Minor Gripes
In Play the Game, the romantic comedy I mentioned in my last post, one trick that the male lead uses pick up women is to “unexpectedly” find gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s in his coat pocket and say, “Oh, I’ve been looking for these! Gift certificates to my girlfriend’s / mom’s favorite restaurant! Oh, no, they expire this weekend, and my girlfriend / mom is out of town until next week! Here, why don’t you take these, and take someone who appreciates good food?”
At that point, the woman is supposed to bite her lip, look thrilled but hesitant, look coyly up at the lead through her lashes, and say, “Oh, I couldn’t, unless–why don’t you come with me?”
Of course, the male lead accepts, and they happily have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s.
The problem is, no one offers a complete stranger gift certificates to Charlie Trotter’s. It would be akin to saying, “Oh, look, I forgot that I had $300 in my pocket! Would you like to have it?” Charlie Trotter’s isn’t a casual restaurant or even a medium-expensive restaurant, it’s the kind of place that only offers tasting menus at $150 a head. Trotter is one of the most influential chefs in America and was the first to do small plate tasting courses. You don’t just offer a complete stranger your gift certificates to Trotter’s. It’s not believable; get your incidental details right, people, especially when they’re a running joke in the film.
I fully admit it’s a stupid nit to pick, but it bothered me throughout the movie. Frankly, it’s easier to rant about than everything else that bothered me about the film.
Home-Made Beverages
For all y’all beer/liquor/home cooking/vintage cookbook enthusiasts out there, here’s a PDF of Home-Made Beverages, an anonymous book by A Practical Brewer, published in 1919. It has recipes for beer, cordial, liqueur, and many alcoholic liquids. The PDF I’ve uploaded is a scan of a copy of a faded booklet from 1919, so while it’s legible, it’s less than crisp and clear. Right-click, save as, and wait for it to finish downloading– the file is 137 MB.
Bordelaise Sauce
I want to make it. It’s like coming home, the way going home never was. It’s like looking up at the sky in Piazza di San Callisto and realizing that I’m back home, back where I belong. I breathed in deeply and when I exhaled, it felt like I was shaking off all my stress and narrow bindings and finally, finally expanding to wholly fit in my skin. It’s comfort and freedom and finding out that Rome was only ever a plane flight away. It’s peace of mind. It’s complex tastes, hours of labor, and the soothing routine of mincing shallots. It’s narrowing my focus down to the edge of my blade, the familiar feel of the knife in my hand and the familiar sight of the cutting board I’ve had for years.
It’s a mouthful that widened my eyes at an inspiring, provocative meal. It’s a dance of delicate tastes that I wished would go on forever. The day it’s made, all the notes are clear and distinct but somehow create a sum greater than the parts. The day after, the flavors have melded into something less sparkling clear but smoother and more relaxed.
I want to roll up and cuddle in it like a blanket. I want to make it. I want to simmer red wine with shallots, carrots, mushrooms, parsley, thyme, garlic, and a bay leaf, then pour in veal stock and peppercorns and reduce it. I want to spoon it over a double-cut rib steak, seasoned, seared, basted, and roasted.
How can something I’ve had only four times and made only three be home? It’s unreasonable. And yet, the first mouthful was a revelation and a homecoming all at once. This is a world you never imagined. This is where you belong.
I have a profound desire to make bordelaise sauce. I have one container of veal stock left and had been planning to make the full on boeuf bordelaise meal for C, my +1, but I might not wait.
Gender and Chef-ing
The Astor Center recently held a panel discussion on the topic of “Gender Confusion: Unraveling the Myths of Gender in the Restaurant Kitchen.” The premise was this: two men and two women from the foodie world did a blind tasting of menus prepared by female and male chefs and mixologists and had to decide if the dishes were prepared by a woman or a man, with the goal of identifying whether or not men and women cook differently. In other words, is cooking style rooted in one’s gender? Y’all can probably guess what my answer is.
I wonder, does anyone ask if cooking style is biologically rooted in one’s ethnicity? On the one hand, insofar as ethnicity correlates to exposure to a specific culture and its culinary profile, the ethnicity that you’re born into is likely influence how you cook. It’s likely to affect what spices, flavors, and techniques you’re exposed to. The level of influence depends on many factors, though: where are you living? Are you an immigrant? What generation? Are you adopted by parents of a different ethnicity? Etc. That influence, however, is also affected by where and with whom you do your training. Take Marco Pierre White for example. Half-English, half-Italian, he was born, raised, and trained in England, and became one of the best French chefs of the ’90s. Julia Child was born and raised in the U.S., grew up eating “traditional New England food” (Wikipedia), took classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and along with Simone Beck and Louise Bertholle, did much to popularize French cuisine in the U.S. I think that most people would conclude that if there is a connection between cooking style and ethnicity, it’s one of influence rather than biological determinism, and it’s a potential connection rather than one set in stone.
Now, leaving aside the larger issues of sexism in the glorification and elevation of TV/restaurant/celebrity cooking; in restaurant kitchens; in society at large and how that shapes notions of what is considered feminine or masculine, I found the idea of gender determining cooking style amusing and interesting on a personal level. Personally, my cooking style is a mishmash, all over the map in terms of ethnic influences and stereotypically masculine or feminine techniques, colors, and flavors. I know very little of the Korean food I grew up with; don’t care much for American cuisine; and found my home in Roman and Cal-French cooking. My particular style stretches across the spectrum from lackadaisical and simple to complicated and perfectionist. I’ve been vegetarian and omnivorous, can cook both ways, and like the challenge of cooking to accommodate dietary restrictions. Some of my cooking preferences line up according to gender stereotypes and some don’t, but those are due to my idiosyncrasies rather than my gender. E.g., I don’t like cooking with beef. Dislike of red meat: stereotypically feminine. However, my taste probably stems from eating too much overcooked beef as a child, and were it not for that experience, perhaps I would love cooking beef. After all, my current favorite dish to cook and eat is boeuf bordelaise, with mushroom duxelles and pommes Anna. Complicated, showy, technique-driven, and perfectionist: stereotypically masculine. The reason for liking The French Laundry Cookbook’s boeuf bordelaise preparation, however, is because the complexity of it suits my neurotic nature.
