One of Those Nights

Every once in a while I have one of those meals that sticks with me. I don’t mean on the seat of my pants or the front of my shirt. I mean in my memory and subconscious as an event. A meal that sticks out as a true experience, one to be savored slowly and for years to come over and over again. an experience perfectly balanced and refined, fun and comfortable, masterfully executed and obviously, wonderful to eat. I recently had another meal that fits that description. Unfortunately, this one was a four hour flight away from my house.

Vail is not only the best place to ski in this country (in my honest and uninformed opinion) it is also one of the best places to eat. The number and caliber of restaurants in what could otherwise be a dinky ski village is dizzying. The meal of note I speak of was at Osaki's.

Osaki’s is absolutely teeny. The fact that the servers can maneuver at all makes one wonder how masterful they are on the slopes. Run by a husband and wife, Osaki's is so far beyond the spicy tuna roll that it’s almost laughable (they do have the standard sushi joint staples of course and they are wonderful, but they are not the reason I am writing this).

The proper way to enjoy Osaki’s and push the chef to exercise his imagination is to make a reservation and request omakase ahead of time, giving him the opportunity to pull together the practically unheard of ingredients that will soon come together into a meal you will remember for a long time, even after you stop grinning about it.

There were a number of things about this meal that I found striking. First and foremost, I saw (and ate) freshly grated wasabi. I was certain that I would live a long and unfulfilled life never experiencing real wasabi. I find that a lot of people are aware of the fact that the ubiquitous bright green paste included on all sushi platters in this country is little more than reconstituted colored horseradish. It is not wasabi. Real wasabi is a stout (and rather expensive) root that is not widely grown in this country.

The root in the picture is from Oregon. The piece you see was quoted at a price of $40-50. Here is a short pop quiz on wasabi root preparation. In accordance with tradition Traditionally, the root is ground and peeled on a a) metal grater, b) ceramic grater, c) the chef’s 5 o’clock shadow, or d) a shark skin grater. Contrary to your first instinct, the answer is not c. The answer is actually d, of all things. Wasabi root is traditionally finely grated on shark skin stretched over a slightly curved piece of wood. The skin ( I got to touch it!) is shockingly sharp and rough, almost as though it were studded with teeny industrial diamonds.


Next on the rarities list were real live yuzu lemons. I have never seen an actual yuzu before. I have seen the juice in stores, I know that it is used as the base for ponzu sauce, but I have never actually seen a yuzu fruit. There are a number of varieties of yuzu lemons, all small and knobby looking citrus fruit, some green, some yellow, full of little seeds. The taste is markedly acidic but much more flavorful and nuanced than straight lemon juice. It is floral and complex, like a more self-involved and less orange-tasting Meyer lemon. Combined with the sweet lobster meat, the yuzu lemon flavor will not be easily forgotten.

Broiled lobster tail with yuzu and yuzu-based sauce

Here are the rest of the dishes we had that night. While each of them warrants a couple of paragraphs of descriptions, explanations, and reactions, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I am still thinking about this meal.

Tempura – crab claw, sea urchin in seaweed with really crisp minty/basil-like leaf; shiitake mushroom and something else

Sweet shrimp, scallops, ginko nut, mountain peach, shallot shavings

Trio of tunas with fresh wasabi

Golden eye red snapper, Red snapper, fluke with black caviar

Torched kobe with radish sprouts
Unagi (fresh water eel) – with yuzu zest or green tea salt

House made mochi – red bean, green tea, raspberry (too sweet and acrid-tasting)

Looking over it all now, I cannot believe that I managed to eat it all. Although leaving anything behind on the plate was simply out of the question, practically against my religion.

Things You Can Learn from Cheetos

The following is a cross post from my sciency blog. For whatever reason, I felt the need to expound upon my love of Cheetos (which I have already done once).

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I like to eat healthfully, generally make sure that my food is indeed made out of food and not supremely processed, over-salted and preserved food-like substances. I love lentils and brown rice and have put away a fair amount of tofu in my time.

But then there are Cheetos. I cannot explain my love for Cheetos. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Maybe it started at the vending machine in high school which provided my daily kick of the neon orange glow sticks. I got hooked. They are so good in such a bad way.

The last time I splurged on the dietary horror that is a bag of Cheetos, I did what I have long since trained myself not to do – I looked at the ingredient list. Oy vey. If I brought Cheetos to inorganic chemistry class in college, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten a C – they would have been a great cheat sheet.

I want to know what all that chemical garbage is doing in my food. Why is it there? What role does it serve? The internet came to the rescue of this miniature chemistry lesson.

The following is the (almost) complete ingredient list from a bag of Cheetos, annotated by yours truly:

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Enriched corn meal, with all usual vitamin supplements

Vegetable oil

Salt – the third ingredient on the list – no wonder I love Cheetos.

Maltodextrin – polysaccharide produced from starch (rice, corn or potato); easily digestible and absorbed as easily as glucose.

