Kale and Seaweed Salad. And Qs about Online Sharing

I’ve written three very different versions of this blog post this week. I thought that I was rejecting drafts because I couldn’t get the voice right, but today it occurred to me that it’s the content that was giving me difficulty. I don’t have an answer to the questions that I’m posing; in fact, I don’t even know if they’re the right questions. So this entry is less of a declarative statement than a snapshot of the ideas swimming in and out of focus in my head. Really, I’d just like to grab a beer and have a spirited debate on the subject. So, imagine your favorite draft in hand and bear with me. And this is a soliloquy only due to the format choice – I really would like to hear your point of view.

Why share personal content online? That is the question. Recipes, photos, anecdotes, opinions, musings. Facebook, flickr, blogspot, twitter, Google Buzz, Google Reader. Why share?

That of course begs the question, “sharing with whom?” Because I update my Mom on my latest adventures for different reasons than I post a recipe for a bunch of (very agreeable) strangers. Or at least I think they’re different reasons.

In no particular order: archiving valuable information (recipes, photos) for easy retrieval, getting feedback and thereby validation on creative attempts, keeping in touch/strengthening relationships with distant friends and family, creating communities out of strangers, enjoying hearing myself talk uninterrupted on my soapbox, immediate attention from a wide audience, “popularity” (albeit highly transient…obsessing over hit rates and comment counts…blogging as a gateway drug…).

Why do you share? I bet your first answer is a highly logical, rational, reasonable one. I’m interested to hear that reason, but I’m also interested in the more subconscious one lying just under the surface.

Realization/Confession: I’m an information junkie. My crack is highly concentrated doses of really high quality content, content that pushes my brain to think slightly differently and makes me want to start a discussion with somebody immediately. A juicy local news item pertaining to a business or neighborhood or government institution that I know. An artistically impressive photo that succeeds in communicating a complex set of feelings. A blog post that not only disseminates a recipe but is able to articulate and therefore pass on the meaning buried in that particular combination of ingredients and technical steps. Or the briefest of high quality content messages -- and these days, one I come across with alarming frequency, the facebook update “X has gotten married.”

Quality. À la Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

This is important, because I’m trying to figure out how I want to use this blog and my flickr space. Whom am I posting for? How much personal detail is too much? How can I create and share compelling content while protecting myself emotionally and honoring the privacy of my loved ones? Ironically, I feel more comfortable sharing terribly intimate musings with perfect strangers than with remote acquaintances who know me in real life.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Oh, and this recipe. One of the best parts about living in a place and in a social circle where vegetables carry no stigma is that we’ve learned to expect them to be fun. This recipe honors the ingredients that go into it, producing something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s one of those rare reasons to love winter produce, that interminable sea of tough greens. The salad itself is fast, flavorful, and incredibly forgiving: change the ratio of greens to seaweed, supplement kale with chard, add mushrooms to make a hearty lunch… you really can’t go wrong. Believe me: we must have made this recipe 5,000 times while I was in grad school. It’s also vegan; translation: Everybody Will Like It. We bring it to almost every potluck we’re invited to between October and March.

Kale and Seaweed Salad (serves six as a side)

1 bunch Kale or Chard
1/2 cup seaweed flakes ("sea vegetable" - dried or fresh. Our grocery sells dried Wakame flakes in its Asian section.
1 Tbs peeled, minced ginger
1 Tbs minced garlic
1 Tbs toasted sesame seeds
Seasame oil
Soy Sauce

Optional: additional veggies like mushrooms or carrots, sliced.

Optional: 2 serrano peppers, chopped.

If using dried seaweed, let it soak in water 5 - 7 min. Drain and place in the serving bowl. Add 1 tsp sesame oil and the minced ginger.

Soak the Kale in water to loosen any dirt, rinse thoroughly. Chop in 1"x2" strips.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tsp sesame oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and serrano (if using) and gently sauté for 1 min.

Add the Kale and optional supplemental veggies and 3 Tbs Soy sauce. Sauté at high heat, stirring constantly. Alternatively, if not using mushrooms, turn heat to low and cover, cooking gently for 5-10minutes.

Add Kale to serving bowl, add sesame oil and soy sauce to taste. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds.

Caramel Sauce Snobbery

Am I a snob?

I mean, I don't think of myself as a snob. I don't consciously look down on folks who don't cook as assiduously as I do (read: don't undertake lunatic baking projects at 3am). But several friends have poked fun at my tendency to refuse any culinary shortcuts. They do it mostly to get a rise out of me, but it is true: I stubbornly attempt to make (almost) everything from scratch.

I can think of many reasons why I do this. First and foremost is my desire to be good at everything. I don't count that as one of my neuroses. Rather, I have a mindset from bygone era: in a more civilized age, a Gentleman was supposed to demonstrate a mastery of many skills: riding, dancing, fencing, hunting, the niceties of high society, etc. While some of those abilities are regrettably defunct, I still think a sign of class when someone has interests and [dare-I-say] proficiency in a variety of fields.

There you go: I'm in my twenties and am already coming out as a nostalgic fossil. Go figure.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. I recently rediscovered the blog of an old friend of mine, The Moody Foody. Michelle and I went to high school in the Caribbean together, spending most of our extra-curricular time on the theatre dept's tiny tiny stage. I still have vivid memories of her bringing the house down as a fiery Italian matron. After so many years, it was a lot of fun to find that she'd become a foody and going over her culinary adventures through New York and the Old Continent.

