Lentil Soup

Late January is usually the time when I abandon my new year’s dieting resolution. During the first week of the year, I cook wholesome foods like tofu and exotic, crunchy grains. For the beginning of 2008, I even went so far as to drink a juice cocktail of carrots, parsley, garlic, and wheat grass – a sobering experience indeed. As time progresses, my cocktails begin to include alcohol, and I begin to crave heavy, winter fare.

This year, however, I have an added incentive to keep my resolution: the terror of looking like a whale in my wedding dress. I know all brides are supposed to be beautiful, but the camera adds ten pounds and wedding pictures last forever. So, when I normally would have been braising short ribs or pan-frying chicken, I instead started off January’s fourth week by preparing a lentil soup. This hearty dish satisfied my winter appetite without causing a crisis in my midsection.

Unfortunately, my virtue wasn’t absolute. I couldn’t help but sneak a little salt pork into the soup. But, I limited myself to a tiny slab, using it as a subtle flavoring. I added all the vegetables of my ill-advised juice cocktail, excluding the wheat grass, of course. Needless to say, they were far tastier in this incarnation, which was delicious and provided enough leftovers for healthful lunches for the rest of the week.

1 medium piece of salt pork, scored (see picture above)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 large leek, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 carrot, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bag, green lentils
1 cup of dry white wine
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme
1 28-oz can of whole tomatoes, drained and chopped
6 cups of chicken stock
2 tbs. red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the salt pork in boiling water for one minute. Place the olive oil in a large pot and warm over medium heat until it begins to shimmer. Add the leek, carrot, onion and garlic and sauté until soft. Add the lentils and sauté until they begin to darken. Deglaze the pan with the white wine, and then add the bay leaves, thyme, tomatoes, stock and salt pork. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the lentils are soft but still retain their shape, about 45 minutes. Puree one cup of the soup in a blender, and then return to pot. Add the vinegar, salt, pepper.

Cheap Meat

My first trip to McKinnon’s Meat Market lasted about five seconds. I took one whiff of the store’s nauseous bouquet of rotting meat and chemical sanitizer, turned around, and walked right out the door. In the two and a half years I’ve lived in Davis Square, I never returned, even though the shop is a mere four minutes from my house and I am desperate for a decent butcher. That is, until yesterday, when I finally braved the stench and took a chance on McKinnon’s.

Truth be told, shopping at McKinnon’s wasn’t much of a gamble, since their prices are so low that many of the store’s Internet reviews posit that it must be owned by the Mafia. How else could they afford to sell New York strip steaks at $4.49 per pound, chicken pieces for $0.69 per pound, and the hanger steak that I purchased for $1.00 per pound? How else could a little store with no parking carry a wide selection of exotic meats, including oxtails, tripe, and chicken feet?

The kicker is that the meat is actually delicious. We grilled the hanger steak quite rare, and its robust flavor made Alex remark that this was his new favorite cut of beef. It wasn’t just the cooking; the meat truly was first rate. I paired it with a jalapeno jam from Jeffrey Fournier of 51 Lincoln. The sweet, spicy jam was a perfect match for the rich meat. The entire meal of steak, eggplant, jalapeno jam cost a mere $6.00, and included a bonus sandwich for lunch today.

Jalapeno Jam

½ lb jalapeno peppers, seeded and sliced into half moons (if the peppers are more mild, keep the seeds)
¼ lb garlic, sliced
Pineapple juice to cover
½ cup sugar

Combine ingredients and cook until liquid is dissolved.

Unemployed, but Not Starving

A wise man once said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.* Now that I have graduated culinary school, these words seem truer than ever. I have finally chosen to pursue a job I will love, and am therefore doomed to unemployment.

This is probably a bit pessimistic, since I only just started my job search. On the bright side, I now have time to cook the elaborate dinners Alex envisioned when I started cooking school. And, I have time to write the about these creations. Starting tomorrow.


* This quotation is often wrongly attributed to Confucius. Like most fortune cookie translations, the master’s actual words have little to do with the English saying, which was probably derived from 知之者，不如好之者；好之者，不如乐之者, or Knowledge is not equal to devotion; Devotion is not equal to joy (translation from confucius.org).