Sugar

Monosodium glutamate – an amino acid that acts as a potent flavor enhancer. MSG triggers the umami taste receptors, making food taste more savory.

Autolyzed yeast extract – often contains free glutamic acids and is, for that reason, used as a supplement to MSG. “…consists of concentrations of yeast cells that are allowed to die and break up, so that the yeasts’ digestive enzymes break their proteins down into simpler compounds.”

Citric acid – Used for tart flavor and as an antioxidant.

Artificial color – apparently, neon orange doesn’t come easily – Cheetos are colored by no fewer than four food dyes

Partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil

Hydrolyzed soy protein – ”...Soy protein is used for emulsification and texturizing. Specific applications include adhesives, asphalts, resins, cleaning materials, cosmetics, inks, pleather, paints, paper coatings, pesticides/fungicides, plastics, polyesters and textile fibres.” Ok, I am sure that soy protein isn’t as scary as that passage just made it sound, but it sure does give a girl pause.

“Cheddar cheese” – I am sorry, I couldn’t help putting cheese in quotation marks.

Whey – “Whey proteins primarily consist of α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin. Depending on the method of manufacture, whey may also contain glycomacropeptides (GMP).”

Onion powder

Whey protein concentrate – often used in body-building supplements, this is basically pure, milk-derived bioactive protein. Why it is included in my most favorite of bright orange “foods,” I can’t seem to figure out. It doesn’t sound terribly sinister, so I will forgive its inclusion.

Corn syrup solids – sweetener and thickener, dried corn syrup consisting mostly of dextrose. “Corn syrup contains no nutritional value other than calories, promotes tooth decay, and is used mainly in foods with little intrinsic nutritional value.”

Natural flavor – huh?

Buttermilk solids – analogous to dried milk as far as food additives are concerned. “Buttermilk is the liquid remaining from the cream after the butter has been removed from the churn. (This buttermilk should not be confused with the fluid buttermilk sold to consumers, a cultured lowfat milk that resembles buttermilk.)”

Garlic powder

Disodium phosphate – “Disodium phosphate is a sodium salt of orthophosphoric acid and is used as an antioxidant synergist, stabiliser and buffering agent in food. It is also used as an emulsifier in the manufacture of pasteurised processed cheese. Disodium phosphate is added to powdered milk to prevent gelation.” Note: harmful if ingested in quantity. Oooook, limiting Cheeto intake starting…. Now.

Sodium diacetate – basically vinegar in solid form, this additive is used as an antimicrobial/preservative and to add a tangy flavor to foods.

Sodium caseinate – milk protein conjugate used as a binder, emulsifier, or thickener, likely used in the “cheese” in Cheetos.

Lactic acid – ”...fermented from lactose (milk sugar), most commercially used lactic acid is derived by using bacteria such as Bacillus acidilacti, Lactobacillus delbueckii or Lactobacillus bulgaricus to ferment carbohydrates from nondairy sources such as cornstarch, potatoes and molasses. usually either as a pH adjusting ingredient, or as a preservative (either as antioxidant or for control of pathogenic micro-organisms).”

Disodium inosinate – disodium salt of inosinic acid. That clarifies everything, huh? Used in concert with MSG to trigger the umami taste receptors.

Disodium guanylate – “… often added to foods in conjunction with disodium inosinate; the combination is known as disodium 5’-ribonucleotides. Disodium guanylate is produced from dried fish or dried seaweed and is often added to instant noodles, potato chips and snacks, savoury rice, tinned vegetables, cured meats, packet soup. ...The food additives disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are useful only in synergy with MSG-containing ingredients, and provide a likely indicator of the presence of MSG in a product.”

Nonfat milk solids

Sodium citrate – sodium salt of citric acid, added for tartness and to balance pH.

Carrageenan – obtained from seaweed, indigestible large protein used as a thickening, stabilizing and gelling agent.

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Whew.

What I found most interesting in this chemical roster is the amount of MSG and MSG analogs – no fewer than four separate chemicals to trigger that sought-after umami flavor. Cheetos also contain a fair number and preservatives and stabilizers, all chemicals with natural derivations, but chemicals nonetheless.

My conclusion? You probably won’t die from eating a bag (or eight) of Cheetos every once in a while, perhaps it’s best not to make a habit of it.

A Calming Effect

The most complicated and seemingly stressful undertakings can sometimes calm me down. It is the strangest thing. Most people, when embroiled in writing a dissertation, 18,000 blogs and doing lord knows what else, don’t think that making a massively involved dinner on a Friday after a full day of work is a particularly bright idea. Luckily, I never said I was bright.

There I was, having lived through a full day of procrastination, writer’s block, and lack of productivity, running manically from grocery store to liquor store to prepare a Spanish-themed dinner for the awesomeness that is my friend Kanchan. Kanchan was kind enough to give me a wonderful Spanish cookbook for my birthday, a Spanish equivalent of the Italian Silver Spoon. The ginormous and gorgeous book is filled with recipes that have quickly become house specials for me. Dates stuffed with almonds and wrapped in bacon? Umm, yea.

