The Neglected Bird

Do people eat goose (geese?) around Christmas? I have a vague notion that they do or did at some point in time. Being the good Jewish women that we are, my Mom and I cooked a goose this Christmas day, just to say we did. It was an experience.

Let me preface by saying that I now know enough to stay away from cooking whole birds. This year’s Thanksgiving turkey experience is likely to stay with me for years - anything larger than a chicken now paralyzes me with fear. When I say that my Mom and I cooked a goose, I mean that she let me chop things while she cooked a goose. I am an excellent chopper.

I had never seen a goose wrapped in plastic before and, therefore, feel the need to describe it. Ours resembled a small, elongated turkey. Its body was long, its wings were long, its neck (stuffed where it wouldn’t reach under normal circumstances) was long. I found the sight of the long wings somewhat disquieting but I am not sure why. Perhaps they were too arm-like for my comfort. The breast of the goose seemed atrophied as compared to a turkey - there was not a lot of meat there.


The key thing about geese is this – they are basically bags of fat. This wasn’t even one of them force-fed geese that are now inaccessible to Chicago’s dining community (I will have to leave Boston if they ever ban foie gras here. I am not kidding). Ours was a farm-raised, free range, organic, hippie, happy goose and it was still a bag of fat. I know, I know – fat is flavor, but wow. Trimming the bird took a bit of time. (Please note that I abstained from posting a picture of a pile of goose fat. Said picture can be produced upon request).

We followed Emeril’s recipe for roasting the goose. His approach involves the thoroughly gruesome step of poking holes all over the bird to allow rendering fat to escape during cooking and dousing the goose with boiling water every half hour to help that fat render. And render it did. There was goose fat all over the oven door, on the floor by the oven, and hanging in the kitchen air. There must have been an inch of fat at the bottom of the roasting pan. After the cooking was done I felt as though I was covered in a thin layer of goose fat. I smelled goose everywhere I turned for a day following.

So how did it taste? Like a cross between a turkey and a duck - not as gamey as duck but more flavorful that turkey. It was dark meat all over like a duck, more fatty (for discussion, see above), and more chewy. The breast meat was great – juicy, tender, and flavorful. The rest of the bird, however – the legs and all other accessory parts – were rather tough and not very pleasant to eat, although the wonderful mild duck flavor was still there.

We were surprised to find that our 12 pound goose really only fed three people. That’s a lot of inedible goose! The ever-wise they say that a four pound chicken can feed four people while a four pound duck can feed just two. I would say that a four pound goose, if such a thing existed, would feed only one.

Ever seen goose on a restaurant menu? I haven’t, not once. Maybe it’s not economically sound to offer goose when only a fourth of it (breast meat) is desirable. It does seem odd for the restaurant industry to neglect an entire species of farmed bird, though it does explain why the high schoolers at the Whole Foods checkout counter didn’t know that people eat geese.

At the end of the night, with the goose experience behind us, my Mom decided that she doesn’t like goose and I decided that I need a shower to wash that goose off. I think that the tougher texture and more delicate flavor of goose is better suited to slower cooking methods as opposed to roasting. Goose confit would be fantastic, especially since the fat can be removed once the confit is chilled. Food (goose) for thought.


Update: I asked an actual chef why actual restaurants don't serve goose. This was Chef Josh's response : "Because it's a pain in the ass." Concise and to the point. I couldn't have said it better myself.

First Time For Everything

I, much to the horror and disbelief of my friend Ben, have never had Taco Bell. Have I been deprived? No. Uninitiated? Yes. Well, I am innocent no longer. Yesterday, I had Taco Bell for the first time.

After a night of bowling… Aah let me rephrase. After a night of watching my friends bowl while drinking beer in a bowling alley in Virginia (an experience that is difficult to convey without pictures. You just wouldn’t believe me), it was decided that the time had come for me to experience the wonder and potential stomachache that is Taco Bell. And so I did. Pulling up to a Taco Bell drive-through in one of the million strip malls that make up the entirety of Northern Virginia, I let Ben take the reigns and order his favorites. A giant bag of his favorites.

