A Russian Thanksgiving

The internet is rife with bloggers' accounts of their turkeys and stuffings. You don't need me for that. Yes, my family had dinner. Yes, we made turkey (and it was transcendent, beyond-turkey wonderful), and two kinds of stuffing, and two kinds of cranberry sauce. Yes, there was an excess of food and lots of family and lots of fun. However, as I am sure you can judge from the photo above, Thanksgiving in my family tends to be a little different from the norm. How so? We drink. And I mean, we drink. Every once in a while we play true to type (Russians), and we drink vodka. And we enjoy it.

At the beginning of the evening, I ran to fetch something from the kitchen. Upon my return, I found that I had already been served - a slice of bread (home-made, naturally) and a shot of superb vodka (a brand that not imported into the States, straight from the ex-motherland. Not really my motherland per se, but I am sure it is someone's). I think my plate summed up a lot of things about me pretty well. Aaaah, my parents know me well.



P.S. We ran out of vodka half way through dinner (I may never let my father live this one down) and had to move on to Patron. My grandmother liked it! Lick, shoot, bite, the whole story. She was a champ.

Shanghai Gate

My friends tell me that the surest way to tell if a Chinese (or other variety of Asian) restaurant is any good is to assess its Asian Quotient (AQ), otherwise known as the number of Asian diners. If the number of Asian diners far outweighs the number of white ones, it is a safe bet that the restaurant knows what they are doing. If however, the restaurant is full of plain old white people, there is a high chance that it is as authentic as the Italian food at Bertucci’s. Which is to say, not at all.

This past week I had the marked pleasure and honor of being one of four white people at Shanghai Gate (very high AQ). Notably, the other three white people happened to be sitting at my table, even more notable was the fact that one of the above mentioned white people was a fluent Chinese speaker that spends a large part of her time working and living in China and Taiwan (she also happens to be Elizabeth, the perfectly lovely fiancée of a perfectly lovely friend and lab mate, Allen. Say hi, Allen).

Elizabeth took up the reigns and ordered for all of us (in Chinese, natch) impressing both myself and our servers in equal measure. The double take the server did when addressed in perfect Chinese was something to behold. Made me feel all important too. I would have never known to order the stuff she did because I would have no idea.


Twice fried green beans in garlic sauce – salty, crunchy, a little spicy, and fried. Mmm.
Lion’s head casserole (in the background) - very finely ground pork meatball spiced with soy sauce and sherry, in a deep brown broth and baby bok choy. I did not know why it is called that – Elizabeth had no answer for me. It doesn’t look like a lion’s head. I think it is safe to assume that it doesn’t taste like one either. Apparently, the name is derived from the fact that its accompanying cooked bok choy or napa cabbage looks like the mane on the meatball lion head. I admit that I failed to see the resemblance.


Black bean chicken wraps – minced chicken, sweet perfectly balanced with sour, set off by the fresh crunch of the lettuce.


Yu Xiang Pork – shredded pork in fish sauce with bamboo shoots, served with steamed bread. The bread was light, slightly sweet, and kinda sticky on the outside, making for an airy, fishy pork umami bomb of a sandwich (way better than it sounds).

And the thing that I was most excited about. The thing that made my long, shit day seem just a little bit shorter – soup dumplings (photo at head of post). The most brilliant invention of all time. Soup inside a dumpling. Bite through the wrapper for a giant gush of super hot broth and a small pork meatball. The key is catching the dumpling at the correct temperature – cool enough that it won’t burn the first eight layers of flesh off your mouth but not so cold that the broth begins to congeal.



Standing out in a room had never tasted so good.

---
Shanghai Gate
204 Harvard Avenue
Allston, MA 02134
(617) 566-7344

Sin City Tortillas

I am way too visually stimulated. Scary movies give me nightmares. Not even movies that others consider scary - I saw stupid stupid Outbreak and could hardly sleep for two weeks. I am so completely unhip.

A couple of years ago, everyone was telling me about Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City and how utterly fabulous it was. I, knowing full well that I should not, went to see it. I walked out of the movie theater in a practically catatonic state from discomfort, carrying a general feeling ickiness. I was not a happy camper.

A year (or more?) has passed and Mr. Rodriguez has made it up to me. You see, he is a badass. The DVDs of his movies (for sure Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Sin City, not sure about others) had short cooking videos as a bonus feature. How awesome is that?? The first video had him making puerco pibil, the same dish that Johnny Depp’s CIA agent killed cooks for when he found one that he particularly enjoyed. The second video at the end of the Sin City DVD has Mr. Rodriguez making breakfast tacos with homemade flour tortillas. The egg breakfast taco part of the video was nothing terribly remarkable. The tortillas, however, were stunners. Fluffy, with round brown spots from the hot skillet, they looked nothing like the plastic-enclosed stuff you buy in a grocery store.