Ed Levine was one of the tasters in the panel and wrote up his thoughts on it here. He shares some of the panel’s preconceptions about gender:
- Women chefs use spices more subtly than men
- Male chefs love to make use of lots of toys in their cooking (look out, Grant Achatz)
- Female chefs cook to nurture and feed people’s souls, while male chefs cook to compete and impress
- Women chefs are more likely to cook soulful “grandmere-style” food than their male counterparts, who are much more likely to be into dazzling, technique-driven cooking
- Male chefs like to cook red meat; women chefs are much more likely to cook pink food and use edible flowers
- Women chefs are more precise. They follow instructions more carefully than men do
- Women chefs’ food is more subtle and sophisticated, while their male counterparts cook gutsier, deep-flavored, testosterone-driven food
- Women chefs cook with their hearts and souls, while male chefs cook with their head and their private parts
As I was reading the list of preconceptions, my thoughts were mostly incoherent sputtering and “But what about Celebrity Chef X? Or Celebrity Chef Y? There are so many bloody counterexamples!” So, here are my thoughts on those preconceptions:
- Women chefs use spices more subtly than men
Really? I seem to recall my mom making a stir fry that was so heavy on garlic and chili pepper that my dad started coughing when he stuck his head in the kitchen and got a whiff of the air. - Male chefs love to make use of lots of toys in their cooking (look out, Grant Achatz)
Well, I’ll cop to disliking toys in my kitchen, but that’s due to disliking kitchen clutter. As far as molecular gastronomy, which is what the ‘toys’ and ‘Grant Achatz’ comments are referring to, goes, it seems likely to me that there are fewer female than male molecular gastronomists because molecular gastronomy is esoteric to begin with, and so female chefs have even fewer opportunities to be exposed to molecular gastronomy than to non-molecular gastronomy cooking. Furthermore, it also goes back to the restaurant industry being largely male-dominated and sexist. Achatz was exposed to molecular gastronomy when Keller, chef-proprietor of The French Laundry, arranged a trip to El Bulli, famed center for molecular gastronomy, for his then-sous chef. How many female sous chefs were there in TFL’s kitchen at the time (or now) to have a chance at that kind of opportunity? - Female chefs cook to nurture and feed people’s souls, while male chefs cook to compete and impress
After hearing Zuni Cafe’s Judy Rodgers give a talk, I’m fairly certain that most female chefs, like most male chefs, cook to meet the bottom line and keep the doors open at their restaurants. And what of celebrity TV chefs such as Cat Cora, who go into flashy, competition-style TV cooking where the cooking is to compete with other chefs and to impress judges, rather than to nurture restaurant goers? It’s worth noting that unlike the other, male American Iron Chefs, Cora did not have a restaurant prior to being on the show. I.e., the lone woman on the American Iron Chef went straight from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to a competitive TV cooking show where only a panel of judges tastes her food, and tastes it for critique, without stopping by a restaurant to “nurture and feed people’s souls” on the way. - Women chefs are more likely to cook soulful “grandmere-style” food than their male counterparts, who are much more likely to be into dazzling, technique-driven cooking
You know, it’s hard to evaluate this claim and think of professional counterexamples, because there are comparatively female restaurant chefs, and of the ones in the Bay Area, most of them operate restaurants that are beyond my budget. I’d suggest that the disparity in numbers between male and female restaurant chefs is the result of pervasive sexism and with so few samples, it’s hard to weigh these claims.Oh, wait, thought of one! Elizabeth Falkner at Citizen Cake makes desserts that definitely fall into the “dazzling, technique-driven” category. Her plated desserts look like modern art (and although delicious, are about as filling), and in Demolition Desserts, she lays out the step by step process of thinking, deconstructing, and experimenting that takes her from a chocolate chip cookie to this chocolate dessert (from the Kara’s Cupcakes post), which, given the Citizen Cake style, is likely some kind of meta dessert that playfully deconstructs the essence of chocolate and childhood nostalgia.
- Male chefs like to cook red meat; women chefs are much more likely to cook pink food and use edible flowers
Uh, yeah, tell that to Masa, who rarely serves red meat (does Masa serve any land animals?), and to Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustards Grill. Cafe Gratitude, which serves raw food (no meat there!), is run by a male and female couple. As far as edible flowers go, the only times I’ve had them have been at Oishii, a sushi restaurant in Boston, where the male sushi chefs put flowers on the nigiri. - Women chefs are more precise. They follow instructions more carefully than men do
Tell that to molecular gastronomists, who are mostly male and whose craft depends on subtlety, precision and carefully following instructions. See, also, Thomas Keller and The French Laundry Cookbook, which is all about the pursuit of perfection and carefully following the exacting instructions laid out in the book. See, also, CIA Certified Master Chef exam (described in detail in Michael Ruhlman’s Soul of a Chef), which has been passed almost entirely by men and which is judged by the participants’ ability to meet exacting criteria in their menu composition, cooking technique, plating, and presentation. Brian Polcyn of Five Lakes Grill was marked down by the male examiners during his CMC exam because when he sliced his duck terrine for plating, the slices were ever so slightly uneven. - Women chefs’ food is more subtle and sophisticated, while their male counterparts cook gutsier, deep-flavored, testosterone-driven food
See immediately above. - Women chefs cook with their hearts and souls, while male chefs cook with their head and their private parts
Is this question different from the “soulful grandmere vs. dazzling technique” question? Not substantially.