Really though, the dinner was all about paella, the most Spanish of all Spanish dishes. Here’s the thing with paella. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass. It involves all kinds of stocks and infusions and just, issues. I totally punked out of making the cookbook version of the paella, which boasted no less than two pages of directions (in small font), and opted instead for a recipe I pulled off Epicurious.


Still, it was a production, but one that I found calming me half way through the procedure. I started breathing a little slower and panicking a little less (still cursing just as much though. The cursing doesn’t seem subject to change). Even though my pan wasn’t the right size, even though I read snow peas when the recipe quite clearly stated sugar snap peas, even though I bought some Chernobyl-sized clams that refused to open even after extended cooking, instead of the little dainty clams I was meant to buy... Despite all that I felt more collected than I had the entire day.


Out of the oven the paella came, fragrant with saffron, shellfish and smoky spice from the chorizo and smoked paprika. It was great. We put as big a dent as two people could into a giant pan full of rice and seafood. We finished with some traditional crème caramel (the caramel portion of which may stay with my stove top forever. Caramel is a persistent bugger), poured the last of the second bottle of white wine for the evening and sat back. Because it hurt. Miraculously, I was calm and collected, having just run about like a chicken with my head cut off two hours prior. I don’t know if it was the bottom of the second bottle of wine, the cooking or the company, but I felt so much better. Stress can't compete with such a roster of pleasures.

Southern Belle at Heart

Anyone who has ever been to Northern Virginia (where I grew up) can attest to the fact that it is an entity on its own, completely unrelated to the rest of the state. While the whole of Virginia is considered to be the South, Northern Virginia is most certainly not. It is as Northern, Yankee, metropolitan, and progressive as a suburban area could ever be. It is not the South, dammit. It’s different.

Please consider the evidence - there is no Southern food in Northern Virginia. None at all. There is New Mexican, Peruvian, French, French, French, and Italian, but no traditional Southern food. And yet, I somehow managed to fall in love with cornbread, greens, hushpuppies… I love it all.

There is no marked Southern accent, certainly not one as defined as you would hear in Central or Southern VA. And yet, I use “y’all” in every day speech. My friends from home make merciless fun of me for it, but I still say it.

Perhaps Virginia seeped its way into me. Stealthily, it leaked through the Silicon Valley that is Northern VA, dripped through the massive malls with parking lots that look like Benz dealerships. Somehow, there is a little bit of the South in me.

Northern Virginia ain’t got nothin' on North Carolina (for the uninitiated, that’s pronounced Noth Caralahynah) when it comes to being the South. I had the pleasure of visiting NC for the second time this year, this time for a science blogging conference. Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know I was a giant dork? Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

There is some seriously good Southern food to be had in NC, along with people with a completely awesome Southern drawl that I could listen to all day. After the conference, at which we were served excellent pulled pork from Bullock’s and Locopops (if you have never had a Locopop, I feel very sorry for you. Check them out the NPR podcast about Locopops) my new blogger friend Aaron and I went in search of good Southern food. And we found it, at Crook’s Corner.

Nothing says Southern food like a pig up on a pole. Inside though, Crook's Corner was way more arty and urban than I predicted from the wall of hubcaps outside.


I must have stared at that menu for a good twenty minutes before deciding on shrimp and grits. I think I made the right decision. Huge shrimp, bacon, mushrooms and scallions were piled on top of cheesy, creamy grits. The grits were just stupid good. This may be because they were about 60% butter and cheese, 40% creamy white corn. Not a bad ratio.


There were also giant cheddar jalapeno hushpuppies that were just eh (innocuous cornbread more than hushpuppy) and a giant biscuit, as big as my head.




I also can’t forget to mention the infinitely polite server who looked like he had a mother of a hangover, and did I mention the giant pig on a pole? It was awesome.

There may be a bit of the Southern belle in me yet. Just don't expect me to bat my eyelashes. Or wear pastels. Or giggle. And really, I am not that friendly. So ok, maybe it's just the Southern y'all and the food that I love. I am ok with that.

Boston Winter, Texas Heat

My butt hurts.

An unconventional start to a food blog post, I know, but it hurts! I was shoveling my car out from yet another mountain of compacted snow when I slipped and fell. I don’t know how I managed it, but I fell exactly and precisely on my tail bone. Not on my side, not on my behind… Nope, directly on the tail bone. Ouch. I flailed on the ground in a dramatic fashion hoping someone would come by and help me up, or maybe even shovel my car for me out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah. So that didn’t happen. After a couple more loud groans (ok, curses) I got up and finished the job. My butt still hurts though.

As much as I love winter - sledding, skiing, snowball fights, fur trimmed hoods, and all that - I hate hate shoveling my car and hate falling even more. Boston winters are not for ninnies. Boston winters are, however, for all day stews, chilies, and mugs of hot tea to squeeze while watching the snow wreak havoc on all those unfortunate enough to be caught outside.