He, being the badass that he is, looked like he was born with tortilla dough in his hand (that’s actually kind of gross. Sorry). I had some ethnic and cultural shortcomings to overcome in attempting to make tortillas, but I think it did a passable job. There was room for improvement, certainly – my tortillas wound up oddly crunchy on the edges and not exactly circular (umm, if you squinted just right they sort of looked like circles), but it wasn’t bad for the first try.

Absent was the odd chemical aftertaste of store-bought tortillas (at least the ones sold on the East coast) as well as the rubbery, gummy texture. Instead, there was warmth, freshness, fluffiness, and softness. If I could make tortillas large enough to use as blankets, I would. Alas, as that is currently not a possibility, I had to make do with regular sized fresh tortillas, but they perfect for holding skirt steak fajitas with adobo seasoning and green bell peppers. One day, long in the future, I may approach badass-hood. Not holding my breath though.



The following is my annotated transcript of the YouTube video of Robert Rodriguez making tortillas.

Sin City Tortillas

2 cups flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup butter
½- ¾ cups warm water

- Cut the butter into the flour in a food processor, stand mixer, pastry cutter, or just two forks (the trick is to incorporate the butter without melting it from the heat of your hands). The flour will have a course, almost cornmeal-like consistency.
- Add water until the dough holds together but is not sticky (Mr. Rodriguez is descriptive and vague all at the same time on this point).
- Knead the dough for about 2 minutes.
- Separate dough into 8 – 10 golf-sized balls.
- Wet a towel with warm water, cover the dough balls and allow them to rest for about 20 minutes.
- Squash the dough balls into disks and roll out (I floured my board rather heavily. Mr. Rodriguez did not. I am not half the badass he is).
- Plop tortilla dough onto heated skillet over hot heat. Cook on one side ~8 seconds and flip over (if the tortillas are coloring too quickly, turn down the heat). Cook about a minute – the tortillas should start bubbling, indicating that the baking powder is doing its job. Flip them over again and press on the edges a little with a spatula to keep them in contact with the cooking surface.
- Cover with towel to keep the tortillas warm until ready to eat.



Consider yourself a badass for making your own tortillas. I do.

What Next?

This is getting out of hand. I am not creative enough to keep up. Every week, Maiya ups the brunch stakes. Every week, she pulls out something so completely fabulous that I spend the next seven days digging through my brain-bound food catalogue, trying to come up with something equally stunning and impressive. I thought I was doing pretty well.

Take my last brunch, for example. I made a fennel and carrot salad (on a mandoline, no fingers sliced open, thankyouverymuch) substituting oranges for tangerines and arugula for watercress, apple sausage patties (so-so), slow-scrambled eggs, a la Gordon Ramsey (beware of YouTube link), a giant German pancake, and no-knead bread.


While the German pancake looked all kinds of impressive and sophisticated, I quickly realized that the Germans went and pulled a misnomer. It’s really way more breakfast soufflé that pancake. Yes, it’s topped with lemon juice and powdered sugar but it still tastes like pouffy eggs with tang and sweetness, not like a doughy, gorgeously carbohydrate-laden pancake. It was quite pretty though, and crunchy on the bottom from the healthy (or desperately unhealthy, as the case may be) dosing of butter.

German pancake (aka breakfast souffle)

The slow scrambled eggs were the silkiest I have had, with no texture besides that of a bright orange, silky custard, no eggy curds to mess up the experience. The bread was, well… fresh baked bread and that can hardly ever be bad, and the salad was fresh and crunchy.

So you can see why I was feeling confident in my brunch abilities. And then I went to Maiya’s house. Do you know what she did? You will never guess. It was crazy. I was stupefied beyond words and pictures. I had to resort to video to do the process justice!

Perfect poached eggs

Maiya in action, dipping poached eggs in more egg and panko bread crumbs (something deeply un-Kosher about bathing poached eggs in beaten eggs. A bit of boiling a kid in mother's milk, if you ask me. Yum).