My gastronomic curiosity did not get the best of me – I stayed away from things containing lettuce and/or beef… if beef it be. I stuck to chicken – spicy chicken taco, I think. Or burrito. Don’t remember. I have to say, it wasn’t terrible. It was certainly not as bad as I was expecting, having programmed myself to believe that Taco Bell is the representation of all that is wrong with fast food. It was better drowned in hot sauce, but not awful. The rice was on the crunchy side and the tortilla tasted slightly raw, but the chicken pieces were blessedly small enough that I didn’t have to have an opinion on their quality.

I don’t know if it was the late hour or the bowling alley or the beer that didn’t sit well with me, but I admit that it may have been the Taco Bell. I felt a little wonky for about an hour but was perfectly ok in the morning. No doom or major gastro-intestinal distress to speak of, even though I was told to expect it by people less enthusiastic than Ben to have me try the Bell. I don’t think my body was all that surprised at what it was given, considering my never-ending love of fried pickles. I am not an haute cuisine 24-7 kind of girl. There is too much to eat all around me to confine myself to organics.

Cabbage: More Than Meets (And Offends) The Eye

I tried my best, I really did, but I think there is simply no way to make cooked cabbage look attractive. Even the word cabbage is ugly – it’s staccato and has that icky [dj] sound at the end which makes it sound like the flatulence it has been said to induce. A raw cabbage leaf is really the best I can do. To add to its unfortunate appearance when cooked, cabbage is associated with stench, need, and poverty, implying that you only eat it if you have no other choice. Well, I object.

I grew up eating cabbage (and, yes, I admit that a large part of Russia’s cuisine evolved out of need) and happen to like it (if not its English name) a great deal. I know for a fact that there are acceptable and interesting uses for this vegetable besides mayonnaise-drowned coleslaw. There is pickled cabbage (my grandmother’s is best but oooh kimchee – not at all Russian but so very tangy and spicy and wonderful), cabbage soups, and braised or stewed cabbage just to name a few, none of which will make your house smell like that of a pauper in a Dostoevsky novel.

For all my cabbage enthusiasm and loyalty, I have never cooked it myself. It never occurred to me to go out and buy a simple head of cabbage. Somehow I always got distracted by leeks or fennel or something along those sophisticated and elaborate lines. Luckily, I didn’t have to go anywhere – it came to me in my Boston Organics box. This led to a phone call to my Mom and the birth of what I now call Pink Cabbage.

The cabbage is cooked with onions until it’s soft but not mushy, and is colored slightly pink by tomato paste. That’s it. I can’t figure out if that’s a braise or a stew or a sauté or wilting, and I know that I am in no condition to go through more schooling to find out (more school may well break me), so any help is appreciated. Pink Cabbage is simple, relatively fast, not stinky, and has a lot of flavor for little input… all those pluses but it’s still ugly. I took a picture just to say I did, so here you go:


Pink Cabbage

This recipe has the infuriating characteristic of all those handed down from one’s Mother - the measurements are a dash of this and a pinch of that. The point is that the amount of ingredients you need depends on the size of your cabbage. If it’s large, use a large onion and slightly more tomato paste. My cabbage was teeeeeny (organic, remember?) so I used a smaller onion to match. The amounts I listed are for a smaller head of cabbage.

1 head of cabbage, sliced or shredded
1 onion, thinly sliced into half moons
1 tsp tomato paste
½ tsp sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1) Saute onion in olive oil till softened and golden.
2) Add cabbage and salt it aggressively – the salt is needed to break down the cabbage and get it to release some of its water. Cover with lid and cook over medium-low heat till most of the water from the cabbage has evaporated.
3) Add tomato paste, sugar, and black pepper to taste. The cabbage should turn slightly pink – add more tomato paste if your cabbage is larger. Cook with lid on for about another 10 minutes until the cabbage is soft but still a little resistant to the bite. Al dente, if you will.


P.S. Hidden behind ugliness and lousy reputation is cabbage’s nutritional value – it’s really good for you. Cabbage is super low in calories and has a lot of vitamin C, and it’s umami. And now for some more cabbage leaf pictures, because I was on a roll.