That is, until I came to her recent post about Caramel Apples. Not having been able to make the caramel sauce from scratch, she reverted to (gasp!) Kraft Caramel! Michelle, Michelle, how could you? Capital treason!

Thus went the first few reactions from my stunned and horrified brain. But then I saw the pictures she left behind (nice dramatic touch, leaving those at the end, btw). And you know what? Those apples look damn good. I like them apples. And that was enough to give me pause and reflect. Why is the idea of purchasing pre-made portions of recipe such a repulsive idea?

I can think of arguments for both sides of the question, but since I don't want to take on a global theoretical debate, I pondered a simpler question: what does it mean for me? The answer is: I'm not sure. There's nothing strictly wrong about the ideology of it. By that, I mean to say that I can't find reason to condemn someone for buying something they could have made themselves. If that were so, were would we draw the line? Should we bake our own bread whenever we want a PB&J? Or take it to an extreme: let's all move out of the city and become farmers. We'll make everything ourselves. Because a national agrarian society is definitely the way to go. Right. (rolls eyes)

I simply believe that everyone should know how to cook. To quote a literary character: "He who cooks well, eats well." It doesn't mean that you have to be in utter control all the time, but it does imply a certain level of awareness about what you consume. Not only is that a damn good idea from a dietary point of view, but it also means you can prepare your meals to your own taste (instead of fitting into the generic consumer model). And that, of course, brings in the capitalist industry take on it. I simply don't want some big company telling me what to eat. Especially not when the ingredient list usually contains sugar, sugar, corn syrup, and some flavouring. My uncle is an industrial chef, and he doesn't eat his products, for crying out loud.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I'm still going to make everything from scratch. Why? Because I can. Because doing so makes me happy. That's enough for me, and I'm not out to change anyone's mind on the matter. If that makes me a culinary snob, then so be it. It doesn't bother me if other people approach it from a different angle (so Michelle, you're still ok in my books). After all, diversity makes life all the more interesting, and that goes for the kitchen, too.

SO! To conclude this long, drawn-out reflection (who knew a post about caramel apples could do such a thing?), I going to respond to Michelle's challenge. She asked to be given a single good, interesting recipe for caramel sauce this Halloween. I'm going to do one better, since there's only so much creativity you can put into butter, sugar, and cream. This is the dish that I'll be bringing to a party this weekend. It's clipped from the November edition of the Food & Wine magazine.

Caramel-Croissant Pudding

• 2 stale all-butter croissants, coarsely torn
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 Tbs water
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 Tbs bourbon
• 2 large eggs, beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly bitter a 1-quart shallow baking dish and arrange the croissant pieces in the dish. In a small saucepan, stir the sugar and water over moderately high heat until the sugar dissolves; wash down any crystals on the sides with a wet pastry brush. Cook without stirring until a medium amber caramel forms, about 5min. Remove from the heat and stir in the cream, milk, and bourbon. Cook over low heat just until any hardened caramel dissolves.

2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs. Gradually whisk in the hot caramel. Pour over the croissants and let stand for 10min, pressing the croissants to keep them submerged.

3. Bake the pudding in the center of the oven for 20min, until puffed and golden. Let cool for 10min, then serve.


ps:

• I realise the irony in using a recipe from Food & Wine after discussing snobbery. Believe me, I don't read it for the articles.
  
  
• If you start talking about this dish out loud, do me a favour: pretend you're French when saying "croissant" (the r is guttural and the t is silent). This is not me being a snob; this is me having a pet peeve. Do your part to stop the mispronunciation of foreign words!

pps:
Victory! I made the pudding successfully last night. I will confess I was pretty nervous when the caramel first turned out completely liquid, as opposed to the the viscous, gooey deliciousness I was expecting -- but 20min in the oven fixed that. Surprisingly, even though the croissants are submerged in this sugary liquid for several minutes before cooking, they loose none of their buttery flaky texture. This is definitely not a mushy bread pudding. It's not crisp, per se, but you could almost cut it into squares and eat with your hands. Definitely recommended for your sweet tooth!

Happy Halloween!

Death by Chocolate

This is something I wrote and put aside many weeks ago. I think I lost the pictures somewhere along the way. More updates to come...

A lot has happened since I last posted here. That applies to all three of us, really, but mostly to me. As of a few months ago, I am officially an alumnus of the University of Chicago (yaaaaaay!). Granted, with that comes all the "fun" of post-graduation: job-hunting, grad school-applying, student loan-paying, etc. (booooo!). Another piece of that unfortunate collection is saying good-bye to everyone who I've been suffering alongside through the past few years. As all graduates know, it's hard to do. You become attached to people fighting through the cerebral chaos of college. But you rarely realise that when you go on to the real world, you probably won't be able to share that camaderie as before.

But anyway, I'm not here to wax poetic and maudlin. I'm manly that way.

One such fellow whose company I no longer enjoy is my former roommate. God knows why, but the man has decided to leave Chicago to go to graduate school in Arizona. Frozen tundra to arid desert. What? I'm sure he'll have plenty of fun with his new pet scorpions (they hide in the shoes!) -- they will probably be more cooperative listeners to his advanced math lectures. More so than his former smartass roommates, at least.

