Dinner Bell

The Losses from Trade

2009-03-18T14:36:00.005-05:00

Advertised in today's New York Times food section on-line, as part of an almost certainly multi-million-dollar product launch, is a heart-breaking example of how resource-rich countries lose tremendous economic development opportunities. Stevia is an herb native to Paraguay that is naturally very sweet. It has been used for hundreds and hundreds of years by Paraguay’s indigenous population in infusions, mate, and simply to chew. A calorie-free sweetener can be extracted from this leaf and has been commonly used in Paraguay for at least a decade if not more. Imagine the potential this has. Replace ubiquitous, cancer-causing, synthesized sweeteners with a naturally occurring, calorie-free sweetener. This is the sort of breakthrough product that could form the base to develop an entire food industry and development strategy in the country that is blessed with such an herb.

Ah, but this is no good, what about high fructose corn syrup? What about saccharine and sucralose and aspartame? No, Stevia was not safe for consumption, according to the FDA. No matter that it has had regulatory approval in Japan for decades with no evidence of worse side effects than synthetic sweeteners. Americans must be kept safe from the ill effects of stevia. That is, until Cargill and Coca-Cola invest in the research, product definition and design, and marketing that can assure that the economic gains from this product be captured in the U.S. Then suddenly stevia is a miracle herb that no readers of the New York Times food section can miss out on and we get Truvia: "the first great-tasting, zero-calorie natural sweetener that's a miracle of nature, not chemistry."

In the meantime China has far surpassed Paraguay as the main grower of Stevia, having had three decades to consolidate its supply links to the Japanese and Korean markets. No Paraguayan Denomination of Controlled Origin; no development of innovative marketing, product definition, logistics, packaging, and branding capacities in Paraguayan companies; no direct relationships between stevia producers and processors in Paraguay and the enormous international food processing industry that will jump all over Truvia to sweeten everything from that Odewalla sludge that gives professional women their healthy edge to the super-gulps at 7-eleven that give other women their healthy bottoms; no mention of Paraguay at all in Truvia's promotional activities.

As Paraguay yet again embraces its role as a primary product exporter, the government’s export promotion agency and ministry of commerce celebrate stevia's regulatory approval in the U.S., laud Coke and Cargill's 'research and development' of Truvia, and congratulate themselves for 'accessing' an enormous market that will soon open up and produce the latest in two centuries of successive export booms that promise to save Paraguay's ever-struggling "pequeños productores" from their perpetual underdevelopment.

Obviously, exploiting the opportunities afforded by Stevia to their fullest potential would require investment, research, development, planning, and coordination that far outstrip the capacities of any of the public or private sector institutions that currently exist in Paraguay. But that is the point. Instead of using this resource as a 'hook' to attract from abroad the resources necessary to develop themselves and upgrade their capacities, these organizations have thrown themselves entirely into the arms of foreign investors and the multinational monopolies supported by US regulatory regimes. What a waste.

Breaking the food bank

2008-09-18T19:13:00.003-05:00

I apparently had four more noteworthy meals before I left Paraguay. I'm afraid that I didn't enjoy them enough, because since I've gotten back to the U.S.--I've got to admit--I've suffered some pretty sever sticker shock: $2.50 for a bunch of organic cilantro at whole food is just absurd (granted it was whole foods, but still). In Paraguay, an equivalent bunch of organic cilantro would cost 20 cents. Food prices really seem to have gone noticeably up since I have been gone. I spent more than five dollars on a single heirloom tomato! It's amazing how much it costs to feed yourself these days, and I realized how much I've been taking my time in Paraguay for granted. It is easy to complain or lament the lack of certain things, like sweet peas or good avocados. But little did I realize that, when I got back to the U.S., I wouldn't even be able to afford an avocado (I've seen them selling for $2.00-2.50)! I've vowed to better appreciate all of the fresh, organic, and affordable produce that is available in Paraguay. Part of it is, of course, the fact that my dollars are worth more than guaraníes (though that advantage seems to be decreasing daily) and that even my meager graduate student income puts me toward the upper end of the income distribution. Still, I'm curious if you compared the cost of food and produce, adjusting for purchasing power, whether food would still not be cheaper in Paraguay. Any economists out there interested in checking this out for me? It's definitely worth knowing, because this is what Paraguayans will give up if they let the countryside get bulldozed and covered by soybean plantations. At any rate, I decided we better eat up while we are in Paraguay, because we might be on a diet of beans and rice when we get back to the U.S.

1. Salad of lima beans, sweet corn, radish, and roasted red pepper with pesto. Notice the nasturtium garnish. This was really a delicious and fresh salad, and I found corn that is actually sweet (not starchy) at the supermarket!
2. Dduk with kim chi octopus and crab stix. I used some surumi sticks that are meant for sushi in this korean inspired seafood soup. It was very good and spicy.
3. Pork soup with mung bean noodles and cilantro. I used the last bit of ecoagro pork in this soup. I boiled the bones with the meat left on it with lemon grass, ginger, garlic, and some leek scraps and pho spices for the broth. I added fish sauce and served it with cilantro and basil. However, we decided that it's time to let this basil plant go to seed, because it's getting to that bitter, woody stage that always makes me think the plant is taking its revenge on us for delaying its reproduction by manufacturing lethal, bitter poisons to kill us.
4. Mixed green salad, and cheese plate. This was made with produce from the agroshopping. A new friend, fellow fulbright scholar, and researcher of agricultural associations was visiting Paraguay from Brazil and wanted to check out the agroshopping. I was more than happy to oblige, and while we didn't have a chance to put together an elaborate meal, the weather and the opportunity was perfect for a really fresh salad and a cheese bored. I tore up some purple basil in this salad, along with arugula and two kinds of lettuce, green onion, and cherry tomatoes and dressed it with a classic vinaigrette. The cheese plate was all local cheeses and included a blue cheese, a buttery cow's-milk with black pepper, and a third on I can't remember the name of (I need to start writing these down!) but was a strong, ripened cow's-milk cheese. All three were pretty good. The blue cheese (and I'm not usually a big fan) was very creamy and pleasant flavored. The salami was also very good.

The Second Agrarian Divide?

2008-09-10T21:59:00.006-05:00

It's amazing and in some ways puzzling to me to watch how food markets are developing in the U.S. It seems like more and more energy is being put into reconstructing the diversity, quality, and geography of traditional food systems and that there is more and more interest in consuming local produce and learning (or relearning) to consume in post-industrial (pre-industrial?) ways. Today, there were two New York times articles that inspired me to write something. One about the local wheat movement, challenging the idea that wheat can't be grown in places like New York State and that wheat ought to be a flavorless, uniform, and consistent commodity. There is a whole package of self reinforcing knowledge that must be recovered together to make such a thing possible: what varieties of wheat grow well where and in what seasons; what those variates of wheat are best used for (pasta, bread, pastries, cakes); how to bake responsively to the variable qualities of flour ground from these different wheats (to adjust the flavors and moisture instinctively to get a good result from different flours); how to enjoy and consume baked goods that aren't just white starches but where wheat and its flavors are an actual player.

Times reporter Indrani Sen writes: "It might take a while to appreciate high-quality, small-batch flours after a lifetime of eating food made with mass-produced flour. Their musky fragrances are often more pronounced, and variations in taste and texture bring a new range of complexity to baked goods, making supermarket flour seem one dimensional by comparison."

I've often thought that, in addition to ecological ways of producing food--i.e. farming methods that mimic ecological processes so that food production is environmentally sound and sustainable--there are also ecological ways of consuming food that mirror or parallel the process of growing food. After all, food is made up of living things, which are limited by their nature and their relationship to the seasons, the soil, the weather, and their relationship to other living things. I think one of the reasons that I love cooking and that I am so fascinated by the world's different cuisines is because of all of the almost ecological knowledge encoded into traditional cooking. Obviously, seasonal eating and the knowledge to make the most out of each season's products is a big piece of this. But it goes well beyond knowing what is in season and knowing what to do and how to respond to the varying qualities of the living things produced by a farm and how to break down and recombine the different components of farm products to make the most of them. French recipes, so I hear, used to stipulate whether winter or spring eggs were to be used, because of their different properties (I might have gotten the seasons wrong, but you get the point). When a cow is killed, it's different parts all have different uses, from the roasting parts, to the soup bones, to the viscera which require special care and treatment to be palatable and occasionally even delicious.

All this knowledge, and then the actual physical investments needed to grow, mill, store, and transport wheat at the local level, must be recovered and put in place to make anything like a market for local wheat possible. And apparently, there is enough interest and will to make this happen. It's bizarre to me, because all of this infrastructure and knowledge existed in the U.S. before it was wiped out by industrial ways of producing and eating and by the subsidies that have upheld and expanded this system in the name of development and progress. Until the 1960s, the Midwest was populated by hundreds of local breweries that produced a vast variety of beers with the knowledge of German, Czech, and Polish immigrants. Midwestern small batch brewing was wiped out by bud light and other tasteless brews only to be later resurrected in the 'snobbish' microbrew craze on the coasts and in cities like Portland, OR. It turns out that people--at least those with economic means--really value the way we used to produce and eat--or at least the way they imagine we used to produce and eat.

What's more puzzling, is that this knowledge and this infrastructure exists (however precariously) in developing countries like Paraguay. Still, rather than strengthening, developing, and making more viable these traditional food systems, most proposed responses to the current global food crisis involve the further industrialization of agriculture. It seems to me that this creates a food supply that people consume not because they demand it or because it is nutritious, but because its empty calories are so cheap that the diversity of qualities people actually value cannot possibly compete. Moreover, by further submitting the food supply to the very vulnerabilities of energy and input intensity that have created this crisis, such a response seems to only postpone an inevitable adjustment toward more sustainable way of producing and eating while leaving an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, environmental destruction, and culinary barrenness in its wake.

The other article was only slightly related, but was about how supermarket chains are opening smaller stores that focus on fresh food and convenience, upending "a long-running trend in the grocery business: building ever-larger stores in the belief that consumers want choice above all." Audre Martin writes: " Of course, small grocery stores have been around forever, and some old-time neighborhood markets still exist. Meanwhile, a handful of specialty retailers have proved that shoppers will flock to smaller stores if they are offered a novel experience." I've also always puzzled at why anyone shops exclusively at huge supermarkets. It strikes me as outright irrational. Produce is much more expensive, for example, at the supermarket near my old apartment in Chicago, than it is at the nearly equidistant Vietnamese small grocers on Argyle street. I never understood why Chicago neighborhoods are not populated by grocers of this sort rather than by Jewel. But it turns out, people like the convenience and quality of a small store for quick shopping trips, and now supermarket companies like Tesco have discovered this and will be the ones to profit from it.

This apparent turning back happens at a time when the monopoly of agribusiness over the food supply and the trade of food has reached alarming levels. From Monsanto's patenting of plant genetic material and the legal system's support for the privatization of life to Walmart's tremendous share in the supermarket industry, private companies have never had so much power to impose their values and profit motive on the way we eat and the way we produce our food. This has led to an illusion of diversity and a reality of stark agricultural and gastronomic monotony.

[This picture is just outside the largest fragment of Atlantic Forest left in Paraguay; the emptiness of the cleared forest and the tree stumps that dot some of the landscape give eerie testament to the extent and the newness of the destruction]

It's like food production and consumption is being pushed or pulled in opposite directions and a highly developed dualism is arising that parallels the increasing inequality of income, education, and health in the U.S. I often wonder how this could possibly play out. Can these two food systems coexist, and if so, for how long? What tensions does this imply for Americans, some of whom will increasingly get their chicken from farmer Phil and others from Phillip Morris?

Porky Paraguay

2008-09-02T21:12:00.008-05:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I discovered an excellent source of pork and other wonderful small-farmer produce. It is ecoagro, a marketing firm for small farmers involved in the agroecology development project of Altervida, a Paraguayan environmental NGO. If you sign up, they send you a weekly product list and you can place your order by email or by phone. They have all sorts of vegetables and herbs, citrus fruits and papaya, and even some dried goods like cornmeal sugar, brown sugar, yerba mate, beans, and animal products like Paraguayan cheese, pork, and I suspect/hope they sometimes have chicken and eggs. The quality is very high and the quantity very generous (the cilantro bunches were huge), and it is not any more expensive than the supermarket. It's all organic and from small farmers, and if you order more than 50.000, they have free delivery. I really recommend this service for anyone in Asuncion. There is virtually no draw back, except perhaps that you will still need to go to the supermarket once in a while. Here is some of the stuff I made from this produce:

1. Hummus, avocado, radish, and pita. This actually was made with stuff from the agrofair. After fussing so much about how bad the avocados are in Paraguay, we actually had a run of pretty decent ones. Still less buttery and nutty than good old Hass, but much better than the weird watery ones we had been getting. The food processor my parents got me (in addition to the wok) has also made a terrific addition to my kitchen. Making hummus from garbanzos and sesame seeds is pretty quick work now
2. Olive flat bread with caprese salad. Nearly a year after planting the smuggled seeds, our nasturtiums finally bloomed. Expect to see them garnishing everything I eat for a while.
3. Fried tofu with miso sauce, and a salad of watercress, avocado, heart of palm and radish. We had tofu like this at a Japanese restaurant in Asuncion and after finding firm Japanese-style tofu at a Korean store near the municipal market, I wanted to try to recreate it. It turned out pretty good, and even better the second time (below).
4. Arugula salad with pecan dressing. At the agroshopping they had whole (shell-on) pecans, grown in paraguay, and sold pretty cheap. While I never realized what a pain in the ass it is to shell pecans, I had never enjoyed them so much either. Generally, I feel that pecans are inferior to most nuts--the walnut, almond, cashew, hazelnut, maybe even the peanut--but these were really delicious and sweet. I bought them because David always talks about his grandfather's pecan tree in Alabama, but I think I ended up enjoying them more than he did (maybe because I made him do the shelling). This arugula salad, which I dressed with pecans that I smashed in the mortar with raw garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice and topped with shaved sardo cheese was really delicious. 5. Angel hair pasta with shimeji mushrooms, roasted red pepper, and bacon. I sauteed these mushrooms from the agroshopping (I guess this post was actually mostly about an earlier trip to the agroshopping not ecoagro's delivery service) with some bacon, onion, and garlic, deglazed with some sherry, and added a container of frozen duck stock that I had. I reduced this down added some roasted red pepper and finished the sauce off with a good quantity of butter, grated cheese and chopped parsley. This was awesome.
6. Here began three meals with the ecoagro pork: Pork with dduk, kimchee and tofu. As mentioned, we found a Korean store near the market where we bought tofu, and also kimchee and little 'coins' made of glutinous rice. We had eaten something very similar to this near our apartment in somerville, and I had always wanted to reproduce it. It turned out pretty well.
7. Fried tofu with miso and beet greens; Pork with cilantro. The beet greens were also from the tops of the beets we got from ecoagro. They were excellent with the tofu and miso, very sweet and flavorful. The pork with cilantro was actually also an attempt to reproduce a dish we'd sometimes get from a chinese takeout place in somerville. You wouldn't think that stir frying cilantro like greens would work very well, but it is delicious. It was hard to get good light on this picture, but I wanted to include it because the meal turned out so good.
8. Penne and Pork with fennel, beet greens, and pecan olive pesto. This was probably the best of the meals here. The olives, ricotta cheese, and pecans made a rich and meaty pesto that stood up well to the pork, and the sweetness of the beat greens and fennel contrasted well with the saltiness of the pesto.

Wok's New, Pussycat?

2008-08-28T13:32:00.008-05:00

So, as I mentioned, my parents made me the super-awesomely useful gift of a wok when they were in Paraguay. It's kind of weird that I've never had a wok before, because they are extremely practical cooking tools, and the variety of Asian-inspired dishes you can easily and deliciously prepare in them are also extremely practical. It's even more surprising given how often I clumsily crammed way more ingredients than comfortably fit into my medium sauté pan in boston for stir frying or to dress pasta, cursing the inadequate size of my only available cooking vessel. As it turns out, an identical cuisinart medium sauté pan was one of my only cooking vessel for the first 8 months or so in Paraguay as well. So, when I got the wok, I immediately went about seasoning it, and then I went a little wok crazy:

1. First, I tried to make smoky hot chicken stir-fried with dried red chillies and green garlic chives. I saw this on a show by an Australian chef and chinese cooking-show host, Kylie Kwong, that the 'People and Arts' channel shows down here on cable. I really like her and her show (which is unusual because food show hosts usually grate on me--perhaps it's my envy of their food super-stardom). Perhaps it was my inexperience with the wok, but this was kind of dissapointing. It wasn't bad, kind of lighter and more herbal tasting than I was craving that day--it definitely did not turn out all caramelized and beautifully browned and smoky like hers. At any rate, I think that my skills have really improved as I've used my wok more and more and maybe I should try this again. The better my results have gotten, though, the more I feel compelled to up my game. I am totally set on buying a pit stove when I get back to Boston for good next year. They sell them at the Taiwanese grocery where I bought the wok in Paraguay for only $25-$50. Hopefully they are not much more in Boston's china town (and hopefully it's not a fire-code violation or anything). It's basically bowl-shaped iron burner you connect directly to a gas tank (like a barbecue) and it lets you get the wok much, much hotter and apparently lends food a special flavor that only the 'breath of the wok' can give. I'm sure it would also cut down even more on the cooking time.

2. My second attempt was soy braised baby bock choi with sausage. They sell little dried pork sausages at the agroshopping that I think make a pretty good stand in for chinese sausage.
3. These sausages were especially good in what I would consider my first wok success: dried sausage fried rice. I don't remember any more, but I think there may have actually been shrimp in there too, in addition to eggs, beansprouts, and green onion.

4. This was kind of the tail end of the Persimmon season. We still get them at the supermarket sometimes, but they are all mushy and kind of wierdly Styrofoamy (like winter tomatoes) now.

5. Not realizing the season was over, I bought way too many not very good persimmons that sat in the fridge forever. Finally, I made this persimmon cake from them, where they worked very well. My grandmother devoured the majority of it.

6. I didn't use the wok for this Tom Ka Gai (Thai coconut chicken soup), but it did continue with the asian theme. It used up a lot of stuff we had, including some coconuts that were lying around (they don't always have them at the supermarket and so whenever they do I buy them just in case), some chicken legs and thighs that were in the freezer, and baby corn I bought on a wok-inspired whim. It may surprise you, but Paraguay actually produces a lot of lemon grass. It is a different variety than the southeast asian one, called cedrón kapi'i here, but shares many of the essential oils and the same flavor profile. The annoying part, for me, is that it is only used in tea here and not to cook with, so mostly you can only get the thin blades from the top of the plant and none of the lower, tougher stem that you use in cooking. So every time I'm in the market I examine all of the cedrón and try to get some of the coveted stem. I've had some luck a few times, like when I made this soup. But my hunt is finally over because just this week we planted two plants in our own herb garden.

7. A few times when I've been out in the field I've had really fantastic interviews, with farmers that are really enthusiastic about organic farming and their success with it. These farmers are not only extremely generous with their time and information, but sometimes even with their produce. I'm sorry I didn't get a good picture in the field, but the boiled mandioca here was from one of those farmers who brought out two very thick roots to show me how using green manure had really increased his yields. In his formerly nutrient poorer soil, he had only produced thin, fragile roots for him and his family to eat. Seeing how impressed I was, he offered the roots as a gift. The cheese here, queso paraguay, a crucial and unsubstitutable ingredient in traditional Paraguayan cooking, is also from a sugar-cane farmer whose wife makes cheese from their family's cows (though I had to purchase this one, it's a little scarcer than mandioca), and who, incidentally host a very nice peace corps volunteer with whom I had a long chat about the community.
8. These ingredients found their way into a very traditional dish of mandi'o chyryry, or fried mandioca with eggs, cheese, ham, and onion, cooked in a very untraditional wok. I promise a recipe for this and other paraguayan specialties will eventually make it on here.
9.We had a tenderloin festival a while back when I saw an Argentine cooking show where they were preparing one for beef carpaccio. I went to the butcher down the street and asked for their freshest beef tenderloin, explaining that I intended to eat it raw. He brought out a plastic-wrapped tube from the freezer, which had a decent color, but didn't really convince me. After getting some help to clean it up from youtube, it looked much better, but I chickened out in the end and, after freezing the cleaned tenderloin, I very quickly seared the outside on a cast iron pan before slicing it. Here it is served up with arugula, cherry tomatoes, capers, a lemon vinagrette, and spicy mayonaise. It was truly delicious, and aparently completely safe.
10. The next day we had another round of tenderloin, this time (slightly less) quickly seared, marinated in a mixture of soy, sugar, and sherry (I had no mirin--japanese cookign wine) and served cold with pickled onion, and chili-daikon relish. This is one of David's absolute favorite dishes. It is really delicious, flavorful, and rich, without being at all heavy.
11. Out of the leftover tenderloin and some cabbage, I threw together a quick beef teriyaki in the wok. In the back is a avocado, arrugula, and cherry tomato salad.

12. Also using the wok, I made some braised red cabbage, with lardons, orange peel, and green apple, to serve alongside the left over sundried tomato and mascarpone ravioli that had been in the freezer. This was a really excellent wintery meal for the cold weather we were having.

13. Finally, I made some orange pork, hoping to redeem my earlier attempt at smoky chile chicken. This was a little better, though the pork was a really horrible, barely edible quality. I won't be buying pork from the supermarket any more. But as future posts will attest, I have found an excellent source of really fresh organic pork grown buy small-holders and made some good pork dinners since. Notice the new rice bowls in this picture too. We were eating so much asian food that we decided it was worth getting some bowls for rice. We still need noodle bowls, but I haven't found quite the right size and shape yet.
Their is a colony of Japanese immigrants in the south of Paraguay, near Encarnacion, that grows Japanese-style, short-grain rice that is pretty good. It's texture is a little mushier than the real Japanese stuff, but it has a really good clean flavor and has been indispensable to making all of these asian-inspired dishes. I buy it at the Taiwanese grocery near the main public market in Asuncion.

Omnivore's Hundred

2008-08-25T19:12:00.006-05:00

So, a British food blogger at Very Good Taste came up with an interesting game. He made a list of 100 items he thought every omnivore should try at least once, asked people to post it on their blog, bold the items they had tried, cross out the items they wouldn't consider trying, and link the results to his blog. While a lot of the choices would definitely make my 100, some of them definitely would not and strike me either as rather odd choices or things that I can't imagine anyone who is even remotely fond of eating wouldn't have tried already and eaten many times (e.g. catfish, poleta, calemari). Maybe I'll make my own list later. But it is a fun game, and you'll probably learn stuff about my by reading it. I can't figure out how to do strike-through on blogger, so I've put asterisks around the items I wouldn't consider trying, and I've annotated my list as I thought interesting. A quick count yields 26 items that I have not tried, and only three that I wouldn't consider trying, and in reality I probably would in certain circumstances. Chocolate and Zucchini has linked to wikipedia for the more obscure entries if you want more explanation.
At any rate, here it goes.