Mea Culpa

I humbly apologize to all two of my readers for the delay in posting yet another toothsome missive. You may blame Slothfullia and Procrastinatorix, Twin Deities and local hearth gods for the delay. Perhaps someday they shall let me out of their clutches, but, I fear, no time soon, as I have much obeisance to make at their altars in the form of endless nail-picking and idiotic website browsing.* I must now return to a fascinating treatise I am writing on Willa Cather's "O Pioneers!" and the early 20th century Midwestern farm novel as a genre of American literature. No, I do not know what this has to do with Gastronomy, either.






*At least a good majority of last night's websites were culinary-related. I prepared a raw cacao-banana ice cream from a recipe on Dr. Weil.com (not bad...the old granola-head cranks out a pretty good one now and then.) and am planning to do a bunch of holiday baking for friends and family in the area.

Brief, Bad Poems Inspired By The Encounter Of A Potent Symbol Of the Past

1.

Sitting on the ground
Empty forty of O.E.
Hurling in remembrance

2.

Forty of O.E.
Almost empty but not quite
I should take a sip
Reed scroungers unite
It's punk rock, yo.

3.

Oldee English booze
Hope you had fun with that now
And did not pass out
Like me that one time
passed out singing.

4.
Why did you not drink
Those last ten ounces, Bill?
Then again, I sympathize
O.E. is some swill.
I understand the backwash
is likely to appall.
Still, respect The Forty, poser
Next time drink it all.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes, A Dish That Everyone Else Probably Knows About But I Just Discovered

Slow-roasted roma tomatoes, realllllly slow roasted for seven hours or so in a low gentle oven till the skins are shriveled and the flesh is dark blood red, are GLORIOUS. The most effortless dish I have ever made, and easily one of the most vibrantly flavorful.

I've always enjoyed making tomato sauce, that most friendly and useful of basics, but have struggled with the production of a truly tomatoey rendition. This is probably because the State of the Tomato in this country is in tatters. But I've just found out that the slow-roasting of even a crappy bunch of tomatoes brings out that elusive punch of tomato flavor that my sauces usually fail to attain*, even with the addition of red wine, sugar, tomato paste, or other enrichments. Of course, it makes the preparation of a tomato sauce an all-day affair, technically, as you've got the oven going for a good 7 to 9 hours depending on oven temp. But it is WORTH IT to have morsels of tart-sweet goodness you can eat like YUMMY CANDY, or simply food-process or finely chop and saute for a quick sauce to toss with pasta. And you didn't have to go to the irritatingly snobby gourmet foods store to buy THEIR fire-roasted tomatoes for eight dollars a jar or something because two pounds of crappy-ish roma tomatoes only cost you two bucks.

I am supposed to be working on a paper on farmers' reactions to the Country Life movement for Ag History and reading a fascinating treatise on antebellum crop production for same. And I do.not.want.to.do.it.

I think I'll go make myself another bowl of pasta.

Slow-roasted tomatoes

A lot of roma tomatoes, sliced in half from top to bottom
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Dried basil

Arrange sliced tomatoes on baking sheets. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried spices. Roast for about 6 hours in a 275 oven, 7 or 8 in a 250 oven. (Obviously the lower the temperature the longer it'll take.) Tomatoes are "done" when they're darker red and shriveling--these can go for a long time, so if they're not done to your liking, simply roast them longer. Eat as is or chop, mix into fresh-cooked pasta with cheese, or whatever dish you would like to possess a dynamite tomato flavor.

*in my view, at least; like most cooks, I'm my own toughest critic.

Far From My Vegan Days

I stood in a refrigerated room at Kinnealey Quality Meats, trying my best to appear like a tough chef and refrain from shivering. It was the end of an hour-long tour, and I was chilled to the bone. Still, things were much better than I expected. My experience with commercial meat purveyors had been limited to a traumatic reading of The Jungle, so I was anticipating serious blood and gore. Instead, Kinnealey’s was a clean and, dare I say it, appetizing environment. There were no sides of beef hanging oozing onto the floor (most meat is now butchered into smaller cuts at the slaughterhouse to save on shipping fees). The storage rooms smelled of sanitizer; the only carnal aroma in the entire facility was in the dry aging room. Maybe things would have been different if I visited an actual slaughterhouse, but Kinnealey’s completely contradicted the many accounts I'd read of the food industry’s unsavory side.