The greatest loss here, of course, is that I have one fewer guinea pig on whom to test my baked concoctions. Evidently, being exposed to these hazardous materials, the boy has developed a mild addiction to them. Our most recent report from the Southwest informs us that he is "wasting away" without them. So, without further ado, I hereby provide the recipe to one of my most-favouritest cakes ever: the Silver Palate's Decadent Chocolate Cake. And when they say "decadent," they aren't kidding around. This is Death by Chocolate. I don't know if baking is quite as enjoyable down there, but the products of this recipe are always worth it.

So, Fluffles, this is for you.

Decadent Chocolate Cake

• 1 cup boiling water
• 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 8 Tbs (1 stick) sweet butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup dairy sour cream
• 2 cups less 2 Tbs unbleached, all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Chocolate Frosting (below)

1. Preheat your oven to 350F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan. Knock out excess.

2. Pour boiling water over chocolate and butter; let stand until melted. (you don't really have to do that. Really. Just ensure that the butter is in liquid form.) Stir in vanilla and sugar, then whisk in egg yolks, one at a time, blending well after each addition.

3. Mix baking soda and sour cream and whisk into chocolate mixture.

4. Sift flour and baking powder together and add to batter mixing thoroughly.

5. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Stir a quarter of the egg whites thoroughly into the batter. Scoop remaining egg whites on top of the batter and gently fold together.

6. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Set on the middle rack of the over and bake for 40-50min, or until the edges have pulled away from the sides of the pan and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10min; unmold and cool completely before frosting.

Chocolate Frosting

• 2 Tbs sweet butter
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 6 Tbs heavy cream
• 1 1/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar, or as needed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Place all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan over low heat and whisk until smooth. Cool slightly; add more sugar if necessary to achieve a spreding consistency. Spread on cake while frosting is still warm.

If you are so fortunate as to have a pint of berries on hand (raspberries are best, I think), I recommend tossing half in the batter, mixing some in with the frosting, and placing any remaining pieces on top as decoration.

Dinner alone

Leftovers.

Dear Do (because I know you're reading this),

Right now, you're in the air somewhere between here and Chicago. Which is a shame, because cooking dinner isn't nearly as fun without you. I mean, I was almost too lazy to assemble my fajita/burrito, even though you'd prepared and carefully packaged all the components last night. As for utensils, a plate, a place mat? Forget it. I ate dinner while standing in the kitchen. Why bother taking the extra time? Which is kind of funny, given that I'm the fastidious one who insists on napkins and place mats.

I'm bemused at how little I want to cook, with no one to cook for. Is it because there's no one to share the resulting creation with, no one to appreciate the intimate moment known as dinner time? I feel completely lethargic and culinarily apathetic. I really enjoy cooking with you, for you. I find it really fun to participate in your culinary adventures, offering unwanted tips while washing your prep bowls, sampling your creations and trying to argue you out of adding wine and/or hot sauce. I love how you always find something worth complimenting when I set dinner on the table, and how any less-than-optimal parts of the dish are always the recipe's fault, never mine. The two of us huddling over cookbooks on Saturday mornings, over tea, passing recipe clippings back and forth, is disgustingly endearing. I love how much you, and we, have gotten into cooking. It really makes my day, every day.

You should have landed two minutes ago. I'll see you in 39 hours.

Oh, and Do? I just accidentally bit into one of the many jalapeños that you added to the fajita chicken. It nearly seared my taste buds off; what on earth were you thinking??

Chieboujen: Neen's work in progress

[I'm a day or so late in getting this post up because, much to my surprise, I found it really hard to write. I've written about my relationship with Africa so many times for scholarship/admission essays that it feels like the story and the feelings are no longer mine. Like they belong on my business card or to some University admissions office. Not that it helps that these events took place 10 years ago, and my identity has grown and been shaped by much since then. This all required some unforeseen processing. Anyways. Sorry for being late.]

When I was six, my family moved to Senegal; when I was nine, we moved to Gabon. With a little luck and a little bribery, my folks got my brother and me into excellent local public schools where we were the only Americans amidst lots of little French expats and upper-middle class Senegalese or Gabonese. Needless to say, with no English outside the home, we went from no knowledge of French to bilingual in about 5 days flat. Kids are amazing like that.

I have come to realize that the expat experience for a kid is entirely different from that of an adult. As as child, I had barely an inkling that Senegal was undergoing an important Presidential election, that Zaire was imploding right next door, or that scary-ass forms F.G.M. were taking place in the empty lot around the corner. I was completely oblivious to socio-political history: I couldn't yet differentiate between the 'normal' and the 'abnormal' because 'norms' changed every time we moved. Even poverty. My 7 year old self saw the beggars, the lepers, the villages to which we donated our old clothing... but was completely oblivious to the magnitude of the poverty or the gross inequality among classes (well, okay, when I was 11 even I was grossed out by the fact that there was a swamp shantytown directly across the street from the gleaming, mile-long Gabonese presidential compound). If anything, America was weird with its clean, empty suburban roads and its gratuitously huge cinemas. Squeaky clean. Kinda creepy.

Then my family left Africa when I was 12 and I didn't return until two summers ago, when I got funding to do my B.A. thesis research in Mali. It was a pretty intense summer. My first extended period of time away from Do, the aid project that I was studying turned out to be a glorious, expensive fiasco, and here I was, an adult, submerged in a culture that I had happily navigated with ease as a kid. Like I said, intense. In that soul-searching, God-searching, priority-rethinking kind of way. [Okay, this post now officially gets this 'Existential Ruminations' label.]