My saving grace at the end of a long day of hobbling around with a sore bum and a cranky demeanor, was a bowl of chili that had bubbled happily away all of the previous Sunday. While I realize that the chili wasn’t true, conventional Texas Red (it had beans in it. Three kinds of beans, even. Gasp), I did have a real live Texan assisting and directing the chili-making. Does that count? Do I get some cred back, JC?

Chili, in process

We basically put every manner of chile and spice into the pot that we could find. The Hatch green and red chiles that I brought back from San Antonio eons ago? Toss them in. Chile powder from my masala dabba? Sure. A can of chipotles in adobo sauce? Sounds good. Luckily, the searing heat of the chili mellowed during the cooking to a rather bearable, but still runny nose-inducing spiciness. The smokiness of the chipotles and roasted dried chiles combined with the other spices into a really complex and multi-layered taste. I can say with some certainty that it is the best chili I have ever tried. And it came out of my kitchen! And it made my butt feel better. Or maybe it just helped me forget, as I was happily wiping my nose and drinking cold water.

Dry roasting red Hatch chiles from Mesilla, New Mexico. These gave off the richest, smokiest, most intense smell. Inimitable.

Texan-directed three bean chili

1 red onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, roasted, peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
5 roasted chiles, such as Hatch (if you are fortunate enough to have a few stashed in your freezer) or poblanos, seeded, peeled, and chopped. I used a mix of hot and mild Hatch chiles.
2 dried, ripe (red) Hatch chiles or other New Mexican chiles
1 can chipotles in adobo sauce, pureed
1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 can black eyed peas, rinsed and drained
1 can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
42 ounces of whole canned tomatoes (that’s one big can and one small can), crushed roughly by hand, liquid reserved
1.5 - 2 lbs beef chuck, 85%, cut into 1 to 2 inch cubes (we actually only used 1 pound but would have liked more. I upped the amount of meat for the recipe)

1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground chile powder
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried epazote (I don’t actually have any idea what this tastes like on its own. Smelled pretty good though – a little minty).
3 sprigs fresh thyme (why thyme, you ask? Because it was in my fridge)

1) Preheat oven to 325F.
2) Roast dried chiles in a dry skillet until slightly darkened and fragrant. Cover in
boiling water to rehydrate for about 30 minutes. Strain liquid and reserve.
2) Salt and pepper the beef aggressively. In a heavy, oven-safe pot, brown meat in batches over high heat for a couple of minutes on each side, until a brown crust develops. Remove meat from pot to be added back later.


3) Lower heat. Add onion to same pot and sauté, scraping up the browned beef bits from the bottom. You may need to add oil at this point if the meat didn’t let out enough fat. Add garlic, dried spices, and thyme. Sautee for a couple more minutes to toast the spices and soften the onion.
4) Add bell pepper, Hatch chiles, rehydrated chiles, and chipotle in adobo puree. Swish around for about 5 more minutes to make sure the chiles are making friends.
5) Add tomatoes and their liquid, beans, reserved liquid from rehydrated chiles, and the browned beef. Season with salt and ground black pepper. Bring to a boil. Remove and throw away the scary, atomic rehydrated red chiles.
6) Transfer giant, heavy and hot pot to the oven and let it be for 4 hours or so, until lots of the liquid has evaporated, the flavors mellowed and beans softened, and most importantly, until the meat is falling apart. It should melt under the slightest touch. OMG.
7) Serve garnished with cheddar cheese, scallions, cilantro, fresh lime, and tortilla chips.


Please consider this recipe as a submission to Leena’s virtual chili cook-off. Hope the Texan presence during the chili making isn’t considered an unfair advantage.

Do a Good Deed

I have a special pot of pity reserved for all grad students world wide. Grad school is hard, it takes forever, and requires more patience than you ever thought could fit into your body. For this reason (and because she is seriously awesome – a Master's degree in Gastronomy? The very definition of awesome), I am posting a link to a survey that Leena, at Leena Eats, has to administer for her dissertation on food blogs (awesome again). Her dissertation, folks. This is serious.

Help a fellow student out. If you are a US resident (sorry to exclude) spend 10 minutes of your time sometime between January 14 - 28th clicking away on a survey about food blogs. It’s a mitzvah.

Take the poll HERE.

Fantasy Fulfilled

I am bound to get some pretty interesting hits from that title, ain’t I…

Have you ever day dreamed (or night dreamed) about walking into a restaurant and ordering every last thing on the menu, just to try a little bite of everything? To have a big long table covered with every manner and variety of food? If you have, let me know. We may have to be friends.


This long held gluttonous fantasy of mine just came true and I couldn’t be happier about it! World events conspired to make it happen. My friend Allen and his fiancée are planning their summer wedding. Minor snag in the plans, however – Elizabeth is in the Congo. Yep, the Congo. Thanks, State Department.