Hellidays

How I wish I was clever enough to have come up with the word Hellidays all by myself. Sadly, that is not the case. It is the brainchild of Chris Schlesinger, chef-owner of the East Coast Grill in Inman Square. The East Coast Grill (let it be ECG) is a fantastic restaurant on any night. The menu is half barbeque, half seafood with a large raw bar. I have never made it past the seafood to the barbeque and so cannot speak for it. The fish, however… Blackened tuna tacos sound odd and taste amazing, with pickled jicama and avocado. The fish is super fresh as are the accompaniments, all prepared with respect for the ingredients, which is to say nothing is drowning in an unidentifiable sauce.

Well, the ECG is hard enough to get into on any old night. Now imagine a once in a year event in which the chefs try to come up with the hottest, scariest, most searingly spicy dishes and put them all on one menu. That, ladies and gentlemen, is Hell Night. Or three Hell Nights to be precise. I have been trying to get a reservation for months. Months (!) without success. Finally, the people at ECG realized that I really needed to get in on the Hell Night action and, in an unprecedented move, added another three nights. So the Hellidays were born.

The items on the Hell Night menu are rated for spice level in bombs. Ten bombs is the highest and belongs to the Pasta From Hell. This dish requires a signed waiver prior to consumption. Puking is not unheard of. Of course should you be a total loser you can order off the bright pink (to signify weak and girly? If girly is to be considered weak and derogatory, that is. Regardless...) wimp menu but be warned that you will be laughed at and humiliated by the entire staff. Should you bite off more than your stomach lining can take, you can order the Antidote, again knowing full well that you will be ridiculed for it. Now, I don’t know this from personal experience, not being a loser and all, but the antidote is in fact a creamsicle in a champagne glass. How debasing!

So, what do non-losers, hardcore spice-eaters such as myself order on Hell Night? Well, first up were mussels swimming in a green sauce of pulverized jalapenos in a green curry type of sauce. The mussels were giant and creamy and remarkably, not at all overpowered by the jalapenos. They were flavored with subtle coconut milk and curry.


Moving on, next up were Hell fries – self explanatory, good, and somewhat curry-tasting, fried noodles with shrimp and duck, and a baked stuffed crab. Much beer was needed as accompaniment. I am proud to say that nothing overwhelmed me (then again, nothing was over 4 bombs…) but was all very flavorful and good. And then I met my match. Or came close to it.

I always wondered when it would happen, when would I reach my spice threshold. Well, it happened yesterday. Almost. (Not admitting weakness here, mind you). Carnitas tacos with jalapeno sour cream, guacamole and red salsa: five bombs. Tender meat, crispy vegetables, fresh tortilla, and a delayed, slow-rising, and painful burning sensation all about the mouth area: priceless. It came on so slowly! I thought I was in the clear, munching happily away very proud of the fact that I was eating what my dining companions (of markedly weaker constitutions) had to put aside.

Then the spice came. It wasn’t enough for tears, certainly nowhere near puking territory but it was some of the most intense heat I have ever experienced (and I have been around the spicy block). Burning, prickling, and imagined swelling aside, I do find it remarkable how the taste of the tacos was in no way obscured by the heat. It was almost magic. That’s something I noticed with everything I tried that night – no matter how burning hot it was, the spice never overwhelmed the taste of what I was eating. A wonderful balance was struck between trying to make you cry and actually letting you taste your food (which was seriously good). With the tacos specifically, you taste something totally awesome, count to 20 (really, it was that slow) then start drinking a lot of beer under the pretense of being really thirsty. Yeah.

Wisely, the starters were far spicier than the entrees… I suppose because you would be eating a lot more of the entree, volume-wise. I had the Vietnamese Big Bowl of Seafood, which at four bombs was frankly not spicy at all, and I don’t think it was due to loss of sensation on my part. There were baby fennel bulbs, giant shrimp and scallops swimming about in a lemongrass-flavored broth. Good, but not close to the genius of the tacos.


And then there was dessert. Jalapeno rocky road ice cream. OMG. That’s really all I can say. OMG. Sweet and chocolaty with a slightly delayed kick. My mouth alternated between cold and hot. It was brilliant and addicitve. I could eat it every day.

There was a lesson to be learned from all this. Spicy doesn’t mean flavorless. Intense spice does not have to overwhelm what you’re eating. The balance struck between the food and the heat was awesome, and dare I say? masterful (I think I just earned another pretension point). I am so going back to the next Hell Night, provided I can get a table. I can push myself further. I don’t think I reached my limit with the heat. I can do better. [I didn’t actually finish the taco, but don’t tell. That’s one taco for three people. Small taco. Potent taco.]