Draining deep-fried eggs

The woman made deep-fried poached eggs and served them on top of creamed spinach and fried ham. Really. She did. But being Maiya and being completely awesome, she swapped out the fried ham for fried Spam, which I had never had before but thoroughly enjoyed in all of its salty glory. Oh but that’s not all. There was also a salad with goat cheese and a pomegranate vinaigrette, and black pepper and cheddar bread from Hi-Rise Bakery. And mimosas. And I didn’t eat for the rest of the day (which I suppose is the whole point of Sunday brunch).**


The deep fried eggs were insane. Just insane. Crunchy on the outside with perfectly set whites and liquid yolks which spilled all over the already rich and creamy spinach, making my eyes cross in brunchy bliss. Oh but I left something out - the ginormous pan-sized hash brown with herbs and Parmesan, so handy in soaking up the yolk overflow.

Oozing deep-fried poached eggs and Parmesan hash brown

How am I supposed to follow that one, people?? I have no idea. Help me.


** Ok, so that's kind of a big fat lie. What I should have said is that I had no business eating again on Sunday but instead made fajitas, fresh flour tortillas, and guacamole with the supervisor. And it was all so good.

Muttar Paneer

So Archna and I made paneer. Well, that’s not really all we did. It was a Saturday to be remembered. We got up at about 9:30AM… I had my first beer by 10:30. It all went downhill from there and it wasn’t pretty. Picture two people splayed out on a couch in front of a TV blaring the Food Network, the coffee table in front of them littered with cheese, bread, and newly emptied bottles of wine. We managed to capitalize on our sporadic moments of motivation to extricate ourselves from the siren call of my couch to push on in making the paneer and engineering its starring role in one of my favorite dishes of all time, muttar paneer.

It went a little something like this:



1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, grated (I grated both the ginger and the garlic on a microplane. You could also pulverize the garlic in a food processor if making a large batch to store).

½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp chili powder

1¼ cups water
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tomato, chopped (we used about 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
A pinch of sugar

Fried paneer (really don’t know what amount to give… as much as you would like to add? Not very scientific, I know. I think our half gallon of milk yielded 1 – 1½ cups of paneer and we added it all in).


- Toast the cumin seeds in canola oil until they turn pink and begin to release fragrance.
- Add onion, ginger and garlic, sweat until the onion softens.
- Add the ground spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder), cook for another 3 minutes or so.
- Add water, bring to a boil.
- Add tomatoes and simmer on med high heat (a fairly potent simmer) about 10 minutes, mushing up the tomatoes slightly to homogenize.
- Add frozen peas and fried paneer.
- Add more water if necessary to cover the paneer.
- Cook another 10 minutes to infuse the paneer with the spices.
- Add a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peas, salt to taste, serve over rice.



Oh it was wonderful! The paneer was tasted like the essence and soul of milk, condensed into a resilient fried nugget. It was creamy yet firm, with a fresh taste that you can only get from farmhouse milk still warm from a cow. Totally gross description, I know, but having experienced it, I find little else to compare it to.

The paneer was luscious and rich but had the little squeak of a fresh cheese curd. The heat from the chili powder, sweetness from the peas, acidity from the tomatoes and slight punch from the ginger were all in perfect balance with each other and generally got on famously. The pops of the peas, the squeaks of the paneer, and my grunts of approval harmonized beautifully.

I would have been happy to eat the fried cheese all by itself but felt we should have something more involved to show at the end of our day of Gluttony and Sloth. And we did. We had muttar paneer and we had Pride. It was a great day.

End of the Line

The last installment of my restaurant reviews for Nature Network Boston has been posted. As I predicted, I have eaten myself out of a job. I covered all the areas around major research and convention centers, a scientist’s natural habitat. There is nothing left for me to explore.

On the positive side, I can now eat at restaurants that I want to eat at, as opposed to where I think other people may want to eat. I no longer have to dictate where we go when out to dinner with friends (they are all so wonderfully patient but I can see it getting irritating).

Writing and eating for these reviews has been so much fun. It also taught me a whole lot about writing for a major publication. I got a taste (pun intended) of food writing as a profession and I have to say, I liked it. I want more.

Paneer : A Photoessay

There is no use in fighting it. Some (crappy) people may deny it, but the truth is that everyone on this earth is the same on the inside (except maybe Clive Owen. He is better). Let's use cheese as an example. Every culture and cuisine has their version of a fresh cheese. There are variations within the genre, just as with people, but the founding principle is the same. Russian people have have fresh farmer’s cheese (tvorog) – cow’s milk that is cultured overnight, then drained. Italians have mozzarella (pulled or stretched curd cheese) and ricotta, re-cooked from whey. Mexican people have queso fresco, Indians have paneer. Both of these are acid set cheeses, meaning that the milk is curdled by the addition of an acid. The resulting curds are separated and drained, and sometimes pressed (as in the case of queso fresco and paneer) to get rid of extra whey.