Gwen Hyman, who was also on the tasting panel at the Astor Center event, writes (emphases mine)
3. I do not think that women are inherently more “precise” cooks, or “better” cooks, or more “careful” cooks–as some folks said the other night. I think, in fact, that women who are more “precise” etc in the kitchen are probably just–you know–doing that thing women do? where they work three times harder than men? just to hold onto their place on the line? because of all those people who think women aren’t naturally suited to the kitchen?
4. I think that kitchens are still, by and large (though not always), tradition-bound, chest-pounding places that, like high school football teams, are veeeeeeery slow to accept women–and the reasons that there are so few prominent female chefs have very little to do with estrogen and arm muscles, and a whole lot to do with tradition, mentorship, access to funding, differences in education and attitude towards girls–in other words, culture.
… Women still face pretty serious barriers to making it in the kitchen, for lots of reasons–the lingering perception that women are somehow too weak for the kitchen; the paucity of female mentors and role models (this is changing, slowly); inequities and differences in how girls and boys are educated about their choices and interests; differences in access to funding for restaurants; that thing (perhaps you’ve heard of this?) where women are expected not only to do all the work of bearing children but also to do most of the work of raising them, (otherwise they are “bad mothers”)…I could go on. …
As I said the other night, even if you *do* believe in essential differences between men’s cooking and women’s cooking, you can’t actually measure it yet. Until half the important restaurants in the country are run by women–until half the chefs who mentor others, half the culinary instructors, half the professionals are women–until the term “woman chef” seems, in other words, as unnecessary and self-evident and silly as “man chef”–how can anyone judge?
Frivolity
I’ve been busy ever since … since sometime before the election. Actually, it became more intense after the election, because I’ve been volunteering with some of the GLBTQI rights efforts that have been going on since Prop. 8 passed. So, since off- and on- line stuff is eating up my life and upping my stress levels and blood pressure, I’m going to mostly be posting amusing and lighthearted stuff here. For nuanced, informed social commentary, I suggest you look elsewhere.
This is what my schedule looks like:
week one: volunteer volunteer volunteer
week two: collapse into burned out state, retreat from online world, and read food books as escapist pseudo-vacation
week three: volunteer volunteer volunteer
week four: contemplate giving up the volunteer thing in state of burnout and wonder, “I put grad school off for this?”
etc. Also add “neglect friends, family, letters, cooking, laundry, regular showering, blogosphere, flist, and renewing library books” to weeks where I volunteer rather than hide in my flat with the French Laundry cookbooks and Ruhlman’s entire oeuvre.
Of the good: I’m going to see Lang Lang with the symphony tomorrow night, and the Adler Fellow Gala Concert on Saturday.
Of the bad: No one is coming to the Adler concert with me. Someone was supposed to come and bailed for Tahoe. >:O
Of the worse: Having increasingly difficult time not telling some other volunteers to boil their heads with root vegetables and fuck off with their “I think someone should do XYZ” comments, which are inevitably followed up with someone else saying, “That’s a great idea, can you organize that?” and the original speaker staring at their shoes, being silent, and then saying, “Well, it’s very difficult and so I think someone [else] should do XYZ.”
So, just in case y’all have been wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been buried in either activist work or in reading The French Laundry Cookbook concurrently with The French Laundry At Home.
Miscellany
I’ve been working on some labor-intensive projects lately and so haven’t been around much. Then I took this past weekend to be away from the internet almost entirely, aside from checking in on email and reading The French Laundry At Home in conjunction with reading TFL Cookbook. I’ve been reading a lot of cookbooks and cooking-related books this past week as a sort of escapism and an antidote to the project-related stress. Unfortunately, the projects look to be kicking up again in the next few weeks.
Good: Went to see L’Elisir d’Amore again on Sunday because I wanted to see Ramon Vargas again and hear “Una Furtiva Lagrima,” his big aria in Act II.
Bad: Ramon Vargas was out sick and Adler Fellow Alek Shrader was subbing for him.
Good: Alek Shrader has a beautiful tenor voice, a charming stage presence, and despite a tendency to overdo the vibrato at the beginning, did a wonderful job as Nemorino. “Una Furtiva Lagrima” was tender and warm and Shrader was great as an awkward, naive Nemorino. Vargas played up the comic side and was utterly charming, but I also liked Shrader’s more subtle approach.
Bad: the three little kids in front of me that thought it was appropriate to stand up, whisper, and eat candy out of noisy cellophane bags during the show.
Good: The little kids shut up when I got completely fed up with them and said, “Shhh!” after they started talking during the middle of “Una Furtiva Lagrima.”.
Bad: They started talking again after the aria was over.
Bad: Their parents also thought it was appropriate to whisper and eat candy out of noisy cellophane bags during the show.
Angry: People who go to the opera to talk during the opera should not go. I understand that they want to take their kids and give them a treat or god knows what–but the opera does productions specifically “for Families” every year. If they can’t make those or want to go to the full-length show, then they should make their kids behave. If kids cannot sit down and shut up for two and a half hours, they should not be at the opera because they are spoiling it for everyone sitting within earshot of them.
Good: I spent the past weekend reading Ruhlman’s books, The Soul of a Chef and The Reach of a Chef, and learned that the kitchens at the French Laundry and Per Se are extraordinarily clean for restaurant kitchens. They’re spic and span, they’re so clean that Keller can walk around in socks without stepping into any spills or sticky spots. In a restaurant kitchen! According to Ruhlman, this is because Keller is a stickler about cleanliness and perfection and doing a job correctly and without mess because mess means waste.
Bad: I read this and immediately thought, “If they can do this in a restaurant kitchen, I can do it in my kitchen!” This is reason #1 why I would be a terrible person to live with. I like my apartment clean and neat in very specific ways, and it bothers me when it’s not.
Good: Kitchen is now clean, with counters and stove scrubbed, floor swept, pots and pans thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed free of burned-on oil coats, and knives sharpened.
Bad: Still haven’t scrubbed the floor.
Good: Have successfully maintained the rituals and high levels of cleanliness for three and a half whole days.