So what do you do when you have to plan the menu for your wedding dinner and your fiancée is in a war-torn African nation until the end of the month? Why, you procure a surrogate fiancée, of course! One that's a good eater, preferably. That’s where I come in.

Allen and Elizabeth’s catering company, Tastings, is run by a husband and wife team - she bakes and he cooks (could you imagine anything more perfect?). Tastings held a mass, well, tasting for all of their clients. They made cold and hot appetizers, entrees, sides, starches, cakes, candies, and dessert bars, a complete list of which is too long to reproduce here. Their clients had the chance to try a little (or a lot) of everything to decide what they would like to serve at their event.

From front to back: meatballs in Sam Adams sauce, speared with pretzel sticks, Boursin rosettes on pear slices, farmhouse shrimp with bacon and aged Parmesan, smoked salmon with dill creme on a cucumber round.

Not everyone there was planning a wedding – some people were working on Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, which made me laugh because my Bat Mitzvah party was at my house and I think we ordered pizza, which I enjoyed that waaaay more than all the stuffy black tie affairs I attended as a thirteen year old. Seriously. Thirteen years old and wearing a prom dress... There is simply no need. But I massively digress.

Mixed baby greens with mandarin oranges, jicama, red onions, and toasted almonds in herb vinaigrette

Besides poor Allen being traumatized by my being addressed as his fiancée, the evening was a complete and utter gluttonous blast. We were served some of the very best catered food I have ever had, blowing every wedding I have eaten my way though out of the water. There were numerous break out hits, including cocktail olives wrapped in puff pastry as a hot hors d’oeuvre (a brilliant idea that I am absolutely stealing for my next party), pork tenderloin with an apricot bourbon sauce, cooked to a prefect medium rare, as well as surprisingly good Teriyaki flank steak. I was expecting the normal American sugar-spiked sauce soy that passes for teriyaki, but it was subtle smoky and delicious. Hollowed out strawberries filled with cheesecake and covered in graham cracker crumbs were a stroke of genius. Oh, and the black and white chocolate cake - tall, airy and just sweet enough without being cloying, won our unanimous support.

The aftermath of two trips each to the entrée and dessert table (to get a taste of everything, not for sport) was extensive. Other than complete sensory overload from tasting about 60 different items in one evening and my pledging allegiance to a diet of brown rice and steamed vegetables for the next twenty years, the evening was marked by the birth of a draft version of Allen and Elizabeth’s wedding menu. I love milestones.

And I love it when life finds funny ways of giving you what you want, of fulfilling your fantasies.

In Allen's own words, "Oh, the carnage!"

A Party, by the Book (Almost)

New Year’s was a party. A paaaarty. I will not go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that my guests consumed almost all of the hard liquor in my house, and that's saying something. Yeeaaah. I think all I have left is some Triple Sec. I am glad that things didn’t reach the Triple Sec level of desperation. As it was, the end of the evening was not pretty. No offense to pediatricians, but their dispassionate treatment of various body fluids is borderline inhuman. I am not now, nor will I ever be a pediatrician. (My unbudging distaste for children helps nothing in this regard). Make of that what you will.

Besides the astronomical alcohol consumption, the New Year's party was set apart by the fact that I prepared pretty much every item from a recipe, most from cookbooks. This is rare for me. I have a house full of cookbooks but can rarely be bothered to use them. Something about forethought and planning that gets in my way. I made a concerted effort to make things out of books this time around and I was not disappointed.

The menu for that fateful (and booze-full) evening:

Crudites with hummus (perfunctory raw veg. Completely perfunctory)
Almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon (these were crack cocaine, I kid you not; from 1080 recipes)
Melon wrapped in prosciutto
Walnut halves with gorgonzola dolce and red grapes (Deen Brothers cookbook)


Baked brie with dried cherries and almonds (recipe posted here)
Samosas with cilantro chutney (specialty Chez Archna)
Mushroom caps stuffed with bread crumbs and prosciutto (1080 recipes)
Mixed mushroom and goat cheese tartlettes (recipe from my Mom. Need to ask where she found it).


Lemon tart (I have made it before and it was as gorgeous on New Year's as it was the first time, from Silver Spoon)
Fudge brownies dipped in chocolate and topped with chili powder, red salt, or walnuts (for the wimps) (brownie recipe adapted from Gale Gand’s Chocolate and Vanilla. The freaky toppings were my special flourish).


Archna’s homemade samosas stole the show. Starting from scratch, she made the dough, the filling, folded the samosas (with help), fried them, and made a cilantro chuntey that could make a toilet seat cover taste like haute cuisine. I may have to beg her to tell me the recipe beyond: "Garam masala, to taste." Whose taste? Taste what? Measure, woman! Measure!