So you see? They are all the same at heart, and they all taste reeeaally good.

I got a hands-on demonstration of this unifying theory of mine when my old old old (15 years and counting) friend, Archna, came up to Boston for another visit. Seeing as how we were/are both stressed and tired, nothing seemed more appealing than sitting on a couch for hours on end and cooking something that takes ages of waiting but minutes of work. Enter paneer, the main component of one of my most favorite Indian dishes, muttar paneer (peas and paneer).

After multiple phone consultations with Archna’s Mom, and many assurances from her that we will never be able to make it properly we, remarkably, did it. I can’t say that we made it properly, but we made it. And it was delicious.

The basics of paneer making are as follows:

Heat milk (2% or whole milk) slowly over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to boil. Don’t let it boil vigorously or you will have hours of stove scrubbing to look forward to - it always boils over. Always.

Turn off the heat and curdle the milk in one of two ways, either with the addition of vinegar or buttermilk. Buttermilk will make a richer, creamier paneer but vinegar may yield more curds. Add the buttermilk or vinegar until the milk curdles. For half a gallon, we used two cups of buttermilk (approximate vinegar equivalent would be ¼ - ½ cup).

Let the milk rest undisturbed, partially covered for two hours.

Then:

Drain the curds into a cheese cloth set in a colander. Either suspend the bundle from a faucet to drip the whey into the sink or, say you are kinda clumsy and let the cheesecloth slip open, leave the curds to drain the colander for one hour.



Remove the curds onto a high tech, sophisticated paneer pressing machine. This marvel of technology (my own invention) consists of a cooling rack atop a large pot or bowl...





... topped with a plate and a bottle of wine for a press. Preferably Chablis, preferably chilled, although this portion of the instructions may be modified to suit your individual taste.

Allow the paneer to drain for another hour.

Remove the paneer from the cheesecloth and transfer it onto a plate. Slice into biggish cubes.
At this point, the paneer may be refrigerated or frozen, or it can be fried straight away.

Brown in the paneer on both sides in vegetable or canola oil, drain on a paper towel, and use in your preferred recipe. My recipe of choice, muttar paneer, is forthcoming.

The Humanity!

There is no use in denying it – autumn has descended upon Boston. The leaves have changed color and are swirling down to the ground into messy piles, the squirrels have gone crazy and spastic getting ready for the next nine months of winter… and the nutjobs have come out to dine. That is not necessarily an indicator of a change in seasons, but it has come to my attention.

There I was, sitting in a perfectly cozy subterranean Italian restaurant in Beacon Hill (for an NNB review) when I happened to glance over at the next table… and gasped. Loudly. I then proceeded to stare and shoot threatening looks at the woman at that table, trying to make her aware of her incredibly inappropriate and disturbing behavior.

What was she doing? Dancing on the table? No, but that would have been cool. Flossing her teeth with her hair? Nope. Completely revolting, but not unheard of. You know what she did? Get ready for this. She poured ice water into her glass of RED WINE. She really did. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I was floored. I may have been the only one at my table to have such a violent reaction, but that's beside the point.

Look, you don’t have to like red wine, or wine at all for that matter. I mean, I probably won’t have much respect for you, but it’s still ok not to like it. You don’t have to order red wine with dinner. Have a beer, a vodka martini (or four), a Shirley Temple, anything!, but do not order a glass of red wine and proceed to defile it by adding water (especially ice water). I can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin something complex, alive and breathing, beautiful and warming than by diluting and chilling it with ice water.

You know what the lesson here is? Embrace your tastes, your likes and dislikes. At dinner, order a drink you will enjoy, one that will enhance your meal and your evening, no matter what that drink is. But don’t, for the love of all that is holy, order a glass of red wine simply because you think that you should, because it’s the grown-up thing to do, or because everyone else is doing it and then humiliate that wine in front of ardent and emotional fans such as myself. That’s just wrong.




Rant over. Thank you for your attention.

All Over the Place

My thesis work has received yet another blow, slipped one more click past my attention and leaped three steps past my caring. I have one more happy thing to distract myself - I am now a guest columnist for the Fletcher Ledger, the newspaper of the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University. I am all kinds of cultured like that. Take a look at my inaugural article, if time permits.

P.S. I make no claims on the stock photographs. No clue on those.