1. Venison (I would actually replace this with elk on my 100. I had elk once in vermont and once in Montreal and both times it was really delicious)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (i've noticed these a lot on T.V. lately, and apparently producers think these are some form of scrambled eggs. They are actually fried eggs with a tomato or chile sauce. They are ok, but not great I much prefer a breakfast taco or quesadilla).
4. Steak tartare (not yet, but I'm now very fond of beef carpaccio, so I'm willing to give it a shot)
5. Crocodile (I've had Aligator but not croc)
6. Black pudding (delicious as part of a hangover-curing, artery-clogging irish breakfast; much more commenly known as morcilla, or blood sausage, some of David and my favorite parrillada fare)
7. Cheese fondue (I've had it in Switzerland!/if I see one more reference to this as dated or a blast for the '70s past I am really going to kill someone)
8. Carp (Better than you'd think. Whole fried carp chinese style is really good)
9. Borscht (I prefer the polish style, clear borscht with little tortellini-like dumplings). I've been dreaming of it since I went to a Polish restaurant near my friends apartment in Brooklyn a couple years ago. In fact, I found a recipe a few days ago and was going to try it out)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho (anyone who reads this blog can attest to my obsession)
13. PB&J sandwich (not a big fan)
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses (a french, washed-rind cows-milk cheese. I picked some up from Copone's once. If I recall it was pretty could, kind of caramely, but would definately not make my top 100 in the cheese category)
17. Black truffle (I don't know if it was just too subtle or a poor execution, but truffles did not make a big impression on me)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (not a big fan of the fruit wines I've had)
19. Steamed pork buns (I love these and miss them so much that I'm considering trying my hand at them)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (someday I will have a garden full of these)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (mostly in paté; I still want to try an honest to goodness dish made of foie gras)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (It's not bad, actually)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (I guess I would try this, but I don't see much point)
27. Dulce de leche (I come from the land of Dulce de Leche--speaking of which, I'm really tired of Argentina getting sole credit for lots of things that are also typical of paraguay: yerba mate (it's called ilex paraguayensis for pete's sake), empanadas, and if that weren't enough they even steal credit for things that are unambiguously Paraguayan like chipa)
28. Oysters (I love them)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (aparently an Italian fondue-like dish)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (I don't really think the sourdough bowl in necessary)
33. Salted lassi (I got this one by mistake once, and I got to say, I thought it was disgusting)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (I've had them each separately (sorry mom) does that count?_
37. Clotted cream tea (Also my favorite. Tealuxe in Boston has great crumpets with clotted cream and strawberry jam and a fantastic tea selection)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O ( i'd really rather have the vodka straight)
39. Gumbo ( I really hate okra, even in gumbo)
40. Oxtail (very common on my dinner table growing up. I love it in puchero and in pasta sauce)
41. Curried goat (I love goat curry, one reason for my secret plan to become a goat farmer)
42. Whole insects (I'd try them, I guess, but I wouldn't go out of my way to)
43. Phaal (apparently the hottest curry dish you can order at an indian restaurant. I know what I'm getting next time I visit Devon Ave. in Chicago)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (there is a funny story about this and our unexpectedly large dinner bill the first week we were in Paraguay a year ago).
46. *Fugu* (this is that Japanese pufferfish dish. I can't imagine it's delicious enough to be worth even a small risk of death)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (I've recently discovered that eel is common in rural Paraguay, and on my last stint of field work had many a bowl of deliriously delicious eel soup)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (They really are quite good)
50. Sea urchin (I had some at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo)
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (very sour)
53. Abalone ( I don't believe I've had any)
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (But I've actually been on a fast-food boycott since I saw supersize me. It has been almost five years since I've had anything from an unambigously fast-food chain ('casual dining' such as Chile's not included)--my mom beats me though. Once when I was like in third grade she had a terrible hamburger at the Mcdonald's in the Field Museum in Chicago and vowed she would never eat fast food again. We all thought she was crazy (really), but it has been probably 20 years since she has eaten anything from a fast food restaurant besides KFC--my parents are loco for KFC, but even that they only have like once a year).
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (I hate gin, and until several years ago, I didn't like olives either)
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. *Poutine* (This is a quebequeois specialty of french fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy; it's not so much that I wouldn't consider trying this; i just can't imagine that I'd enjoy it that much)
60. Carob chips (I really don't know how this made the list. Unless your allergic to chocolate, there is no point)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (They come grilled a lot in Paraguay as molleja. I used to hate them, but I can stomach them now)
63. Kaolin (this is a kind of clay; I certainly wouldn't object to trying it, but would probably only do so in conjunction with some highly alkaline food like acorns or something that required its neutralizing properties).
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (I'm definitely intrigued after all the press this stinky southeast asian fruit has recieved)
66. Frogs’ legs (I can't remember if I've ever had these; if I did, they didn't make a big impression)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (I've had all of these, in fact, and, as long as the cinnemon is kept far, far away from them, I love these kinds of fried pastries).
68. Haggis (why not?)
69. Fried plantain (I got a taste for these when I was in Haiti for a summer teaching music)
70. *Chitterlings, or andouillette* (I just know that I wouldn't like these. I have such a history of disappointing experience with cow entrails that I don't really want to explore the possibilities of porcine viscera)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (I don't believe I've had them together)
73. Louche absinthe (not yet, but it's on my list)
74. Gjetost, or brunost (If someone offered, I would definitely try this Swedish whey cheese. But, odd-looking as it is, I don't think I'd try it on my own)
75. Roadkill (do people actually eat this? really? I thought that was a mean-spirited, classist joke. I guess it depends on the circumstances though)
76. Baijiu (an extremely potent, apparently fowl-tasting chinese liquor distilled from sorghum. I'm not opposed, but I'm a little past wild nights of drunkenness (usually)).
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (again, not sure how this made the list)
78. Snail (see No. 89 'Horse')
79. Lapsang souchong (a pine-smoked, chinese tea. I tried some at tea-luxe. It is very smoky, good for crisp weather)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky (we just found some of these chocolote-covered cookie sticks at a Korean store in Asuncion)
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (someday . . .)
85. Kobe beef (not yet, but some japanese restaurants in asuncion advertise kobe-style beef)
86. Hare (I've had rabit, and like it a lot, but I've never had an honest-to-goodness wild hare)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (you'll notice in my future posts that nasturtium garnishes will become ubiquitous as our plants FINALLY started to bloom)
89. Horse (When I was in Switzerland. Me and a chinese-american friend tried to explain to our bemused Swiss hosts how it was strange and a little uncomfortable for Americans to eat Horse. However, it was our turn for bemusement when the Swiss shrieked "You guys eat that?" in disgust when we decided to order to the snails.
90. Criollo chocolate (not sure what this is)
91. Spam (It really doesn't taste bad, but I don't think this is a can't miss. It's pretty much represents all that is wrong with the food industry)
92. Soft shell crab (I think soft-shell crabs are kind of insect-like, and disturbing. With all the other delicious crabs out there, I'd leave this one off the list).
93. Rose harissa (I've had harissa but not Rose Harissa. But if it is made with rosewater, I probably wouldn't like it. They make meringue with rose water here, and I think it makes everything taste like old ladies' makeup)
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox (I think I blogged about this, but I'm always amazed by how much better this is in New York)
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Move Over Chicago, A Cambridge Boy's in Town

2008-08-23T19:59:00.005-05:00

An article I wrote and published at upsidedownworld, a Latin American news website.

Belated blogging

2008-06-13T21:40:00.012-05:00

Well . . . it's certainly been a long time. I had an intense couple months of fieldwork, which was followed by an intensive month of writing and my first academic conference. All this went well, but I'm afraid let this blog slide. While I haven't been blogging in the last months, I have not stopped cooking, and think I'll just spend the next few posts catching you all up on what I've been eating. The last post that I had planned is actually from when my parents were visiting Paraguay. We did a lot of cooking and eating, not unlike when they would visit me in Boston.

1. One of Asunción's must visit restaurants is Bar San Roque. It is actually Asuncion's oldest restaurant and has been open more than 100 years. We (re)discovered it when I was little and my sister was going through a phase of obsessively repeating words she thought sounded cool. We were deciding where to go for dinner, someone had suggested Bar San Roque, and Alice started an endless chant of "Bar San Roque, Bar San Roque . . . " until my parents relented. While she didn't actually want to go there, we have her craziness to thank for discovering one of our favorite restaurants in the whole world. The menu has some German influence, but San Roque has some of the best traditional Paraguayan food in Asuncion (of course the best traditional food is home cooked and in the countryside). Pictured here are the only things that a first time visitor should even consider ordering: Asado a la olla ( beef short ribs that have been boiled and then browned in there own rendered fat), and Bife Koguã (steaks cooked in a sauce with tomatoes, green and red peppers, onions, and cilantro, topped off with poached eggs). They make a good chipa guazú (a sort of corn and cheese soufflé), milanesa de surubí (breaded fried fillets of a delicious local river fish), and bife de lomito con cebollas (pan-grilled tenderloin with grilled onions). If you make it to Bar San Roque, you should definitely not pass up a style of Pilsen Chopp (draft of the excellent local pilsner-style beer). For some reason, the beer taste better here than anywhere else in town (ask for a manija grande de chopp).

2. We also went to a german festival at the local German club. After living in northeast Wisconsin for four years during college, I can't say I was impressed with the food. But it was cool to see them making split pea soup in these huge cauldrons.

3. One night when we didn't feel like going out I made a quick lima bean soup. I browned some bacon and a left over pork bone I had in the freezer (I believe it was left over from the tofu with pork and long beans), added some diced turnips and potatoes, onions and garlic, and deglazed with some sherry, covered with water and closed the pressure cooker. After maybe 15 minutes i added the fresh (but starchy paraguayan) lima beans, and softened them for another 15 minutes. I believe the green was fresh thyme. It was really delicious

4. I also had some chicken livers left over from something, and had been wanting to make chopped liver since I saw Ina Garten make it. I thought it was really good, but extremely rich. It was also one of the first meals I prepared with the awesome gift my parents gifted me: a food processor. I'll write more about the processor later, but I've got to say, it's been really useful. I've never been a food processor person, since until now I haven't undertaken many cooking tasks that a blender can't handle. But since I'm making so much from scratch here (e.g. tahini, falafel) it has come in really handy.
5. A different night we used purchases from the agroshopping and the mercado 4 (the largest public market in Asuncion) to make Surubí en papillote, with miso and shimeji mushrooms. Next to the fish is my mothers excellent asparagus risotto. Cooking fish in parchment paper is easy and delicious, and the result is light and very flavorful. I believe in addition to miso, mushrooms, and fish, these parchments had bean sprouts, carrots, green onion, ginger, pepper, and the white wine pictured here. I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the wine, but I would give it my highest recommendation. This particular bottle had sat for who knows how many years in probably the worst place imaginable for wine storage: above the refrigerator in the kitchen, where the heat irregularly ejected by the fridge and the stove did its best to spoil it. Then, it was moved outdoors and stored alternatively next to the stove and the grill for the better part of this year. By the time we actually opened it, the cork was as dry and crumbly, and we opened it only for lack of anything else to drink. Despite having been through wine hell, it was actually pretty good. A little too sweet, perhaps, but not bad.
6. The best meal we had was sun-dried tomato and mascarpone ravioli with tomato braised shortribs and sausages. I made the filling out of ground sun-dried tomatoes, mascarpone and sardo cheese, roasted red pepper, and rosemary. My mother made the sauce (I never get it to turn out as good) and probably the best pasta I've ever had in my life. The ravioli turned out perfect, they were pillowy and light with just the right texture.
7. The timing of my parents visit coincided with my Birthday. We had a big barbeque with all my relatives, and David made this really beautiful and excellent cake for me. It was just the kind of cake I like, not too sweet. He's actually much better at baking than I am.
8.Here is a very traditional lunch of puchero con bori bori. I promise that I am still working on a whole series of posts that will turn dinner bell into the go-to website for Paraguayan recipes, but until then, I'll post pictures and descriptions of some of the outstanding meals we have. It's actually kind of ironic. I've always hated when I'm looking for a really obscure recipe and I find a website that describes, pictures, or otherwise mentions some dish but gives no effort a providing a recipe. Now I am guilty of it myself. But I've decided this website and a potential Paraguayan cookbook are going to be my side project while I do my Fulbright year here. At any rate, puchero (in Paraguay) is basically a beef bone soup (made with neck bones, oxtail, and or short ribs) with boiled vegetables (at home we usually had carrots, potatoes, squash, and cabbage). Here you can see some of the meet and boiled vegetables served with a watercress salad (a traditional accompaniment) and the broth served with bori bori, which are dumplings made from cornmeal and cheese.
9. Another fruit that was in season around this time was "grosella" (to the right in the picture) It took me a while to figure out what this was. In the stands of the supermarket and farmers market they always looked really pretty, and I had tried and liked grosella juice before. But I couldn't imagine what it was or how it was used. But, guessing it would be juicy and taste sort of like a berry, I went ahead and bought some, assuming that I could identify on the internet. but when I examined and sampled one, I discovered that it was basically a flower bud and tasted as much, dry and kind of sour. Furthermore, my internet sleuthing was thwarted by the fact that "grosella" actually means current in standard Spanish and I couldn't find anything that seemed close to what I purchased. Finally, on a website talking about an agricultural diversification development project in Paraguay I found the scientific name, did a second search for that, and discovered that the fruit in question was actually quite familiar to me. It was the calyx of the roselle flower most commonly used to make the Mexican refreshment agua de jamaica, sometimes served hot as "hibiscus tea" in the U.S.
I knew that it was a member of the hibiscus family, but having only seen the flowers dried, I imagined that they looked more like this.
At any rate, I ended up substituting the hibiscus flowers for the cranberries in a recipe for cranberry sauce with kumquats (which were also in season and abundant). I think the sauce turned out ok, and it was meant to be served with

9. Roast ducks. But I think these particular ducks had sat in our grocer's freezer for a bit too long. While the duck itself tasted fine, the sauce definitely tasted 'off' after I added the duck pan drippings that had been de-glazed with some red wine. After having gone through all the trouble of identifying the roselle flowers and then making the sauce, I was kind of annoyed--I think especially because this was mine and my mom's birthday lunch. But then, I'm not sure if I like kumquats either. They seem like such a good citrusy idea, but in reallity, they are all pith and are kind of bitter. Maybe I just needed to add a lot more sugar. The nurse who comes to help take care of my grandmother nearly fainted when we told her how much the ducks cost, and she said she could get us live ones for much cheaper next time. I'll probably take her up on it.

El hormiguero del mundo

2008-05-09T20:15:00.005-05:00

David and I are making a second attempt to use our limited garden space productively. Of the the 20-some heirloom tomato and poblano pepper seeds we planted, only one plant survived to reach maturity, and--as mentioned earlier--it produced only two fruits before it was defeated by illness. Of the dozen nasturtium seeds we planted, only two germinated and ants killed one of these. The other plant has grown large, but to date has produced only three flowers. I'm hoping we'll have more luck with our winter crop. We ripped up a small section of grass (to my mother's temp0rary horror) to plant a couple of rows of garden peas. The results were immediately promising, as they beat their 8-10 day germination time by 5-6 days. But no sooner had they reached two inches than those damned leaf cutter ants marched in and began decapitating our little seedlings. So far they have only gotten to three or four of them, but there is no stopping them if their set on ruining our plot. The most infuriating part is that they seem to cut the pea sprouts down just for spite. They just leave the leaves to rot next to the decapitated stem. They just can't stand to see something growing, and these mycoculturalists of the insect world have quickly gone from objects of amazement and wonder to objects of intense hatred. But I'm still hoping they will spare my peas. I am really excited to introduce my family to the wonders of fresh sweet peas, and to make at least a few meals where I don't have to be worried about the treason of Paraguay's starch peas. In the meantime, we have been enjoying some seasonal fruits and vegetables from the supermarket in our meals.

1. Heirloom Tomato Salad with China Rose Radishes and Avocado. This salad would have been amazing, had it not been for the avocado. Add avocado to the list of produce of puzzlingly inferior quality in paraguay (currently populated by peas and tomatoes). This had to be the worst avocado of my life. Avocados here tend to be flavorless and watery, but this one had a distinct foul bitterness and a vague rancid nut flavor. It was just horrible and enough to make me give up on Paraguayan avocados. But I keep buying them, because everytime I go to the supermarket they look slightly different in shape, color, and texture. Sometimes completely spherical, sometimes longer and recently even pear shaped, sometimes lighter green sometimes darker, sometimes smooth, sometimes rougher. It's maddening because each time I see a new shape I think, "this is it; this is the one," only to be dissapointed all over again. Well, I have one more in my fridge now, so we'll give it one more shot. But these beautiful radishes were an unexpected discovery. I bought them because they looked unusual, especially compared to the typically very conventional produce carried by our supermarket, but I didn't expect to like them very much. I thought they would be more like daikon than like salad radishes. But they are excellently spicy and sharp and reveal gorgeous patterns when cut into thin slices. After some internet searching I concluded our new find was a 'china rose' radish. We've been using them a lot in salads in the last few weeks. 2. Falafel with Tahini. This was a bit of a chore, but well worth it. There is an excellent brand of pita bread here, which (when reheated) is soft inside and crispy and chewy on the outside. I used NYtimes food writer Mark Bittman's recipe, and it turned out really well--though I would not suggest using a blender for this recipe. I ended up not having parsley the night I decided to make this, so I used watercress instead and it turned out fine. I also made some tahini by grinding up seseame seeds with oil in the blender and mixing it with plain yogurt, garlic, mint, and some green onion. I served it with some more radishes and green onion. For dessert we had another seasonal item, persimmons. They appeared a couple months ago and were such a persistent offering in the supermarket that I finally gave in and tried one. They are really delicious and sweet with an almost brown-sugar or maple syrup kind of flavor. We have been eating them a lot for dessert after lunch and dinner.
3. A closeup
4. Tofu Miso Soup with spinach. I've mentioned that the tofu here is excellent. I had a chance to go to the agroshopping and buy some from my favorite stand, which i believe is from a Taiwanese farm. The tofu was creamy and dense with an excellent clean flavor.
5. Yard-long beans with spicy ground pork and tofu. I promised this would make a reprise. It was good, but I had to use miso instead of black beans (hey fermented soy is fermented soy, right?) and I didn't put enough spice into this one, I think. But it was still good, and I like long beans much better than green beans; they have less water and a more concentrated, greener flavor.
6. Yogurt cheese with fresh herbs and olive oil. This was an elegant light dinner with some pita bread and the salad pictured below. I made the cheese from some homemade yogurt, strained in cheese cloth over night, rolled it in mint and basil, and drizzle it with olive oil and black pepper. It is garnished with nasturtium leaves.
6. Spinach salad with toasted almonds and spiced persimmons. This is one of the best salads I've ever made. I dressed it with lime juice, honey, toasted ground cumin and coriander, and olive oil, and sprinkled the persimmon with ground hot chile. It was perfect.

Back to Boston

2008-04-29T18:10:00.007-05:00

So I found out today that I have been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to do research in Paraguay for 2008-2009. This is really great news for my research, because I was starting to get really worried that I was very short on time and now I will be able to extend my project and look at how different peasant organizations are reacting to the cannibalistic spread of the soybean industry. This probably means I'll be going back to the U.S. a little sooner than I expected, and I'll be back in Paraguay a lot sooner. All this back and forth is getting to be a bit much, but I certainly am not about to complain. But I figure I should catch up on my blogging about the meals I cooked in Boston before its time to go back again.

In the last few weeks before my sublet ran out, I took advantage of having the kitchen and made some pretty good meals.

1. This was not one of them: Curried Pumpkin soup. It was an extreme convenience meal. Preparation consisted of me dumping a can of pumpkin left behind by the former subletter of my room in beacon hill into a pot with a can of coconut milk, half a jar of red curry paste, and half a box of chicken broth. I threw in some left over canned tomatoes too, and topped it off with chopped cilantro. My roommate said it "tasted like curry sauce." I can't say that it was the most delicious thing I made while in Boston, but it fed me in less than 10 minutes, used up some leftover ingredients, and let me get back to work really quick as I was preparing my colloquium. And I wouldn't say it was 'bad.'2. This was followed, however, by one of the best meals I've cooked in a long time. Rum braised beef short rib with roasted butternut squash.
I have been meaning to do a big long, ranty post about how much I hate butternut squash. With all the tremendous, delicious diversity of squash that exists in the world and in its native American habitat, the butternut squash has somehow gained a regrettable culinary hegemony. Do a search for squash soup, winter vegetable stew, squash gnocchi, squash risotto--what you will--and you'll observe how the butternut, the bully of the squash world, has marginalized its more delicious and beautiful brothers into shameful obscurity. It's watery, flavorless flesh, smooth, pale skin, and industrial uniformity recalls alarmist cold war depictions of communist consumer autocracy. Yet, it is the capitalist forces of Safeway or Super Stop and Shop and some industrial-scale farm in California or Texas, rather than Big Brother, that has perfected blandness and obliterated choice. How could anyone pass up the turban squashs's explosive colors, the oddness of the hubbard and kabocha squashes, the elegance of the fairytale pumpkin and golden nugget squash, the buttercup squash's rustic charm, and the rich, creamy, even caramely, flesh they harbor for such a miserly vegetable as the butter nut squash? I'll never know. But . . . having just read the omnivores dilemma and being as I am, deeply concerned with agricultural sustainability, I decided that I would try to eat more locally while I was in Boston, and at whole foods (the only supermarket in the vicinity of the room I was renting) the butternut squash and the beets were about the only local produce available. The butternut squash's shortcomings aside, its shape did make for a nice presentation here, and this meal was delicious. I was very sad to have eaten such a delicious meal by myself. But as it was the middle of a very busy week, I couldn't find a dinner guest.
3. I had many guests at another memorable meal: "mussels two ways." In keeping with my desire to eat more locally, I steamed up two heaping bowls of new england mussels, one with tomato broth, olives, and Spanish chorizo, and another with leaks, cream and lemon zest. Mussels are my go to dinner party dish, because they are quick, cheap (at least in Boston) and delicious as long as they are fresh. They make a great impression without much work or expense. These took a little more work than I bargained for, as they were particularly dirty and bearded [cheap, quick, dirty and bearded . . . doesn't sound like the makings for a dinner party], but I put my friend Roberto to work cleaning as I get everything else ready. Luckily the crowd was a relaxed one with no hurry [despite appearances], and when it was ready we worked our leisurely way to the bottom of both bowls as well as many bottles of wine. I hope there will be lots more meals like this with these friends when I eventually get back to Boston.
4. This meal was meant for David while he was in town, but I didn't get to cooking it until the very last day that I was in my sublet kitchen. It's the second installment of squid ink pasta I promised long ago: black linguine with smoked salmon, capers, leeks and cream. The salmon and capers together were a bit salty, but still a good use of squid ink pasta, I think.
The last meal I made before returning to Paraguay was with my friend melanie. I believe this was tilapia, with cream and roasted poblano chile rajas. On the side was balsamic glazed brussel sprouts with caramelized shallots. This is one of my favorite fish recipes. The roasted peppers have a smoky, sweet, and entirely unique flavor that marries perfectly with the cream and fish.