We returned to school with fresh meat, waiting for our knives. Our instructor gracefully dismembered a whole lamb, making it look as easy as slicing bread. When it was our turn to clean the lamb and cut it into cubes for stewing, we learned that it wasn’t so simple. With such an expensive product, one wrong cut could be a catastrophe. I nervously sliced into the lamb’s silverskin, wincing as if I were cutting myself. The process was awkward and stressful, but my confidence grew with each cut. It didn’t hurt that I was working with a partner, and I let her take a go at some of the more difficult parts. I left the class eager to cut more meat.

Stocks and Soups

I survived my first week of cooking school. To be honest, this wasn’t that much of an accomplishment, since Monday was orientation and Thursday Rosh Hashanah. Still, I was truly exhausted by the weekend’s arrival, though more from preparing a large holiday meal than from the toils of school.

Most school days are organized into two parts. In the morning, we attend a lecture and demonstration on what we will be making in the afternoon’s session, where the twelve students break into two teams and cook. Each team is lead by a sous chef, a distinction which is assigned to a new student each day.

Tuesday and Wednesday’s classes were dedicated to stocks and soups respectively. The class on stocks was more about getting acquainted with the kitchen, and no insights into the secrets of stock-making were offered that you wouldn’t find in any cookbook. Still, the experience of making stocks in class was wildly different from home cooking. Organization is imperative, as we were cooking many dishes simultaneously, and the quantities of food involved were much larger than you would need in the typical home kitchen. My team didn’t read our recipes as closely as we should have, so there was some confusion while cooking, and we forgot to sweat our fish stock’s mirepoix before adding the liquid. I was reminded of a passage from A Debt to Pleasure, where at the end of a recipe for an Irish Stew of layered potatoes, onions and lambs, the reader is instructed to sprinkle each tier with salt and herbs. The narrator explains that, “You will of course not be able to do that if you have been following this recipe without reading it through in advance. Let that be a lesson to you.” Fortunately, our omission had no discernable effect on the final product.


I wish I could say I was more organized on Wednesday, when I acted as my group’s sous chef. I tried to learn the recipes for consommé, French onion soup, and butternut squash soup before the class, but despite my efforts, I added flavorings for the squash soup at the beginning of cooking rather than after cooking, as the recipe suggested. Again, the mistake resulted in negligible consequences, but I was disappointed that I was unable to keep three simple recipes in my head. I’m sure this will become easier with practice.

Probably the most exciting dish we’ve prepared thus far is consommé. Consommé is made by combining a mixture of whipped egg whites, tomatoes, mirpoix and ground beef with chicken and veal stock. The egg whites bind together and form a raft at the top of the broth, bringing with them all the soup’s cloudy impurities (this method is also used to clarify wines). The acid from the tomatoes also helps to create a clearer stock. I hear that the addition of egg shells makes the consommé darker and more flavorful, but this practice seems to have gone out of fashion. Our consommé’s raft took a long time to form, and I became quite nervous that I had done something wrong. But, sure enough, the mixture finally did come together at the top of the pot, resulting in a perfectly clear liquid.

The real fun of consommé is the garnishes. Chef John explained that there are over 300 types of consommés, each distinguished by its own topping. The 2003 edition of Larousse Gastronomique only lists fourteen types of consommé; the Escoffier Cook Book lists 88; and La Répetoire de la Cuisine lists 189, so I’m not sure exactly how Chef John arrived at 300. Still, we can all agree that there are more individually named consommés than the average consommé enthusiast will ever sample. I read through a bunch of them, and the one that seemed the most appealing to me was consommé profiterole, which is garnished with small foie-gras stuffed pastries. Unfortunately, we won’t cover pastry until the end of October, so for now I’ll have to practice my knife skills and enjoy consommé brunoise, topped with vegetables cut into a 1/8 inch cube.