Oystahs

I can’t imagine living far away from a coast. Landlocked states like Nebraska terrify me – they feel claustrophobic and desiccated. I need to have access to the water, I need to see and smell the ocean, to be reminded that there is a great big world outside of my lab, outside of highways, hustle, tussle, and spazzola of every day life. I find the ocean therapeutic. It calms me down, slows my thoughts. The smell of the ocean alone is soothing enough, the sound is even better, being rocked by the waves is the ultimate sensation for inner peace.

The ocean is one of the main reasons I love Boston as much as I do. There is the city ocean, hemmed in by docks, ocean walks and water front restaurants, and there is the nature ocean stretching outside of the city, bordered by wide beaches, sand dunes, and forests. The nature ocean is on the Cape (that’s how we Bostonites refer to Cape Cod. THE Cape. There is no other Cape for us). The pro-Cape Cod propaganda in books and movies is spot on – it is a heavenly spot with great food, gorgeous views, and the kind of quiet stillness that is so sharply lacking in the middle of a city.

A two hour-long mini road trip brought me to Provincetown and Wellfleet at the tip of the Cape. The former is full of adorable gay boys and girls, the latter is teeming with fresh, local oysters (that’s oystahs to us Bostonites). The annual Wellfleet Oysterfest was the reason for the mini-holiday. The festival celebrates the eponymous oysters raised on farms in Wellfleet. The mild tasting, lightly briny Wellfleet oysters were everywhere, sold by local restaurants and oyster farmers - shucked oysters, unshucked oysters, grilled oysters, oyster stew, even an oyster shucking competition (which sounded waaay more exciting than it proved to be).


Maiya took an expert turn at shucking an oyster, while I shied away for fear of losing a finger. I don’t do well with knives.



The warm weather and shockingly blue skies were a great complement to gorging on fresh seafood and plastic cups of locally brewed Octoberfest. This most perfect festival day continued with a cranberry picking expedition and a bonfire on a deserted beach under a star-riddled sky, with potatoes and corn caramelizing in the embers. I can’t think of a better argument for living on a coast… or for eating your body weight in fresh oysters.

Green Eggs and Ham

I have a fear of yeast (the baking kind, not the lab kind). I never make recipes that involve yeast, rising, proofing, kneading or any other equally intimidating words. They bring up images of rolled up sleeves, beads of sweat forming on the forehead, and of little cups full of breeding, breathing, scum colored yeast. Blech. I cannot tell you why I have such a strange and powerful aversion to an organism that has served mankind for centuries, but I do.

I am here to tell you that I have made a small step toward conquering my yeastophobia. Under strict and patient supervision, I assisted in making my very first homemade pizza, complete with a made-from-scratch, yeast-leavened crust. It was scary, I won’t lie. But I made it through, ate pizza, and lived to tell the tale.

My kind supervisor added yeast to a warm water and sugar bath to wake up the little buggers and coax them into eating mode (I could not be trusted with such a key step). After the yeast solution was added to flour and salt it came time to knead the dough. For five whole minutes. Yeah, I know! Five minutes is a lot! I kneaded, I grunted, I got tired and whiney but it was worth it - the dough rose beautifully. I got to punch it down with a disproportionate amount of glee (and a little vindictiveness), after which it was rolled out by my attentive and generous supervisor (I still hate rolling pins and had to defer). The rolled out dough was covered in a thick, deep green Greek olive oil, a home-made tomato sauce with tons of browned garlic, and then it was time for the toppings.


I really have no self-control. Practically the entire contents of my fridge made their way onto this pizza. I roasted a red bell pepper and three Anaheim chiles, sliced green zebra heirloom tomatoes (note that all the vegetables were green…), tore prosciutto di Parma, cut rounds of fresh mozzarella, and what the hell, plopped a raw egg into the center. I am sure I could have found something else to sprinkle, layer, or shower on top (capers were up next … but they were vetoed) but the crust had to go into the oven before it became soggy.


Twelve minutes in a 600F oven, no pizza stone, no fancy equipment, just crossed fingers and a few bated breaths and there it was – a crunchy crust baked all the way through to the center, bubbling cheese, crispy prosciutto, melted tomatoes, and creamy, oozing egg in the middle. And let me tell you, it was fantastic – the taste of the pizza no doubt enhanced by the flavor of my victory over yeast, but delicious nonetheless. What lies ahead in my journey with yeast – cinnamon buns? Bread? Panettone? Who knows. But it all sounds a little less scary now.