Victory for Paraguayan Democracy!

2008-04-21T19:14:00.000-05:00

Today we woke up in a new country. The opposition’s land-slide victory in Paraguay’s general elections will end the Colorado Party's 61-year hold on power. It was almost surreal last night, to hear the candidates one by one concede victory to Fernando Lugo only three hours after the poles closed. Blanca Ovelar, the Colorado Candidate, appeared on T.V. in the deserted party headquarters to declare that opposition candidate Fernando Lugo's 10-point lead "irreversible" and that she would do nothing to steal his victory. After what seemed like an ungracious, foot-dragging delay, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, the current president, appeared before the press gathered in the conference room at the presidential mansion, and declared the transition would be a peaceful one.

This comes after months of despicable smear campaigns the likes of which the U.S. has not known, reports of vote buying, discovery of voter registries that had thousands of dead people on them, and rumors of other assorted fraud attempts and conspiracy theories about how the election would be rigged and assassination plots would be hatched—months of news that generally cast doubt on the possibilities for a change in government. Some of these reports seemed far fetched, however, that the government was preparing massive fraud, would otherwise intervene in the results to prevent a transition, or would perhaps just refuse to give up power, were not at all outside the realm of possibility and imagination. In a poll by La Nación, a Paraguayan daily, 88% of respondents thought that the ruling party could potentially interfere with a change of power.

I can only conclude that the opposition's victory was so large that it exceeded the Colorado's capacity for fraud at the polls, and that the upwelling of support and celebration so substantial that the ruling party could not stomach the discontent, violence, and chaos that ignoring or overturning the popular will would have provoked. The scene that unfolded last night before the monument that holds the remains of Paraguay’s national heroes in downtown Asunción was one for the history books. The crowd of thousands that gathered to celebrate the opening of a new chapter in Paraguayan history looked much like the other crowds that have marked this countries flawed political history: the throngs that materialized after the 1989 overthrow of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, the March Massacre protests that followed Vice President Luis Argaña’s Assassination and held off ex-general (and 2008 retrograde Presidential Candidate) Lino Oviedo’s coup attempt, and the massive peasant protests that—for better or for worse—prevented the privatization and pilfering of state property and enterprise. Only, the ambivalence and ambiguity that loomed above the heads of these earlier crowds was absent last night. A process that began by replacing dictatorship with “Stroessnerism without Stroessner” and a flawed regime that has gone by a variety of labels (from the relatively succinct “Competitive Authoritarianism” to the rather cumbersome “Sustained Civil-Military Control without Democracy”) ended in the fall of a once monolithic power and the conclusive expression of the popular will.

It will be very difficult and probably impossible for this government to live up to the enormous expectations generated by the historic defeat of the ruling party. But I really do believe the defeat matters on its own. Yesterday, Paraguayans lived in a country where it was impossible for the Colorado Party to lose an election; where, in order to secure employment, you needed to join the ruling party; where the state served the private interests of its managers and employees at the expense of the public good, where corruption was so rampant that holding any ambition was pointless. Today, while much of this may continue to be true for quite a long time, people no longer believe it is inevitable. As people begin to imagine Paraguay as a more democratic country and to see themselves as democratic citizens, their conception of the actions and behaviors that best serve their interests can change. I really believe that what we imagine ourselves to be part of and how we imagine the workings of society has a hold of its own on the political and economic realities we perceive and how we choose to respond to them. The possibility of electoral defeat introduces new kinds of strategic uncertainty into politics for political parties, politicians, and interest groups, and this uncertainty potentially opens up stretches of political space and opportunity for groups long excluded from the exercise of power. Nothing about this is inevitable. While I do feel the election results are an unambiguous good, much depends on how the mess of political and social actors respond to the uncertainty created by this shake-up, how the game to use this uncertainty to serve the different private, group, and public interests of these actors plays out, and how far the outcomes of this game goes toward creating more inclusive institutions and relationships.

The opposition's celebration last night in front of the Panteón de los Héroes in downtown Asunción. Photo: ABC Color

Eternal Winter, the Sequal

2008-04-19T17:25:00.004-05:00

So I spend two extremely productive, extremely cold months in Boston from the end of January to the end of March. I had a very successful first colloquium (thesis proposal) and made lots of progress. They just happened to be the coldest months of the year, and just as it was going to get warmer, it was time for me to go back to Paraguay. I wasn't complaining then (and I'm not really complaining now either) because I was looking forward to some beautiful late summer days and cool evenings. Unfortunately, fall came right on time in Paraguay, because after not so much as a couple nice weeks, a cold (and wet) front moved in. Only days after I gratefully stored the three sweaters I had been rotating for the last two months in Boston, I had to dig through my wardrobe to pull them out again.

All the cold weather is weighing me down, literally. I think I gained a lot of weight in Boston, mostly because I ate a lot of unnecessary meals when I was bored and tired of doing work, and especially because I ate all of these meals at the selection of fastish-food places in the vicinity of campus. But it didn't help that when I made time to cook, I found myself craving wintry comfort foods. But there is nothing like eating rich stews and roasts, and creamy, starchy root vegetables in a warm cosy room while the snow is falling outside. I was hoping to slim down by eating lots of fresh salads and summer fair, but the way it is working out, it looks like I am destined to live two years of my life in constant winter. I'm going to have to find a way to work off the extra calories.

Some of the meals I made in Boston were really spectacular. Unfortunately, the pictures of the two best meals I made the whole time I was there stayed behind withe the camera I forgot there, but I luckily saved most of them on my computer before I came back. So you'll have to take my word for it until manage to get a hold of them. In the meantime here are the rest

1. This was a masaman curry with beef, yukon gold potatoes, and eggplant.

2. Rosemary split pea soup with pancetta and cream. This soup would have been awesome, except we just took so much longer for the peas to totally soften than the package said that I finally gave up and we ate them with slighly more 'texture' than I prefer. It was still really good though.
3. Stir-fried tempeh with kim chee and sesame. This was awesome. I love kimchee in stir fry or with noodles. Because it's a fermented mixture of usually cabage, chilies, and dried shrimp it adds lots of complex flavors with just one ingredient, lending acidity, freshness, meatiness (or 'unami,' if you will), spicyness, and saltiness to any dish.
4. Roast chicken with mashed potatoes

5. Winter vegetable stew. I used this as a filling for a pot pie once, it was awesome. It was a very fast and satisfying with some rice, but is a much more special meal if you throw crust on it.
6. Tofu and green beans with spicy black-bean-ground-pork sauce. I think this will be making a reprise soon, as I got some really excellent tofu and some yard-long beans from the farmers market this week. I guess this is kind of a combination of ma po tofu and szechuan green beans, perhaps not traditional, but it was really good.
7. A closeup.
8. Pizza with spanish chorizo and mushrooms. I made this to make use of a block of mozzarella cheese an earlier tenant had left behind in the fridge in the apartment where I was subletting a room. Unfortunately, it was fat free mozzarella. I really want to know whose idea this was, and how they can possibly continue to sell it. It really was more of a stand-in for cheese, having perhaps some of its visual and physical properties, but absolutely none of its culinary properties. It melted more like plastic than like cheese and didn't taste far off either.

8. Caprese salad. My first meal upon returning to Paraguay and my only taste of summer. Of something like 20 heirloom tomato seedlings we managed to sprout, only one grew to a full plant. That plant only managed to produce two fruits before it succumbed to a particularly virulent case of virticulum wilt. It looks like it might pull through, but I don't know if any of the little green tomatoes will grow and ripen before it gets too cold.

2008-02-11T22:42:00.000-05:00

As I was getting ready to head back to the states and I got very engrossed in my thesis proposal, I definitely indulged in some convenience meals. Normally I really hate doing this, because I really enjoy cooking, and if I don't have time to do any, it means that I am not really taking any sort of break from work all day. But, in this case, it was nice to feel really productive in my research. Plus, since it was the tale end of the summer holiday in Paraguay, my cousins and their friends were having nightly beer sessions around the pool, and I would join in, share a beer, and offer some of our dinner before heading in to do more work or to sleep--so I did get a little bit of social time.

Here are the nachos we made. Very quick and the ultimate in convenience food. We don't make them often because I really doesn't seem healthy, but once in a while to save you some work. I'm really glad they have tortilla chips at the supermarket now. When me and my sisters tried to make guacamole one Christmas, we had to serve it with crackers because there was nothing remotely like a tortilla chip in the country. But, I'm still considering smuggling an avocado tree into the country. They only grow reed avocados in Paraguay. They are really big and bland. The flesh is watery and slightly bitter, rather than buttery and creamy like the Hass avocados we get in the U.S. People think of avocado as a fruit here, and mash it with milk and sugar as a desert and are kind of grossed out by the idea of putting it in a salad or eating it as a vegetable. At any rate, they make really terrible guacamole, but weren't so bad chopped up along with some shredded chicken and homemade salsa for these nachos.
The next night we made some chicken quesadillas, using flour tortillas from the supermarket (Paraguay is getting so cosmopolitan). We managed to use up the rest of the chicken and the last of the leftover cheese from the christmas-time pizzeada here.
Then I made some hummus. While I actually had to make it completely from scratch (including the tahini) this still turned out to be a really fast and convenient meal. I just blended some sesame seeds with some oil, before adding the garbanzo beans which I had pressure cooked and the rest of the ingredients to the blender. It came out perfect, and along with the excellent and fluffy pita bread from the supermarket, and a watercress and roasted red pepper salad, we had an awesome and fresh dinner in less than half an hour (beat that Rachel Ray!)
I did manage to cook one really excellent, and rather labor intensive meal before taking off for the U.S:
squid-ink fettuccine with cuttlefish, yard-long beans, and yellow curry sauce.
We found the squid-ink pasta at the supermarket, imported form Uruguay, and the cuttlefish frozen from Argentina. We had to make everything else from scratch, which meant grinding the spices and making the curry mixture, and making the coconut milk from whole coconuts. It was really excellent. Squid-ink pasta has a really unique and sort of sweet and savory flavor and is also really visually striking. I think it is kind of intimidating to work with, because you don't want to just through a standard sauce on it. I wanted to pair it with flavors that could stand up well, and was really pleased with this. The coconut's richness and the aromatic spices worked really well with the pasta's flavor, the sweetness of the cuttlefish, and the freshness and crunch of the beans. This was a good meal (and a nice picture for a change--click on it to see it the large version), so much so that you can look forward to another installment of squid-ink fettuccine. I was in Somerville on super Tuesday to place my vote, and Capone's just happened to have squid-ink pasta that day. I'm trying to plan a special meal around it.

Navidad Tamalera

2008-02-02T17:36:00.000-05:00

So since this was David's tropical Christmas in, and if I'm not mistaken his first Christmas away from the U.S. and away from his family, we decided we would adopt his family's Mexican Christmas tradition of making Tamales. This is no small commitment in Paraguay, where to my knowledge the Mexican population is limited to one NGO employee who is married to a Paraguayan. No masa or maseca is available in Paraguay so we had to do the whole process entirely from scratch. My mother brought us some powdered lime (cal) from the Mexican store in the U.S., and we proceeded to do everything ourselves from gathering the banana leaves, to making the nixtamal and grinding the masa, to cooking the filling and forming the tamales. Here it is, all documented. David wanted to be sure we didn't miss a single step of his tamalero exploits.

Well, they don't sell packages of dried corn husks in Paraguay, but luckily the place is silly with banana trees. Here is David harvesting some leaves from a small banana tree in my cousins' yard.
Rinsing the corn

Cooking the corn in the lime-water.
The result of cooking the corn in the lime-water. According to the instructions we were following, at this point, they the corn was supposed to swell up and its hulls are supposed to sort of dissolve into a slimy mess, leaving the white kernel of nixtamal behind. We must have been using a not appropriate variety of corn, because nothing remotely like that happened. We went on as though everything was fine though, because what else were we going to do? I'm not sure what went wrong, but the end result did not suffer for it.
Grinding the corn in the molino. This was quite a process. We ended up attaching the mill to a bench and working as a team. One of us would sit on the bench to weigh it down and load the corn in the hopper while the other one would grind away until he was too tired. Then we would switch, and so on until the entire vat of corn was ground.
The ground nixtamal.

The large cube of tamal dough that resulted from mixing the masa with lard and some broth.

Since the rest of Christmas dinner consisted of various kinds of pork, including this little guy (who turned out to be delicious slow roasted on the grill)

We decided to go with untraditional chicken as the filling for our tamales. Here is the chicken cooking in a broth. Incidentally 'with giblets' in Paraguay includes not just the gizzards, and liver and neck as in the U.S., but also the heart, the feet, and the head!While the chicken was cooking, David was making the chile sauce from dried chiles I had brought from the U.S. fur just such a special occasion. Here is the cooked shredded chicken mixed with the chile suace.

Here are all the tamal fixings ready to go, and the tortillera that my mom also brought from me from the U.S.Setting up the tamales in a make-shift steamer.

and finally serving them up at the dinner table.

The happy customers.

David claimed that these were the best tamales he had ever eaten and that the entire process of making them from scratch is worthwhile. Not having had nearly as many tamales as he has, I couldn't vouch for their authenticity. I can say that everyone really liked them a lot, which was a big relief. I think we both would have been disappointed if, after working so hard (the entire process took about two days), people weren't really crazy about them. But my family, which never really liked tamales before, said they were great, and my relatives liked them so much that they enthusiastically helped out when we used up the leftover masa in a goodbye party before my trip back to Boston.

Pesto Party

2008-02-02T16:52:00.001-05:00

Ah, I remember summer like it was only a few weeks ago, and in fact it was only a few weeks ago that I was enjoying the best fruits of summer in Paraguay. In January in particular there are really amazing pineapples, melons, and mangoes. If you think you are a fan of pineapple--or if you think you are not for the matter--you really ought to go to paraguay. I have never anywhere in my life tasted such amazingly juicy, sweet, and perfect pineapple as in
Paraguay. It has absolutely nothing in common with the sour cardboard that passes for pineapple in the U.S.

In December, David, having missed out on the pesto season in the U.S., made me purchase five huge bunches of basil. The resulting pesto was too much to possibly use before it went bad so we had a week or two where everyday we tried to find some use for it. Utlmately we did have to throw some out, but here are some of the meals we made from it:

Pesto crusted with leeks, yard-long beens and ginger. It was so long ago now, i don't remember too many details, but I really love yard-long beans and am really happy they are available at the agro-shopping in Paraguay. They are denser and less watery than green beans and seem to have a more concentrated, greener flavor.
This gnocchi with asparagus, oyster mushrooms, and pesto was really excellent. Mushrooms have been available pretty regularly at the agrofair and sometimes even at the supermarket, which is a very recent and big development. Until very recently, only canned or jarred mushrooms were available in Paraguay.
We also made this pizza out of some dough we had frozen, fresh mozzarella and some of the best tomatoes I've found in paraguay, and, of course, pesto instead of tomato sauce. There is fresh arrugula on top. We actually made some much better and more attractive pizzas during my families Christmas visit, we didn't take any pictures.

Fire, Fire! My Beets!

2008-02-02T15:51:00.001-05:00

Sorry again for the delay. I have been back in Boston for a couple of weeks now, focusing much more on trying to make sense of my thesis research and forge a new direction than on cooking and blogging. But I have managed to cook a few nice meals, including really fantastic mussels and clams marinier, which unfortunately I could not photograph, because my camera didn't have any batteries. I really need a new camera, one that you can recharge. Keeping mine supplied with batteries has been a whole ordeal which has interfered with my blogging. There has been lots of meals I haven't photographed in the last months because I had no batteries or because the recharger was broken, and then there has been other times that I couldn't load my pictures onto my computer because the camera had no batteries. I took virtually no pictures on my second trip to Japan because I had no batteries. I don't know if that's a good enough excuse, but it really is the main reasons I've been less diligent about posting in the last months.
At any rate, one of the more notable meals I recently cooked was at my friends' Abby and Sam's house. It was actually the day I had arrived in Boston from Paraguay, and, as they have played host to me before on my brief and tardily announced trips to Boston, I wanted to offer to cook them dinner partially by way of thanks. They gladly accepted, and before I set off to look at apartments in Porter Square and Beacon Hill (where I did in fact find my current residence), I hurriedly scoured the rather extravagant shelves of Savenor's market for something from which I could throw dinner together after returning from my frigid hunt. Despite having been transported from the tropical splendor of Paraguay to the gray, icy, darkness of Boston in less than a day, I was already craving wintery comfort food. I spotted some duck sausage and settled on making a meal from fettuccine with duck sausage, wild mushrooms, and radicchio and a warm salad of roasted beats and shallots with lemon and goat cheese.

While I think the meal certainly showed Abby and Sam the extent of my burning gratitude, I think they would probably have preferred a nice thank you card. Suffice it to say that I did, without a doubt, the stupidest, most embarrassing thing that I have ever done in the kitchen--and mind you I have been cooking since I was probably seven or eight and starting cooking whole meals in high school. The beets were taking a longer time than I had anticipated and so I had to keep checking them and finally, in frustration, I turned the temperature up to 500 degrees hoping that a few minutes of intense roasting would finish them off while I finalized the rest of the meal. Well, it did nearly finish off beets along with the occupants of the whole building, because, minutes after I turned up the heat, the oven started billowing foul-smelling black smoke that quickly filled the whole apartment. As it turned out, I had inadvertently left the oven mitt inside the oven beneath the roasting pan after returning the beets to the oven and turning the heat up. I must stay that such things really are well made, because rather than bursting into flames in the 500 degree oven, the hot pad simply blackened and smoldered, and it ceased to exude any smoke as soon as I extracted it from the oven with a pair of tongs and ran it under cold water.

As Abby, Sam and I desperately tried to vent the smoke out of the house by creating as much of an icy draft as possible, we noticed the flashing red lights outside.

Literally less than five minutes after we noticed the first bits of smoke, the Cambridge fire department arrived at the apartment with two trucks and a full team of firemen ready to kick some serious ass. The neighbors had smelled the smoke and called in the emergency thinking that plumbing work done earlier that day had provoked an electrical fire or something like that. By the time the firemen were there, the smoke was all gone, and everything was under control, but we had to sheepishly explain that 'we' had left an oven mitt in the oven and apologize for the false alarm. While I walked away from this meal with a great deal more confidence in oven mitts and my local fire department, I was deeply embarrassed and shaken, and I don't think I'll try cooking a meal after international travel again.

In the end, nothing was ruined, and the beet salad and pasta were both pretty good. I left the skins on the beets which gives them a roastier potato-like quality,

and, while the pasta was good, I think it need to be a little saucier. The bitter radicchio contrasted well with the richness of the duck, but it would have been better if I had made the effort to get a bottle of sweet vermouth, as I had originally planned, to reduce as part of the sauce to give it some sweetness as well.

Okonomiyucky

2008-01-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

So . . . [I think I am finally give into my desire to start every post I've ever composed with the word 'so'] I have of a lot of catching up to do after my long absence from this blog--an absence that even my tech-not-so-savvy mother called 'shameful.' But this is not that post. I promise I will write all about my second trip to Japan, my family's visit to Paraguay for Christmas,
and the other meals I've cooked soon. But It is just too late tonight for such a marathon of writing and excruciatingly slow picture uploading. Instead, I'll just relate my improvised attempts to introduce Japanese culture to my household in a country that is as far from Japan--geographically, culturally, demographically, gastronomically--as you can possibly get.

Tonight, after watching a chance broadcast of memoirs of a geisha, I attempted (mostly unsuccesfully) to make Okonomiyaki. Granted, this was not a well thought out and planned attempt to carefully recreate the meals I had in Tokyo as much as it was a desperate attempt to scrape together dinner from the ingredients in a refrigerator left bare after the Christmas and new years holidays. But still, most of my meals are just as improvised. I had plenty of okonomiyaki's mainstay: cabbage, and despite its four-month repose in my vegetable bin (seriously) it was still light, fresh, and sweet. Besides that, I had only red bell pepper, and onion. I also lacked bonito flakes and the seaweed powder we sprinkled on top (is it kombu?), but I figured if I had the essentials, I could successfully create the main idea of okonomiyaki and my tastebuds and memory would forgive the absence of these embellishments. I made the sauce from ketchup following some instructions on the internet, using Paraguayan molasses (miel de caña) in stead of sugar and fish sauce in stead of Worcestershire sauce and it actually turned out remarkably similar to what they use in Japan.
The recipe I found online for the actual okonomiyaki was decidedly less accurate. I was suspicious after seeing that it required an entire cup of flour, but was too lazy to find another recipe and figured I could adjust the consistency. Despite its promising appearance, pre-flip, they came out extremely doughy, heavy, and gloopy, not a pleasant combination, especially when topped off with barbecue sauce and mayonnaise, as these Japanese griddlecakes are intended to be eaten. I put a lot less flour in the second one, and it turned out a lot lighter and tastier, but still not quite right. And with the first attempt having settled at the bottom of my stomach like a bottle of elmer's, it was hard to appreciate the improvement.
In addition to a recipe of dubious authenticity, I was working with a pan that lost its non-stick properties long ago and whose wide lip made it impossible to wield the spatula with sufficient leverage to flip the pancakes without turning them into an unsightly cabbage hash. While this was one of my least successful meals in a while, it wasn't so bad as a first attempt, especially given the circumstances. If I give it another try, I think that some ground pork or shrimp would definitely improve the results, and even less flour.