Just before I was to leave Mali, my host father (who turned out to be my father's baptismal godfather from back in their Peace Corps days...small world...) arranged to serve Chiebujen at a large party. This was a lovely, personal goodbye gesture: Chiebujen (pronounced Cheboojen) is the Senegalese national dish. It's a very hearty fish and vegetable stew served over rice or couscous. Imagine if you will, a platter the size of your coffee table, piled high with rice/couscous, with fist-size hunks of fish, cabbage, yam, carrots, okra etc, and 10 or so people squatting around eating with their hands. It was so delicious. Addictive. Particularly so because I had far away memories of these flavor combinations. Even as my adult head was feeling seriously alienated by a culture that I thought would be familiar, Chebujen felt like home to my taste buds.

So I'm going to recreate it. Given that I'm working with American ingredients and very vague childhood memories, this is probably going to take numerous permutations. Please, anyone in the blogosphere, your suggestions are more than welcome (I'm particularly looking at YOU, Mom and Dad).

For Monday night's take on Chebujen, I combined a Nytimes Thebu Djen recipe and a Thieboudienne recipe that Chicago's Field Museum distributed during an exhibit on Senegal in 2004. The process of combining two fairly complicated recipes on the fly, all the while comparing the flavors to the echoes somewhere in the recesses of my memory, was...er... hard. Especially because, when I did get the flavors right, they provoked emotional flashbacks like no other. You know how the senses provoke more emotional recollections than words do? Songs, taste, places, pictures? yeeeah.

Monday night's Chiebujen was no where near perfect, but it was definitely heading in the right direction. The recipe below is exactly what I did, errors and all, and the italics are what I'm going to change next time. In general:

- It needs to be exponentially hotter. Scotch Bonnet peppers, here we come.
- I need to use whole (cleaned) fish. And more of it. This fish cube idea is for toubabs (West African for gringo).
- I need to track down dried snail or a more authentic version of dried fish than Herring. Herring?! WTF?
- No homemade or tinned chicken broth. Bouillon cubes all the way. Wish I could find the Maggi brand.

I need to track down an African market; my folks suggest that there may be one near Adams Morgan.

Neen's first take on Chiebu Djen
(Ideas for next time in Italics)
Serves 6-8.

3/4 cup loosely packed cilantro leaves
4 scallions (white and lower green parts), trimmed
4 cloves garlic, peeled (I'd increase)
4 Serrano chilies. (Oh my gosh, this needs to be upped. Either increase by 150% for starters, or go to scotch bonnet peppers)
1 lb firm fleshed fish fillets, such as tuna, shark or swordfish, cut into 1/2" pieces (yeah, the whole cubes of fish is so toubab. And there wasn't nearly enough fish flavor. Next time: 2 whole red snappers (3-4lbs total), cleaned, scaled, and cut into thirds)
3 onions
2 garlic cloves
1 red bell pepper (Umm, check if this is a Toubab addition)
1.5 oz dried fish (I could only find dried herring, talk about not authentic! Next time, go to an African market and try to find yete (dried snail) or guedge (dried fish), or at worst dried cod. And double the quantity.)
1.5 cups peanut oil (we're deep frying? Really? Check out other recipes)
1 can (6oz) tomato paste (Halve the quantity of tomato paste and water)
4 large carrots
1 small green cabbage
1 sweet potato (standing in for yucca or yam, try to find one of those. Oh and add 0.5 lbs calabaza or butternut squash)
4 cups chicken broth (Make it using bouillon cubes, preferably Maggi)
Chicken bouillon cube (Shouldn't need this if follow above instructions)
12 Okra pods.
12 1/4" pieces of tamarind
3 cups rice (For God's Sake, try to find some long grained variety that isn't Jasmine rice.)

1. In the food processor, mince cilantro, scallions, 4 garlic cloves, and 1 stemmed Serrano chili.
   
2. Create a pocket in the fish by slicing horizontally through the center of each piece, leaving one side attached. Fill the opening with about one teaspoon of the cilantro mixture. Pack the fish in a bowl, cover with any remaining cilantro mixture, and fridge until needed.
   
3. Prep work time! Assemble in one bowl 3 chilies (stemmed, split in half), 3 onions (chopped), garlic cloves (minced), bell pepper (diced), and dried fish.
   
4. Pour peanut oil into 2 gallon dutch oven over high heat until a piece of onion dropped into it sizzles vigorously. Add your prepped veggies from Item 3, stir occasionally until onions begin to brown (10min). In the meantime, in a medium bowl (or your now empty veggie prep bowl!), whisk tomato paste with 1 cup water. When the onions are just beginning to brown, add diluted tomato paste. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally to keep from scorching, 15 min.
   
5. In the meantime, turn oven to warm setting (200 degrees). Prep carrots (cut into six pieces) and sweet potato (peeled, cut into six pieces), set aside, and prep the cabbage (cored, cut into six pieces), set aside. When the stew is ready, add chicken broth with 3 cups of water and a Chicken bouillon cube to the stew pot. Turn heat to high and return to a simmer. Add the carrots and sweet potato and simmer for 5 min. Add the cabbage and okra, cover and simmer for 15 min. Add the stuffed fish and cook 5 minutes more or until the fish is cooked through and the vegetables are fork-tender.
   
