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.

Paris, Part 1

I returned from France last week five pounds heaver. The weight came from my soul, which is still is still soaring . . . drunkenly. The trip was amazing, filled with countless extravagant meals and fabulous wines. I have struggled on how to blog about the trip, fearing that a litany of all the noteworthy feasts would be tedious. No one wants to read another rhapsody about how great French food is. I’ve read countless florid descriptions of a the satisfying crunch of a croissant’s light, buttery layers or rants about why the cheap table wine at a Parisian bistro is better than much of the swill we get in the States. I certainly don’t want to resort to the cliché about how it is impossible to get a bad meal in France, despite the fact that my experience on this trip supported this theory. Still, I want to record all the great things I ate, if only to quiet my family and friends who keep asking when I’m going to post about France. So, I figured I would start with a post about my first dinner in Paris, and see how things continue from there.

My first dinner in Paris was at Le Duc, a Michelin-starred seafood restaurant that my brother recommended. The meal commenced with a heaping plate of bigorneaux (small snails).



Sometimes bigorneaux can be rubbery and bland, but these were tender and sweet. I dove right in, prying the sweet flesh from the shells and popping them into my mouth as if they were candy. Alex watched with loving admiration as I gorged myself, although I must admit that an onlooker unfamiliar with his expressions would have mistaken his look for horror. When he said, “Jenny, how can you eat that?” he really meant, “Behold what an exotic, adventurous fiancée I have.”

The next course should have been Le Duc’s famous raw fish platter, which is not on the menu, but is ordered by everyone in the know, according to my brother and sister-in-law. Alex and I were hesitant to try it, questioning the wisdom of ordering something that fails to test the chef’s ability to cook. We were also jetlagged and weren’t sure exactly what the raw fish platter was called in French. In whispers, we guessed that it might be called the plateau fruits de la mer, and even tried to look it up in the Michelin review of the restaurant, but in the end we were too shy. Alex chose the trio of smoked fish and I ordered the oysters plate from the menu. The smoked fish was uninspired. I was happy with the oysters, which were plump and not too briny, until the neighboring table was presented with a raw fish platter heaping with oysters, clams, shrimp, langoustines, escargots, and lobster. Futterneid is the German word for the devastating resentment that occurs when someone orders better food than you. Sure, the oysters were delicious, but futterneid diminished their sweetness. I jealously looked on until the table noticed my staring. There was a glint of triumph in their eyes when I went back to my meal; they knew they were dining better than I.

The next course was a sole meuniere, which was a little buttery for my taste. Likewise, Alex’s sea bass was swimming in butter. To me, fresh fish should taste of the sea, not of the land. While the dishes weren’t my favorite, I appreciated their Frenchness. Later in the trip, I would receive a pamphlet about entitled, “Butter: Healthy or Not?” The conclusion was a resounding yes.

For dessert, we had a rum cake that was much more about the rum than the cake. The waiter brought out a modest portion of pound-cake, and then poured about a cup of rum over the top. If that weren’t enough, he left the bottle on the table in case we were still feeling sober. That wasn’t the case, and after happily eating the dessert we stumbled back to the hotel to sleep off the meal. The trip was off to a good start.