Yesterday's attempt at yakiudon fared much better. The noodles I purchased in one of asuncion's ambiguously asian shops (this one had mostly Chinese products but also a big bulk bag of Japanese rice and a smattering of southeast asian goods) did not turn out to be udon, despite the equally ambiguously Asian saleswoman's affirmation in this regard. The result was still very tasty, with thin slices of beef, cabbage, green onion, and red pepper along with the fried noodles.

2007-11-18T17:24:00.000-05:00

I now have something like my own kitchen, be it a partial and partially furnished one, in the quincho, or the covered outdoor grilling area where there is also a stove and a newly purchased refrigerator. We've been investing in the minimum necessary kitchen accoutrements: kitchen towels, tupperware, a dish rack, a salad spinner. The latter has got to be one of the single most useful kitchen accessories; I use it every day to dry salad greens and fresh herbs and it far more efficient than the towel or paper towel alternative, which is time-consuming and cumbersome, and always leaves your greens soggy and makes your dressing watery. Salad spinners are pretty exotic in Paraguay, however: there were only two units, both on display in the store and everyone who has seen it has looked at it quizzically and asked what it is for. Moving into the quincho kitchen also instigated a daily covert knife war. At night I would go to my Tia Silvia's kitchen and take the sharpest chopping knife (which incidentally was too dull to cut a tomato before david sharpened it) to make dinner with. Then, each morning, my aunt would sneak to the quincho and steel it back while we were asleep. Since then, we bought our own extremely cheap chopping knife from the supermarket and my cousin's wife made gift of a second one after hearing about the knife wars. To make the kitchen fully functional we'd need to get a microwave and a toaster oven, but in the meantime we just walk over to my Aunts's kitchen if we need to heat something. Despite our incomplete kitchen I've managed some pretty good meals.

1. Tofu salad with carrots radishes and thai-style dressing. We discovered what might count as Asunción's china town the other day on the outskirts of the largest public market. Just outside the market's labyrinth of clothing, electronics, crafts, produce, meat, medicinal herb, hardware, and just-about-anything-you-can-imagine vendors are a strip of Chinese restaurants and grocery stores. I have been told there are a cluster of Korean restaurants and shops as well, but they are harder to find because they are unmarked mom and pop affairs. At any rate, the tofu bought was actually made in Paraguay and was really delicious. It was not as firm as we are used to in the U.S. which made it kind of a mess to brown, but it had a really good flavor and was really creamy. We would eat tofu at least twice a month in Boston, so I'm glad we won't have to go without it here. It would be kind of ridiculous too, given the amount of soybeans produced in Paraguay.

2. Rosemary roasted chicken and sautéed radishes with mustard-chive sauce with mashed potatoes. This was a really great meal. After seasoning with salt and pepper, I slid some some garlic and rosemary leaves under the skin of a few chicken quarters and pan seared them until the skin was nice and crispy. They went into the oven to finish while I made their mashed potato bed and sauteed some radishes we got from the market in butter and olive oil with garlic and green onion, followed by a deglazing and short steaming with dry vermouth, and finished off with some brown mustard. The skin was perfectly crisp and the flesh juicy and succulent.

3. Mostacciole al pesto with baby lima beans, smoked bacon, and zucchini. The difference between fresh versus dried vegetables in Paraguay as opposed to the U.S. is quickly becoming the bane of my kitchen. Ironically, after the sweetcorn and pea mishaps, I was prepared for the 'fresh' lima beans I purchased from the supermarkets refrigerator case to take at least 30 minutes of boiling to transform their starchy toughness into buttery creaminess, and felt very clever indeed for not falling prey to the freshness ruse of Paraguayan vegetables for a third time. And so, after browning the garlic and smoked bacon with the lima beans, I deglazed with some vermouth and added enough chicken broth to cook the beans. Unfortunately, they cooked very unevenly, and my judgment that they were done was based on what turned out to be a very unrepresentative sample. So while some of the beans were creamy and buttery, others were unpleasantly crunchy and raw tasting. It made me really mad, because I made a very deliberate attempt to avoid this pitfall, and because this meal would have been absolutely perfect had the lima beans been done right. The flavor and texture of the few beans that were cooked paired perfectly with the richness and smokiness of the bacon, and the freshness of the zucchini and pesto.

4. Ingredients for roasted pork spring rolls. I brought back some spring roll wrappers from Boston because all of the other ingredients to make them are available here, maybe the wrappers too if we look in the Korean shops (but I really doubt it). After going through all the trouble of bringing thai basil seeds here (none of which sprouted incidentally) I realized that the variety of basil in Paraguay has remarkably similar strong liquorish flavor and is a more than acceptable stand in. I marinated a couple of pork loins in garlic, fish sauce, pepper, sugar, and a little olive oil and roasted them in the oven. As stinky and offensive as fish sauce smells--and really isn't rotting fish a flavor that most of us would think to avoid rather than add to our dinner--it adds a really wonderful savory quality to anything you add it to. I think it makes a great marinade for this reason, I read somewhere about how anchovies are actually a secret ingredient for many chefs and that they find their way into some unexpected dishes for similar reasons.

5. Roasted pork springrolls with peanut sauce. When you get these at a Vietnamese restaurant they are usually filled with rice vermicelli, but instead we fill them with julienned carrots, green onion, and bean sprouts, in addition to fresh basil, mint, and cilantro . Generally, I think that trying to be as authentic as possible in recreating the cuisine of other cultures yields the best results. But I'm never a fan of starch-filled starch, and I really think that filling them with julienned vegetables is an improvement. They are even lighter and fresher tasting this way. It also helped that, instead of the miserly bits of leathery pork that you sometimes get, we used tender slices of rosy-pink pork tenderloin.

6. Vietnamese sandwiches made from the leftovers. We had the leftover pork in some sandwiches with some grapes and peaches. The fruit has been really excellent. David discovered that the pears here rival Harry and David of Christmas-time fame. I never would have bought them, because besides the box my mother will get for Christmas, I've always found pears to be a rather joyless fruit. But these are juicy and sweet, and have a firm but yielding texture and are just slightly gritty. It's strange though, because the pears from Argentina and Chile (the likely source of these pears) that make it to the U.S. are usually tough and flavorless, or slimy and pasty.

7. An extremely improvised soup au pistou. I made this to use up the last of the zucchini and the pesto. It was definitely not bad given how I unplanned it was and that it was missing some of the principle ingredients.

8. At long last my first real caprese salad in a very long time. At the agroshopping I discovered that someone, specifically a cooperative of Japanese farmers, had beat me in introducing the wonders of heirloom tomatoes to Paraguay. They only had one variety however, and it except for one lumpy one that we quickly seized, you wouldn't necessarily know that they weren't just really sweet, juicy, and meaty regular tomatoes. After purchasing them, we went directly to the cheese stand and picked up some fresh mozzarella. I see some more pizza in our future. Also a lot more pesto. David made me buy an absurd amount of basil from which we made an absurd amount of pesto. I guess we are just making up for missing out on nearly the whole summer and fall in the U.S.

9. Arugula and watercress salad with heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil mustard dressing. The arugula and the watercress are really wonderful here, much sharper and spicier than in the U.S. The dressing was good, but owes its odd color to the fact that the only vinegar I had was a small bottle of watery balsamic.

10. Classic leek and potato soup. Another improvised meal, but a good one. My mom made this a lot when we were growing up and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand. I forgot that I still had a piece of smoked bacon or I would have added that too.

Back in El Jardín del Mundo

2007-10-31T17:22:00.000-05:00

El Jardín del Mundo feels more like el Horno del Mundo right now. I got back to Paraguay on monday night and was immediately greeted by the perfume of coconut flowers in the heavy, humid air that very quickly become associated with this place for anyone who has lived here here. I haven't been here very often in winter, so it was strange to arrive in July last time. The feeling coming off the plane was much more familiar and comforting, and it was so nice to escape Boston just as the crisp clear days and beautiful fall colors were ending and the miserly days of late autumn were about to begin. The nights here have been amazing. I love nights that are warm and humid enough to feel tropical and breezy but still not sticky or uncomfortable. The days, however, have already become unbearable, reaching an unimaginable 117F degrees in certain parts of the city, yesterday, and summer is still ahead of us. In January the city empties as anyone with the means goes to the beach in Argentina, or Brazil, or at least to the nearby lake town of San Bernardino.

To my great chagrin, none of the aforementioned heirloom seeds sprouted in our backyard garden, allegedly because the ground has been too hot, though I suspect poor agronomic technique. I think there may be time to take a second shot at it, and perhaps the seeds I gave to my cousins fared better. I will have my heirloom tomatoes!

I booked the cheapest itinerary I could find back to Paraguay for the dates that I needed. Unfortunately, this involved flying into La Guardia on Saturday afternoon from Boston and leaving JFK for Sao Paulo early on Sunday morning. Heavy luggage, despite its name, is not really made for lugging all around New York and surrounding burroughs. This all turned out very well for me, however, and would have been glad to have done it even if it hadn't saved me any money at all, because I got to stay the night at my friend Pat's house. Pat and I met what now seems like many years ago when we both did a semester of study abroad in Argentina, and we have been pretty admirable about staying in touch since, at least about seeing each other a couple times a year, if not at actually talking or writing often. Pat and his roommate Sasha checked out Dinner Bell on occasion, and I've promised them many meals that have never materialized. This quick visit, dictated by the market for international travel, seemed a perfect opportunity to make good on my offer.

Pat and I stepped outside of his Brooklyn apartment about 20 minutes before closing time for the variety of food shops and specialty grocers that populate the storefronts, a bit concerned that we'd missed the boat. Before those 20 minutes had elapsed, we were able to visit a first-rate fish shop, patisserie/boulangerie, wineshop, meat market, and produce stand, assembling all of the necessary ingredients for an awesome seafood stew. Here are the assorted vegetables along with a slice of pancetta.

Having assembled said ingredients in less than 20 minutes, I was left with something less than what is required for a classic bouillabaisse. Furthermore, after consulting a recipe, it seemed to me that the steps required for bouillabaisse were entirely excessive, particularly considering that I didn't even have the pages of ingredients required. Surely something more delicious could be made with less voulez-vous. So I hesitated for a while, deciding what other brand of seafood stew should form the basis of my creation. I was thinking of the Cioppino recipes I've seen on the food network and the amazing Mexican sopa de mariscos that I had eaten in Puerto Vallarta/approximated with Rick Bayless's recipes. The main dilemma was what to do with the whole octopus we had purchased from the fish market.

There are two ways to cook octopus, the fast but difficult way and the slow but easy way. The former involves dropping in the octopus last after the other ingredients are done and cooking it only very briefly. Any longer than a minute and it gets tough as leather. The problem is that octopus is also tough when it is still raw as well, so it's hard to know if you have undershot or overshot the very narrow window. The latter method involves cooking the octopus for 1-2 hours in the oven, allowing the extended exposure to the high temperature to soften the proteins and the braising liquid to penetrate the octopus resulting in a very agreeable texture and lots of flavor. You could always try option 1 and opt for method 2 in the case that you overcook it, except that we were making mussels and clams and shrimp in addition to octopus and they would be awful after cooking for so long. The other problem with octopus is that it lets out a tremendous amount of water as it cooks, and this could have thrown all the proportions off if I'd used method number 1. Of course, I could have blanched the octopus in a different pot until it was done, and chopped and added it to the rest of the ingredients, but then I would not have taken advantage of all of the flavorful octopus juice (seriously, it was good).

So . . . after what probably seemed like too long to my hosts/diners I decided that I would puree the vegetables and tomatoes and fry them into a paste, as to form the base for any variety of Mexican soups, and after deglazing with a bit of white wine, I would add the uncooked octopus and put it into the 450 oven for and hour and a half. In the meantime I made a roasted red bell pepper rouille, and threw the sliced potatoes in with the octopus after an hour. When it came out, the octopus was nearly done and a nice broth had formed from the cooking liquid and the paste. In went the clams, shrimp, and mussels on top of the stove. Topped off with a crouton and some of the red bell pepper rouille, it was ready to go.

I've made many a seafood soup in my day, but this was exceptionally good. In large part due to the ingredients we had, but the slow braise gave the octopus a perfect texture, and most of all, made a broth more flavorful than any other seafood stew I've made (or perhaps even tasted).

Desert was an assortment of offerings, including butterscotch pudding, pumpkin cheesecake, a sour cherry tart (it had some ridiculous French name that I can't recall now, but something like floucantie) and a chocolate soufflé. The tart and the soufflé were my favorite, but the cheesecake was not bad considering my aversion to pumpkin pie spices.

We had quite a bit of wine and even headed out briefly down the street to one of my friends' favorite beer bars. I at least got a taste of Halloween before leaving the country for a place that knows very little of jack-o-lanterns. It was the perfect way to spend the night before I left the U.S.

I arrived in Paraguay just in time for David's birthday. He has been bugging me for months that he wanted a strawberry cake. We had a slice of one at the expoferia where the producers of Paraguay's agricultural and manufactured goods come together to promote their products each year, and where a small-farmers' association was selling cake made from their strawberries. Admittedly, it was delicious, but David wanted me to buy one for my little niece's birthday even though the lady behind the counter clearly said that kids prefer dulce de leche cakes. At any rate, I knew I'd be in trouble if I didn't produce a strawberry cake for his birthday. Unfortunately, the bakery shop we always go to said they weren't making them anymore because strawberries were out of season (not entirely true, but perhaps they are too expensive in late season to make a cake without a prior order). Rather than losing an entire afternoon running around the entire city in 100-plus degree heat and potentially still coming up short, I decided that I would just make the cake myself. I went to the supermarket and very quickly found all of the ingredients necessary, including two cake pans that I was told I could not return if I found that I already had cake pans at home.

While not the most beautiful cake I've ever seen or made (and much less attractive than the ones you get a bake shops in Asunción), it was very tasty and a close enough approximation to David's dream cake that he was happy. It had mashed strawberries in the cake batter and was filled with strawberries and whipped cream inside and out.

We didn't actually get to eating the cake until the day after his birthday, because the night of his birthday I took him out for Japanese food. It was not bad considering that these particular sushi chefs and cooks were working so far from home, and, while it was hard to appreciate after having been in Japan so recently, it was a nice birthday dinner for David who after four months here was probably ready for something a little different. I'm curious to go back and try the meat dishes--beef being something also highly appreciated and well prepared by the Japanese but much more abundant in Paraguay than tuna or snapper (or than in Japan). So the next night we gathered my family for cake and a bilingual version of happy birthday.

Here is David blowing out the candle:

Kitchen Squatter

2007-10-24T20:36:00.001-05:00

So it has been two months since I've had a kitchen that I could in any sense call my own. It's been four months since I had a kitchen that I could call entirely my own. So its been hard to do a lot of cooking, which means I've been ordering out and eating out way more than I like and spending way too much money to feed myself. But, I have made really good progress on my thesis proposal while I've been in Boston, and I suppose its worth it so that someday I can say I am no longer a student. Putting a thesis together is such a long and thankless process. It really is like Sisyphus and the boulder. Every time you write a new proposal and expend the enormous effort it takes to address whatever set of critiques you received on the last version, or accommodate new evidence, or place the study in relevant theoretical framework, it just creates new problems and new critiques and you have to do it again, and again, and again with no end. This has been the last year of my life, and, while I can say that I am definitely much closer to having a viable thesis project than I was a year ago, the work is very repetitive and it is hard to ever feel you have accomplished anything. Not feeling any sense of accomplishment is not so good for motivation. I think that is one reason that I like cooking so much. It is not unlike other creative projects like writing a novel or a song or making a sculpture, but instead of requiring enormous of sacrifice and patience, it is instantly gratifying. Even the most elaborate meals and dinner parties I've hosted have been planned at most a week in advance. I plan my weeknight dinners in front of the fridge and produce something really satisfying in an hour or so. Cooking gives me an opportunity to exercise my creativity, solve problems, and concentrate on something that gives immediate results. I think it is really therapeutic for someone like me, who has been investing in an uncertain future for years and has years to wait before making good on that investment, to have some part of each day where I feel so productive and useful. I noticed this especially during the few times that I have been able to cook in the last weeks. I hadn't realized how much I missed the familiar sequence of cooking's physical tasks: chopping the vegetables, frying the aromatics, browning the protein, adding the vegetables, seasoning with salt, deglazing the pan, adjusting the heat, stirring, finishing with fresh herbs; all of this has a logical and deeply comforting flow.

I stopped in Chicago to see my family for a few days on my way back from Japan last month. My mom made me an early thanksgiving dinner, since I'll be in Paraguay at the end of November. I've only ever missed thanksgiving once, and that was when I was doing my study abroad in Argentina. Being from a food-obsessed family, I would say that thanksgiving is probably the most important holiday for us, though any holiday is easily made into an excuse to do some serious cooking. I really love thanksgiving, I think it is the best American tradition (leaving aside the idealized vision it provides of Native Americans' relationship to their colonial intruders). No other holiday is more completely about family and sharing with those that mean most to you. I think it is really wonderful that we all get a day off work and school to do what we ought to do every day. Plus, my mom makes a pretty phenomenal turkey, actually two turkeys and either a pork or beef roast too, along with homemade dinner rolls that people demand year after year and pear and apple tarts made with homemade puff pastry. Each year, my tia Mai makes better mashed potatoes and mashed sweet potatoes than I've ever tasted elsewhere and homemade mayonnaise to dress the sandwiches we make from the leftover turkey after getting back from day-after-thanksgiving shopping. Somehow, I didn't manage to get any pictures of the thanksgiving rehearsal my mom held for me, but it was very good. I'll have to plan thanksgiving for David and I and my family in Paraguay. It will be fun to cook my own thanksgiving dinner and to share these traditions with my extended family, but I know it will be a little sad to celebrate where the holiday doesn't have the same meaning.

I did take a picture of another meal we cooked while I was in Chicago to take care of my Mexican fix. I have way too much luggage to take back with me to Paraguay, but I'm still thinking I should buy a bag of Maseca to be able to make tortillas there. Either that, or I'm going to have to learn to make my own masa from raw corn, because there is really no mexican food to speak of (or to eat) in Paraguay. Don't tell the agricultural inspection service, but I took some poblano, jalapeño, tomatillo, and epazote seeds with me, and David supposedly planted some in the garden. I couldn't go a whole year without any mexican food. This dinner will have to tide me over until the plants start to bear fruit: steak tacos with homemade corn tortillas and homemade salsa, guacamole, and black bean salad.

I've been staying with one of David's friends and fellow clarinetists, Kristian, since I've been back in town. It's pretty far from any supermarkets though, but I managed to carry back some groceries on the T a few times and make some good meals. I made a pretty good African peanut stew that didn't get photographed unfortunately. But Kristian and his brother were pretty impressed, so you don't have to take my word that it was pretty good.

I did get a picture of this linguine with spicy sausage and tomato sauce. It was a good quick meal that used up the leftover ingredients from the African peanut stew.
Yesterday, I had my friend Melanie over for dinner and had a lot of fun cooking and drinking way too much of Kristian's dad's "Three-Buck Chuck." That small step up from Carlo Rossi makes all the difference. We quickly concluded that it was well worth all three of those bucks. After putting away for bottles between the three of us, we engaged in a bought unsuccessful intercontinental 'drunk dialing' unfortunately neither David nor our French friend Vincent answered their phone.

Dinner was wholewheat noodles with browned tofu, broccoli rabe, crimini mushrooms, and peanut sauce. Melanie said she was amazed at what can be done with a few ingredients. It was pretty good considering how improvised it was. I was just going to serve it with rice, but all we could find was super fancy rice at more than $10 for a small jar at Savenor's market in Beacon Hill where we stopped on our way to the T station. The noodles were even better I think, and the bitterness of the broccoli rabe was matched perfectly by the deeply toasted garlic and tempered by sweet and creamy peanut sauce.
Here is the basic recipe:

1 lbs. fresh wholewheat or buckwheat noodles
1 package firm tofu (you could also use chicken, but I think the flavor and texture of tofu are perfect in this).
6 cloves of garlic sliced thinly
Good Soy Sauce (I like San-J organic tamari or shoyu)
1 bunch broccoli rabe, chopped
1/3 cup dry white wine (old sour wine works well, because the sauce needs the acidity)
1 cup sliced mushrooms (shitakes, oyster, shimeji or other wild mushrooms would be good)
1/3-1/2 cup chunky 'natural' peanut better (the kind that separates when it sits and has no sugar)
1/2-1 cup reserved pasta cooking water
small bunch cilantro

Cut the tofu to desired size (I like larger rectangles) and brown well in some peanut oil. It browns much better if you don't move the pieces around at all until they are ready to flip. Once they are browned add a few table spoons of soy sauce (3). Set aside. Wipe out the pan and brown the garlic in some more peanut oil. Don't let it burn, but let it get a deep toasty golden. Add the mushrooms season with salt and saute until the mushrooms have released their liquids and it has evaporated. Add the broccoli rabe, and stir fry over very high heat, deglaze with the white wine and cover the saucepan to let the broccoli rabe steam until it is tender, take off the heat and add the tofu back in. Meanwhile cook the noodles in salted water. When you are ready to serve, add the peanut better to the broccoli rabe tofu mixture and add enough of the pasta cooking water to make a sauce of creamy consistency, it should not be too watery but if it is too thick it won't coat the noodles and other ingredients either. Toss with the noodles and garnish with chopped cilantro. I think I will experiment with adding some sugar to the peanut sauce if I make this again.

Here are Melanie and Kristian ready to pounce.
We also had a dessert course of a single cheese. I forget the name (I have to remember to save cheese labels so I can post my reviews!) but it was a great value. It was only $5 but a very tasty, soft french cows milk wrapped in chestnut leaves. It had a very creamy almost liquidy texture at room temperature, and a buttery flavor that was good with lingenberry jam as for dessert.
A timer shot of Melanie and I.

Bobby "El Gringo" Flay

2007-10-14T15:20:00.000-05:00

So how is Bobby Flay's Spanish so horrendous, despite being the iron chef of southwest cuisine? I mean, I'm not asking for Rick Bayless-style painfully laborious attempts at phonetic authenticity, but come on, Flay sounds like the most contact he's had with Latin language and culture is the South Park Episode featuring Cartman's hand as Jenifer Lopez. I've always been irritated by people who draw too much attention to foreign words by over-pronouncing them and entirely switching accents mid-sentence, but there are ways to not entirely mispronounce Spanish words while still speaking English. I've watched too much food network this weekend . . .