6. Using tongs, carefully transfer the vegetables and fish from the stew to a platter, cover with aluminum foil and place in warm oven. Bring the remaining stew to a boil, add tamarind. Add rice, reduce heat to low and cook until tender and all the broth has been absorbed. (10-20min). (I had to add a little extra water).
   
7. On a wide communal platter, spoon a portion of rice, mounding it in the center. Add veggies and fish around the sides. Serve Immediately.
   

Creating Traditions: Passover Lite and Spiced Charoset

I'm simultaneously intrigued and intimidated by Passover. Intrigued because it's such a "Family food" holiday, to quote D: at its center is the dining room table and a family-friendly set of prayers and stories and symbolic foods. It's so cool that arguably the most fundamental biblical event is commemorated within the intimacy of the family circle. I'm charmed, perhaps because I'm a sucker for all things symbolic (oops, is that my Episcopalianism showing?). But I'm also intimidated: one of the primary purposes of the holiday is to remember and reaffirm membership in the Jewish family at large. Last time I checked with my mother and my priest, I'm not Jewish. And yet this year, I was the one who assembled the Seder plate, set the table, and made dinner. Hmm. Walking the walk of an interfaith couple definitely provides food for thought.

[D Steals Talky Stick and Runs to the Corner of the Room]

Well, while Neen is not a Jew, I am. I had better clarify: I am a 30-minute Jew. If observance takes longer than 30 minutes at a sitting, it had better be Yom Kippur - for anything else, it just isn't going to happen. So when it comes to Seders, well you can imagine. As far as I can glean, a proper Seder, in my Grandfather's tradition, takes approximately 5-6 hours. It starts around sunset and food is finally served around midnight. It is amazing to me that he managed that with 4 children in the house.

I don't have the attention span for that - so when it comes time for a Passover Seder, I turn immediately to a nifty little booklet called 30 Minute Seder. Despite the cheesy main-page, the actually Seder guide is well put together, and - best of all- thin! It covers all of the most basic mitzvot with little explanations for those of us who have no clue what the bitter herbs are supposed to symbolize, or who might not realize that a hard-boiled egg is to commemorate Jewish midwives (?!). Though I admit, the absolute best on our Seder plate was the bone that represents the strong arm of God - let me just say, the little chicken thigh bone was almost hilariously puny looking. But I get ahead of myself.

The Seder itself really took only 30 minutes, a miracle considering that last year with my parents (when I used the same book!) it took us nearly two hours to get through everything - though, we had not yet discovered Neen's mad "Warp-speed Narration" talents at the time. The Seder starts with lighting the candles, an opening prayer, and a blessing over the wine. (For those of you who are on top of the ball, you will realize that I am skipping the removal of the chametz from the house - well, it just wasn't in the game plan. That would definitely take more than 30 minutes ;). After that we did all of the basic prayers... to a degree. The hiding of the afikomen (a piece of matzah that is broken off in the early portion of the seder) was executed by placing it on the window sill to our left.

By far the two highlights of the Seder were the Warp-Speed Narration of the story of Moses (performed by Neen) and the seder plate (created by Neen). It seems like an obvious question to ask, "well Do, what exactly are you good for?!" That is a fair question. Overall, probably not very much on this kind of occasion. I was going to cook a dish, but since we didn't get around to having a Seder until Monday night, when I had kendo practice, I couldn't get home in time to help with the cooking. (Yeah I know, along with being a 30-minute Jew - I am also the kind that does everything a day late, it is a brutal combination). So if I seem a little under-represented in the workload here, it is because Neen is an inter-cultural saint. Besides, in the end it worked out - the Matzah Ball Soup that Neen made was FABULOUS! I was stuffed after one large bowl, and eating anything else would have really just been a waste of stomach space. It has taken me most of the last two days to convince her that not only do I like the matzah ball soup, it is one of the best things to come out of this kitchen for a long while. Maybe it is just because I haven't had matzah ball soup in so long and this soup is fulfilling some long forgotten desire, but I can't get enough of it. It will definitely be going into the all time favorites category!

But all of that is a tangent - the matzah ball soup will be posted separately, so keep an eye out for it! What I really wanted to talk about was Neen's mad narration skillz. Thats right, skillz. There is not other way to describe her ability to decimate a story and then recombine the pieces into a short, snappy little tale that hits all of the main points in modern language (and lots of laughs). Sometimes you just wind up with a Moses the rapper, or Pharoah as played by Darth Vader. No matter what, it's funny. Not a bad thing when you are dealing with a 30-minute Jew running to the end of his attention span for rituals.

Of course, there is also the Seder plate. This is can be a very intense item to make. Neen was in charge of it, and she pulled it off perfectly. If you would like to know what everything means I recommend this wikipedia page. Our particular tray included a Charoset inspired by the Yemenite tradition (very similar to the Sephardic, which is my heritage), made with nuts, dried apricot, raisins, port, and a diverse set of spices. Very good. I was impressed because last year we made the more common apple-based Charoset, and it just didn't work for me at all, so this was a very nice change of pace. Of course, the reason this is so important is the ever famous Hillel sandwiches. (For those not in know, a Hillel sandwich is charoset, bitter herbs (i.e. horseradish) smashed between two pieces of matzah.) On this particular occasion, the Hillel sandwiches were actually really, really tasty. Neen I kept going back for more because the strong flavor of horseradish really complimented the sweet, spiced flavor of the charoset. Of course, we also need to eat through a bunch of matzah (we bought a box), and - as Neen discovered - matzah is actually a really uninteresting flavor on its own. But covered in charoset and horseradish, the matzah simply becomes a vehicle to get delicious flavors to ones mouth. Go Charoset!