First Day of School

I eagerly arrived at Boston University’s cooking school yesterday, armed with my chef’s jacket, thermometer, timer, and new Global knife. After much agony and research, I finally decided I wanted to buy MAC knife. Unfortunately, my decision took a nontrivial amount of time, so the day before school started, I still was without knife. Alex and I went to Tags, Crate and Barrel, and Bed Bath and Beyond, but none of the stores sold MACs. Time was running out, and the Patriots’ opening game had already started, so I settled for a Global, my second choice.

My relationship with the new knife is off to a rocky start. While cleaning it for the first time, I cut two of my fingers. Maybe the knife knows that I settled, and was seeking its revenge. I resent the injury the knife inflicted. You cut me, Global; you cut me deep. I hope that we will be able to work out our issues over the semester. If not, I can always register for a MAC when I get married next year.

I am officially a student at Boston University’s culinary school. The opening day was dedicated to the administrative minutiae of all first days of school. We were introduced to the primary instructors, went over the syllabus, took a tour of the kitchen, and roasted bones for the beef and veal stock that we will complete tomorrow. While much of the material covered today was quite dry, the course of study promises to be thrilling. More often than not, classes will be taught by guest instructors, including Masaharu Morimoto, Jasper White, Jacques Pepin, Helen Chen (Joyce’s daughter), and an array of chefs from Boston’s best restaurants. The two primary instructors, John Vyhnanek and Jean Jacques Paimblanc, were quite impressive themselves, both with distinct teaching styles. I am eager for today’s class, when I will start cooking, and hopefully have more to report.

Last Week of Freedom

This is my last week until cooking school begins. I realize I have been somewhat lax in my blogging, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that it has been a month since my last post. I hope this will all change once school starts, when I will undoubtedly be boiling over with amusing stories. Unfortunately, when you have many stories to write, you usually have no time to write them.

This isn’t to say that my vacation from posting is due to an absence of inspiration. I have spent a good deal of the last month in the kitchen, enjoying the August harvest’s bounty. I made a delicious coconut rum cake, which was probably the most beautiful cake I’ve ever baked. My hand still bears a scar from a tiny mishap opening the coconut, but the cake was definitely worth this minor disfigurement. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the cake, but it looked exactly like the photograph in Gourmet.

I also made a horrible grilled tuna with tapenade butter. While the seasoning and cooking were successful, the fish was Trader Joe’s deep-frozen tuna for the palateless cheapskate, which was probably the worst tuna I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I was quite optimistic about the tuna, because of many delicious meals from Whole Foods’ deep frozen sushi-grade tuna, but the Trader Joe’s version hardly seemed like the same species of fish. It was stringy and flavorless, and for the first time in my life, I understood James Beard’s oft quoted remark that, “Tuna is a fish that I think is better canned than fresh.”

I will try to be better about the blog, and hope I will have the stamina to chronicle my adventures at cooking school. Until then, I plan to enjoy my last week of freedom with a great deal of sloth, as well, I’m sure, as my usual share of gluttony.

Sushi with Zach

When I first met Alex, I was obsessed with baking bread. With the ambitious goal of perfecting the baguette, I would make a loaf a day, experimenting with different recipes and techniques. Alex disapproved of my hobby, arguing that it was useless to spend so much time making a product that could be readily bought at local bakeries. Although these objections were usually made through a mouth stuffed with baguette, they did possess a certain degree of logic. These days I rarely make bread. Alex has long forgotten his disapproval, and wistfully recalls the early days of our relationship, when he thought he would enjoy homemade bread for the rest of his life.