Miserere Mei - 申し訳ありません｡

2007-10-13T18:24:00.001-05:00

I'm so very sorry for being away so long. Traveling so much has taken its toll, and I have been very busy trying to get my dissertation proposal completed and presented. In reality, I didn't have sufficient internet access to post until I got to Boston, and was too overwhelmed with work until now to update. More about school later. First, let me catch everyone up on a month of absolutely wonderful eating.

Before I left Paraguay, we had a feijoada with my extended family. There was nothing fake about this joada. I had to prepare the beans in two different pots in order to make enough, and, while one pot didn't turn out quite right, the other pot turned out exactly like the feijoada that my Brazilian friend Ana made for her going away party in Cambridge and that both David and I have been dreaming about ever since. I hid the truth about the other pot from my cousin Mari, who is from bellavista--a city that lies on either side of the boarder separating the department of Amambay, Paraguay and Mato Grosso do Sul,Brazil--and whose house I am always eager to visit at meal time. But the truth is that the pot was neglected too long while I ran to the store to get mandioca and bread and it ran out of water and nearly getting scorched, thus never acquiring the thick creamy consistency that takes many, many hours to develop and makes this dish much more than Brazilian pork and beans. I'm making myself hungry writing about this!

Here is everyone at the table, waiting to eat and wanting desperately for David to finish taking the pictures.
Here is the plated feijoada with all of the appropriate side dishes, bread, rice, orange slices (apparently eaten to help digestion), collard greens, farofa (yuca flour toasted with garlic and butter), mandioca, and vinegary tomato-green pepper relish or molho de campanha (chimichurri in paraguay).
I then spent a very brief week in Boston, madly completing my Fulbright proposal and application before going to Japan. I was lucky enough to stay with my friends Abby and Sam. They might have gotten a hint about heirloom tomatoes from my posts in Paraguay, because they greeted me with a meal that would have satisfied a condemned man's last request for tomatoes: two salads of heirloom tomatoes, steamed mussels, and penne with peppers and sausage. You can see the pictures of this and the other excellent meals I've had at Sam and Abby's house on their food blog. An invitation to their kitchen is quite a treat. Sam has got a fantastic knack for planning impressive and very well balanced meals in which each element really compliments and enhances the others. He also has the kind of talent for plating and presentation that always makes you feel like a very special and honored guest.

Upon arriving in Tokyo, I wasted no time in satisfying my tremendous anticipation for two weeks of gastronomic exploration and discovery (oh wait, I was there for a workshop on sustainable forestry and regional development). I got to the hotel the first night after more than 16 hours of traveling and desperately in need of a shower. As I was headed to the elevator I was greeted by one of the program staff and invited to join the other participants for dinner. Despite the protests of my apparently starving dinner companions, I decided I should take said shower, as much for their sake as my own, and rushed back down to join them on what turned out to be a 40 minute hike through Shinagawa for Okonimyaki. Here we are waiting for our meal.
As you will see, the Japanese are very fond of table top preparation. The most special meals we had all involved cooking them yourself. Okonomiyaki are what Americans inevitably lack any word but 'pancakes' to describe, but what we would call a tortilla in south america, that are filled with all manner of different meats and vegetables but typically contain a lot of cabbage. You order what you like, and the waiter brings you a bowl that contains the requested ingredients. This bowl contains cabbage and cod roe, in addition to the eggs, flour, water, and other standard ingredients. You then blend all these ingredients and pour the batter onto the griddle.
Flipping such things is always a bit of a challenge, apparently even for Japanese, and okonomiyaki are quite thick and are still soft when they need flipping, so there were a couple Julia-Child-like repair operations, but the results were still delicious. After flipping, the pancakes are covered with a Japanese barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed powder, and bonito flakes. The Japanese love of mayonnaise, while sometimes manifesting itself in unexpected ways, warmed my heart and pleased my belly after living most of my life with what I can only describe as the absurd squeamishness that many Americans have regarding this delicious and indispensable condiment.

Here is a professional making some loaded okonomiyaki in asakusa.

Cynthia, a fellow MIT student and participant in the University of Tokyo Intensive Program on Sustainability, and I took advantage of our intense 12-hour jetlag to visit one of Tokyo's must sees (even for the non-food obsessed): Tsukiji fish market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and one of the most economically and gastronomically impressive places I have ever been. The market was immense; really, "market" just does not convey the scale of this place which is for fish what Manhattan is for finance. I'm afraid my camera was running out of batteries at this point, so I didn't get too many good shots. But here is one of the hundreds of aisles that stretch the enormous distance of the main warehouse and are lined with stalls selling all that the world's oceans produced that day. We arrived a bit late (7:30am), but lifts and carts still zoomed about, narrowly dodging wide-eyed tourists like myself, and a flurry of packing and unpacking, gutting and cleaning, and buying and selling revealed the gears of the global fisheries market as thousands of individuals transacted so that the world's most piscivorous nation could satisfy its demand.

The fish seemed to be generally of very high quality and very fresh, and of tremendous variety as well.

Quite a large amount of octopus.

Outside of this main warehouse were other stalls selling produce, kitchen equipment, and other ingredients. It was like seeing a book or magazine article come to life for me, or stepping through the television screen into iron chef, where familiar characters like fresh wasabi, or matsutake mushrooms were suddenly within my reach.

Matsutake Mushrooms

It was very difficult for me to be in the world's marine garden of eden and know that I had no kitchen available to me and that I would not have an opportunity to cook. The pain was only assuaged by the knowledge that only a few feet away, my breakfast of the freshest and most authentic sushi of my life was hopefully waiting for me at one of the many tightly packed restaurants inside the market. Lacking any Japanese skills whatsoever, I had no choice but to order the 10 piece set and hope for the best. I was not disappointed. Except for a battleship sushi that overflowed a bit too much with its cargo of sea urchin roe, this was one the most delicious experiences I had while in Japan. The exquisite texture and flavor of the fish left no doubt about its freshness. The highlights included the creamy and delicate anago, or simmered salt-water eel (not the typically barbecued fresh-water unagi that is also common in Japan and readily available in the U.S.), the mackerel, and of course the fatty tuna. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in the restaurant for some reason.

That afternoon, the group of participants left for Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost major island, where the University of Tokyo Forest is located and where we would spend the two weeks of the program. My fears that they would either skimp on the food budget, as often happens in the U.S., or that they would somehow try to accommodate the very wide range of non-Japanese palates was quickly allayed, as even the lunch box we got before boarding the airplane contained a tasty assortment of sandwiches that were more high tea than gate gourmet.

Our first meal upon arriving at the university forest in Hokkaido was also impeccable for what was essentially cafeteria food. It included (from the bottom left) steamed salmon with shitake and inoki mushrooms, what I believe was spinach stuffed cabbage rolls, seafood and vegetable tempura, japanese pickes, a mixed salad, and tofu miso soup (not shown).
The next evening was the welcome party, which began with Mongolian hotpot and large amounts of beer and sake. The hotpot consisted of a dome-shaped grill surrounded by a broth-filled trough. slices of mutton are grilled on top, while cabbage, onions, beansprouts, peppers, and onions are cooked in the broth.
What appeared to be an uninspired desert turned out to be a life-altering experience. Hokkaido is japan's main agricultural area, and despite highly unfavorable conditions, its small farmers have survived and continue to compete with much cheaper imported products by forming production and marketing cooperatives and specializing in very high-quality high-value produce. One such product is melon. Mind you, I had had quite a lot to drink, but this was no ordinary cantaloupe. It was the perfect fruit. The platonic ideal of melonhood. It was sweet and perfumed, but not cloying; it was juicy but still rich and not watery, and above all, it had a texture unlike any melon I've ever tasted. Somehow firm and silky or at the same time, not tough or squishy or slimy as melon is apt to be, but imparting a luxurious sensation as you bit through the flesh and swirled it around your tongue. Clearly, I enjoyed this more than anyone else.

Another local specialty is lavender, and, while the fields were not in bloom, a lavender theme park did have fields planted with other beautiful flowers and had the broadest variety of lavender products imaginable, including lavender-flavored ice cream.

My delight continued the next day as I opened my first Bento box, and marveled at what an ordinary lunch is like in Japan. To begin with, the rice by itself is excellent, and though I am not Japanese, I suspect its worth the tremendous amount of subsidies payed out by the Japanese government each year, largely to farmers in Hokkaido, so that this product of paramount cultural importance is not obliterated by the free market (liberal economists be damned!). As I write about the food in Japan, I am starting to believe that Japanese food is all about texture, because, again, the texture of rice in Japan is incomparable, even to the Japanese rice sold in the U.S. The box of rice is accompanied by a multitude of side dishes, which typically included a piece of grilled fish, something breaded and fried or what Japanese call 'cutlet,' some pickles, a salad, and some kind of fish roe. While it was undoubtedly better than peanut better and jelly everyday, I'm sorry to say my enthusiasm did wane a bit after about two weeks of nothing but bento for lunch, and, while I quite enjoy fish roe in many applications, I doubt that I'll ever have the Japanese appetite for it.

Another Japanese meal that I can't say I was enthusiastic about was oden. It is a rather bland assortment of vegetables, bean curd, and egg boiled in dashi and served with miso. I had it a second time from a street vendor in Tokyo with a group from the program, where it included fish cakes.

We had one free day during the course of the program, and I spent it as you might expect, eating and relaxing. The day began at the Hokkaido wine festival, where the regions wine-makers showcase and celebrate their produce. I can't say Hokkaido would be my top pick for wine-tasting, but some of it was surprisingly agreeable, and I would have had much more if I was not still getting over the miserable cold I caught in Paraguay. I also had an incredible bowl of soba noodles, which I maintain were handmade. Some of my companions laughed at this proposition, but, again, the texture was remarkable. The noodles' rough edge and their graininess suggested to me that this was not instant soba, and after all, they do grow buckwheat only a few kilometers away.

Contemplating the noodles.

I then very nearly won two bottles of local Furano wine, because there was a contest for the person who had come from farthest away. It was between me and two fellow participants, Niklas from Sweden, and Cau from Vietnam. Here we are being interviewed.

Sweden and Massachusetts are very nearly equidistant from Tokyo, at least in terms of flying time, and I felt a bit dishonest saying I had come form Paraguay since I technically did stay for four days in Boston. So Niklas was deemed the winner, getting two bottles of wine as well as his name and picture in the paper. I lost my chance at minor celebrity, but didn't miss out entirely on the wine as it later formed part of my final meal in Japan.

We stayed at the wine festival a bit longer in order to watch taiko drumming presentation

and then went off to find some lunch. The plan was sushi, but the wait was too long so we settled for a ramen shop, specializing in 'cheese ramen.' Hokkaido is especially known for its dairy products, including milk, custards, and cheese. Tempting as cheese ramen sounds, after a week, I was beginning to crave something spicier than standard Japanese food and went with the 'spicy' ramen, with korean chili sauce.

After the wine festival and getting lunch, our third order of business was to take the train to a nearby town for a highly relaxing afternoon at the natural hotspring. Niklas, Cau, and I enlisted one of our Japanese classmates to help plan our free day, and no one could have planned a better day for me. I have always wanted to visit a hot spring and had suspected that such natural luxury would be highly agreeable to my personality. After finally visiting one, I've got to say that the availability of hotsprings must make a substantial contribution to the Japanese quality of life that is not reflected in their GDP. This particular onsen consisted of ten different pools: a hot pool, an outdoor pool of the same temperature, a very hot pool, an extremely cold pool (which I did not enjoy), a slightly sulfurous cave pool, a pool with tiny bubbles, a sauna, an underwater recliner with massaging jets, large ceramic urns that held a single person and were the water was somehow highly buoyant, and--probably my favorite-- a stone stool above which a heavy stream of hot water fell upon your shoulders massaging your back. Access to all this cost less than $10. No clothing is allowed in the bath, so naturally, I took no pictures. Here we are with our Japanese friend Eiji on our way to the onsen.

Strangely enough, the hotspring was located in a suburban strip mall, so before catching the train back to Furano we killed sometime at a large supermarket, another element of a free day made especially for me. I'm probably the only person who could find an hour too little time at supermarket even when I wasn't there to shop. Indeed, my friends had to drag me out so we would make the train in time. The fish section was impressive

and included whole Alaskan king crabs, which I'd only seen in pictures.
We then returned to Furano and the sushi place that we had abandoned at lunch time. There was still a bit of a wait, but none of us wanted too pass it up a second time. Conveyor belt sushi is apparently the cheaper alternative to a true sushi bar, but I enthusiastically gorged myself on sushi of much higher quality and much lower cost than you'd find in the U.S. I always say that cheap or even moderately priced sushi isn't worth it, because you get what you pay for, and if you are going to eat sushi you might as well cough up what a delicious meal is really worth. Except in Japan, where all the excellent sushi I could eat (well actually, i could have eaten this sushi until it killed me) cost me less than $17.

We had the privileged position in the shop, the first booth next to the wall, so we could be the first to pull whatever we liked from the conveyor belt, which included the widest variety that I've been able to try in a single meal: yellowtail, tuna, shrimp, squid, fried octopus, snapper, tuna with grilled mayonnaise, egg, abalone . . . At the end of the meal, the waitress just adds up the number of plates of each color, representing the different price categories, and totals your bill.
The Japanese clearly share my priorities in life, because the program ended with another awesome party centered around Korean barbecue. Each table had a pit filled with charcoal and covered by a grate upon which we grilled the combination of chicken and beef skewers, whole scallops, prawns, and tripe they brought out to us. Generally not a big fan of the cow's digestive organs, I was surprised to really enjoy the small intestine that we call chinchulín in Paraguay.The grill was very hot, and the room was filled with them, so you couldn't help but consume tremendous amounts of the incredibly refreshing and constantly flowing beer, and the mood became very festive very quickly.

After returning to Tokyo, we had one last outing all together to a Persian restaurant, which can only be described as the most insane dining experience of my entire life. The restaurant's proprietor ran about the restaurant yelling at his guests to eat more, literally pelting food at us, at one point placing a chicken in front of me, yelling violently and incomprehensively to me to give it back, and serving a portion of it to a separate party of guests at another table before bringing the chicken back to me, dragging unwilling guests by their ankles on the ground to dance with the belly dancer, lifting a friend of ours onto his shoulders and taking an inexplicable and uncomfortable liking for my MIT friend cynthia.

After the program ended I spent a couple of extra days in Tokyo and enjoying the excellent hospitality of my new friend Yosuke. I had an awesome time and made the most of the little bit of time I had there because Yosuke was willing to show me around. Here we are at Asakusa, a temple and tourist destination in Tokyo

where they sell lots of Japanese souvenirs and snacks.

Here we saw gentlemen hand making little cakes filled with red bean. It was amazing how quickly he moved and how coordinated the whole process was. They were delicious hot off the griddle.

Despite their less than appealing appearance, even more delicious were little fritters filled with red bean. They were like jelly donuts, deliciously crisp and sweet and still hot from the oil.

Yosuke and I also visited a sushi restaurant where we had an awesome rice bowl topped with anago and wasabi.

bonito tataki,

and an assortment of hand formed sushi.

This is, of course, not a food blog, but a cooking blog, meaning that it's not really about the meals I eat but about the meals that I cook. So I'll end my post with pictures of the way I ended my trip. The only meal I cooked the whole time was for Yosuke and his friends to thank him for his friendship and hospitality while I was in Tokyo. I wanted to make pasta with pesto, but fresh herbs are scarce and outrageously expensive, so I went with a seafood pasta with mojo de ajo. To my surprise, the ajo in Japan was unlike any garlic I had ever seen. Unlike garlic in the US and latin america, it didn't have any individual 'teeth,' consisting instead of one large clove. For this application it worked perfectly, saving a great deal of peeling time and energy.
Here was the final product, which contained copious amounts of cuttle fish, grilled shrimp, and shimeji and king oyster mushrooms. Niklas also brought his bottle of prize furano wine, and we made sangría to go with the Mexican theme.
Here we are posing for the camera at my final celebration in Tokyo.

This was an unbelievable experience. I only wrote about the food-related aspects here, but I am so very grateful for all the friends I made and for the chance to engage with students from all over Asia and the world about sustainable development. It really did remind me why I do what I do and convinced me that there is value in a Ph.D. in social science--something I was sorely in need of at this stage in my education. It is hard to keep motivated and stay focussed, and my time in Japan has definitely helped feel prepared for the hard times ahead.

Thanks to everyone who gave me this opportunity!

Leaving on a Jet Plan

2007-08-31T23:12:00.000-05:00

It is very nearly time for me to go back to U.S and I feel like I just got started here. The two months really flew by, and just as I started to settle into a good work rhythm, I'm getting interrupted by a whole slew of traveling. It is probably pretty good timing though. I need an opportunity to stop and take stock of all the interviews I've done and decide what direction to take my research. I'm still unsure of what the central question of my thesis will be, and it is getting difficult to move forward without a very clear focus. I'll be spending a few days in Boston hopefully getting some feedback from friends and professors and preparing some grant proposals. Then, most notably, I get to go to japan for two weeks. This came about after applying for a travel grant to attend a short course on sustainable development through the university of Tokyo. The theme is sustainable forestry and regional development in Asia, which has only a general relation to the research that I am doing, and MIT was giving complete funding for one person to attend. I decided to apply even though it was a stretch, and am really glad I did, because I ended up getting funded. Mostly graduate students and some undergrads from all over Asia and the world will be attending. Many participants from Japan, Thailand, and Southeast Asia, and some from Europe and Australia. It should be a really amazing experience to meet and learn about sustainable development with people from all over. I am also excited to squeeze as much good eating into the the two weeks. There is a cultural show night (Natsu-Matsuri, in Japanese apparently), for which perhaps I will try to cook something typically american. I'm having a hard time deciding what, becuase I'm sure everyone the world over has had the most typical hamburgers, french fries, etc. I thought maybe something mexican would be good, but I bet I'd have to take the ingredients, and mexican always takes ridiculous amounts of work. I also don't know whether to perform something Paraguayan or something American (a folk song perhaps?). Japan has been one of my top culinary tourism fantasy destinations for a while now, and while the motive of the trip is not eating, I certainly don't plan on letting this opportunity slide. Let me know about any can't miss food destinations in Hokkaido or in or around Tokyo.

We have continued to eating well here, and I think we got our food budget a little better under control. Here have been our meals for the last couple weeks.

1. Spaghetti Capricciose with oyster mushrooms, sweet vermouth, and arrugula. We made this with some mushrooms we bought from the agroshopping. It was a Mario Battali recipe and was very good.

2. Spinach Salad with strawberries and toasted almonds. I made a dressing out of balsamic vinager and what I thought was honey, but turned out to be royal jelly. I don't really know what people use royal jelly for, but I don't think I'd put it into a dressing again. It has a stronger, molassesy and kind of funky flavor. I ended up cooking the dressing to try to get some of the raw flavor out of the "honey" and wilting the spinach with it. In the end it tasted good, but I think royal jelly is probably is better used to trigger the development of a queen than to dress a salad.

3. Mostaccioli with peas, ham, new potatoes and minted cream. Much like the corn, the peas here aren't sweet here. Even when they are fresh they are very starchy and need to be boiled for at least 20 minutes to eat.

4. Mushroom omelet with smoked provolone.

5. Watercress and potato soup with yogurt and chives. I've never cooked watercress before, but it was too cold to eat salad and tried it out in soup. It really was very delicious and refreshing.

6. Broccoli with toasted garlic and sesame.

7. The elusive mangosteen. A fruit that has eluded eager consumers of tropical fruit in the U.S. for nearly a century. Attempts to cultivate it in the U.S. have failed, and the first mangosteens to be imported legally into the U.S. arrived in early august, after attempts starting in 1925. I had always read about how delicious and coveted this fruit was, and I had the chance to taste it (imported from brazil) myself after noticing the strange fruit in my supermarket next to the chirimoya and figs (also strange delicious fruits). It really was remarkable. I don't know if it was worth the 82 year wait, but very sweet and flavorful with a very agreeable texture indeed. It would make a very elegant desert for a dinner party served with some sorbet and perhaps a splash cointreau.

8.Fakejoada. I made some approximated feijoada with sausages and a smoked pork chop. It was very good, but didn't really boil long enough to let the flavors develop entirely. The sausage was amazing though, with a strange and delicious melt-in-your-mouth quality. Tomorrow, I'm making the real thing with pork ribs and more of that sausage for a goodbye party with my family.

9. Sesame Beef with pea pods. The pea pods had sat in the fridge for about two weeks, but were still really sweet, and crunchy.

10. Grilled chicken with Tandoori spices. I made this during our grill fest in June, and thought it would make a nice alternative to the sunday chicken stew my tia silvia usually makes. Now we have access to this beautiful built-in grill in our yard whenever we want. I definitely plan on taking advantage of it. Everyone loved this, eating seconds and thirds. We spent the rest of this sunday playing Canasta with my cousins until late at night.

11. We had to make homemade coconut milk because, as close as we are to brazil, there is no prepared coconut milk for sale in our grocery store. I had never done this before, but it is simple enough and requires simply blending the broken up flesh with hot water, and straining it through some cloth.

12. We made some beef masaman curry with the coconut milk and a can of curry paste we brought with us. Its accompanied by some soy braised red cabbage.

13. Finally, a salad of fresh beans with fresh mozzarella and mustard vinaigrette. I started to cut up some tomatoes for a caprese salad, but just couldn't go through with it. They were all mealy and dry as tomatoes in winter a wont to be. I plan on gorging myself on heirlooms tomatoes during the few weeks I'll spend in the U.S.

Eternal Winter

2007-08-15T13:55:00.000-05:00

The main drawback coming to Paraguay when we did is that we missed out on the summer in the U.S., including the nice weather, the summer and fall produce, and the non-cold season. Today I woke up with a very sore throat, making this the second cold I have had in a single month, both of which I caught from David. I didn't believe him when he said he was getting sick again, because I thought it was ridiculous to catch two colds in three weeks. But I was careful to keep at least 10 feet of distance from him at all times, and I still woke up sick today just as he was getting over it. This comes after a winter in which I had 3 particularly virulent colds, also with David serving as the vector. I don't know what it is, but he gets more colds than anyone I know, and when you live with someone its hard to avoid getting infected.