[Neen, in awe of Do's flood of reactions, wrestles the talking stick away]

Wow, I guess Do had something to say! I'll be brief and just throw in my two cents:
1) Matzah is awful stuff.
2) This Charoset is addictive. It's completely different from the classic apple one because of all the spices, and I would gladly eat it any time. I highly recommend it for anyone that doesn't already have their own traditions engraved in stone.


Charoset (Inspired by Gil Marks' Yemenite Version)

Handful of slivered almonds (or other nuts)
Handful each of raisins and dried apricots (or other dried fruit, dates and figs are particularly traditional)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
large pinch of dried cardamom
large pinch of cayenne.
Cheap Port (adds great spicing, but Kosher red wine would work too).

Pulse the dried fruit and nuts in the food processor until they are very finely chopped. Add the spices and pulse again to mix. Add just enough port to moistened, pulse to mix. Voila!

Disappointing Dinner, Memes, and Other Misc. Ruminations

We had a rather disappointing dinner last night with an acquaintance from college. He's a very recent graduate (3 weeks) and it surprised me how much that affected our conversation: he couldn't relate to our stories about run-ins with the landlord or the "rhythm" of the 9-5 job; we eventually tired of his enthusiasm for his new job (after learning about the organization's history, financial status, and all of his colleagues' job descriptions and career goals...). I'm shocked that 10 months outside the Ivory Tower created such a notable gulf between us.

Not to mention that two new recipes that we tried were not particularly memorable or worth the effort. The sausage/porcini pasta dish tastes ubiquitously French (good, but I've got other recipes on hand that'll accomplish that as well if not better), and was not deserving of the expensive porcinis or Farmer's Market sausage that it used. The recipe for fried oysters was just not impressive. Which was sad: had they worked I would absolutely have submitted the recipe to the Vintage Cookbooks event hosted by the Weekend Cookbook Challenge crew.

I may write a food post at some point today but, for variety's sake, I'm going to use this post for unfinished business and miscellaneous thoughts.

-- First, Johanna asked for a picture of the new cruet that my parents got me while they were in town. It's simply a receptacle that is specifically meant to hold salad dressing, so that you don't have to make dressing every time. We used to use a jar. My parents use a tall plastic Tupperware-like cruet. I picked this one out from Crate and Barrel because a) it's not tacky or cheesy, like many others out there, b) it's got a bunch of different recipes for salad dressing written on the side of the container. Not something I'd really want I were hosting the Queen of England, but convenient for someone who is personally terrified of making salads.

-- Second, Johanna tagged me for a six word memoir. I procrastinated all week under the pretense of thinking about it. It seems rather over-the-top for me to attempt to describe myself in six words, both because, since I'm only 23, the choice of words changes almost weekly, and because most adjectives seem viable to a greater or lesser extent.

My six words would be:
exotic: I grew up in West Africa and Switzerland (French school K-12), worked in the Dominican Republic, and am tri-lingual.
affectionate: My Mom observes that I need a lot of attention, like a puppy. That's A-OK with Do!
ambitious: Fighting to capitalize on good school, good grades, good resume in a town where most young people are fervently trying to do the same.
settled: Relatively speaking. I'm the boring one among my peers: I come home every night to my partner and cook with porcinis.
nerdy: I'm a certified nerd, got the degree to prove it. You should see our bookshelves (Kant, theoretical organizational decision-making, Theological Feminist Criticism...that said, I'm currently reading Sense & Sensibility ;).
verbal: (My Mom: "She never stops talking!"). Maybe this blog is an outlet..?

[Completely unrelated: last Thanksgiving, D's family played a game to come up with "six word novels." Essentially, you have six words to communicate an entire story line. The best one was told by D's Dad: "Frodo Kills Darth Vader. Lucas Sues." LOVE IT.]

-- Finally, Passover starts tomorrow. I'm a little sad: we won't be able to fly out to celebrate with D's family and all our close D.C. friends are going home to their families, so it'll be just a small tete-a-tete Seder. That, and after the six weeks of self-imposed vegetarianism otherwise known as Lent, we're both dragging our feet at the thought of another week or so of culinary regulation. We dutifully bought Kosher-for-Passover Matzah last weekend, but have yet to decide how else we're going to approach the holiday. Ah, the culinary trials and tribulations of the interfaith liturgical calendar. It helps to know that all High Holidays between Passover and Yom Kippur will leave our kitchen alone.

-- Speaking of Lent, have you noticed how many posts are under the vegetarian tab?? Wow, we've really, unconsciously, seriously modified our diet as a result of that exercise. We now eat meat at only 50% of our meals. I'm really impressed!

TGIF.

Growing Up and Soft-Shelled Crabs.

Having my parents visiting for a week has unexpectedly kicked the internal philosophizing into motion. Especially with Do out of town at his conference, it feels like the three of us are walking a very fine line between 2008 and 2001.