Much to his disappointment, Alex’s cost-benefit cooking calculus has stuck with me, so when my brother Zach called to extol the glories of homemade sushi, I wasn’t convinced. The photographs of his sushi were beautiful, to be sure, and his enthusiasm was hard to resist, but I couldn’t help but question whether it was worth the effort when I could get delicious sushi delivered to my home in less than 30 minutes. So, when Zach suggested that we make sushi during my recent visit to Cleveland, I figured it was a great opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

And, making sushi with Zach was a bit of a fuss. The project required trips to no fewer than three markets. We had to cook and season the rice, mix up the spicy mayonnaise, make the wasabi paste, cut the fish and vegetables, and finally assemble the rolls. Also, the tuna, salmon, crab and escolar were not cheap, so we probably didn’t save any money by making the sushi ourselves (this is only a consideration for future sushi-making, as Zach bore the entire tab for his freeloading sister). Our resulting sushi was impressive and quite delicious, but was it really worth the effort?

For me, the answer is yes. The problem with Alex’s cost-benefit cooking calculus is that it doesn’t take into account that preparing things like sushi and bread is a lot of fun. Going to all the stores with Zach and my adorable niece was a blast, and making the rolls was much more satisfying than ordering delivery. My one successful roll filled me with pride, and left me eager to make sushi again if for no other reason than to banish from memory my other awkward efforts.

Most of Zach’s sushi doesn’t require a recipe; you simply cut fish, avocado, cucumber, and whatever else your heart desires into strips, and then assemble the rolls using a traditional sushi mat (he recommends cutting a paper bag into a square and covering it with aluminum foil and saran wrap as an alternative). Place the fish in the center of a piece of nori, and then place enough sushi rice to cover the nori in the center and work it into an even layer. Be sure to keep a container of water and rice vinegar nearby, and regularly coat your hands and knife to prevent the rice from sticking.


Zach’s Sushi Rice:

Ingredients:

1 cup, Nishiki rice
1 ¼ cups water
2 tbs rice vinegar
Salt
Pepper

Preparation:

Place rice in a strainer and thoroughly wash until water runs clearly through the rice. Bring rice and water to a boil in a medium-sized pot. Once boiling, cover and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Remove rice from heat and let stand for another 10 minutes. (Do not remove lid!)

Place rice in a non-metallic bowl. Fold in vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Do not overwork the rice. Traditionally, a sushi chef will have one of his assistants fan the sushi for 15 minutes at this point. Zach fans it himself with a paper plate for a few minutes; I would probably make Alex do this. Cover the rice with the paper plate until you make the rolls.

What Four Sticks of Butter, Four Cups of Sugar, a Bottle of Guinness and About Three Pounds of Chocolate Can Do

Make an evilly good cake, that's what, one that sits in the fridge among the lowly healthful string cheese and lettuce secure in its own delectableness. I just had to put an extra pound or so of it down into the garbage, as its siren song was all too tempting and I have still plenty of poundage to lose and muscle to build. (And even now I am half envisioning digging it out of the trash. A little vegetable scrap, chicken skin and coffee grinds wouldn't dim Its chocolaty goodness would it? Hahahah! KIDDING! Sort of.) The Guinness adds intensity, moistness and depth to the cake, and although it is certainly possible that the FOUR STICKS OF BUTTER have something to do with the luscious tenderness of the crumb, I contend it is due to the Guinness, that venerable Irish booze.

Chocolate Stout Cake with Chocolate Ganache

Best made the day before you want to eat it.

2 cups Guinness Stout
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups good quality unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups all purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sour cream

Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Butter three 8-inch round cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line with parchment paper and butter the paper. (Commentary: I used two 9-inch cake pans, buttering the bottoms but leaving out the parchment paper. Mistake--one of the cakes broke apart out of the pan due to the stickiness of its bottom. I think parchment paper is yet another waste of the nation's trees, but in the future I'll at least flour the pans well. Alas, fair cake, I hardly knew ye!)

Bring stout and butter to a simmer in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add the cocoa powder and whisk till mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl to blend.
Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream, then add the stout-cocoa mixture and beat just to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed till combined.

Divide batter equally among prepared pans and put them in the center rack of the oven. Bake for 35 minutes. (More Commentary: If using 9-inch pans as I did, and filling them near to full to boot, you'll need to bake for 50-55 minutes. Make sure cakes are totally baked through.

Transfer cakes to rack and cool 10 minutes; unmold cakes from pan and cool completely.