So, we finally got internet in the house, and while it is a bit slow, it makes my life a lot easier here. Something that would get done in a single day, takes a week to get done without regular internet access. Partly, this is because people aren't great about answering their phones, or being in their offices here. At any rate, all is well, aside from my cold. My work has progressed somewhat, and I am feeling better about it, but time is running out and I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I would like. Today is a holiday though and all the offices are closed, so at least I have an excuse to stay home in bed today. It is the anniversary of the founding of the city of Asunción, which was founded 470 years ago today, is one of the oldest cities in South America, and served as a Spanish base for the second founding of Buenos Aires and other cities in the Spanish empire, which is why it is known as the "mother of cities," or sometimes the "cradle of America" Yesterday there was a modest display of fire works and an outdoor concert in the main plaza downtown.

We've been eating lots and lots of meat, which we are not really accustomed to, which has made me realize how large a proportion of our diet in Boston was made up of shellfish and their relatives. I'm not terribly confident about cooking meat, especially when it is just for two people, rather than a roast for a dinner party or something. On top of that, the cuts here are different, and looking at the meat counter at the super market just bewilders me. I made my best guess for what might be skirt steak, and it turned out I had gotten one of toughest cuts of meat that is only good for puchero, a beef soup that boils for hours. So in the meantime, I feel guilty to say, I haven't adjusted my cooking to local ingredients as well as I imagined I would. There are several reasons for this, 1) my tia Silvia cooks a lunch (the big meal of the day) of delicious Paraguayan food for us every day, and when planning dinner I always feel like we should eat something different; 2) Traditional paraguayan food ingredients are cheap, plentiful, and fresh, but they require a lot of preparation and time that I don't really have-- Beans have to be cooked, meat has to be boiled, cornmeal has to be made into something 3) my mom left a whole cabinet full of non-Paraguayan ingredients here a few months ago that I have found pretty handy in coming up with quick and tasty meals based on the techniques and recipes I am used to; 4) I feel far out of my element here. I don't have my own highly personalized kitchen any longer and I am not surrounded by the groceries and specialty stores that I have grown very used to. You'll also notice, perhaps, that lighting is an issue in the pictures. We haven't found a good place to take the pictures and the flash makes things look terrible. We don't really have a table to eat at either in the part of the house we live in, so we end up sitting on the edge of my bed in front of the tv with our plates in our laps and putting the serving dishes on a chair.

While what we've been cooking has been tasty and convenient, it has also been pretty expensive. I am kind of shocked at the grocery bill we are running up. I'm hoping with time we'll develop more frugal shopping habits, and figure out how to do more with the more common and economical local ingredients. Here is the run-down, starting with our last meals in Boston, using farmer's market produce:

1. This was a black pepper linguine (which somehow ended up being one of my favorite flavors at Capone's) with garlic scape pesto, garnished with fresh basil, lemon zest, and parmagiano.

2.The foto of our "eat up our food and drink all our alcohol party." We invited anyone who was left in Boston to eat a meal that I made out of what was left in the house. At the very top are some fingerling potatoes roasted in duck fat with rosemary and sea salt. Clockwise, are the long-promised empanadas (these were as guilt free as I've ever made with free-range beef and eggs); next a simple salad of red romaine; a pear tart using some puff pastry I'd had in the freezer for much, much too long; and finally free-range beef ribs braised with ancho chile and coffee. These were amazingly rich and flavorful.

Here is a close-up of the beef ribs, the picture isn't great, but it gives you an idea. I found the recipe on line:

3. Our final meal in Boston, prepared and scarfed down in literally in less than five minutes while we called the cab to go to the airport. I had bought the ripest tomatoes available and put in them in a brown bag a few days earlier. I couldn't miss out on at least on Caprese salad.

4. Our first meal in Paraguay was in fact all local. A salad of watercress, heart of palm, and hardboiled egg. David loves watercress and heart of palm, both very paraguayan ingredients.

5. Our next meal was also fairly local, given that Paraguay has substantial german influence in its cuisine: Sausages and Sourkraut. They make very high quality wursts in Paraguay, which are usually grilled as the first course of a barbeque and eaten with mandioca. They worked perfectly in this application as well. The funny part is that when I was packing up the kitchen, I debated whether to bring the juniper berries and decided I would never make SourKraut here. It turned out to be practically the first thing I made. Luckily my mom left some caraway seed, so it tasted fairly authentic, and I have since found juniper berries at a gourmet store.

6. This meal was all local. I was inspired by the fresh vegetables at the supermarket to make an Indian curry. Lacking a spice grinder, and too lazy to grind the spices by hand in the mortar and pestle I relied on some curry powder my mom had left in the cabinet. It did the trick, but not as well as home mixed spice powder. The yogurt here is absolutely delicious though, and after years of making our own yogurt, I think we'll be taking a break here.

Here is the finished curry.

7. This was a not entirely successful pasta carbonera with smoked pork loin. I had to improvise the recipe to the best of my memory and knowledge, because I did not have internet access. It would have been fine, but I ended up putting far too much black pepper. Again for lack of a pepper mill I had david grind it in the mortar and pestle. Not realizing how much was in mortar I added it all to the sauce and had to cook some of harshness out of it, inadvertently (but not surprisingly) curdling the egg yolk. All things considered, it was still pretty tasty.

8. Another example of how far out of my element I am. This was corn chowder with smoked pork loin and red bell pepper. I intended this to be a quick and easy meal, but I did not count on the drastic difference between sweet corn in the U.S. and sweetcorn here. I think I have commented on it before, explaining that US corn doesn't work as well for Chipa Guazu. But it turns out that Paraguayan corn isn't so great for U.S. recipes either. I had to boil it for almost an hour to get it tender enough to drink in a soup, and there really is no need to leave any whole kernels for texture here, the tremendous amount of fibre in the blended corn kernels is more than enough.

9. Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce and Italian Sausage. It was very good.

10. Here we used up some leftover beef (the cut is called vacio, which I suspect is flank steak, translation anyone?) To make a sort of asian beef salad with watercress, tomatoes, and cashew dressing. We didn't have any soy sauce or sesame oil, but it worked out anyway.

11. The leftover cauliflower went into another curry with some potatoes and onions, this time without yogurt and with hand ground spices. It was definitely worth the trouble.

12. Cellophane noodles with shrimp, red cabbage, and sesame seeds. While the cellophane noodles and shrimp are certainly not Paraguayan (and the shrimp were pretty pricey), the sesame seeds actually are. Over 35,000 small farmers are now growing sesame seed, as the result of a Japanese companies effort to create a supply base in Paraguay. It is one of the few positive examples of agricultural diversification with a substantial socio-economic effect, and details about this case might just find themselves a place in my thesis. This was really good.

13 Finally, arrugula salad with goat cheese, candied pecans, and apple. This was after we went to the "agroshopping" for the first time. It is basically a farmers market styled after those in U.S. and Europe. It was a development project of the Japanese Development Assistance Agency (JICA), to give small farmers direct access to some of the country's most affluent consumers. Every tuesday they set up in the first floor of one of the fancy shopping malls (Mariscal Lopez Shopping) in a ritzy neighborhood. I was surprised to see that there is in fact a variety of high quality produce and farm products, though definitely a reduced variety compared to the US. In particular there are swiss and french cheese makers that make very high quality cheese in about 20 varieties (emmental, gruyer, brie, camembert, muenster, a soft rind goat, fresh mozzarella, a manchego style, and many more). There is also a stand that sells all manner of cured and smoked meats. If I go next week I'll take some pictures. At an rate, we used some arrugula and goat cheese from the market, some pecans left by my mother, and some maple syrup we brought with us to make this salad. I love this picture too.

The hole in the world wide web

2007-08-01T17:22:00.000-05:00

So still no internet at home. For my political economy colleagues, paraguay certainly makes you consider the upside to telecom privatization. Anyhow, things are going well here. I have started on my field work, and while it is pretty late in the game to be torn between different research projects, there is at least not a lack of interesting avenues to explore. Most of my interviews have revealed intriguing possibilities and made me excited to do this work. The problem is that it only takes one interview that seems to contradict or complicate in some way the hypotheses I am exploring to make me doubt the entire research agenda and whether I really ought to be doing a PhD in political science at all. This is really unfortunate, since I know that I´m bound to have a lot of these sorts of interviews before my fieldwork is done, and that I´m likely to get more confused as time goes on rather than more sure of what I think I know. Knowing that doesn't really help though. In general, I'm kind of shocked with how much some of my interviews confirm the view of small-producers, innovation, high-quality niche markets, and cooperation that I developed in Boston. The problem comes when someone disagrees with how I see things or challenges my proposal. Obviously, this is a necessary and generally desirable part of the process. However, its impossible to decide whether this difference comes from my infinitely inferior knowledge of local conditions and utter lack of experience in development work compared to those I am interviews, or from a difference of interpretation. It's a tough call, because in writing a dissertation, I want to come up with something new and not just repeat the conventional wisdom that is guiding people in the field, but I also have to learn from people whose experience vastly exceeds my own. You need to be confident enough to not have an existential crisis every time someone sees things differently, but not so much that you don't realize when you are barking up the wrong tree. It doesn't help that I'm "very young to be doing a PhD." I've grown a beard to appear slightly older, but still, I know people would take me more seriously if I were older. Or if i had more experience working in international development. I know that I would feel more confident, and probably command more respect if I had more experience. We all have to start somewhere, but it definitely have inklings of being in over my head as I try to get this project off the ground. Its hard to start anything though, and I guess i I look at this as the start of a new career, then I'm not doing so bad.

As for the cooking, it's hard to not have my own kitchen for the time being, but we have been cooking some. I promise I'll upload some pictures as soon as I have better internet access. I've been assured that it will not be more than two more weeks. I can also commence with a series of traditional parguayan recipes as well.

¡Saludos desdel Paraguay!

2007-07-13T12:04:00.000-05:00

Faithful blog readers:

The move out of the apartment and to Paraguay has gone pretty well, and I do have pictures of the last meals we had and our "eat our food and drink our alcohol" party. However, internet access is a bit scarce here, so it might be a while before I get to posting again. We're trying to get internet in the house, but it apparently takes a very long time. But keep checking, I promise I won't disappear for ever.

Cleaning House

2007-07-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

Sorry to those of you who might have checked on Wednesday for my weekly update. I meant to post, but this week has been really crazy and continues to be, as we are packing up our apartment and preparing to move to Paraguay! It's been exhausting and we are not even close to done yet with only a few days to go. We've been eating pretty well though, and very often. I'm trying to avoid throwing out any food, so I've been cooking every day to use up all the ingredients in the pantry, fridge and freezer. Here's the recap:

A chicken torso (without legs, thighs, or wings) was left over from the paella last week, some tandoori paste left from the grill-fest a few weeks ago, and the last of some homemade yogurt combined to make tandoori roasted chicken breast. We experimented with the naan and found that it comes out much better on the flat iron grill than in the oven on the baking stone. It rose beautifully and came out soft on the grill, while it was tough and cardboard-like on the baking stone. Go figure.
Basil and red chard from the farmers market went into this red chard and sausage ravioli with basil pesto.
The rest of the italian sausage went into a broccoli rabe and italian sausage pizza with fresh mozzarella.
Next was crab cakes with fresh shelled peas and fava beans and some radishes and curly lettuce from the farmers market, with a whole-grain mustard and lime dressing. These crab cakes were awesome, and used up a bit of old baguette. The recipe is actually from Martha Stewart's hors d'oeuvre book, also a worthwhile investment.
As promised some weeks ago, the home-made lard I rendered for the chipas found their way into some home-made flour tortillas. They came out perfect, flaky and light, and ideal for these free range beef fajitas. I used the last of some canned tomatoes to make a quick-cooked salsa with green chiles.
Plated
The next night I was too exhausted to cook, but by the time we got to dinner it was too late to order out, and we were starving. So I threw a box of beef broth into a pot with pho herbs and spices, some dried shitakes, and the last of our dried udon noodles for an improvised dinner of vietnamese spiced udon with peas. It was decent considering how improvised it was, though a little on the salty side, and could have stood the addition of some actual beef or at least tofu.
We bought a Pullman-shaped loaf of brioche for sandwiches at the farmers market last saturday which was absolutely perfect as a toasted base for some crabcake leftovers and spicy tuna sandwiches. The nasturtiums started blooming on the balcony too, so I'm trying to enjoy them while we have a chance. I love the idea of eating a flower, and nasturtiums are peppery and delicious.
The leftover flour tortillas made for some breakfast quesadillas with scrambled egg, green chile, and the last of the misfit alpine cheese.
The leftover dough from the broccoli rabe pizza was the base of our lunch today, which I've got to say was even better. I made pesto from the garlic scapes we got last saturday at the market and the last of the pine nuts from the pantry, and topped the pizza with the pesto, ricotta cheese, and the very first of the summer's tomatoes (hothouse grown and coaxed into complete ripeness in a paper bag on our counter) and some chopped basil. This was an amazing pizza. And as excited as I am to go to paraguay, I'm really very sad to miss the tomato season here. We go into a tomato feeding frenzy during the month of august, and every meal is something tomato related: salsas, gazpacho, pasta with fresh tomato sauce, caprese salad, bruschetta, tomato sandwiches, it goes on and on.

I find it really satisfying to use up the last bits of things and clean out my kitchen that way. It seems like its all accelerating now that we've only got a few days left in this apartment, but there is still a lot of food in the fridge and freezer.

Two blogs collided

2007-06-27T17:31:00.000-05:00

Here's where blog meets blog. My sister, author of domisworld, and her husband brought my nephew Domingo to visit his tio in Boston last week. By all accounts it was a fantastic weekend, and we managed a worthy culinary encore to my parents visit a couple weeks ago. Domi is the sweetest baby in the whole universe and it makes me sad that it will be at least several months before I see him again. He is really the most agreeable and easy going baby I know. He hardly cries at all, and he is always smiling and laughing and snuggling with you. I think he liked Boston and his tio's house. And, while he's still too little to eat many things and eats mostly milk, baby food, and little bits of what his parents are eating, maybe someday he'll look forward to visiting and eating at my house.
Somehow we failed to take a picture of the empanadas we made upon my sister's arrival. I made the traditional filling out of free-range ground beef and organic eggs--not your typical empanada--and bought pastry disks for the shell from the Brazilian butcher in union square (they are definitely not the same as my tia's homemade dough, but they do the trick). We froze some to fry up later, so we'll be sure to snap a picture and perhaps post a recipe as well.

Our next item of business was a trip to formaggio kitchen, a cathedral of fine foods near harvard square, and definitely the widest selection of cheeses I have ever witnessed. It's the kind of place that makes you wish you were very, very wealthy. Really, only cheese and perhaps sushi (see below) make me second guess my career choices and wonder whether I should have tried my luck on Wall Street.

Dinner was a thai squid salad, with avocado and mango. It was light, fresh, and very flavorful. Perfect after the fairly heavy lunch of empanadas, of which we all had one or two more than we probably should have.

The salad was also perfect to precede our cheese course from formaggio kitchen. We picked out three cheeses: an italian robiola, wrapped in chestnut leaves with pronounced goat milk flavors, a french sheepsmilk, and a swiss alpine style cheese. It might start to sound like I'm crying wolf, but this robiola was even better than the 'la tur' I wrote about two weeks ago. It was like no cheese I've had before. As my sister's husband said, "there is not moment of doubt; this cheese is good from start to finish." The sheepsmilk was very good as well, but I'm afraid I don't remember the name, and the alpine style cheese didn't really pair well with the other two, but was very good grated onto some breakfast sandwiches a few days later. We also picked up some fresh figs at formaggio.

We started off the next day by visiting the farmers market, where we picked up some vegetables and some free-range pork and chicken that would go into that evening's special dinner. Then we went out for dim sum with my brother in-law's best friend who just happened to be in Boston to meet domi! Dim Sum is one of my favorite cheap and delicious meals. It's a great breakfast, believe it or not, particularly after a night of drinking. This was Chau Chau City, which people say is the best dim sum in Boston.

After a little bit of sight seeing in the Boston Public Gardens, we headed to New Deal fish Market to begin preparation on what would be one of the best meals I've cooked since I started this blog. We picked up two lobsters, some mussels, and clams that would go into a paella along with the chicken and pork we got earlier that day from the farmers market.

After several minutes of Homer Simpson-like groaning, we debated whether this was 'the best' or 'one of the best' paellas we had ever had. My mom makes fantastic paella. It is always a very special occasion dinner, and Alice and I have had many so we couldn't conclude outright that it was the best we had ever had. But Chris and David said they had never had better. It certainly helped that the seafood, and the meat too, I suppose, was as fresh as it could possibly be. Even the peas were so fresh and sweet from the farmer's market that we shelled them and just sprinkled them onto the finished paella raw.

Here it is plated with a glass of Chilean Cabernet. Clockwise from the lemon are mussel, chicken, lobster, country-style pork rib, and clam.
The next day, our plan was to go to the beach and have a light salad as lunch before we went to an early dinner at Boston's best (and most expensive!) sushi restaurant, oishii. The salad was all from the farmer's market, fresh peas, radishes, arrugula, green onion, and boston lettuce.
Here we are at the beach, but you will notice--no salad. We realized after we'd been on the highway for twenty minutes that in the scramble to make sure we had the baby and all his things, change of clothes for the restaurants, printed out directions, etc., we had left the salad sitting on the coffee table in the living room. We ate it the next day, and it was still very good.

And here is our appetizer from oishii, complete with iceblock. It is Kobe beef tartar with fried shallots and osetra caviar. This has got to be the fancy-pansiest thing I've ever eaten. In the very corner you also see white salmon sashimi, served with plum sauce and tuna tartar. Everything was carefully prepared, and beautifully presented. The sushi was amazingly fresh and had an exquisite texture that melted in your mouth. But it's certainly not cheap. If wealth has it's benefits, oishii is one of them.
Before my sister's visit, I experienced an important first. The first meal that I have cooked for David that he hated. It is strange, because I liked it just fine. I've made meals that I've been critical of and he has not minded, but he really had to force this one down. I wasn't terribly hurt, because I realized that in the nearly four years of our friendship, this was the first time it had happened. The offending meal was turnip and purple cauliflower gratin. I was lazy and didn't parboil the greens, which would have tempered their strong 'turnip' flavor. I think David would have liked it otherwise, but he also said it was too 'casserole-like' for him.

Luckily dessert was to follow. A leftover blueberry waffle from breakfast with vanilla ice-cream and some of the strawberry rhubarb compote still in my fridge.

We are leaving July 9th, and their is still a lot of food in my fridge and in my pantry. In the next couple weeks we'll be trying to use up as much as we can, so it should result in some creative combinations.

All work and no cooking (not really)

2007-06-20T18:30:00.000-05:00

I'm exhausted today, as I've been trying to catch up on some work and continuing to make preparations for our move to Paraguay. So I don't think I'll have too much to say about the meals we've been cooking. We spent the first part of this week eating up all the yummy leftovers from last week, and cooking very little. Plus we were showing our apartment so we were trying to keep the kitchen very clean.

I snuck in a few purchases along with the groceries for when my parents were here of things we always want but can never afford. One item was good smoked salmon. When we were in New York for the first time we decided we had better go to a deli and get some authentic bagel and lox. I really didn't expect much, because I really didn't care too much for lox or smoked salmon when I had tried it before. We were blown away by how much better it was and baffled why it should actually be any different at this deli in Brooklyn than in Boston or anywhere else. On our second trip to New York, I was skeptical that we could recreate our sublime lox experience, but sure enough we ordered a pumpernickel bagel with lox, cream cheese, etc. at a deli across the street from Lincoln center and it was amazing. We haven't been to New York for a while now, and David has been bugging me about craving lox. I didn't want to buy the cheep stuff because I'm sure it would be disappointing and not a terribly 'eco-friendly' choice either. So I slipped a small package of wild alaska lox into our basket at Savenor's. Thanks mom and dad! It wasn't quite the same as our big apple lox (only god and the deli man knows why) but it was pretty good.

We've also been using up saturday's farmer's market purchases. This was asparagus and some mild variety of asian mustard green, stir fried with oyster sauce and black vinegar. They turned out perfectly crisp and green with lots of flavor. I wanted to spare us the carb calories and didn't make any rice. It was a real mistake because their was nothing to soak up the sauce and balance the rich flavors. Next time I'll just jog a little longer the next day.

Farm egg omelet filled with sautéed pea tendrils, prosciutto, and truffled cheese. This used up the last of last week's cheese board and some prosciutto that was too old for sandwiches. I love farm eggs. Someday I swear I will have chickens in my yard so I can have them any time I want.

Finally, last night we had curried udon noodles with spicy chinese mustard greens and sugar snap peas. I'm thinking of adding sliced beef to the leftovers.

He who eats alone chokes alone

2007-06-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

Boy what a week of eating and cooking I've had! I've just passed through the culinary highlight of the year, and it's nice to have this blog posting to reflect on it. Each year my parents come out to visit me in Boston for about a week, and we spend it cooking together and searching for Boston's best restaurants. It's really a very important week for me, because without foodnetwork (or cable television) eating out is really the greatest source of inspiration and continued learning for my cooking. But it all has to happen in one week, since David and I can't really afford to go out very often on our own. Its pedagogical purpose aside, my parents' visit is one of things we look forward to all year. We have a lot of fun, and it makes me really happy to have them as part of my life here, since I am far away from my family most of the year. I love showing my parents and close friends who visit where I do my grocery shopping, what bus I take to school, how I make tea in the morning, where I pick up lunch in a hurry, where a good bar is. All the little details of my life that they would know unconsciously if they could share it more regularly with me. It's strange, I really love my life here, my apartment and kitchen, and--at least in some broad general way--the work that I am doing and career I'm headed toward. But it often seems really incomplete without the many close relationships and dense domestic life I've shared with friends and family in earlier stages of my life. That's why I'm always happier when people visit and I can cook for more than two.

Here's what we ate:

Most recently, and I think the best meal I made this week, was grilled shrimp zarandeado with saffron fettuccine and green garlic mojo. This is a twist on the traditional camarones al mojo de ajo.. We used some more of the huge wild-caught pink shrimp from New Deal Fish Market, and the same guajillo chile marinade I used to grill them last time. The sauce for the pasta is made by cooking a probably 3 or 4 tablespoons of chopped garlic in 3/4 cup of olive oil at very low heat until it is silky, golden, and sweet, about half an hour. You then add the juice of one lime, and a chopped chipotle chile. We used green garlic, the plant's 'baby' stage before the hard bulb and papery skin forms, from the farmers market. It lent a mellow garlic flavor to the fruitiness of the olive oil and married perfectly with the smoky sweetness of the chipotle and the fragrance of the saffron. Alongside this was mixed farmers market salad greens, french breakfast radishes, and avocado, with a lime and whole-grain mustard dressing.