Good: I have comp tickets to the Adler Fellow Gala Concert.
Good: Ji Young Yang, who has a voice like silver bells, and Alek Shrader are singing scenes from Semele together.
Good: Heidi Melton, Andrew Bidlack (excellent as the Fool in Boris Godunov this year), and Kenneth Kellogg!
Oxtail Soup
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking in the past couple of weeks (risotto alla salsiccia, lobster soup, baked pastas, cornbread muffins, and Earl Grey tea muffins, among other things), whether because the weather is (nominally, if not actually) changing and I cook more often in the fall and winter, or because I have more free time or what. Anyway, one of the things I tried last weekend was ggori gom tang, oxtail soup. The NYT published this recipe by Momofuku’s David Chang a while back, and I’d been meaning to try it ever since.
Now, the primary reasons that I don’t cook much Korean food are that I never learned from my mom and that I still haven’t found a good cookbook. When I do find a cookbook, I’ll flip through it and find that either (a) none of this stuff is what my mom makes or (b) that’s not how my mom makes it! Fail. Chang’s recipe falls into category (b), but I figured it was worth a shot, anyway. Even though it’s not how my mom makes gom tang, it’s a basis for experimentation. All bolding is mine.
Time: About 4 hours
2 1/2 pounds oxtails, trimmed and cut in 2 1/2-inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large onion, sliced thinly WTF? Onions? My mom doesn’t use onions.
1 sheet konbu (dried kelp, available in specialty food markets and health food stores) WTF? My mom doesn’t use konbu, either. Is this Korean?
1 large daikon radish, about 1 1/2 pounds, peeled and cut into 1-inch-thick rounds Ok, my mom used to use daikon (or some other tuber radish thing, they’re all called moo as far as I’m concerned).
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, or as needed
2 to 4 tablespoons thinly sliced scallions, for garnish
Cooked white rice for serving (optional) Optional?! Bap is not optional for gook! Half the point of making gook is so you can dump bap in it!
I decided to give the onion a try, since the scallions had tiny onion bulbs at their bases and I had some leftover onions. Passed on the konbu, because I didn’t have any on hand and regarded it with suspicion as an interloper, anyway. Passed on the daikon, because I don’t like it and always picked it out of the soup when I was little (hence my mom used to, but no longer does, use daikon in gook) – I thought about using it in to add flavor and then throwing it out, but that felt wasteful.
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Season oxtails liberally with salt and pepper and place in a roasting pan. Roast until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Transfer oxtails to a plate (do not turn off oven); add sliced onion to unwashed roasting pan. Roast onions until tender and golden, about 15 minutes. Allow onions to cool, then cover and refrigerate until needed; leave oxtails at room temperature. I don’t recall my mom roasting the oxtails, let alone roasting onions in the drippings, but it’s an excuse to use the roasting tray and it can’t hurt, right? The onions smelled delicious.
2. In a large casserole or stockpot, bring 10 cups water to a simmer. Add konbu and simmer for 4 minutes. Discard konbu and add 1 tablespoon salt and daikon. Simmer until daikon is tender but not falling apart, about 30 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove daikon and set aside. Add oxtails and simmer, covered, until tender, about 2 1/2 hours. Using a slotted spoon, remove oxtails to a sheet tray and cool, reserving liquid in pot. Turn off heat. I skipped the konbu and daikon, so basically I simmered the oxtails for two and a half hours. Brought back memories of my mom making soup and leaving the pot on the stove for hours.
3. Reserve some of the meatiest oxtails (one or two per serving) for presentation; cover and keep warm. Pick meat from remaining oxtails, discarding excess fat, and set meat aside. Um, yeah, no. I left the meat on the bone so that the bones would add flavor, and kept the fat in for the same reason.
4. Add roasted sliced onions to broth, bring to a boil and reduce by a third. Return oxtail meat and daikon to broth and heat through. Season to taste with soy sauce and black pepper. Ladle into bowls and garnish each with reserved oxtails and a sprinkle of scallions. If desired, serve with white rice. Forgot the soy sauce, oops, and used salt instead. If the broth tastes bland or dull, it’s not salted enough.
Yield: 2 to 4 servings. Depending on your appetite; this will make a hell of a lot more than four servings for me, especially as I’m diluting the soup with more water (see below). 10c of water made for a soup that was quite flavorful but too thick for me (Korean soups are usually quite thin until you dump the rice in.).
In the end, it tasted great. Not quite like how my mom makes it, but still good. The roasted onions added a tinge of distinctively cooked-onion-y sweetness and roasting the meat made the soup much, much darker in color than I expected, although that didn’t affect the flavor. It’s easy to make and once you have a big pot of it, you can eat it for days (perfect for a quick dinner after a long day). I think that next time, I’ll roast the meat but skip the onions (the sweetness was nice, but it’s not how I like my gom tang), and add extra scallions for their tangy taste, which acts as a nice counterpoint to the rich, meaty broth.
Miscellaneous note: the soup is very, very fatty. If that matters to you, you can trim the meat before roasting or chill the soup overnight and skim the fat off. I left all the fat on and didn’t bother with the skimming step. What I’m doing instead is saving the bones and chunks of fat and throwing them back into the soup pot with some more water, then simmering the soup so as to stretch the broth for as long as possible. The meat’s nice, sure, but my favorite part is eating rice in the broth. It’s rich, warm, and good, and feels like kitchen love. It’s also cheap.
Another note: when it cooled off, the soup congealed, due to the gelatin in the bones. It looked disgusting, but it turned back into a liquid after being heated up. I don’t recall that ever happening when my mom made soup, so perhaps it’s a function of the roasting or maybe she just used a higher proportion of water to meat.