The alcohol gluttony was out of hand, the food consumption was a close second. For me, anyway. You know, they say (and by they I mean my grandmother) the way you spend New Year’s eve is the way you will spend the rest of the year. By that measure, I will spend the next months eating great food, drinking with my friends, and dancing on chairs to Salt ‘n Pepa’s Shoop. Old school, baby.

Too Perfect

I just couldn’t resist.



New Year’s pedicure polish color: Vodka and Caviar.

How perfect is that??

Wishing all a Happy New Year, filled to the stomach-expanding brim with good food, good drinks, and of course, Vodka and Caviar.

I've Met My Match

Damn. I let myself down at Sichuan Village in Chantilly, VA. I finally showed my whiteness.

Wonderful, food-loving Ben took me to his favorite Sichuan-style Chinese restaurant in Virginia. He took good care of us, ordering five dishes for three people and earning a respectful (or perhaps incredulous) stare from the nice server lady. By the way, don't bother going without someone who can order off the Chinese menu, else you will be eating those beloved Chinese-American classics, chicken fried rice and lo mein. Vomit.

The first to arrive was a cold appetizer of sliced tendon, tripe, and stomach in a Sichuan chili sauce with spring onions, and peanuts. The sauce is the reason I dream about Sichuanese food. Made with dried and roasted chilis, not ground but crushed into small pieces that retain their texture, the heat and flavor of the chilis leached into the oil, coloring it red. And red is my favorite color. We were meant to be, don’t you see? Toasted, flavorful, moderately hot, with a dry crunch, the oil was painfully addictive. I could – and did – eat it with a spoon. Oh yeah, and the tendon, tripe, yeah whatever. They were good, but they were not confused. The sauce was the star of the show.


Then came the dry fried green beans, a la Shanghai Gate (perhaps even more delicious). There was also fried fish and steamed tofu, and a giant, bone-in pork shoulder with a thick fatty skin and meat so melted and tender that Ben cut it up with a spoon. A spoon, people! The rather imposing pork shoulder was surrounded by baby bok choy, reconstituted dried mushrooms, and curiously, squares of ham in a thick sauce. Forget the ham. Forget the sauce. You can most certainly forget the cabbagey bits when staring at sweet, fatty, cotton ball-soft pork that pulls away from the bone with no pressure from the chopsticks. Make sure to fight for the skin. I would have, if I had assurance I wouldn’t explode from eating too much.

Salty, garlicky, crispy green beans

Fried white fish and tofu in a chili sauce

Pork shoulder with ham squares and baby bok choy

I was so happy. So happy! We were all doing so well, happy, eating, talking… and naturally, this was around this time that it happened, that I failed. One of the chief reasons I forced Ben to take me to this place was the promise of blood tofu – congealed pork blood steamed and cut into squares. Try not to read too much into my dying to try this particular delicacy. Just let it go.

I was expecting something tinny, metallic and derr, blood-like. It wasn’t. The blood tofu was very mild. It hardly had any taste at all, with a consistency of hard tofu - creamy and silky, but drier. It was good. The blood tofu swam around with bamboo shoots and wiggly chunks of pork intestines.

Scary. Just... scary

The pork inside bits? Not so much. Without going into too much detail, they tasted just like the substance it is their job to convey. Yep, they had a certain tint of poo. And here’s the thing. You can’t really bite through a chunk of pork intestine. You kinda have to take the whole piece given into your mouth and pray that it stays there as you work on it, with pained focus and rigid concentration. I know that not everything I ate after the poo conveyor tasted the same, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t looking for that flavor in every subsequent bite. That's an acquired taste if I ever experienced one.

I totally failed. I thought myself all kinds of badass. I was psyched about the blood tofu, the tendon and stomach frankly rocked (and rocked hard). The poo conveyor, however? It almost did me in. My whiteness got the best of me. I deduct ten badass points from myself. Sigh.





Sichuan Village
14005 Lee Jackson Highway
Chantilly VA 20151
(703) 631- 5888

Just Like Water, But Better

Some stereotypes are true. Russians really do know their vodka. Swedish vodka is fit only for degreasing engines, French vodka plays in the minor leagues, at best, but the Russians… Russians are the studs of the vodka world. They do it right.

There are a two key factors which determine the quality or smoothness of vodka. 1) The purity and quality of the water. Water in Russian is voda. Vodka - voda... get it? Except they drink way more vodka than water over there.
2) The amount and quality of wheat or rye. Contrary to popular belief, it’s only the Polish that make vodka from potatoes - the Russians always use grain.

Russians are very particular about how they drink their vodka, following a strict ritual that distinguishes their vodka drinking from all the other sissy vodka practices on the planet (why on earth would anyone dilute their vodka with fruit juice? Unless they are drinking Swedish vodka, that is).

So here’s what you do if you want to drink like a Russian. This procedure is not for the faint of heart, I warn you.

To drink like a Russian:
- Take a shot glass (real Russians fill a normal glass half way up but I don’t expect that level of devoted alcoholism out of normal people) and fill it to the brim with vodka which you just took out of the freezer.