Cooking Class, Revisited

Anyone who has ever spent time around me can attest to the fact that I make an ass of myself on a regular basis. Recently, I have started making an ass of myself on a much more grand (and public) scale. By that I of course mean this blog.

I went on a bit of a tirade about a class I attended at Williams-Sonoma (aka my crack den). I was not a fan, and I was rather vocal about it, at which point the above-mentioned ass-making took place, blogger style. [I keep hoping that one day I will, miraculously, wake up having learned to hold my tongue. I'll let y'all know when that happens.]

Through the wonder that is the internet Jo, a chef, food blogger, and instructor at W-S happened upon the post. Irked by my experience and reaction (and being the kind person that she is) Jo invited me to sit in on one of her classes* at W-S.

It was such great fun! Jo is wonderfully well-spoken, fun, full of knowledge, skill, and interesting factoids. She gave the history and background of the ingredients (complete with taste tests), explained and demonstrated each step of the recipes, and offered short cuts, alternatives, and funny stories along the way.

The theme of the class was dishes that can be started one day and finished the next. In under two hours, she managed to prepare and serve five fantastic dishes, slightly tweaked following her own expertise and taste. I may be hooked.


- Pasta Rustica with chicken sausage and three cheeses – Three cheeses, melted together. ‘Nuff said.
- White Chili
- Pasta Salad with grilled tuna and roasted tomatoes
- Chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce – Gorgeous enchilada sauce with oven roasted chiles and tomatillos, and the most amazingly light and fresh queso fresco.
- Polenta casserole with meat sauce – Polenta layered with a red wine-heavy meat ragu, topped with cheese and baked. Brilliant!


Lesson learned: I do not live and write in a vacuum. Thoughts do well when filtered. I have lots to improve on (Snarkiness : 1, SND/Anna : Nil). I am hoping that my ass-making will decrease, if not disappear, in the time and blog posts to come.


Thank you, Jo ( and the managerial staff at the Burlington, Mass. Williams-Sonoma) for allowing me to sit in on a wonderful class. It was thoughtful and generous of you. W-S is my friend and crack den, as ever.







* As a disclaimer, cooking classes such as the ones taught by Jo are not free ($50 each). I did not know of their existence (shockingly enough). Had I known, I would have had more realistic expectations of the free technique class offered by W-S. The store is not a charity, public education is not their main occupation, nor their responsibility. It's pretty cool that they offer free classes at all.

On the Road to Improvement

On the road to Durham

A week ago I listened close to my gut instinct and took in its constant scream of, “Science ties me up in knots, get me out of here!” I took three days off lab, rearranged and rebooked travel plans and attended a food blogging event in Durham, North Carolina, organized by the wonderful folks at BlogTogether. A food blogging event alone would have been enough to send my instincts into convulsions but with Michael Ruhlman as the guest of honor/speaker/author/blogger idol, I had no hope of resisting.

The first part of the event was a book reading at the Regulator Bookshop. Michael Ruhlman read an excerpt from his book, talked about writing books and blogs, the direction of American cuisine, cooking, eating and generally enjoying life to its fullest. He then signed books for a line of eager blogger worshippers such as myself, taking time to chat with every one of them.


When my turn came I was awkward and tongue tied, due no doubt to stress and science (I blame everything on science these days). Happily, Bora covered by saying that I am shy. Thank you! We bloggers need to stick together. [As an aside, I may be a great many things but shy I am not. Inarticulate and unsociable at times, yes. Shy? Not so much.] I did manage to squawk out a bit about my own blog and food writing, which Michael sat through with all his composure and obscene patience.

The next day was spent in anticipation of dinner at Piedmont. Chefs Drew Brown and Andy Magowan based practically the entire dinner on one heirloom pig that was raised on a local farm. I don’t know if it was the knowledge that all the ingredients save for the olive oil were born and raised in locally or that the execution of the dishes was flawless, but the food was rich, alive, fresh, simple, and cared for. In other words, it was great.


First
Housemade charcuterie and local cheeses: pate, lomo, rillette, head cheese, new moon, chevre camembert and accompaniments
Le Colture Fagher Prosecco

Second
White sweet potato puree with pancetta
Pierre Henri Chardonnay 2006

Third
Arugula salad with cherry tomatoes, pickled oak-grown shiitakes and herbs (basil, tarragon, fennel fronds and dill were all I could pick out)

Fourth
Pork loin with butternut squash polenta, braised chard and jus
La Gironnere Cotes do Bordeaux 2003

Fifth
Scuppernong* granita with moscato d’asti, cookies

---------

Michael took a look at my blog and was kind enough to give me his opinion on how I can improve. I have to be more me, he said, have to give the reader a better sense of my voice minus the snarky, to which I am massively prone. Good idea? Yes. Easy to execute? Nope. I’ll be working on it, over the next 20 years or so.