Beautiful Surprises
One of the joys of SOLE produce:
I was shucking an ear of corn and found that little caterpillar nestled under the husks and silk. It was curled up at the top on a bare patch where it’d eaten away the kernels. A small, ordinary miracle in the middle of an urban apartment, a connection with the cycle of birth, growth, transformation, and death. A sign that this corn wasn’t grown with pesticides and herbicides harmful to the pests, the farm workers, everyone living near the farm, and the plant, animal, and human communities that would’ve been affected by the chemical runoff.
I tossed the hungry caterpillar out the window and into the yard, where it’ll hopefully have a well fed life and grow to be one of the moths that likes to zoom into my flat.
Seasonality: A Panegyric to Tomatoes. And Oranges. And Peaches. And Pomegranates. And Green Garlic and Persimmons and Clementines…
This summer, I didn’t cook as much as I did last winter. I’m not too surprised, since during the summer I tend to want bread and fruit rather than cooked produce, but I’m a little sad because the bounty of spring and summer will soon pass. Last year, my last fresh tomato was in November, because I picked it up at a farmers market in SoCal when I was down south for the weekend (talk about food miles!) and I made penne all’ arrabbiata with it. Most likely, the last of the fresh tomatoes will be at the end of October, less than a month and a half away. I think about that and regret every week that I didn’t cook fresh sauces and celebrate the vibrancy and flavor of fresh tomatoes. Then I remember that in March, April, and May, I ate tomatoes by the (cooked) pound, thrilled at the extra dimensions of taste they added to spaghetti all’ amatriciana.
Some photos: food
Some photos from the past two months: food.
Rosewater creme brulee and pistachio shortbread at Citizen Cake. The creme brulee was perfect and the caramelized top was sweet and burnt-bitter and shattered into pieces with each bite.
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Photoblogging
A photo post, to celebrate having working wireless and to provide some filler material for my brain tonight. Taken with the camera on an LG Chocolate phone. Images below the cut.
Monday, June 2
I had copies of my apartment keys made for a friend (should’ve done it a lot sooner, but oh, well, it didn’t occur to me), and found a cute, tacky tourist kitsch SF keychain to put them on while I was getting lightbulbs at Walgreens (they stock an amazing amount of touristy SF junk). The best part of it is that the round thing in the center spins: on one side is a cable car and on the other, the GG bridge!
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Wine Tasting
I’ve got a new Friday evening, end of week ritual: wine tasting at Biondivino! Today they were doing tastings from Dettori~Baddu Nigoloso, a small winery located on the north shore of Sardegna, and that led to getting slightly tipsy (it was a long day, an empty stomach, and apparently I hit it off with the bloke doing the pouring, because he kept saying, “Now try this,” and pouring other vintage years to compare the tastes, and a moscaddedu–simply gorgeous and refreshing, not too sweet), then beer with dinner, then meandering down Polk St. and getting dragged into S.N.O.B. (Sonoma, Napa, Or Beyond), a comfortable wine bar that I might start going to in lieu of Amelie. My friend A had a delicious petit syrah there and the vibe was relaxed for a Friday night; the last few times I’ve been to Amelie, I’ve been disappointed by the wines I’ve had, and it gets uncomfortably packed on weekends. Anyway, at Biondivino, in addition to the usual cheese, prosciutto, and bread, there was polpo and some kind of grain dish (similar to Israeli couscous?) to nibble on from La Ciccia, a Sardinian restaurant out in Noe Valley that’s just jumped to the top of my list of places to try, based solely on the strength of the grain/pasta stuff. Mmm!
I had a point, but I think I lost it somewhere along the way while thinking about the Dettori Tenores 2004 I tasted tonight (tasting order: Bianco 2006, Bianco 2003, both vermentino; Tuderi 2003, Tuderi 2004; Tenores 2004; Rosso 2004; Moscaddedu 2006). It was a gorgeous, deep, ruby red color with a warm and refreshing flavor (my wine vocab, it is not so extensive. Nor sophisticated. Nor wine-literate, actually.). Losing my train of thought has been a common occurrence of late; there was wine tonight, wine and beer last night (dinner at A16 and celebrating marriage equality!!!!); and hitting the bars with the SF alums last weekend. I love wine and going out in the hot weather that’s been rolling out recently, the intense heat is a body memory linked with wine, pasta, pizza, and hanging out with friends until the wee hours of the morning. It feels right (more memories and unconscious habits from Rome kicking in).
Oh, right. I was watching the video that Pocochina linked and just cried with joy. The four California Supreme Court justices in the majority decision affected the lives of thousands of people for the better yesterday. I am still deliriously happy when I think about it. I printed off the majority opinion today and I’m going to go read it–when I saw the court officers(?) carry out copies in the video, I started crying, realizing that those papers, those words, are not just letters and sounds. They are the lives of real people, who are now free to marry their loved ones in the eyes of the state of California. They are the lives of real people, whose oppression and harassment the court recognized as legitimate evils of the same type as racism and sexism. The decision, the freedom, the bold cry for equality is an ever-springing fountain of joy deep inside that lifts my whole spirit.
So I’m going to go read the decision because I want to know every single word. I want to grasp them and burn them into my soul, where no one will ever be able to erase them. These are my rights, goddamnit, and I will hold onto them fiercely.
Friday Fluff
I’ve finally succumbed and subscribed to AT&T for DSL, which should turn on next week. Hopefully, my personal laptop will be fixed by then (Tuesday morning, it refused to turn on. I think there’s a short somewhere), so that I won’t be using the slow, lagging laptop I’m on in the interim, and won’t be trying to blog via iTouch. It’d be an interesting experiment, to say the least, although it might also be faster than this laptop.
In the meantime, have some fluff:
I really want to make this Soy Poached Roast Chicken (Bitten, 2008/04/30) with these Snow Peas (Bittman, 2008/04/30) this weekend. The peas have been out at the market for months and I’ve looked at them, tempted to try cooking some but not sure of how to do it.