- Pick up the shot glass with one hand, a dill pickle with the other.

- Toast to the health of your friends (hopefully, you are not doing this all by your alcoholic lonesome).*

- Exhale strongly to get all the air out of your lungs. Quickly take the shot and bite the pickle, neither stalling nor breathing between the swallow and the bite. [Getting rid of all the air prevents the burn of the vodka as it comes back up.]
*Update - my father has requested a correction to the above point, lest one of you actually attempt to stuff a pickle into your mouth without breathing, choke, and then sue me for all I am worth (which is really not all that much, although I do have some nice earrings). You are supposed to exhale once more after swallowing the shot and then bite the pickle. I guess I do it (and many other things) without thinking.

- Rinse and repeat until the desired doneness. Err, drunken-ness.

Up until recently, I thought that Grey Goose was the cat’s pajamas (whatever that means). That is until my father brought back a bottle of Marusya** from his last trip to Moscow. The vodka, in its elegant, narrow-necked 500 mL bottle, is not currently exported from Russia and not terribly easy to come by while there. This stuff, people… This stuff left me speechless. It’s so good that the makers recommend drinking it at room temperature, which is unheard of for vodka.


With Marusya, all the rules and rituals go out the window. You really don’t need to chill it to take the edge off – there is no edge. It is smooth and velvety. You don’t need a pickle chaser to take the burn off – the vodka goes down without a hitch. There is no kick back, no diesel-like fumes punching up into the nasal passages after the swallow. There is no taste, no after taste, no trace of engine cleaner. It’s like buttah. It made for a memorable Thanksgiving and I hope it does the same for this coming New Year’s eve.

I cannot wait until this stuff is sold in the U.S. Or at least until they get a freakin website. Until then, I have to rely on my Dad’s frequent business trips to Moscow for my supply of Marusya. Man, that stuff is good.




* Russians toast with “Za vashe zdorovye,” to your health. Not to be confused with “Na zdorovje”, which is a Polish toast. We take this very seriously, in case you couldn’t tell.

** Marusya, a pet name for Maria, is a very Russian name for a very Russian woman.

Gefilt-oy Fish

The raw materials:
Carp – the cheapest fish on this earth, full of teeny bones and a fatty skin (occasionally referred to as “crap”)
Beets and carrots, for color and sweetness
Onion
Clean, dry onion skins (no one ever accused Jewish cuisine of being wasteful)*
Bread
Oil
Eggs
Pepper, salt, and sugar
About five hours, five helpers, a couple of bottles of wine and a ton of patience.

That’s all it takes to prepare my grandmother’s gefilte fish (from here on out referred to as gefilt-oy fish, so named for the obscene amount of time and labor that goes into its preparation).

Do not be fooled by the short and basic ingredient list – this is not a trivial recipe. It is probably the least trivial cooking event I have ever been a party to. And a party it was, by the way – one that started with wine and ended with vodka. We had to celebrate the fish, did we not?

I wish I had concentration enough to snap a photo of the final, plated fish, but by that time all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. I can tell you that my grandmother’s gefilt-oy fish is very sweet, smooth, and light. I loved making the fish with my entire family and closest friends around me, crowding around my Mom’s kitchen island. I loved looking at the fish, drinking to the fish’s well-being, eating the fish, so on and so forth, but will I ever make it myself? NFW. Email me if you need me to decipher that acronym.



The following recipe is more of a guideline than a hard-set protocol. I am writing it up less to encourage anyone to undertake this lengthy (read: pain in the ass) procedure but to give you an idea of just how much of a pain in the ass it actually is. Unless you have your whole family crowded around you. Then it's fun.

My grandmother's gefilt-oy fish

For 3-4 kg of carp (whole fish):
1) Boil the carp heads, tails, and fins (excluding the gills!) for 30 minutes to make a fish stock. Strain the stock and keep hot.

Crappy carp

2) While the stock is boiling happily away in a giant pot on the stove, slice the fish vertically into “steak” pieces. Make an incision (pardon the medical terminology) along the spine of the fish on both sides. Slide the knife under the skin and cut out the knob of fish flesh between the ribs (are they actually ribs? Pardon my cursory knowledge of fish anatomy) and the spine, being careful to keep the skin attached.

Keep the bones! They are key players in the many many subsequent steps.

The scene of the massacre

3) Grind the fish flesh, onions, and two pieces of white bread soaked in water in a meat grinder. Mix in two raw eggs, a tablespoon of canola oil, black pepper, salt, sugar, and some cold water to a grandmother-sanctioned consistency. What that consistency is, I cannot say.

4) Adjust seasoning. And by this my grandmother meant taste the RAW fish and egg mixture, all the while assuring your family that you are not going to die of carp/crap poisoning because we eat sushi right? It’s the same thing, right? (Umm, no. Actually it’s not the same thing, not at all. Last time I checked, toro didn’t cost 99c per pound.)