Okay, that may not seem like much, but in 2001 I was 16. A pretty independent and headstrong teenager, I had good relationships with my parents, was free to proceed about my life and the city more or less unquestioned, and avoided most “common space” chores (making dinner, cleaning, lunches) because it didn’t feel like my “domain.” The parents knew how to do that sort of stuff -- what if I did a chore wrong and got corrected? I would probably have gotten indignant (“hey, I was trying to do you a favor!”), there would have been a fight… why risk that? I stuck with tidying, walking the dog, setting the table, and verbalizing appreciation at dinner time. Anything that required independent thought, I left to them. It just seemed easier that way (and, like all teenagers, I was lazy!).

In 2008, I’m 23. I’ve lived outside of my parents’ home for 5 years, two of those in a one-bedroom apartment with Do. We’re adults now, and it’s our home. We make executive decisions about cleaning, using up leftovers, mending, etc. We know to spontaneously grab a cleaning product if the bathroom floor looks questionable. So we don’t wash our sheets every week or swifter as often as we should, but our home is usually reasonably tidy and the kitchen is always clean. I'm an adult now.

So living with my parents over the course of the past week in my teeny apartment has prompted a lot of new scenarios: How much can my parents clean my apartment before it goes from extremely generous to intrusive? How can I be a gracious recipient of this generosity without reverting to the lazy teenager who assumes that the kitchen will be cleaned and the dinner prepared by the parents? (Note, I haven't done anything in the kitchen more laborious than sitting and chatting all week). When I come home from a long day at work and they have the house cleaned and dinner prepared, well, who is hosting whom?

I guess that’s it: it’s freakin’ hard to follow the standard scripts of host and guests when it’s a child and her parents. This may just be a post-collegiate thing, but I doubt it. I bet that time and age allow you to write new scripts for yourselves, but I bet that the standard ones never fit. They’re your PARENTS after all, how can they be GUESTS?

Of course, being in your early twenties also means that you HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING half the time (There, I admitted it, ha! See if you can coax a similar statement out of your teenagers!) and, unlike when you were a teen, you recognize that you really need to learn how to sew on a button/use the broiler/do your taxes. No one is going to take care of my chores if I surrepticiously avoid them because I don't know how (though I did try to shove off my taxes on D this year... but he's off at that darn conference!). What a relief to have Mom and Dad physically present to guide me through, step by step.

For example, this week I had my first encounter with soft-shelled crab.

When we were exploring the Dupont Farmer’s Market on Sunday, the very last stand was selling flounder and soft-shelled crab. The gentleman explained to us that we’re about 3 weeks early for soft-shelled crab, but that he was selling some that he caught last season and froze. Sure, why not? We picked up three to go with our morels and waltzed off.

Now, I’ve been to a crab feast before, where you buy a heap-o-steamed crabs from the fish market, cover the (outdoor) table with newspaper, and go at them with hammers and picks. Brute force, baby! You pick out your meat, avoiding the intestines and the shell parts. It's disturbingly fun. But the thought of taking a whole crab, a WHOLE crab, and chomping on it, seems kind of weird. Maybe that’s why most folks hide soft shelled crabs in sandwiches.

But my Mom took care of it all. She knew how to season it, how to bread it, how long to cook it, and executed the whole thing in about 5 minutes flat. It would have taken me 1 hour of research, 30 minutes of preparation, and five minutes of hyperventilating over the thought of the whole crab. As it was, I had the whole thing on my plate before I thought to get nervous.

And they were great! This was crab, with no distractions: no sandwich, no shell, no cool hammer. Breaded & sautéed for texture, but still the creamy crab meat inside. No stress. Eye-grabbing presentation. The crabs themselves were a little tough and chewy, which probably means that they were caught and frozen late last season. No problem: in three weeks, when soft shelled crabs ARE in season, I’ll know what to do with them.

Thanks, Mom.

The Fish Market, or Surviving Holy Week

If I contemplate another 5 days without meat, I think I'll scream.

This may be because we've reached the last week of Lent, the holiest week in the Christian calendar, during which cheating is definitely not an option. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, we've sentenced ourselves to a meat-less Lent, Sabbaths excluded)It may also have something to do with the fact that we ate every meal out this weekend, for the most part at fabulous seafood places.


Maryland Blue Crabs
Originally uploaded by .Angeli

Why on earth did we do this to ourselves? Why did we throw away our precious few meat days on fish? Well, coincidentally or not, some of D.C.'s best casual restaurants happen to be seafood joints and D's parents were visiting from the Midwest. We had sinfully good oysters and fried clams at Hank's Oyster Bar, hit up the Smithsonian (I'd forgotten that the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art is so freakin' impressive), overordered at Bistro Bis, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the tourists at Mt. Vernon (I abhor adolescent school trips. They're too busy with their own complicated social structures and taking photos of everything to pay attention to what they're looking at). Best of all, we had Sunday morning breakfast at the D.C. Fish Market.


FishMarket8.jpg
Originally uploaded by .Angeli

Now is time for me to wax poetical. The Fish Market is this dirty, mucky place on the wharf, buried just below a particularly hard-to-navigate piece of D.C. city planning and therefore impossible to find unless you're looking for it. On this particular morning, it was cold, wet, gray, and absolutely glorious. More fresh fish than you could shake a stick at, anything that's in season, all beauties. Crab, alive or already cooked. Whole fish, steaks, or fillets. Local fish like trout or flounder, or exotic swordfish and tuna and salmon that have been flown in. And if you're not shopping for dinner, there are hush puppies, stuffed crab, oysters shucked in front of you, and the best New England clam chowder I have ever had at Jessie's Cooked Seafood stand.