I learned to enjoy food the first summer I was living in Rome and I learned to cook the year after, when I was living with a roommate of Italian descent. So pretty much everything I know how to cook is Italian (more specifically la cucina Romanesca) and I’m used to those tastes and methods. I have a sense of how they work and how to throw things together in the kitchen, whereas I lack that intuition and experience when it comes to Korean or any other Asian cuisine. It’s something that’ll come with experience, but I’d like a teacher or a cookbook to start with and I haven’t got either. Haven’t found a good English-language Korean cookbook, and while My Korean Kitchen is a good read and informative, it’s not hanshik the way my mom makes it. In the meantime I’m thinking of branching out into other cuisines, although it’s a bit difficult because most of the ingredients and spices I have in my kitchen right now aren’t ones that are used in Chinese or Korean cooking.
Photos below the cut. Pro-Clinton material (I like to get a heads up when I’m clicking on political content, so…fair’s fair, I guess.).
On the joys of breakfast
I’m not a morning person at all. This morning I was supposed to shower, iron a shirt so I could wear something clean and pressed to work, and get to work early. If a friend hadn’t texted me during the night, thus prompting me to stay awake long enough to text her back when I woke up this morning, thus allowing the brain to cough and lurch into gear, I probably would have hit the snooze button for an hour and gone in to work after deciding that I didn’t need shower until tonight and that the shirt in the closet wasn’t all that wrinkled, really.
It was a lovely morning. I woke up, sent some texts, and showered. For once, there was hot water, because I got up before the hot water in the building was drained by the morning shower folks. Then I made polenta, because last night I wanted polenta but decided it was the better part of gastrointestinal valor to leave it for today. While the water was boiling and the polenta was bubbling, I filled and heated the iron, and started ironing a shirt. The polenta finished, and as the layer clinging to the sides of the pot cooked through and then burned, it filled the kitchen with the smell of grilled corn. I grated some parmesan in, then took it to the bedroom to eat while finishing up the ironing, then ate it from the pot, sitting at the table while sunlight streamed in through the big windows.
I cleaned up, put everything away, and made an attempt to straighten things up so that the flat wouldn’t be too messy, and headed out the door, clean, warm, fresh, filled, and happy.
Then the cell phone rang and I had to rush and bus to work instead of walking, and then the computer started doing a bad impression of a brick, and then a small hill of work fell on my head. But I got to read while busing, and it was still a nice morning. Sunny, nice, a small piece of time to read, cook, and enjoy the brilliant sunlight. Not sure if I’ll make a routine out of waking up early enough to do more than cram morning hygiene, dressing, and running out the door in less than ten minutes, but it’s a nice thought. And tomorrow, I don’t have to iron anything because today’s shirt is reasonably unwrinkled and clean, so the ironing time can go to making a cup of espresso instead. Espresso and sunlight. Mmmm.
I have a wine collection!
If two bottles counts as a collection, that is. It’s only the beginning of a collection by virtue of the fact that I tend not to have wine with dinner when I’m cooking for one, and that’s most of the nights that I cook. So I had one bottle, then I received another one today, and in all likelihood they’ll still be in the cabinet when I get more for my birthday this year. By the time I’m dead, I’ll have a cellar!
I should throw dinner parties. Then I could cook and have people over and we could eat and drink the lovely, lonely bottles sadly mouldering away behind the mixing bowls, the flour, and the pasta machine. That would require acquiring more chairs and more friends, however.
The original reason I started writing about red wines tonight was the label on the Ca’ del Solo Sangiovese, and then somewhere along the line it digressed into nostalgic thoughts about how I relate to food (with memories and emotional context) and what red wines mean to me (Rome/happiness, friends, joy). Here’s the label:
Sangiovese is often a fairly rustic grape variety, but occasionally seems to rise above its putative station and provide a tasting experience of great elegance and intelligence. Such is the case with our ‘05, a highly concentrated, spicy and sanguinous, explosively delicious cherry bomb. The wine is absolutely brilliant with bisteca fiorentina, wild boar, or as an antidote to wild bores.
The photo illustration on the reverse displays a sensitive crystallization of our 2005 Sangiovese. Sensitive crystallizations create a visual representation of a wine’s organizing forces–a snapshot of its internal harmony. By featuring this representation, we hope to demonstrate our commitment to natural, vital wine and to the great virtue of transparency.
Sanguinous is an adjective that gives me pause, but cherry bomb? Bisteca fiorentina and wild bores? Made of awesome! I love the humor and I love puns. The sensitive crystallization, though–I wish I could find a picture of the label to put up here, because when I looked at it, I wondered if the picture was supposed to be a balloon, a desiccated cross section of an orange, or a weird mineral formation.
Another Poem
Had this lovely exchange on Facebook with a friend last night. The prompting factor was that I recently added the “I am a fan of … Hillary Clinton” sidebar on my profile.
Friend:
Oh, my dear [Pizza Diavola].I love you, but she really IS a monster!
Politics of Fear, man, Politics of Fear.
PD:
wow, thanks for the informative, persuasive comment.
Friend:
Anytime, man, anytime.
*sigh*
Have another poem, inspired by Glashoff Farms’ amazing blackberry preserves:
wine-dark seas
in a jar
but tastier
OM NOM NOM
Links roundup
Links roundup tonight, then a post tomorrow (assuming work doesn’t explode again–cross your fingers for me!). I’ve been kicking around thoughts on “Clinton is too ambitious” / “She’s just doing this to get elected” / “She wants it too much,” and how those statements show that the speaker (1) is sexist or (2) hasn’t thought the issue through and is either relying on sexist stereotypes or simply has invested zero thinking in analyzing the candidate and the statement. It’s also nothing short of bizarre to me that being ambitious and wanting the presidency are bad or even remarkable, given that both qualities are inherent in the nature of running for president in a competition against other people. It’s like going to the ocean and complaining that the beach is sandy and the water’s salty. I also wonder why people think that Clinton is too ambitious and put her in the “wants to be someone” camp of “Anyone running for president either wants to do something or be someone,” rather than Mitt Romney. He’d be my first and probably only choice for “Just doing this to get elected as a vanity project.”