Then you slather 'em in this:

Ganache

2 cups whipping cream
1 pound bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped

Bring cream to simmer in heavy medium or large saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate, whisk till melted and smooth. Refrigerate until icing is spreadable, about 2 hours.

Supposedly makes 12 servings unless you are like me and sneak large chunks of it at random and inopportune times, like before breakfast and at one in the morning.

Ceviche

Where are all the sweet summer tomatoes? They certainly aren’t at my local Shaw’s or Whole Foods, which sell the same bland, tasteless tomatoes that they do in the winter. They also aren’t at my local gourmet store, Formaggio Kitchen, which also offered a pathetic selection of mushy industrial “heirloom” tomatoes. It is possible that they are at the Davis Square weekly farmers’ market, which I didn’t visit today because of the rain. Still, that wouldn’t have helped me yesterday, when I went to the store hoping to make the pasta caprese from last month’s Cook’s Illustrated and test their theory that the secret to the dish is freezing cubes of fresh mozzarella before cooking (this seems to be the secret of most of their dishes involving cheese).

Instead, I decided to improvise a salmon ceviche. I used farm-raised Atlantic salmon, which is surprisingly delicious and socially responsible to boot. The texture of salmon was quite luxurious, similar to sushi but without the heavy oily flavor that sometimes can be unpleasant. The dish was a great success, and I forgot about my tomato problems until after lunch, when I finished all the ceviche and am left wondering what to make for tomorrow’s dinner.

Salmon Ceviche:

Ingredients:

1 lb Fresh farm-raised Atlantic salmon, cut into ½ inch cubes
1 English Cucumber, peeled, de-seeded and cubed
1 avocado, cubed
2 shallots, minced
1 jalapeño pepper, minced
1 orange, supremed
½ cup cilantro, chopped
Juice of 1 large lemon
Juice of 1 lime
Tabasco Sauce, a dash
Salt
Pepper

Preparation:

Combine Ingredients. Allow to marinate for at least 1 hour. The dish will improve over time.

Juicy Juice

I have had little truly notable cuisine lately. A chunk of of tough and spongy New York Strip here, a lusciously crisp and oily funnel cake there. I am spending a chunk of the summer outside of Washington, D.C with my fiance.

DC is a city about whose gastronomic prospects I am sort of vague. I have gleaned one or two impressions, but I suspect that in these food-trend-heavy times they are probably outdated. I envision the typical DC eatery as an obscurely located, richly-appointed, dark wood-paneled, ostentatious pastoral English countryside painting-filled, boys' clubhouse (No Girls Allowed!) where "Beltway insiders" like Henry Kissinger and other such corpulent grubs plot policy over double martinis and steaks. As far as I know this is still quite the thing; however, there is also a pretty good collection of ethnic restaurants, especially in the outlying suburbs, where there are plenty of Chinese and Vietnamese folks. In the city there seems to be an ever-increasing melange of New American/organic/locally-sourced/hip n'trendy places in town.

Well, I guess. I don't really know. I am not going to any of them at the moment. No longer dining on arugula, I am instead sending its tender little leaves to a grisly death. Vampirically I drink of its life-giving fluids, flushing the pulpy evidence of my crime down the disposal. So far numerous plump and ripened vegetables have died at my hands, their bodies crushed to withered fragments in the growling jaws of a Breville Elite Juice Fountain Plus. Yes, I have taken up Juicing!

It's a lot of fun, really, although I see why a lot of people can't be bothered with it. Why buy all those fabulous, lovely vegetables and fruits only to shove them into a juicer instead of cooking them up in numerous delectable ways? Most of the juicing books and websited I've looked at give delicious sounding recipes for fruit and vegetable juices and smoothies, but when said produce is 5.99 a pound (organic, natch) you feel sort of like an ass shoving the sun-ripened raspberries and local blueberries in a juicer instead of just PUTTING THEM IN YOUR MOUTH AND EATING THEM, FOR GOD'S SAKE. WHAT A CONCEPT.

Why am I doing it, then? Well, it IS a great way to quickly get in a pound's worth of produce into yourself when you're in a rush. If The Government says we have to have our "five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day," juicing is a GOOD way to do it (although you are missing out on the fiber there, so you have to get a bunch of that in or else you'll get constipated and your arteries will get clogged up and a miserable death will surely ensue.)