FishMarket36.jpg
Originally uploaded by .Angeli

Okay, so that's not saying much, since my experience with clam chowder is limited. However, D's Mom assures me that it's truly amazing and I've decided that she's a credible source, given that she entitled her last vacation "The Great New England Clam Tour" and drove around tasting clam chowder morning noon and night. Jessie's wife has been making clam chowder from the same recipe for over 20 years (so claims Jessie), and uses a clam-based stock instead of ubiquitous seafood stock (so say my tastebuds). Creamy, but not too creamy, with chewy fresh clams, it tastes like the sea. It is by far the best eating-out option in D.C. And at $5 for an extra-large serving, you can go back again, and again, and again. Next time you're in D.C., go!


But back to Holy Week. With 5 weeks of meat-less eating under our belts, what have we learned? Well, for one, that our diet depends on meat a lot more than we thought. Almost all soups and sauces call for chicken or beef stock for heartiness, and many of our favorite pasta or other 'one-pot' dishes call for small quantities sausage or some other meat product for flavor/texture. There's a big difference between dishes-not-revolving-around-a-meat-main and meatless dishes, which we didn't fully appreciate when we started this.

We've also come to realize (duh) that eating vegetarian in the winter sucks. In the summer, you just throw some fresh veggies together and sprinkle some lemon on and it's the best meal you've ever had. In the winter, when you crave warm, hearty meals, mediocre imported veggies simply aren't as satisfying. We've come to depend on carbs and beans a lot. I don't want to see another lentil soup until 2009. So, this excercise brought out the worst in both the veggies and in our culinary patience. It didn't help that we're both gratuitously stringent when it comes to recipe quality -- if it's not the best, we'd rather not eat it.

Yesterday evening, when we sat down to put together the week's shopping list (yay for having the car back and being able to do a mass shop!), it was pretty depressing to realize that we couldn't find anything vegetarian that we wanted to eat. We leafed through mountains of cookbooks and recipe clippings, but nothing that was in season seemed inspiring or exciting. As noted in a hilarious post by Laura at The Kitchen Illiterate blog, hearty vegetarian recipes have an unfortunate tendency to turn out as monochromatic mush. The irony is that, within a few weeks of returning to the world of the omnivores, it'll be spring and we'll be feasting on asparagus and peas and making dishes far too light for any sort of meat addition. Kind of funny, but also kind of depressing.

So has it been worth it?
From a religious perspective, absolutely. Oh man, do I ever feel like I'm the fasting penitent, waiting with anticipation for Easter. It's been a while since I've felt this appreciative that the Almighty made creation and pronounced it edible. From the ethical standpoint, I'm still inclined to increase our consumption of "happy" meat once we get through this -- yesterday, while driving to D's parents' hotel, we finally stumbled across the Dupont Farmers' Market and man is it big! But from the diet standpoint? I don't know. Maybe once this is over, I'll be more easily satisfied with meat stock in my soup or small quantities of sausage in my pasta... or maybe I'll be so sick of eating vegetarian that I'll cook nothing but meat-based dishes for months.

In the mean time, 4 more vegetarian dinners until Shabbat.

Lent without Meat, loosely defined

Since we won't be cooking today, it seems a good time to hold forth on a mildly schizophrenic topic in our household, namely that of Lent.

Lent, all torturous forty days of it, is a traditional time to make winter suck even more than you thought it could. Don't get me wrong, as an Episcopalian I'm part of a long line of folks who take to such self-disciplined displays of liturgical symbolism like a pig to mud. In the past, I've engaged in such hardcore (and short-lived) forms of piety that included 30min of daily prayer and a no-solid foods diet (soups and yogurt drinks only, that year involved a lot of cheating).

The thing is, though, D is not Episcopalian. If I had to peg him down, it would be a sort of Durkheimian Jew who adamantly repudiates all things ascetic. One day of fasting for Yom Kippur is one thing, forty days of it in the dreariest part of winter is quite another. So I was completely blown away when D took my suggestion of one meatless day a week and upped it to five.

The logic was that both Judaism and Christianity frown upon Sabbath fasting, so our household should clearly not restrain itself between Friday night and Monday morning. And since it's a Christian ritual, it seems only fair that we should follow the Jewish definition of meat, which conveniently does not include seafood. (Now would not be a good time to mention that clams are strictly not kosher under any circumstances, but hey, who's checking). So here we are, making a reasonably good faith effort to not eat meat during the workweek. Three weeks down, three to go.

We, or at least I, embarked on this exercise not so much for religious reasons, really, as for intellectual and ethical ones. When designing a meal, we tend to start with the meat and work our way out from there. In our defense, so do our main sources of inspiration, namely our cookbooks and our parents. But still, how much creativity would it require to think beyond that stand-by square 1 when assembling something as mundane as weeknight dinners for six weeks. Especially in the dead of winter, when it's not like veggies are at their most glamorous. Could we get along without missing meat? Would it inspire new cooking habits, reduce our grocery bills, introduce us to new favorite dishes? Would it allow us, both financially and mentally, to splurge on "happy" meat on the rarer occasions when we did cook it? I read Omnivore's Dilemma in the fall and we visited the "beyond organic" Polyface farm with their grass-fed beef and chicken. Would we be more enlightened, or simply have another reason to cry out TGIF?

We'll keep you posted on that. So far all I can say with certainty is that it's definitely making it more difficult to work through our weekend leftovers!