Steamed lobsters with breakfast radishes and spring turnips, braised with their greens with bacon and balsamic vinegar.

Followed by a cheese course and fresh farmer's market strawberries. To the right of the strawberries is 'la tur,' an Italian robiola-style cow, sheep, and goats-milk cheese with a creamy and sometimes almost liquidy texture and dubbed by one food critic 'as close to love as a cheese can get.' This is one of the best cheese I've ever had and I highly recommend finding it or the similar and also excellent 'robiola rocchetta.' Clockwise from there are some bread from the Davis Square farmer's market; a small portion of lavender and lemon goat cheese, also from the farmers market, a truffled semi-soft cows milk cheese, and 'queso al romero' a semi-hard spanish sheeps milk cheese with rosemary.

Standing prime-rib roast, with horseradish rosemary crust and salad of Boston lettuce with strawberries and black sesame dressing. The balsamic and chinese black vinegar reduction I made a couple weeks ago, along with toasted sesame oil, black sesame seeds and some red wine vinegar, was an ideal match for the sweetness and perfume of the strawberries . The roast was perfection. I knew when we picked it up from savenor's market from the beautiful and even marbling that it would be the best beef roast I have ever made. It's expensive to get your meat from such a high end butcher, but if you enjoy meat I think you owe it to yourself and the animal to do it right.

Desert was the debut of the cheeses described above, but with an anise-spiced rhubarb and strawberry compote.
Vietnamese fresh spring rolls filled with roast pork, sliced steak, and fresh herbs. We made an afternoon snack of this to use some leftover pork chop and steak frites from central kitchen--a restaurant that gets my highest recommendation for consistently excellent food and great value. We tried our best to make mojitos out of some pretty sad limes, they weren't great, but they did the trick.

My mother discovered fiddleheads--the not yet unfurled bud of a wild fern available only in the spring time--at central kitchen, where the spring market vegetables was by far the most inventive, freshest, and most flavorful dish on the menu. It came as a trio with sauteed fiddleheads, minted breakfast radishes, and a little turnip and maitake mushroom 'package.' We found some fiddleheads in the supermarket and decided to give it a shot. This dinner was roasted duck breast, spiced with star anise, red chili, and black pepper and served with a blackberry port-wine sauce. On the side are Yuca gnocchi with leeks and fiddleheads sautéed in brown butter.

Before my parents came we celebrated the start of the farmer's market season with two different meals. Below is basil linguine with braised grass-fed beef-rib and arrugula salad with local organic fresh mozzarella cheese. For those of you following the discussion of short rib braising chowhound, using the pressure cooker worked perfectly. The meat was falling off the bone in less than an hour; so much so, that the main drawback to this method is that the ribs loose their shape too much and are not as elegant as the much longer oven braise usually required.

Finally, the first farmer's market meal of the season, more than a week ago, was red-leaf boston lettuce with blueberries, pickled onion, lavender-lemon goat cheese and balsamic-maple vinaigrette (thanks to Hanna for the dressing recipe :) ). We wait all year for the farmers market, because, while you can certainly get lettuce all year round, it just cannot compare with what you get directly from the grower. Just-picked lettuce has an amazingly soft texture, its not so crisp and full water as what you get at the store, and it tastes greener and more 'leafy'.

Receta de Chipa - Chipa Recipe

2007-06-06T20:31:00.001-05:00

Dear Readers,

The internet is so full of entirely bogus Paraguayan recipes--particularly bogus chipa recipes posted by Argentines who don't even seem to realize that chipa is a predominantly paraguayan food--that I felt it was time to get at least one good, tested recipe out there for my fellow paraguayan-american cooks, aimlessly and hopelessly surfing the internet for some direction. I searched all websites, english and spanish, combined incites from a few recipes that seemed on the right track, and used my good sense and knowledge of what chipa should be like to come up with something that is very authentic in taste, texture, and aroma. I'm pretty sure the ones you get on the street are made from yuca starch alone, but, when I tried that last time, they just didn't taste right. So these are chipa mestizo, meaning they are made with both yuca starch and corn meal. As they came out of the oven today, they were every bit as good as you get in Paraguay.

The process did involve rendering my own lard from pork fat, which I admit is probably more ambitious than many of you get. The alternatives were to use oil, which I guarantee would not come out right; butter, which has more saturated fat and cholesterol than lard and doesn't taste as good; shortening, which generally is full of the newly dreaded transfat; or store-bought lard, which is tasteless and full of the same transfats because it is hydrogenated. If you live near a fancy butcher or a large mexican community, you can probably find fresh rendered lard. For me, there was really there was no other option but to do it myself. I had always wanted to try my hand at it anyway, and it turned out to be completely worth it because the chipa were awesome. I also can't wait to use the leftover lard to make some flour tortillas!

Since I'll be working in paraguay for quite a while starting in July, I'd like to make this the first in a series of paraguayan recipes I'll be posting, in an effort to improve the quality of Paraguayan food information available online. Maybe I can convince a chipera to divulge her formula so that we can finally have a definitive chipa recipe. In the meantime, her is my best effort:

Chipa

500g Yuca Starch
500g corn flour (milled much finer/powdery than corn meal)
6 eggs
500g Grated Cheese (you want a strongly flavored cheese with high fat content; if you have access to a Brazilian grocery, queijo minas curado has the right flavor and consistency)
8 tbs. Lard
1 tbs anise seed
1 cup milk
1 tbs salt

Mix the cornmeal and yuca starch in a very large bowl. Add the eggs, the lard, and the grated cheese. Mix this together until it is fairly uniform; it will be crumbly but you should work out any large lumps and make sure the lard and egg are evenly distributed. Dissolve the salt into the milk and add it to the mixture along with the anise. Knead until it is smooth and uniform and anise is evenly distributed. It should have the consistency of soft clay.

Preheat the oven (and baking stone if you have one) to 500. Shape the dough as you like, small nuggets for chipitas, or rings for the traditional shape, though the large oval shapes (below) came out the best for me. Bake for 15-20 minutes directly on a baking stone or on an ungreased baking sheet until they are golden brown with a crisp exterior. They should still be somewhat doughy and cheesy inside and are best hot. The rings were slightly overdone in 15 minutes, but the large ovals were absolutely perfect.

Here they are as part of merienda with the obligatory cup of cocido quemado.

The life Aquatic

2007-06-03T23:11:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I've been contributing to the death aquatic. My fish choices have not been the most responsible as of late. Last weeks snapper already made me feel a bit guilty, but I figured it was the only one we've bought in the last two years, and the shrimp were the most responsible (and most delicious) you can buy. But I had a moment of stupidity or perhaps some kind of Freudian willful blindness at the supermarket yesterday. There was all sorts of fish they don't usually have, some of it much fresher than usual, at Market Basket, where there is no fish counter--just a refrigerator case with the day's 'catch'--usually a bunch of farm-raised salmon, tilapia and shrimp imported from china, and random bits of cod, scrod, and haddock.

But yesterday, there was hake, mako shark, swordfish (pretty sad looking though), halibut, and others. It was strange, a great diversity of fish all at once. So I somehow convinced myself that it these fish must be 'in season' and if they were so cheap they probably weren't threatened species. I bet on the Hake, and the Mako Shark. Turns out hake is neither an 'ecobest' nor and 'ecoworst' choice on sustainable fish purchasing guide, meaning that it was probably an ok choice. I probably should have thought a little harder about the shark, though--A clear ecoworst, as well as a source of unhealthy amounts of mercury. Apparently both mako shark species are categorized as 'vulnerable,' in no small part because the practice of 'finning' them for shark-fin soup in Asia. It looked so fresh and firm though, and it was ridiculously cheap, that I just didn't think it all the way through.

I did make something delicious out of it though. This was tonight's dinner: mako shark ceviche, with sweet corn, yukon gold new potatoes, avocado, and pickled onion. It really was the perfect fish for this preparation, with a firm texture and clean taste, but farmed striped bass is apparently and an 'ecobest' choice and would probably work very well. This is super easy to make and delicious. You just cube or dice the fish, and marinate overnight in 1 clove garlic smashed, one chile pepper (serrano) halved, a teaspoon of sea salt, black pepper, a few sprigs cilantro, and enough lime juice to cover (I juiced 8 limes). The lime juice really does 'cook' the fish and gives it a terrific fresh flavor. I pickle the onions in rice vinegar to same me the time and money of juicing that many limes.

The night before we had the Hake (or Merluza as it is called in Spanish) in a tomato stew with potatoes and peas. I'd been saving some tomato sauce in the freezer that I had been meaning to use and I thought this was a good opportunity. It was a really delicious late-night dinner.

Finally. This meal had got to be one of the best ones I've posted about here. I purchased a can of fresh crab claw meat from the supermarket a few weeks ago (apparently canned and refrigerated, it keeps for several months) because it seemed like a good idea and was pretty cheap for crab. I wanted to make something special out of it, since we don't often get a hold of large amounts of what I hoped would be good quality crab meat. After thinking for a while, I decided I would make crab cannelloni. I adapted a mexican recipe from Rick Bayless, for fish with poblano chile rajas and cream, and made a filling out of shallots, roasted poblano chiles, green onion, garlic, crabmeat, pine nuts, and a little cream. I then filled thin egg pasta sheets from Capone's, covered the cannelloni with bechamel and grating cheese , and into the oven for 30 minutes. The presentation may be lacking, but no presentation, or picture for the matter, can really do these justice. They were exquisite.

Plated

School's Out for Summuh

2007-05-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Not that it actually makes much difference in terms of what I do on a daily basis, but the semester ended a little over a week ago. At this stage in graduate school, I pretty much should be steadily working on research regardless of whether classes are in session, but it is still really nice to not have any immediately pressing deadlines. I did manage to take one wonderful restorative week off after I handed in a revised proposal to do a tremendous amount of cooking. I cooked as many blogworthy meals in last week as I did in the month before. As will become clear by the pictures below, David and I had access to a grill at the house he was 'sitting' while its owners were on vacation, and we grilled like it was going out of style, cramming a whole summer's worth of cravings into a week.

But first, I continued to use up some of what we had in the fridge. This will continue to occupy me as we are leaving this apartment in a little more than a month and we need to use up all of the food in the house. This was Fusilli pasta with fava beans, and cilantro-tahini sauce. This used up the last of some homemade yogurt, some cilantro that was losing its green, a box of pasta, and some of the tahini I bought to make hummus. I used up the rest of the frozen mixed seafood and a package of rice noodles to make yellow curry noodles. Curry paste is the ultimate convenience food. Mixed with a can of coconut milk and some vegetables, curry paste makes a quick, luxuriously rich and filling meal.
I've had an octopus in the freezer for months now that I have saving for a special occasion, which never really came around. But I saw a recipe in the new your times that seemed easy and appealing so I decided to try it out. The basic format of the recipe was good, the octopus bakes and slowly tenderizes in its own juices and a hefty amount of olive oil and garlic for more than an hour. But as it was written, the recipe would seem pretty bland. I added a tablespoon of paprika to make it more interesting and ensure that it had a deep red color, and ended up adding quite a bit of salt, though the recipe says to add it only 'if needed.' I cut the potatoes into very large chunks, as suggested by the recipe, and they still came out a bit over cooked, so I next time, I would cut them smaller, brown them separately and add them to the octopus closer to the end of cooking time. Still, the rich garlicky broth was delicious sopped up with some bread, and the leftovers the next day were even better.
Perhaps it will become a tradition, but we marked the end of the semester with another cheeseboard from capone's, though more modest than our last few. This one had two semi-firm sheepsmilk cheeses, a pecorino toscano and a french sheepsmilk that was wonderful. We also picked up a bottle of cheap Côte-du-Rhone, and what Capone's called "perhaps the best salami we have ever had." If they still have it, it is definitely worth getting.
Thus began the week of grilling. First, we made grilled portobello mushrooms. I made a marinade from olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, sherry, and fresh rosemary from the balcony. They grilled up perfectly juicy and plump like steaks, fulfilling the promise that grilled mushrooms hold out as a satisfying vegetarian option that is so often broken at restaurants.

I served the mushroom steaks up with a green bean salad with grape organic tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese.
Craving some grilled fish, we went to what is probably Boston's best fish market, New Deal--described in this fish blog, and got a red snapper to grill up. The marinade was from Rick Bayless's version of the chile-bathed grilled Pescado Zarandeado that you get in Puerto Vallarta.
The next day, we had a lunch of Vietnamese fresh spring rolls, filled with hoisin-marinated tofu and fresh herbs, and homemade peanut sauce. These were so flavorful, fresh, and light, and invovled no cooking at all, only assembly.
We also picked up some of the freshest, largest shrimp I've ever seen at New Deal Fish Market. They were wild-caught Florida gulf shrimp. I used some of the left-over marinade from the fish and grilled the shrimp with the shell on so they could get lots of grilled flavor without drying out. The trick is to cut through the top of the shell down the length of the shrimp with a sharp knife to clean out the 'vein' and make for painless shell removal when your eating them. Across the street from New Deal is Mayflower Poultry, with a big sign stating "fresh-killed poultry" and we picked up a whole cut up chicken. I marinated it with tandoori spices and yogurt overnight. Yogurt makes for a bit of a messy grill, but chicken always comes out so tender and juicy after a yogurt bath that its worth it. Sake made for a bit of an odd pairing, but we needed to spend more than $10 at the Japanese market where we bought the spring roll wrappers in order to put our purchases on credit card.
At Shaw's supermarket, we meant to pick up some hamburgers for the most traditional of grill fair but ran across some wild Alaskan salmon that looked too fresh to pass up--particularly compared to the pale, color-added, polluting, farm-raised atlantic salmon that crowds the fish counter most of the year. Its accompanied by grilled leeks with mustard dressing.

We still would have picked up some burgers, except that these 'naturally-raised' baby-back pork ribs seduced us. I made a dry-rub from an unreasonable amount of spices which grilled up into a smoky-sweet crust as they slowly tenderized on the grill. We grilled up some sweet plantains to serve with organic avocado guacamole.
Rounding out our week of grilling was warm grilled mangoes and plums with vanilla ice cream and a balsamic-Chinese-black vinegar reduction. Chinese black vinegar is sweetened and spiced, so its perfect for reducing to a syrup for deserts or glazes. This was a great way to round out our week of grilling.

Month in Review

2007-05-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

My deepest apologies to all my fans. This has been an unforgivable absence. The end of the semester just took over me, and I haven't been able to post. This weekend was particularly crazy, as David graduated from his masters program--he now has a Masters in Music Performance! and his mother and friends were staying with us. On top of that I had three different performances to sing in myself. But we have definitely been eating and taking pictures. So here is about three weeks worth of meals:

We are in and out of the poor house these days, so as our economic situation changes, we have been going to the grocery store less often and looking for stuff on sale, and trying to do the best we can with what we already have at home. This has involved really cleaning out my freezer of all the ingredients, partially prepared meals, leftovers, and frozen staples that have been sitting and accumulating in their over the past year. One night we had very little in the house and David used the last of the homemade wheat bread to make these tuna melts. Not bad for a cheap dinner.
We've also been eating a ridiculous amount of pizza. It's cheep and we have been using the cans of tomatoes and frozen meats left over from our days of plenty. I believe this one actually used up the leftover sauce, including mushrooms and italian sausage, that I made for the black pepper fettuccine in the last post. It was perfect.
This was the second one out of the oven to which we added some leftover prosciutto. It was a bit dry and old for sandwiches but it crisped up perfectly on the pizza.
I don't remember if there was some occasion, I doubt it really, but one morning David decided to make a nice breakfast: molasses buckwheat pancakes with blackberry syrup and peach mango smoothy using homemade yogurt.
We had left over dough from the earlier pizza, so I had to invent a use for it using the ingredients we had. I know that this is going to sound a little weird, but believe me, it was delicious. It was sort of a pizza nicoise. Pizza with a very small amount of cheese, tomato sauce, tuna, and fresh chopped capers, shallots, hard boiled egg, and parsley. They eat pizza with tuna in Paraguay, and I always thought it was weird (well really it is) until I ate some this last time, and, given that canned tuna and pizza dough is about all we had around, I was lucky that I liked it.
My good friend Hanna stayed with us a few days when she was in town for a class we are taking together, and I made some dinner for a late night study session: golden beet and carrot soup spiced with saffron and garnished with homemade yogurt and fresh chives. This is actually a picture of the leftovers the next night, when we fried up some croquetas de carne y papa that I had made a long time ago (actually out of the meat from the soup bones I used to make the last pho I posted about) and stashed in the freezer. It was the perfect no-extra-cost way to round out this meal.
The next budget-inspired meal was hummus with white-flour tortillas. Hummus has to be the cheapest dinner in the world to make, given that large quantities of dried chick peas cost only cents. To my dismay, tahini is actually a bit expensive, but it doesn't break the bank. I can never get my flatbreads flaky enough, and David makes pretty fantastic flour tortillas (I make the corn ones better), so we decided to let authenticity slide.
We used the left over broth from the aforementioned pho, which had been frozen, some curry paste, the last of some cabbage that had languished far too long in the vegetable crisper, a bag of mixed frozen seafood, and the latest crop of thai basil from our window sill to make a quick seafood noodle soup. It's alarming how cheep frozen seafood is sometimes. We only used half of this bag of squid, cuttlefish, octopus, shrimp, and mussels which was a product of Thailand for only $3.50. I'm sure we are not paying the cost of the mangrove the fish farms are poisoning or of the coral reef that fish trawlers destroy. I looked for a 'responsible' choice, but the only thing I could find was a $50 bag of frozen wild-caught gulf shrimp. I rationalized the purchase by thinking it was only once, because money was tight. But it makes me worried that there is no hope for saving the oceans fisheries if even I, who things about this all the time, gives in to a 'good deal.'
Speaking of the ocean and its frailty, here is another tuna meal. I found out recently that albacore tuna are very plentiful, so we started to eat it again after probably a year of nearly none. There is still the mercury to worry about, but I'm already a little crazy, and I'm not worried about getting pregnant. This was dried pasta with tomato sauce (left over from the pizza), capers, sauteed tuna, and parsley. This is a common enough recipe, and it is very fast, easy, and tasty. It also happens to be the first meal I ever cooked for David about four years ago. I was at is apartment in college and we were hungry. He and his roomate almost never cooked, and their fridge was mostly full of condiments. But I did my best, using a can of tuna, a can of tomatoes, some jarred garlic, and a bit of serracha (rooster sauce). I'll never forget how impressed david was with the magic of making something out of what seemed like nothing.
Finally, I cooked a meal for David, his mom, and our very good friends from portland, OR who were here visiting. We made a trip to whole foods for this one, so no leftovers, frozen meals or canned goods here. The night before, we went out to a brazilian grill for rodizio, an all-you-can-eat meat fest, so I wanted to make something really light and fresh. After looking around a bit, I settled on golden beet salad with arugula, chevre, and lemon-thyme vinaigrette and manila clams steamed in vermouth with chile, garlic, and fresh cilantro. This was an amazing meal, and the pictures turned out so well that I couldn't help posting more than one.
I think this will go into the food memory bank for a long time. It was another really wonderful meal with friends of the sort I wish we had time to have much more often.

Here is a close up.

It Might as Well be Spring

2007-04-22T23:11:00.000-05:00

Today's weather was amazing. I will dare say that the spring has finally arrived, and with it all things spring. My neighborhood was full of renewed life this weekend as people strolled the sidewalks, setting out for cafes, plant nurseries, grocery stores, and parks. The time of salad dinners has finally returned. On my balcony, somehow the chives survived the boston winter and have sprouted up again out of the dried brown remains of its neighbor plants in one of my pots, providing us the first local produce of the year. I snipped some today for what turned out to be a really delicious salad: organic baby romaine, with panko crusted goat crottin new england Macintosh apples, and wholegrain mustard vinaigrette. This was so good, it merits a recipe:

Serves 2

1 (5. oz) package organic baby greens
1 tasty apple
2 small goat cheese crottins (I used a french 'crottin de Champcol' 60g, which had absolutely the perfect consistency and flavor for this salad, but you can use one larger one or a slice of boucheron and cut it in half)
1/3 cup of panko style breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup potato or corn starch
1 cup corn or peanut oil for frying

vinaigrette

1 large shallot, diced
1/2 tsp sea salt
fresh ground pepper
2 tsp assertive red wine vinegar (your everyday regina won't do here, it must have stronger acidity and more pronounced flavor to balance the fat in the cheese and the sweetness of the apple).
3 tbs good quality olive oil1
1 tsp whole grain mustard
1 tbs chopped chives

Wash and thoroughly dry the greens, set aside.

Prepare the vinaigrette, place the diced shallot in a medium jar, with the vinegar and salt, and let it sit for a few minutes to soften the flavor of the shallots and dissolve the salt. Add the other ingredients, screw on the lid and shake. Taste it on one of the salad leaves, and correct for acidity and salt. It should have a strong acidic bite to it, so add more vinegar if necessary or more oil if it tastes harsh.

Prepare the crottin. Coat the cheese with corn starch, followed by the beaten egg, and finally coat in the panko. Fry in a small saucepan in enough hot oil to coat (or nearly coat and you can flip it), until golden brown. Place the crottin in a 350 degree oven to heat all the way through and keep warm, at least 15 minutes or until ready to serve.

Assemble the salad. Toss the greens with vinaigrette, plate. Slice the apples thinly and arrange on plate and drizzle with additional vinaigrette. Finally plate the cheese, and garnish with additional chives.

Yesterday's dinner was a late night affair, we ended up eating around 1am. It was really fast and delicious. Fresh black pepper fettuccine with tomato sauce, italian sausage, and button mushrooms. It's so easy to make good tomato sauce just from canned tomatoes and garlic, so I don't know why anyone buys those little jars of evil.

My friend melanie came to visit this week. We used to live together in a vegetarian co-op in college. It was a brief visit, but it was nice to catch up and cook at least one meal. We made hand-rolled vegetable sushi. It was my first attempt at making thick japanese omelet dashi maki tamago and without the special square omelet pan. It certainly seemed like a disaster when I was making it, as folding the thin layers of cooked egg over and over was a much messier business then my recipe suggested, and I thought I was going to end up with scrambled eggs. But to my surprise it came out pretty close. I also made marinated tofu and used up the last of a jar of kimchee. My photographer was asleep, unfortunately, and the camera had only enough batteries for one picture before it died, so I'm afraid this doesn't show this off as well as I would like, but it was tasty.

the seaweed is always greener . . .