When last in China I was much inspired by a yoga-teaching, meditation-retreat taking, fabulously well-muscled and toned friend of my fiance's who, while we were shoveling in our daily glut of oily, fatty pork, would regale us with the wonders of juice fasting, in which you drink nothing but the stuff, made from kale, lettuce or other such rabbity roughage, for anywhere from a few days to a few months. "Juice detoxing releases more than just internal toxins from the body," he would say sagely, contemplating a piece of Sichuan-style smoked bacon. "You'd be surprised at the emotional issues that come up."

Eager to witness the dark night of our souls, Fiance and I were keen to try it. That was two months ago. So far we have bought the juicer and a book of juicing recipes. I have juiced various and sundry combinations of beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, apples, peppers of various colors, cucumbers and spinach. The taste? Wonderful--if you like raw produce, of course. Lettuce juice tastes of lovely green lettuce. No problem. Likewise with beets and tomatoes. It gets problematic when you try to juice things like kale, collards or dandelion greens, all of which have a certain amount of bitterness and are rarely eaten raw, but are extremely nutrient-dense and very good for you. Naturally, it's these leafy greens that you're supposed to do the juice detoxing with, not the yummy tasting stuff.

Despite visions of Self-Actualized Enlightened Juice Fasted Rachel dancing in my head I'm still resisting this whole NOT EATING part. I could do it for a weekend with company, three days tops, but longer than that and I would probably expire. Yes, on the fourth day you would find me writhing on the floor, a pale celery green, antioxidant-rich fluids oozing from every orifice. But three days of kale juice? Would be an interesting experiment to try this month, just to see whether any toxins come out of any orifices. Or maybe to see if I can divine the shape of the universe or something. Until then, I'll continue pulverizing hapless tomatoes--homemade 'V8' is amazing.

Enjoying Ethiopian

Many of my friends get this glazed look in their eyes whenever Ethiopian food is mentioned. “I love Ethiopian food,” they say in a dreamy voice as they recall past culinary ecstasy. You can see their mouths begin to salivate, and then you can see them take a cold, hard swallow when I declare my firm opinion that Ethiopian food is stupid. It’s not that I don’t want to like Ethiopian food. I find the idea of writing of an entire country’s cuisine to be unpalatable, especially when its food receives such high acclaim. But, after many meals of rubbery ijnera bread and boring stews containing overcooked sulfuric eggs, I resigned myself to the idea that Ethiopian food was not for me. That is, until yesterday night, when I had a delightful meal at Addis Red Sea, a new Ethiopian restaurant in Cambridge.

Daunted by the unfamiliar menu, I opted for a combination platter of Doro Wot (chicken stewed in red pepper sauce) and the three vegetarian dishes that the waitress recommended. The Doro Wot was delicious, with tender lemony chicken and a spicy sauce. One of the vegetable dishes was a preparation of collard greens that would rival that from the finest southern kitchen. Their spicy lentils were lovely, and had a completely different flavor from the chicken. But, probably the most impressive was the injera, which was light and flavorful, a perfect vessel to enjoy all the sauces.

I am thrilled that I no longer need to snub Ethiopian food. Usually, I hate being wrong, but in this case I am glad to retract everything negative I’ve said about Ethiopian cuisine (including an unfortunate joke I once made questioning whether they had food in Ethiopia). I plan to rush back to Addis Red Sea and happily eat a humble pie of this delicious cuisine.

Reality Check

Just when I was getting carried away idealizing Chinese food, this story ripped off my rose-tinted glasses.

Chinese Cooking

Some of my favorite dishes from China are unavailable in the States. It is true that Chinese dining options in this country have dramatically improved from the days where all you could find were bland Cantonese-American brown sauce dishes. Within ten minutes of my house are restaurants from Taiwan, Shandong, and Nanjing (although the Nanjing restaurant is ironically called the Qingdao Garden). Still, some of China’s most ubiquitous dishes are absent from American menus.