But that’s for tomorrow, whoops, because I’m trying to go to bed early tonight. Another thing I’m thinking about these days is why I’m an activist (or working on becoming one): specifically, what was it in my upbringing that’s produced an angry, argumentative liberal who believes in Social Change and Individual Action? I suspect that it was books. Specifically, the Little House on the Prairie series.
Another plug for The Hillary 1000, a Clinton media aggregating and fundraising blog run by Redstar, Pocochina, and Donna Darko. They have a bunch of analysis of and links to interesting articles on Clinton in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere (ok, I lie–mostly the blogosphere, and some articles in online magazines. Do those qualify as mainstream media?) and I find it encouraging to encounter like-minded people in the blogosphere who are actively involved as volunteers: blogging, contributing, calling, going out to the March 4 primary states!
Election 2008
Quixote at Shakesville: Clinton vs. Obama. “I have a confession to make. I’m moving away from the Democratic dogma that says we have two fine candidates, and either one will be a great President. I no longer think so. There’s a disconnect between Obama’s words and deeds that got too big for me. So I took another look at Clinton.” A post lookinng at ways in which Obama panders to the right.
Y’all already know where I stand in terms of candidates, but I’m an open-minded person and my vote in the general election is still up for grabs. However, between Quixote’s post and a few other recent ones discussing examples of how Obama distances himself from liberal positions and uses conservative rhetoric to broaden his appeal (or something) make it unlikely that I’ll vote for him, unless he gets his head out of his ass and stands up for the liberal voters who presumably make up his grand movement. If this pandering to conservatives (which nomination does he think he’s running for?) is a taste of what he means by bipartisanship and unity, I’ll pass, thanks.
Feminism & Politics
Jill at Feministe: Women in “Free” Iraq. Concern for women’s rights is good. Using “women’s rights” as a justification for invading other nations, particularly when you don’t give a damn about “women’s rights” in your own country except when it comes to curtailing them, is not good. In fact, it’ll probably result in a complete failure. Color me surprised.
Jeff at Shakesville: Gender: It’s Not Just for Girls Anymore. Long story short: people are people and gender roles hurt girls, boys, and everyone else. Why is this so fucking hard to understand?!
Cara at The Curvature: In a rape culture, the man is never to blame.
A man is accused of sexual assault and attempted sexual assault, the victim goes through with the case, the perpetrator testified that he did indeed attempt sexual assault . . . and he walks free. How, exactly, does that happen? Well, because people will stop at nothing to believe in a world where the patriarchy is actually all fine and fucking dandy and where committing sexual violence against a woman is just “poor judgment.” Who is to blame? Take your pick among the judge, jury, law and culture.
The comments are quite interesting as well, in that you see rape apologism in action, as commentators accuse Cara of “sensationalizing” the case, exaggerating and overhyping our “rape culture,” and saying that technically, under legal minutiae, the rapist didn’t actually rape the victim, even though the rapist admitted to raping her.
Holly at Feministe: Sanesha Stewart is dead and I have only tears and frustration for her. A post on the brutal murder of Sanesha Stewart and the disgustingly transphobic media response to it.
Food & Politics
Bonnie P. at The Ethicurean: Nuggets of truth discusses the Charlotte Observer’s special series The Cruelest Cuts, on the lives of the 28,000 poultry workers in North Carolina.
Cheap food comes at a price, and in this area more than any other, it’s easy for consumers to be aware and to make a difference: by refusing to pay the lowest possible price for food, you can directly cut an unethical company’s bottom line and show that you care about workers’ rights and safety. Hell, you don’t even have to write a letter of complaint to the company or write a letter to your local newspaper. All you have to do is read the newspaper, remember “Company X has extremely poor worker safety,” and decide not to buy Company X’s products at the grocery, if you can afford to do so. I think moral apathy and self-centeredness is a greater problem than outright, bone deep prejudice when it comes to reforming society.
Politics
The NYT Board Blog: The New Stimulus Package: A Big Disappointment. Old news by now, but honestly, I think the stimulus package is a good example of how laughably inept Congress is. Have none of them taken economics? Do none of them have advisors? I can’t believe that the stimulus package is anything but pandering to the short-term desires of short-sighted voters, who are willing to take a tax rebate of a few hundred dollars when the government is running a huge deficit and lacks the money to properly fund education, infrastructure development, rebuilding New Orleans, veterans’ benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid . . . American politics is a joke, I swear. The Democrats use their 2006 mandate to accomplish astonishingly little, and then they cut the most vulnerable groups out of the stimulus bill by dropping food stamps, and applaud themselves for bipartisan work. Gag me with a spoon.
The NYT Board Blog: About those Bush tax cuts for the rich . . .
In unveiling his final budget this month, President Bush again called for making his tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 permanent, rather than letting them expire as scheduled at the end of 2010. That would be irresponsible.
In the spirit of the late, great Molly Ivins, you can’t help but laugh at this shit. It’s either that, or cry. What reality does Bush live in? Apparently it’s not one where economists and anyone not in the top 1% of American society live.
Environmentalism
VentureBeatWIRE: Second Rotation picks up $4.4 for electronics recycling. “Second Rotation is attempting to create a marketplace for used electronics that will slow the pace of new additions to the landfill.” Definitely worth taking a look at the company if you have old phones, mp3 players, printers, or other electronics sitting around your home. Sadly, I don’t think they’ll take my dead laptop battery, which I still haven’t dropping off for recycling.
Miscellaneous
Arthur Frommer: “We are about to advertise the delights of visiting the U.S.A. while at the same time adopting constant measures to keep foreigners out”
I heard a lot of talk about the probability that the new session of Congress will set up a public-private organization spending $200 million dollars a year to promote and market incoming travel to the United States. According to various estimates, the United States has lost as much as 20% of the foreign tourists that were visiting our country each year prior to September 11.