Pictures from the dinner here, courtesy of Anton Zuiker.

*Don’t know what scuppernong is? I didn’t either. It’s a large grape with a thick skin that is grown in NC and is used to make a sweet wine. The granita was pale green, smooth, and almost creamy. The taste came forward in stages – sweet at first, perfumey and floral last.




P.S. Impressions? Michael Ruhlman is a pretty neat (and tall!) guy - well-spoken, attentive, with a barely concealed edge (always the best part of a person) which I unintentionally coaxed out at dinner. I have a tendency to do that. That’s another bit of me that may need to be kept in check.

Classes and Jars

I think my love for Williams-Sonoma has been made amply clear. How disappointed was I when my beloved slipped, losing an entire 10 points on my obsession scale!

Imagine my surprise when I walked into W-S expecting a tutorial in braising as part of their weekly technique classes, and received an extended QVC-type plug for their line of prepared braising sauces! Ick. Why on earth would I go to a class to learn how to open jars? Never mind my disappointment in the instructor who had difficulty distinguishing between a braise and a stew.


I am sorry to be snarky about the entire undertaking considering that the majority of my cooking know-how is gleaned from books and television, but come on! Demonstratig a recipe for chicken cacciatore that consists of step 1) brown chicken, and step 2) open jar of sauce seems like talking down to the audience. But maybe not… the fact that half the people in the room visibly gagged when the instructor began dismembering a whole chicken should have been sign #1 that the audience, and perhaps the class, were not my scene. Were they not aware that the shrink-wrapped blue-ish bird bits they pick up at the supermart come from an actual, gasp, chicken? Irritation embodied, that.

Perhaps I need to finally suck it up, quit my whining (and grad school) and take a real cooking class.





P.S. I am only (mostly) joking about quitting grad school. I think.
P.P.S. Don’t worry, I still love Williams-Sonoma. It will have to earn back the points it lost, however.

Duh

I am a bit (more like huge) of an airhead. I forgot that the whole point of a meme is propagation, so to speak. Here goes, with a slight delay.

What five foods are you ashamed to love?

Leena - Leena Eats
JC - Nobody Cares What You Ate for Breakfast
Hillary - Chew On That
Nitasha - Bloomers & Buns
Who says you have to have a blog to participate in a meme? I object to such blog-centricity. Therefore, Aimee, take it away.


Brutal honesty is best.

Edible Skeletons in Kitchen Closets

I was tagged for a meme. How exciting is that? I feel all bloggerly and validated. Someone out there in the great big bloggy world cares to know what 5 foods I am ashamed to love.

It’s a neat concept for a meme, but one that I have a bit of a problem with. I don’t need to add to my reputation of food snobbiness. I think there is equal beauty in a perfectly ripe, sweet and juicy plum with a crackly, taut skin and a masterfully prepared complex dish with 50 ingredients and 30 garnishes. I don’t like to judge food on anything beyond its merits.

That said, I will now release all my nasty food habits out into the open. Let them run around and make friends with one another.

1. This skeleton may already be out of its closet, but I love Cheetos. I do. I love them. I don’t really know what they are or what they are made of, nor how they get to be knobby, crunchy, and day-glo orange, but I love them. I love how the neon-colored fake cheese gloms onto your fingertips. I love scraping it off with my teeth once a thick enough layer has accumulated. So good and so bad all at the same time.

2. I love burnt cheese. You know when you’re making mac and cheese or baked brie, and just a little bit of the cheese spills its way onto the baking sheet and gets fried into a hard, slightly bitter and massively salty cracker? That’s the bit I love. I will stand there picking at it, chipping it off the metal sheet, shard by crispy little shard. The mac and cheese is a poor consolation prize after all the burnt cheese is gone.

3. Ok, it’s now time for scary “ethnic” stuff. [As an aside, I find the word “ethnic” to be one of the most cringe-worthy in the English language and borderline offensive. It’s a remarkably efficient way of setting someone apart, making them feel different and left out. Speaking as an “ethnic” person, of course.] I love pickled herring. I know I am fulfilling about 15 different stereotypes by saying so, but I do, I love herring. Russians serve it doused with vegetable or sunflower oil, with sliced white onions and occasionally minced dill on top. My hands smell of fish for a whole day afterward, but I don’t mind. I guess I am just ethnic that way.


