recipe the Heinen's bakery is working from needs to be gilded and saved for posterity.
Wow, is it good.
It is light in color, has the satisfying tang of buttermilk, feels as rich as a pastry, and is speckled with a constellation of plump little raisins. Again, I've heard raisins aren't purely traditional, but I don't know what the absolute pure version of soda bread should look like.
All I know is ALL bread should taste like this. Every bit as satisfying as my brown bread in Dublin and a whole heap tastier. If you live in Cleveland, you'd do yourself a favor to run out and buy a loaf before they put away all the St. Patrick's Day merchandise.
I'm feeling a wee bit luckier, even, and I'm off to face the day, happy and well-breakfasted.
So, when I ran into Heinen's yesterday to pick up a few things and saw a table of Irish Soda Bread on display for St. Paddy's Day, I scooped up a loaf.
Yes, there's some Irish heritage in my background, but no one ever rallied around the Irish-ness enough for me to be intimately familiar with all the cultures and traditions of that warm and gregarious people. I did spend 3 days in Dublin once and learned, in 3 days, that Ireland is pretty darn awesome and I could easily get used to it.
While I was there, they fed me a most welcome cup of decent black coffee (welcome because I was previously in England where I couldn't get a potable cup of coffee to save my life) and a piece of dense brown bread at breakfast. I assumed the brown bread was this "soda bread" the Irish are famous for. Anyway, it was a most likable breakfast.
The soda bread I got at Heinen's and the soda bread I see pictures of on the internet are nothing like the heavy brown bread I had for my Dublin breakfasts, but whatever recipe the Heinen's bakery is working from needs to be gilded and saved for posterity.
Wow, is it good.
It is light in color, has the satisfying tang of buttermilk, feels as rich as a pastry, and is speckled with a constellation of plump little raisins. Again, I've heard raisins aren't purely traditional, but I don't know what the absolute pure version of soda bread should look like.
All I know is ALL bread should taste like this. Every bit as satisfying as my brown bread in Dublin and a whole heap tastier. If you live in Cleveland, you'd do yourself a favor to run out and buy a loaf before they put away all the St. Patrick's Day merchandise.
I'm feeling a wee bit luckier, even, and I'm off to face the day, happy and well-breakfasted.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Mr. Bojangles, Freddie, and an Indomitable Constitution
There's a pretty big demographic out there who will instantly call to mind the big pop hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when I mention the title "Mr. Bojangles". The song was a folksy ballad about an over-the-hill, has-been, oft-drunk vaudevillian tap dancer. If you listen hard and get really invested, the song is a classic tear-jerker. For pity's sake, they sing about the title character losing his dog, which is enough to send me over the edge every time.
However, the longer I live, and the more jaded I get after being bilked by sad-sack stories similar to Mr. Bojangles, I half-wonder if the old coot was nothing more than a bullshot (sic, mine) artist.
But the longer I live, the more I see that every bullshot artist can provide some kernels of truth that will serve towards my personal edification.
Maybe Mr. Bonjangles wasn't quite as famed on the vaudevillian circuit as his liquor-induced tales would have you believe. But the guy could still dance better than you or I. Maybe my first boyfriend out of college wasn't really on the farm team for the Kansas City Royals, but he could still swing at a 65 mile per hour pitch better than anyone else in town. Did my pal in Chicago really share a daily bus ride with artist Henry Darger for a long-running number of years? I doubt it, but I did get to learn a lot about an important "outsider" artist.
I've finally learned to not throw the baby out with the bathwater: your garden variety, bullshotting grifter might really have something valuable to say. He just doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously...so he invents them. He hopes you'll understand that the underlying message is what's important.
Fast forward to Freddie. Freddie had connections to everyone who was important, all the way back to George Washington and Bruce Lee. Freddie was a martial arts instructor. Again, I don't know where the bullshot ends and the truth begins, but if you ever wanted anyone to teach you how to be an invulnerable warrior, well, you wanted Freddie to teach you. The important thing was to stop with your nosy questions and just listen to Freddie's underlying message.
Let's move back to nutrition (this is a food blog, isn't it?) When I was training with Freddie in my mid to late 20's, I was probably even more of a stickler for pure, clean eating than I am now. Freddie thought that was fine...to a degree.
"Every once in a while, you have to have some KFC, or a Big Mac", he'd instruct.
Say WHAT???
Freddie was completely serious. He explained that the human body occasionally needed to be challenged in order to keep one's constitution and immune system strong. You WANT your body to be able to handle the occasional pollutant, not to fall over in gastrointestinal distress if you failed to have organic vegan everything. It's not dissimilar to an immunizing vaccination: we take in just a little bit of a disease, so when the big one comes around, our bodies are prepared to handle it.
Do we believe Freddie, or is he another bullshot artist?
I don't know, but Freddie is in better shape than most of us can ever hope to be. And I've never seen him with so much as a case of the sniffles....