I love how populist and down to earth Frommer is, and how he doesn’t shy away from tackling nonsensical politicking as it relates to travel.
Links Roundup
The number of open tabs in my browser, starred entries in my RSS reader, and links marked in my email is becoming overwhelming, so here’s another collection of links. Also, I’m waiting for some enormous attachments to slowly upload to email, so I might as well do something in the meantime. One of these days, I’m going to post the food and music entries I have piled up in my head–I made tagliatelle alla bolognese from scratch last night, both the pasta and the bolognese–but at this rate, it probably won’t be until the November election is over.
In this batch of links we have: politics (surprise!), feminism (surprise!), feminism/politics (no, really, surprise!), food, environmentalism, miscellaneous, and some humor.
Chicken Stock
Stock is a handy thing to have on hand, be it chicken, vegetable, beef, or some mishmosh of leftover vegetables and meat bones. I suspect that’s how it originated, as a way to extract every last bit of flavor and nutrition from food: boil some water with the bones from yesterday’s meat and the leftover fluffy tops of vegetables and voila, that’s another meal squeezed out of your food! I don’t need it often, but when I want to try a soup or a risotto or something else that requires stock, it’s nice to be able to pull some out of the freezer. Canned stock is usually laden with preservatives, chemicals, and tastes too salty, and although it’s cheaper in terms of cash than making stock from scratch, that’s because the costs are hidden from the consumer and passed onto the population at large as externalities. Food politics aside, though, I like making things from scratch. There’s just something comforting and fulfilling about making a risotto from start to finish, and having a pot slowly simmering on the stove for hours gives the kitchen a warm, homey feel.
Stock recipes vary by cuisine, with each cuisine using it for different dishes and using different ingredients based on what’s indigenous to the area. The recipe I usually make is an Italian one from the excellent cookbook Pasta Fresca, by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman. Quite frankly, it’s a bit on the sweet side and is a funny brown color rather than being perfectly clear, but I suspect that’s because I didn’t put enough salt in and was too lazy to strain it more than once.
Utensils:
Stock pot, 8-10 qt
Spoon, to skim off the scum and fat
Colander or sieve, clean dishtowel, and big mixing bowl to strain the stock
1 2-3 pound whole chicken, with feet if possible
1 pound chicken backs and necks
Water
1 carrot, trimmed of its leafy top (or not)
3 stalks celery, trimmed (or not)
3 sprigs parsley
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper or a few peppercorns
On the meat:
1. If you buy meat often, one thing you can do is get a whole chicken, eat the breasts/thighs/wings/whatever, then toss the neck, back, and other bones in the freezer until you want to make a stock. In the long run, it’s cheaper than buying meat pre-cut, as you get more meat with the bones as a bonus.
2. Bones: both local butchers and the meat counters at grocery stores have backs and necks on hand, and they’ll bag some up for you if you ask. Even the Shaw’s in New Haven, which is not an upscale Shaw’s, had marrow bones, and they were helpful and nice when I wandered in last year saying, “This cookbook says I need…marrow bones? For…beef stock?”
3. If you don’t want to deal with a whole chicken, you can make up the weight with odds and ends: more necks and backs, wings, etc. This is what I did, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying a whole chicken.
On the vegetables:
You can trim them of their leafy bits if you like, but if you don’t have another use for them, I figure you might as well toss them in as not. Rinse them well, making sure to get all the dirt off the skin and out of the crevices, particularly the celery. There’s always dirt on the bottom of my celery.
Wash the chicken carefully, rinsing out any blood that remains in the cavity, and gently pull off the extra fat attached to the breast and tail areas. Place the whole chicken and necks in a soup pot. Cover with water so that it is 4 inches above the chicken and bones. Bring to a boil, and carefully skim off all the scum as it rises to the surface. When there is no more scum, add all the remaining ingredients, lower the heat, and simmer, partly covered, for at least 1 hour, or 2 hours for a richer broth. The more slowly the broth bubbles, the clearer the soup will be. Strain the broth, reserving the chicken and vegetables or discard them, if desired. Either use the broth immediately or refrigerate it for later use. If you do refrigerate it, remove the fat from the top when it has congealed.
Straining the stock: stick the big mixing bowl in the sink and place the colander or strainer in or above it, lined with the clean dishtowel. Slowly pour the stock into the colander; go too fast and it’ll overflow. Once it’s all transferred, strain it back into the pot, and again if you want the stock extra-clear. Store in medium-sized tupperware, which thaw more quickly than large ones and have the added benefit of being about the right amount of stock for one meal (for me; I cook for one person). I stuck out a tupperware of stock to thaw last night, and it was mostly melted with a sizable chunk of ice floating in the center this morning. It had to be heated for the risotto anyway, so I dumped the whole thing into a pot, covered it, and turned the heat on low to gently warm it through.
Making stock is usually a weekend project. It doesn’t require much attention, but it takes time and a relatively uncluttered stove top and sink. Once it’s done, however, I have enough tupperwares of stock to last for months, depending on how often I use it.
Sappho has nothing on this
OMG. I can’t read the NYT anymore. I just can’t–not their op-ed section, at any rate, and not their Style section, either. The op-ed page, aside from Bob Herbert and the board editorials, are full of crap writing that’s often just imbecilic, disgusting vitriol, poorly researched and poorly argued to boot. The Style section relies on sexism to prop it up. Dining & Food is still decent, but it’s the only section of the NYT I read these days. Time to delete the NYT bookmarks on my toolbar and start reading the BBC and The Economist in earnest.
I wrote a poem at work today:
O, fruit sublime
O, succulent flesh divine,
How I wish you were mine!
I want you, I need you,
I can’t help but eat you–
OM NOM NOM!
“Ode To A Blood Orange”
*bows* I’ll be here all week, thank you!