An elephant apron and hairy knuckles really help with the chopping.

5) Stuff the ground fish back into the fish skin. This step is totally key and I totally failed. I was not able to make a single piece that met my grandmother’s stringent requirements. I either put in too much filling or too little, either too far in or too far to the side. It wasn’t pretty. Oy.


6) Layer thinly sliced raw, peeled beets, sliced onions, and clean onion skins on the bottom of a heavy pot. Layer fish pieces on top, adding vegetables/onion skin between each fish piece and between each layer to prevent the fish from sticking. Drizzle each layer with canola oil.

This cauldron-esque pot made the trip from Moscow with my grandmother. Apparently, my inability to pack lightly has a genetic component.

7) Pour hot fish stock down the side of the pot (so as not to break up or otherwise disturb the already tormented fish) until the top layer of fish is almost covered, but not quite. Bring to a boil over high heat, lower heat and cook covered for 1 hour and uncovered for 2 hours, shaking the [hot, boiling, heavy, scary] pot occasionally to prevent the fish pieces from sticking to each other. [Please don’t sue me for damages if you, I am assuming drunkenly, decide to try this for yourself.] Every once in a while spoon some cooking liquid over the top layer of fish to prevent it from drying out.

8) Carefully transfer the cooked fish to a platter and pour some of the strained cooking liquid over the pieces to give them a gloss.** Cool completely in refrigerator before eating.




Recipe notes:
* Oddest ingredient prize? That belongs to the onion skins. The skins are largely responsible for the yellow/orange hue of the final gefilte fish product.

** The fish stock, after boiling with the vegetables and gefilt-OY fish, is rich and gelatinous. My grandmother recommends boiling potatoes in leftover stock. I imagine it would also make an amazing base for some form of soup.

Herbanites

WooHoo! Another issue of the Fletcher Ledger is up, with an article from yours truly. I was hoping to have the above sad image of desolation included in the article, but alas, that was not to be. It will make sense in context, I promise. The death and disease in the shot above is to this very day parked on my windowsill. Why I haven't yet tossed it, I can't say. I may still be in mourning.

I Love My Friends

Long blogging absence, even longer graduate school career that Just. Won't. Die. In other words, I have yet another committee meeting tomorrow which has slowed my blogging activities to a crawl. BUT seeing as how I am here to entertain, and since I am a comment whore, I thought I would pass on this excerpt from an email from a dear friend. I think you will quickly see why he and I get along.

In response to my previous post about Christopher Kimball's low opinion of Rachael Ray:

"I haven't really watched Rachel Ray. I think I saw a portion of one show. She has this nice round bottom, but not much going on in the chest area. The two halves don't match. That has nothing to do with her cooking ability... just an observation. I think I have seen her more on Dunkin Donuts commercials lately...which I found odd because I thought she supported some healthy eating initiative."

A Step Away from Greatness

“Thank you for calling WGBH. May I please have your first and last name?”

Boston’s WGBH was one of the first pubic radio and TV stations launched in 1951. It was the home of Julia Child’s French Chef. It is now the home of Christopher Kimball and America’s Test Kitchen. WGBH puts on periodic pledge drives, asking for viewer support and contributions. Pledges can be made online, of course, but it seems that a lot of people are really either uncomfortable with computers or they simply prefer the minimal personal interaction that speaking with a phone operator affords.

This is where I came in. This past weekend I volunteered to take a four-hour shift as a phone pledge-collector. It was a slow day. A really slow day. In those four hours I received four phone calls. Two of those were nutjobs and two were very nice (and very ready to spend – one caller pledged $250, the other, $125).

One of the main reasons that I signed on for the job - besides the good karma vibes of course - was the likelihood of encountering Christopher Kimball, a badass in his own right. He really does wear a bow tie all the time, and not ironically. He is also likely the only man who can pull it off. He is wickedly funny. He hates Rachel Ray with a burning passion (and has little respect for the rest of the Food Network).


I was very happy to have the opportunity to sit behind Mr. Kimball’s back as he asked for donations on live television (you just may see me on PBS if you live in the Boston area – I am the nervous-looking blond girl trying to avoid the camera). I had the chance to speak with him and really wanted to, but totally chickened out. I was also completely pinned behind my desk - I had no idea that 40 people could be stuffed into 5 square feet of floor space, give or take. I did find out that America’s Test Kitchen sends recipes out to home cooks for testing, to get an idea of how real people cook and you can sign up to be a test cook on their website, somewhere.

Turns out, there are some very stupid real people. Apparently, one chicken recipe came back with a poor review. In the comments section of the review, the test cook had written something along the lines of, “ I didn’t have chicken, so I used shrimp. It really wasn’t good.” Wow. I really hope he didn’t cook the shrimp 5 minutes on each side as you would with chicken.




P.S. Should I ever actually graduate, I will absolutely look up how to be a test cook. I am a real person. More often than not, a stupid real person, but still... I can do it.