However, the longer I live, and the more jaded I get after being bilked by sad-sack stories similar to Mr. Bojangles, I half-wonder if the old coot was nothing more than a bullshot (sic, mine) artist.
But the longer I live, the more I see that every bullshot artist can provide some kernels of truth that will serve towards my personal edification.
Maybe Mr. Bonjangles wasn't quite as famed on the vaudevillian circuit as his liquor-induced tales would have you believe. But the guy could still dance better than you or I. Maybe my first boyfriend out of college wasn't really on the farm team for the Kansas City Royals, but he could still swing at a 65 mile per hour pitch better than anyone else in town. Did my pal in Chicago really share a daily bus ride with artist Henry Darger for a long-running number of years? I doubt it, but I did get to learn a lot about an important "outsider" artist.
I've finally learned to not throw the baby out with the bathwater: your garden variety, bullshotting grifter might really have something valuable to say. He just doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously...so he invents them. He hopes you'll understand that the underlying message is what's important.
Fast forward to Freddie. Freddie had connections to everyone who was important, all the way back to George Washington and Bruce Lee. Freddie was a martial arts instructor. Again, I don't know where the bullshot ends and the truth begins, but if you ever wanted anyone to teach you how to be an invulnerable warrior, well, you wanted Freddie to teach you. The important thing was to stop with your nosy questions and just listen to Freddie's underlying message.
Let's move back to nutrition (this is a food blog, isn't it?) When I was training with Freddie in my mid to late 20's, I was probably even more of a stickler for pure, clean eating than I am now. Freddie thought that was fine...to a degree.
"Every once in a while, you have to have some KFC, or a Big Mac", he'd instruct.
Say WHAT???
Freddie was completely serious. He explained that the human body occasionally needed to be challenged in order to keep one's constitution and immune system strong. You WANT your body to be able to handle the occasional pollutant, not to fall over in gastrointestinal distress if you failed to have organic vegan everything. It's not dissimilar to an immunizing vaccination: we take in just a little bit of a disease, so when the big one comes around, our bodies are prepared to handle it.
Do we believe Freddie, or is he another bullshot artist?
I don't know, but Freddie is in better shape than most of us can ever hope to be. And I've never seen him with so much as a case of the sniffles....
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Wall of Sound for Foodies
Never mind that I lopped off a fingertip while belting out the ballad "Angie" while distractedly doing a fast-action, pre-service basil chop at a restaurant shift some years some years ago... listening to music and cooking are a favorite combination of mine.
Today I have been obsessed with Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. C'mon, you must know that big, resonant sound on every Motown hit of the 1960's.... Well, I happened to set up an old microphone at the far end of my living room this afternoon while I hammered on my piano. (I wanted to hear myself play to best know what to work on) Little did I know that the positioning of the mic along with the combination of hard and soft surfaces in my living room would mimic the sound engineering of the legendary Golden Studios where Spector often engineered brilliant pop hits. "Lightning in a Bottle", they called the magical effect.
The creative process is beautiful. Although it leaves a staggering mess in its wake, we are able to forgive it. The revelation of the finished product atones for everything. While the sleep-deprived musicians leave ashtrays overflowing with disgusting cigarette butts and the pot-hurling cooks leave a horrifying sink full of dirty dishes, somehow that glimmering moment when we hear the perfect chord transition within the perfect measure, or when we tilt our heads back and savor that that first taste of a perfectly-balanced sauce....all the ugly chaos is forgiven. After all, it was in the name of some other-worldly alchemy.
Please, someone reading this, turn on some music loud enough to scare your spouse or housemates, pull out some mixing bowls and something really, really messy and just let it flow out like first love. Good music and fine food...THESE are the things to pursue with reckless abandon.
Today I have been obsessed with Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. C'mon, you must know that big, resonant sound on every Motown hit of the 1960's.... Well, I happened to set up an old microphone at the far end of my living room this afternoon while I hammered on my piano. (I wanted to hear myself play to best know what to work on) Little did I know that the positioning of the mic along with the combination of hard and soft surfaces in my living room would mimic the sound engineering of the legendary Golden Studios where Spector often engineered brilliant pop hits. "Lightning in a Bottle", they called the magical effect.
The creative process is beautiful. Although it leaves a staggering mess in its wake, we are able to forgive it. The revelation of the finished product atones for everything. While the sleep-deprived musicians leave ashtrays overflowing with disgusting cigarette butts and the pot-hurling cooks leave a horrifying sink full of dirty dishes, somehow that glimmering moment when we hear the perfect chord transition within the perfect measure, or when we tilt our heads back and savor that that first taste of a perfectly-balanced sauce....all the ugly chaos is forgiven. After all, it was in the name of some other-worldly alchemy.
Please, someone reading this, turn on some music loud enough to scare your spouse or housemates, pull out some mixing bowls and something really, really messy and just let it flow out like first love. Good music and fine food...THESE are the things to pursue with reckless abandon.
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