The lack of some dishes is understandable. Take lamb kabobs (羊肉串儿), for example. While lamb kabobs are available at virtually every street corner in Beijing, they are a Muslim food that isn’t found in Han Chinese restaurants. Few Chinese Muslims make it to America, and those who do rarely open restaurants. However, other dishes, like tiger salad of cucumber and pepper (老虎菜), steamed bread (馒头), or candied fruit kabobs (糖葫芦) are shamefully neglected by restaurants in America, leaving the people who crave them only one option: cooking them at home, which is exactly what Rachel I did the other night.

Finding recipes for the kabobs and salad turned out to be a bit of a challenge. After extensive Internet searching, I was about to give up and just wing it, when on a whim I looked at the webpage for Betty’s Kitchen, a Chinese cooking magazine owned by the media group I worked for while in China. I was amazed to find complete recipes for both the lamb kabobs and cucumber salad, and happily copied down the ingredients. Rachel and I then rushed over to the Super 88, Boston’s Chinese grocery store, optimistic that we would be able to produce the dishes we were craving.

In retrospect, we were a bit naïve to think that we would be able to find the foreign spices listed in the recipes. The grocery store clerk gave me a blank stare when I asked for barbeque powder (烧烤粉) and spicy sedan chair powder (辣轿粉). After a lengthy discussion in Chinese, he directed us to the Western barbeque spice section, and then mocked us when we were unable to find what we wanted. We finally decided to muster up our dignity, forget the recipes, and just improvise the dishes.

The kabobs turned out to be delicious, tasting quite like the Beijing street food, except that we were using a tastier cut of lamb. The tiger salad was reminiscent of what we ate in China, except we were short on peppers. We decided to call it little cat salad (小猫菜), and it truly did this name proud. The night was a great success, and left me eager to cook more Chinese food.

A Familiar Face

While watching old episodes online of Betty’s Kitchen, a Chinese cooking show, I saw the following commercial, which I've captured in a screenshot:

It turns out every episode ends with an commercial for the Betty's Kitchen magazine, which includes a shot from when I appeared on the show in January, 2004. I’m a star!

Organic Nectars Raw Cacao Powder

is THE SHIT. Makes regular cocoa seem like factory sawdust. Rich, vibrant chocolate taste, not sweet, but not at all bitter. Excellent morning meal: a few scoops of cacao powder, one banana, enough chocolate soy or hempmilk to cover. Blend. Like a thin silky chocolate pudding, but fueling and nutritious.

Will be baking bread and dessert this week for Fiance's family reunion (that is if I can stop reading Perez Goddamn Hilton long enough to bang out a paper on 19th century fried chicken recipes and an 18th century cookbook anaysis) and am pondering what sort of loaves to produce. I usually do a part whole wheat kalamata-rosemary as one, but I'm sort of bored of that. I'm not sure of the other. Ideas, o masses of fans who read this blog? Perhaps dame Beranbaum can assist. I'm also making a cherry-apple crisp. Baking. Nothing better.

Mmmmmmush

As expected Jenny's posts should be not only fun to read (xiao wo niu! hao chi!) but a much-needed contrast to anything I would post about my eating habits in the past week or so. Last Friday I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out and have been gumming/sipping/drooling a melange of smoothies, soups, puddings, and rice. There was one night in which I served Brian and myself mushed black-eyed peas and minced collard greens with a side of roasted yam--I'd been reading on deep Southern African-American slave foodways and was missing the homelike stuff--but other than that I've not had much interest in eating nor desire to control what it is I do eat. (Chocolate-peanut butter Truffle Pigs, anyone? No? How about an entire box of flaxseed fiber crackers?)

I have languished in bed, swallowing pills, icing swollen cheeks, oozing fluids, and contending with a sinus infection in the right side of my face that has totally redefined my conception of that malady. Let's just say that the only feasting this week was done by the colonies of bacteria which dined gleefully upon the blood leached into in my sinuses from my gaping gum-holes, then multiplying and dividing into horrid incarnations of their former sweet and innocent wittle selves. Fever and foul snottage ensued.

Anyway!

Jenny, laissez le bon temps rouler.