P.S. Did I mention that the hell-like environment was established by blasting Motley Crue and Satan Claws (get it? Satan Claws? Ha!) parading about the room festooned with wreaths of chili peppers and, occasionally, a truly unappetizing scary mask while yelling no, not HO HO HO, but HOT HOT HOT. Creative: no, effective: yes.

Kumquat? Really?

There are a few words that I still don’t believe are real. Kumquat is one of those words. It sounds like a made up word, like those used in some cartoons or statistics textbooks. I didn’t know that kumquats existed for the longest time. [I was also shocked to my very core to find out that road runners are actual birds that actually live and really do run]. This is not a fruit that I was brought up eating or even being aware of. But they do exist, and this being the season of all that is citrus, they abound.

As I wandered aimlessly through Whole Foods (I have no time for museums but at least there is still Whole Foods) I decided that today would be the day I tried a kumquat. I brought the little plastic box home and stared at it for a good bit. I had no idea what I was in for. I knew that kumquats are meant to be eaten whole, the rind and all. This appealed to me greatly as I love citrus rind – I have a bizarre habit of eating lemon slices, complete with rind. This is certain to be a left over from when I was little - my grandfather and I would stare at each other to see who would flinch first from eating big pieces of lemon. It was a very tame sort of show-down. He let me win.

That unwarranted digression aside, I had no real idea what to expect from a kumquat. They turned out to be very odd sort of little creatures. Their rind is sweet with mild bitterness in the shadows; the tartness of the flesh seems to vary from one fruit to the next. Some are sweet all the way through, some pop with sourness. It’s a bit of an acidity roulette (yes, I know I am a dork. A sleepy dork, at the moment). The really cool part of the kumquat is its truly bizarre textural contrast – the spongy and slightly resistant rind gives way to an interior that seems effervescent, almost carbonated. The batch I have has quite a few seeds. I don’t know if this is the norm, but it may render kumquats not entirely suited to polite company – there is a bit of spitting and sorting involved.



The next step in my kumquat adventure, having conquered not only their name but their entire uncooked selves, is to make kumquat preserves or relish which is a common use for these mythical little things. Next on my list of weird fruit to try: quince; next weird word to become accustomed to: graduation.

Great Things Will Come Of This

Pretty loud title, I know, but I am so excited! I have been dying for one of these things for ages, and now I finally have one! No, not my long-awaited degree, but close. It’s a masala dabba, or tiffin*. It’s a metal tin with little jars to hold the most commonly used spices in Indian cooking. There is a little metal spoon for scooping out the spices, and a tight-fitting lid to keep it all fresh. It totally beats opening seven little baggies in a row, and spilling, and inhaling… oh not good.

Sur La Table sells a masala dabba for an absurd amount of money, considering what it is. Don’t get me wrong, I would live inside a Sur La Table if I could, but come on! The one I am now proud to call my own is the genuine article, straight from wonderful, food-begetting India (180 rupees = $4. Ha. Oh wait. Combined with the cost of the plane ticket to India… Yeah, maybe it’s not such a bargain after all). It’s good to have friends in high places. Or friends who travel to India frequently, as the case may be.

My most awesomest friend’s Mom (Hi Auntie!) brought this tiffin back for me on her last trip. She is kind and patient enough to try to teach me how to cook whenever I come to stay with them. She may just be humoring the funny white girl that hasn’t gotten out of her way in the kitchen for the last decade or so, but I am ok with that. I think I am starting to catch on to the dal thing. Given a few dozen more tries, I am almost certain that my dal will resemble hers. From afar.

The spices that now live in my brand new tiffin, clockwise, starting with the very yellow on the left: turmeric, cumin powder, cumin seeds, coriander powder, garam masala (Auntie makes her own but I may be lacking a few genes necessary to pull that off), black mustard seeds, and red chile powder in the center.

* This I should clarify. A tiffin is (I think) a metal box that is sometimes stackable and is commonly used as a lunch box in India (I have seen Japanese people with a version of a tiffin as well). A masala dabba is a tiffin, but not all tiffins are masala dabbas.