4. Every five years or so, I find enough time to make my own chicken stock. I really like doing it. It makes the house smell good and it reminds me of my Mom’s cooking. She used to buy chicken drumsticks for stocks (now she bad-assedly dismembers whole chickens for the purpose… I have a long way to go before I can even pretend to do that). I loved, and still love, to eat the resulting plain boiled chicken, with some mustard or horseradish. It’s not a particularly bad or disgusting food habit, but it is a really boring one. It’s boiled chicken. Period. But it reminds me of when I was little. More than anything else I cook for myself, boiled chicken drumsticks (possibly the most un-photogenic food in all creation) send me back home.

5. Last one. I should make this one good, right? The grand reveal? The complete gross out? Ok then. It’s not so much a food as an approach to food. I hate utensils. Really, I do. I cannot stand forks, spoons are ok, knives are instruments of dining torture. All the pomp and circumstance and watching where you put what and how you hold it in your hand, blah blah blah. I may be rebelling against my old world upbringing or embracing all the Indian food prepared by my best friends and their Moms over the many years (close to two decades!) of our friendship, but I think food tastes better when you eat it with your hands. You get to feel its weight, its texture. You taste more of it because it’s not scalding hot… And frankly, it’s more fun.




So there you go. When no one is looking, I am eating Cheetos, herring, and boiled chicken with my bare hands, while picking at burnt cheese. How’s that for attractive…

Review Time

It is that time of the month again. My reviews of restaurants around Kenmore Sq/Fenway Park are up for Nature Network Boston.

I have a really bad feeling that I am about to eat myself out of a job. These reviews are supposed to cover restaurants around major research sites in Boston. Not surprisingly, research sites are far more limited than the restaurants ... In other words, I am almost out of research areas. If anyone wants to come over here and start a new institute/research facility so that I can eat all around it, please do! I don't know what I am going to do with all my free time if I don't have these reviews to write!

Note the Audubon review. I went public with my love for Audubon. Sigh. Now everyone knows.

The Chef Show

Every once in a while, I have a really great dinner. I mean the kind of dinner that reminds me why I love to eat out, to think about food, look at food. Every once in a while I have a meal that leaves me with a grin on my face.

Food alone is not enough to achieve this level of culinary euphoria. It requires a combination of factors, sensations, and experiences. It depends on the staff of the restaurant, its ambiance, lighting, smell, decor… When all those things click into place, I am left sated and re-energized in my devotion to this hobby of mine that is beginning to take over my life.

Obviously, I wouldn’t be rambling on about this if I didn’t recently have just such an experience. I did, at Ten Tables in Jamaica Plain.

Ten Tables is a misnomer. They have delusions of grandeur – it’s seven tables, max. There is just one server (because frankly, there is no room for another one) and two chefs in the tiny kitchen. The food philosophy at Ten Tables is simple – use the highest quality ingredients, organic and sourced locally, whenever possible, prepare them simply, without fuss and pretense in order to showcase the ingredients, not the chef. In other words, they don’t mess with your food.


Kanchan and I got to sit at the chef’s table. Again, this is a misnomer. It’s not a table so much as a narrow bar with two very tall bar stools quite literally in the kitchen. It was awesome and voyeuristic. There was no rushing, no yelling, no frenetic movement or apparent stress in the kitchen. There was calm quiet, logic, and calculated movement. When the chef set out to do something so simple as slice an heirloom tomato, he looked at it from all angles, found the spot to cut that would showcase the tomato to its best advantage, and cut slowly, deliberately and precisely. It was amazing to watch.

The whole meal - a four course chef’s tasting menu, in our case - was prepared in much the same fashion. Calmly, respectfully, and dare I say it? Lovingly. The chef did something I have never experienced before – Kanchan and I were not served the same dishes during the tasting menu. Confused, we asked why. The answer was so simple and obvious that it made me wonder why every tasting menu isn’t done this way – the chef said that it allows us to taste more, to experience more. Obvious and genius.


So that was it, my glimpse of a professional kitchen, of a person who loves what he does, who gets to have his hobby be his work. Curious concept, that.




P.S. Some of what we were served:

Heirloom tomatoes with white anchovies and arugula

Poached hake with farro risotto and sweet pepper relish

Perfectly salted, crusty coulotte steak with a truffled white bean puree, shaved fennel, and paper thin radish slices (my favorite course, by far)