2007-04-16T20:32:00.000-05:00

So my evergreen friend--who incidentally just got back from a trip to Nepal and has posted beautiful pictures and clever prose on her knitting blog--pointed me toward another food blog. While it is indeed a beautiful blog with beautiful pictures, it was highly envy inducing, and it wouldn't take to much to make me trade in the life of a boston grad student, for one of a culinary traveler in Japan (well, pretty much money is all it would take). Just think of how much you would learn just by eating and grocery shopping there. The variety of regional specialty produce is amazing. The agricultural system is like the other side of the looking glass from the U.S.'s large-scale, commodity, mass market agriculture. At least they have done something interesting, creative, and aesthetically appreciable with the enormous amount of subsidies given to farmers. At any rate, my first move after seeing this blog was to imagine up a japanese-inspired dinner that would sooth my envy and convince me that Boston offers enough possibilities for creativity and beauty for the time being (and use up some of what was in the fridge). The result was clams in miso broth with seaweed noodles, tofu, and shitake mushrooms.

Crime and Punishment

2007-04-12T23:04:00.000-05:00

So my apologies for not posting sooner, but I'm very sad to disclose that someone stole my laptop. A warning to everyone:, it takes literally less than a minute, and it can happen when your bag is within eyesight. In this case, while I was checking out a book in the music library, a space perhaps only twice as big and more open than my appartment. I saw someone suspiciously leave while I was checking out the book, and when I turned around to grab my bag, the laptop was gone. I hope whoever ended up with it enjoyed all of the food pictures before they reformatted it, or destroyed it for parts. Needless to say, this has taken its toll on my productivity, so I didn't have time to go grocery shopping, to clean the kitchen, and start cooking again until recently.
This picture attests to the clutter my life was in last week. Amid papers and piled up mail is a bowl of orecchiette with pesto and lentils.
Yesterday's dinner was a big hit, though it took an enormous amount of work. I made chicken biryani from some chicken I've had frozen for more than a month and all of the spices tat exist in the whole wide world. I suddenly understand why its a right of passage for young indian women to learn to prepare, 'full indian dinner.'

Tonight we had the leftovers, which had time to deepen their flavor, and I made some whole wheat naan, which were excellent.

This is a picture of the pho I made when I was home over spring break at my parents house, this is the enormous plate of thai basil and bean sprouts. We made the broth completely from scratch from ox tails, and made homemade beefballs, It took probably 7 hours and was a logistical nightmare. I don't know if its worth it, considering that restaurant pho is pretty good and really cheap. But, it was far and away the best pho I've ever made, and my family was very impressed.

Here I am, very focused, dishing out the pho.

Out Like a Lion . . .

2007-03-27T21:16:00.000-05:00

It seems like winter never leaves as suddenly as it shows up. Cooking with the seasons is a lot like dressing for the seasons. By the end of march you I am sick of wearing my winter coat, v-neck sweater, button-down shirt, undershirt combination, and I'm ready to pull out my spring jackets and show off my t-shirt collection. I'm also ready to banish cabbage from my refrigerator and starch from my pantry to make room for asparagus, spring mushrooms, spring onions, peas, artichokes, and fresh herbs. While I'm sure all of those things are available in the grocery store from California, or perhaps Mexico, the weather here is still cold and I feel obliged to stick to my v-neck sweater menus until we get some warm breezes.

Last saturday was David's recital. He worked really hard and did an excellent job. Me and all the friends and family that were there were all very proud of him. I made him this hearty breakfast that morning to keep his strength up. I used the leftover homemade tortillas to make scrambled egg quesadillas, and heated up the leftover beans. I also made the reception for David's recital, which included a cheese board and selection of tea sandwiches. I'll post the picture when I track it down, but I doubt if the Conservatory has seen a better reception.

No offense to Mark Bittman, but I can't say that I usually am very intrigued by the minimalist's recipes. Many of them are just not things that I like to make (e.g. pudding and 'quickbread'), and some of them just don't sound good. However, squid with chilies and greens sounded pretty good for some reason, and the video clip was so convincing that you could create a flavorful, healthy, and novel meal in a matter of minutes that I had to try it out, using some collard greens from the super market. While it was remarkably flavorful considering it really only had four ingredients and took all of 10 minutes to make, it did taste like it was missing something. If I could figure out what that was, this would be a an awesome weeknight recipe.

David was longing for some spring, so he came home with an enormous bunch of really fresh basil from the supermarket. The only thing I could think to do with it was to make pesto, so I went to Capone's and bought some fresh-cut black pepper linguine, and served it up with fresh-made pesto, butter beans sauteed with diced bacon, shallots, and shitake mushrooms. This might have been the best pasta, certainly the best pesto, that I have ever made. I wanted to ship some to my mom for her approval.

The last time I was at the supermarket I bought some Knackwurst, thinking I would use up the can of saurkraut I had in my pantry. There is only one german restaurant that I know of in Boston, and while Jacob Wirths is good, it is expensive if not overpriced. The sausages had sat long enough, so I decided to make a german feast of it. I made this dressed down choucroute garni: Knackwurst with saurkraut and cabbage, spiced with caraway, juniper, bay, and thyme, and I made my first attempt at spätzle, little irregular shaped german pasta/dumplings. To round out the experience, I opened up a jar of really delicious wholegrain mustard that my mom gave me for christmas and sliced up some bread we baked ealier. This dinner was amazing.

Which brings me to tonight's dinner. My refrigerator is once again running low on anything fresh and I had to reach into the pantry for something dried. This time it was a lentil soup of the sort that I ate growing up at least every other week. I can't say it was my favorite then, but now I really love lentils. David was skeptical until he dipped his bread into his bowl and tasted the rich earthy flavor.

Confession

2007-03-15T01:05:00.000-05:00

I am sorry to all of you who have been checking daily with the hope of an update on my culinary whereabouts [i.e. my mother]. I've been busy, but the truth is, I just felt to much pressure to write something interesting. I've gotten such nice comments and encouragement from all of my friends, including those that are far away and who I wouldn't expect to be such enthusiastic readers, that I didn't want to let anyone down with mundane posts. But it takes a lot of energy and is intimidating to write when you are thinking of what might entertain or inspire other people. So i've decided that this blog must be for me, and if that means a great deal of it is simply a log of the meals I eat with simple descriptions and david's excellent pictures, I'm afraid I'll have to be satisfied with the readers who are truly interested in knowing what I ate for dinner. Hopefully my dinners can somehow be inspiring on their own, as cooking is my single greatest creative outlet and each meal is special to me. At the very least, you'll all see what's inspired me at the grocery store, or the farmers market, on the T.V., or wherever I happen to be living and cooking. On that note, I'll review all the cooking I've done in the last couple weeks, starting with tonight's dinner. I used up the last of the tamarind chutney I made with the samosas (below) tonight to make broiled pacific salmon with tamarind glaze and asian greens with peanut lime dressing. I love making fish in my ovens broiler (which is on the bottom, underneath the oven). It gets really hot so you can grill things nicely any time of year.

2 weeks (+) in Review

2007-03-14T23:48:00.000-05:00

I am currently stuck waiting for one loaf of bread to finish baking so I can put another one in. I'm exhausted but it will be at least another hour before I can go to sleep, so I figured I'd take the chance to catch up on my very overdue blogging. David's masters clarinet recital is on saturday, and I am making the reception for it. I'm planning to make a selection of tea sandwiches, using the pain de mie from martha stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres book. This is a great book if you like to set out an impressive spread at your parties. If you are in or around boston, come to David's recital at 5pm at Boston Conservatory. The music should be excellent, and you can sample my food afterword. At any rate, here are our meals from the last few weeks.

After the improvised indian potatoes and peas I went on an indian kick.

The next day I made really simple, but surprisingly delicious indian-style spinach with potatoes and cream. I steamed some quinoa along with it.

If you haven't had quinoa it is a wonderful grain. It has a slight nutty flavor, a great texture, and has the highest amount of protein of any grain.

As promised, I made the samosas out of the leftover indian potatoes, along with some homemade tamarind chutney. I just used frozen spring-roll wrappers from the Japanese store.

Continuing on my campaign to use up all of my sprouting potatoes, I made pan-seared steak with red-wine caramelized onions and robiola mashed potatoes.

Then, I spent a whole day making homemade broth in another attempt at vietnamese beef noodle soup. This was by far the closest attempt. It turned out beautifully. Homemade broth helps, but another trick is to blanch the raw beef before you add it rare to the hot soup. Otherwise, it clouds and thickens the broth and makes the soup cold. I've got enough frozen broth now for one or two future uses.

2 weeks (+) in Review (continued)

2007-02-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

After that, I made a spinach salad with cilantro avocado dressing mushrooms and hard-cooked eggs. Simple but good.

Then, to use up some of the left over tamarind chutney, I made some tofu pad thai. This was last week. Since then I have invested in some thai fish sauce, because without it, Thai and Vietnamese dishes are definitely missing something. Still this was really good, especially as partially recycled leftovers.

The leftover robiola mashed potatoes went into this shepherds pie, which also made use of the orphaned bits of vegetables that were extra from other meals (carrots, mushrooms, onion, celery) and the part of the extra broth from the vietnamese beef soup that I didn't freeze.

By this point, I had used up most of the fresh things that were in my refrigerator and had to come up with something using the nonperishables in my pantry. I went with dried pinto beans and sausage, homemade tortillas, and avocado and shredded lettuce garnish (the last of my vegetables). The pressure cooker is key to putting a meal like this together without having planned ahead for it. Otherwise, you'd have to soak the beans and boil them for hours, and who has the time or foresight for that?

Finally, after having gone to the store, I made a goat cheese turnip and sweet potato mash with turnip greens and thick diced bacon. Most of my meals make use of something that is on the verge of spoiling, or that already has spoiled [the bread that is currently keeping me up was actually baked in order to use up some failed yogurt. I always get distracted when I make yogurt. Usually I leave the oven on and kill the bacteria; this time I boiled the milk so long it practically caramelized. I imagine the bacteria didn't have enough sugar to eat, because when I woke up this morning, instead of yogurt I found a sour soupy goo. So I used it instead of milk in the bread recipe]. This dinner was no exception. We always end up with three kinds of stale fancy cheese in our fridge, because we go crazy when we got to capone's and buy more than two people could possibly eat without getting a heart attack. Luckily, even soft cheeses don't really 'spoil' in the sense that they make you sick. They just get harder and stronger tasting. You can grate cheese that is much to old for eating (I'll censor the actual age in case any of you come to dinner at my house) into your dinner to add richness or sharpness, and no one will be the wiser.

आलू हीरो

2007-02-26T22:19:00.000-05:00

I think I'm settling into a routine now. I am now exercising, getting work done daily, and am adicted to a television program that can serve as the anchor to my weekly scheduling. Heroes was pretty good tonight, it certainly answered some persistent questions. But next week's looks totally awesome. I'll have to cook a special meal.
This week I made some indian-style potatoes with cabbage, onion, and peas, and brown butter.
I bought a bag of organic potatoes a few weeks ago at the grocery store that are starting to sprout, so I think we'll be eating a lot of potatoes for a little while. I also picked up some frozen naan at what I believe is a pakistani grocery near my house. They are prebaked, so you just reheat them in the oven or on the stove, and they actually are really good. My mom and I tried to make naan over christmas and, somehow, its one of the few things we consistently can't get right. These inspired me to change what were going to be european potatoes midway through. They were improvised, so I don't know how authentic these aloo were, but they were tasty and relatively simple to make. I was thinking of using the left overs to make samosas . . .

A (fishy) night at the oscars

2007-02-25T21:55:00.000-05:00

So we are only have way through the oscars, but marie antoinette should totally not have one the award for costume design. Aside from being a mediocre movie, the costumes were nothing that you don't see in every other period movie ever made. On the other hand, the first thing that you noticed and were amazed by in curse of the golden flower was the amazingly elaborate and very sexy costumes and the incredible opulence of the chinese imperial court as portrayed by the film. While it was a pretty bizarre and rather frustrating movie otherwise, I think they got jipped out of this award.

So a few days ago we made mixed seafood with tomato sauce on a bed of soft polenta. I drizzled some of the afore mentioned tomatoey olive oil on top which gave it a really fresh and complex tomato flavor. We reheated some of the leftovers tonight and, strangely enough, it was even better after sitting in the fridge for a few days.

Since we were eating left overs, we indulged in making a desert tonight. David used some left over egg whites to make these chocolate cookies which we layered with fresh whipped cream. They were a perfect balance of sweet chocolate, fresh creme, and crunchy and chewy textures.

Settling In

2007-02-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

It is always really hard to get in the swing of things at the start of the semester. This semester I have so much freedom and flexibility that it is even easier to shuffle along with the lowest acceptable daily productivity, and then assuaging the guilt by indulging in guilty pleasures. Tonight, for example, I watched three episodes of the NBC show, Heroes. I got hooked on this last semester, but have been busy or gone every monday night since January. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out. It is really surprisingly creative for a major network production. But getting back to cooking and blogging is hopefully one piece of a productive routine that is already back in place. Here are the first two meals I cooked when I got back from paraguay. First was pan seared tilapia with lemon caper sauce and a watercress salad. My mother bought me some of the most phenomenal olive oil for Christmas that I used for the dressing. It has lots of rich vegetable and mineral flavors, in particular a really pronounced and delicious tomato aroma.

Then I also made our chinese new year longevity noodles. They were technically Japanese noodles. Udon noodles with Kimchee and crispy tofu. I coat the cubes of tofu in potato starch and fry them. They have lots of great textures: crispy on the outside, creamy inside, and as the broth softens the outside it gets glassy and kind of gummy. This was really delicious. I just can't seem to shake the noodle kick that I am on.

The return of the Chef

2007-02-19T18:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, this time I promise, I'm back for real. At least until the next bought of travelling upsets my routine. After I was in chicago for christmas and new years, I had a couple weeks to get a lot of work done before my trip to Paraguay. I was in Paraguay for three weeks, where I did some cooking, but didn't take any pictures (unfortunately I had to travel without my photographer).
The food related aspect of going to paraguay is always great. To begin with, Paraguayans keep a somewhat Hobbit-like eating schedule. Breakfast is early in the morning, followed by the media mañana snack around 10am. Then comes the day's large mid-day meal around 12:00, merienda or a late afternoon snack around 5pm, and finally dinner around 9:00 or 10pm. While all these calories may be necessary for strenuous manual work in the campo, in asuncion these customs are maintained simply by a love for food--one that I certainly inherited.
When we go to paraguay, our family there always greets me with all of the comida típica that we either can't make or can only approximate in the U.S. Chief among these is chipa guazu, a sort of corn bread/souffle made from sweetcorn, eggs, onions, and cheese. It is both sweet from the corn and savory from the cheese, somehow firm and creamy at the same time. I would count it among latin america's greatest contributions to human happiness. While my sister makes some pretty phenomenal chipa guazu using illinois sweetcorn, it is a lot wetter than the corn in paraguay and you've got to add cornmeal to make the consistency right. Mbeju, on the other hand, is nearly impossible to replicate in the U.S., because the yuca starch available here is too refined to make these flat, cheesy pancakes, and they require a lot of experience and skill to get the consistency and texture just right, the sort of experience that usually only wise old ladies have. Too wet, and they are tough, too dry and they crumble into dust and taste mealy. When its just right, the starch forms a thick pancake that is crispy on the outside, but cheesy and steaming hot on the inside, with a really rich comforting flavor from the mix of animal fat, yuca starch, and strongly flavored paraguayan cheese. Since Ña. Eugenia left, the maid in my grandmother's household for probably over 3o years, good mbeju has been pretty scarce. This time, I discovered a dirty secret though, a cafe in downtown asuncion actually makes the best mbeju I've ever had in my life.

Another favorite is chipa de almidon and chipitas. These are bread made from yuca starch, cheese, fat, and anise seed. They are probably the food most associated with paraguay, and with the women that sell them from enormous baskets balanced upon their heads as they wander city streets, set up stands in public markets, or flag down the many buses that carry travelers across the country's main transport veins. Chipa is a crucial part of breakfast and merienda, and every time one of us goes to paraguay, we return with a suitcase full of chipa to appease pent-up demand. This time, david threatened to eat all of the chipa I'd brought back for my mother before I had a chance to mail it, so I ended up attempting to bake our own. We kept revising the dough with each batch that went in the oven, and by the fifth tray we got pretty close. We've been munching on these all week accompanied by cocido quemado, or tea made from yerba mate leaves, caramelized sugar, and hot milk. This was today's breakfast.
But nothing can compare to the chipa I had this time in paraguay. The sun had not yet come up when we arrived in the southern city of encarnacion, and the bus station was strewn with bleary-eyed vendors preparing for the day or taking advantage of the early morning quiet to nap on benches and lawn chairs that later would seat their customers. In the morning's darkness, the air was still cool and a woman offered boiling hot water and yerba for mate to the few travelers present. Just beyond the lights of the station, by the road, a man on a motorcycle played an endlessly looped recording which advertised the 'best chipa from coronel bogado.' Freshly baked in one of the igloo-shaped, wood-burning brick ovens or tatakua that accompany most rural households, these chipa had been swaddled in clean cotton towel and kept warm in their enormous basket nest as they were sped by motorcycle to the bus station. The man, who sat on his motorcycle drinking mate with two female companions from the bus station, might as well have advertised them as the best chipa in all of paraguay. It was outside was crisp and toasted while the center was doughy and stringy with cheese that steamed in the morning's coolness. They were perfect.

On the other hand, it is great to cook for my family in paraguay, because I always love to introduce them to new ideas and flavors that are not common in paraguay. This time we made grilled pizza, using the large built-in grills that are common in wealthier homes accustomed to holding asados. We lined the grill with left over terra cotta floor tiles which got smoking hot over the coals and produced a crispy and bubbly crust. I also showed them how to make carnitas, or mexican slow-cooked pork that is both fall-from-the-bone tender and crispy from browning in its own rendered fat. This is probably David's all-time favorite from everything I've ever cooked for him, and it was a huge hit in paraguay.
I'll try making more typical paraguayan recipes to familiarize you and the world to the comforts of paraguayan food. I feel this need more urgently after searching the internet for chipa recipes and discovering the horrible bastardizations of my homeland's culinary traditions that presumably instruct adventurous high-school spanish club members who are weary of pan de meurtos. So I'll end with a note of caution, please, if you have found this blog randomly or out of your interest in food or latin america, do not trust any of the Paraguayan recipes posted on the internet! If you really want to taste these recipes, let me know and I'll invite you over or maybe organize some culinary tourism of paraguay for you.

On the road again

2007-01-19T03:18:00.000-05:00

I feel about like this fish right now. It is 3:20am, and I am sitting in the food court of John F. Kennedy International Airport's terminal 4, waiting for the airline ticket counter to open so that I can recheck my bag and continue my journey to Paraguay. Lucky for me there is free internet here! And I think that I should take this opportunity to begin to catch up on my blogging. I owe my family quite a few posts to document the very delicious and very impressive meals we cooked and shared over the christmas holiday. Unfortunately, the pictures are trapped in the currently out of order snapfish.com website that we use to share pictures (or as my mother has called it, 'that snap pig thing'). It seems that the times I find most convenient to use websites are also the times their administrators find most convenient to update them. I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting my return to blogland; I certainly hope I haven't lost any devoted readers in my delinquency. You'll have to stay tuned for pictures the christmas and new year's culinary celebrations. But, in the meantime, here is an update on the meals I've cooked the last few weeks since I returned from chicago.

1. The first notable dinner was whole paprika broiled branzino (which I think is corvina in spanish) with pumpkin risotto, above in closeup, below plated.

2. Salad of baby asian greens with peanut dressing and golden tempeh.

3 . To make up for all that healthy eating, and pay homage to my home town, we made a deep dish pizza. This was loaded with sausage, pepperoni, ham, onion, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and of course lots of cheese. Unfortunately, the crust recipe was a dud; It came out tough and flavorless. I should have suspected while I was making it, because the recipe was too close to a regular pizza dough, but a real chicago pie has a pastry crust.

4. Finally, we had red curry mussels with basmatti rice. This is one of my favorite ways to use shellfish, because it is really fast, attractive, and it tastes great. This dinner was no exception, except that the mussels were of highly dubious freshness. The tasted fine, but they smelled like a sea lion with indigestion before I rinsed them, lots of them were dead and I suspect the stomach ache I had later that night was no coincidence.

Eating is Remembering

2006-12-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

I love having dinner parties. It is always so satisfying when people really like the food you cook them. I also think it makes me happier to eat with a big group. When I was growing up, and still when I go visit my family, we had dinner together at the table every day. Then in college, I lived in our campus's co-op house, where it was pretty much the same way. Meal times have always been very lively for me, full of interesting conversations, stories, laughter and joking. After cooking, shopping, eating, cleaning, and planning our lives together, for years, my housemates at the co-op become my dearest friends in all the world.

It is a bit sad that in graduate school this has changed very much. As this blog documents, I've shared some very special meals with David. But just as it has gotten harder to make friends in general, it has become rarer to share dinner with the group of friends I do have. It has taken much longer to get to this point than in earlier episodes of my life, but the friends I have made in my two years in grad school do mean very much to me. So it was a wonderful to share such a delicious evening with them yesterday. We had an arugula salad with almonds and lemon vinagrette, the homemade pumpkin tortellini I mentioned earlier with petite peas, pancetta, and lemon cream, and we finished it off with another cheese board from Capone's. This time we had an excellent semi-hard peccorino toscano, a very affordable, but just o.k., goats-milk brie, and a truly excellent italian cowsmilk that I just can't remember the name of. It was really creamy with a soft rind and pronounced flavor.

I remember good meals for a very long time, what we ate, who was there, what the occasion was. Eating (and drinking) with people is how relationships get built and my memories of these relationships are embedded in the memories of the meals we shared. I think this meal will stick with me.

Eureka!

2006-12-16T23:33:00.000-05:00

I have recently become obsessed with pho, or Vietnamese beef noodle soup. I could eat it every day, I think. But I have been trying in vain to recreate at home. I have tried three times, and decided I should probably just give up, because each time it is just plain disappointing compared to the restaurant version. This is a distressing experience, because I have a lot of faith in my ability to improve on things in the adaptation to homemade. However, today I was vindicated. I went to Le's Vietnamese restaurant in Harvard square a few day's ago, and had the seafood noodle soup for the first time. This proved much easier and more satisfying in the translation to the home kitchen. I used sliced cuttlefish and Japanese steamed fish cake, which is nice for presentation. I'm glad it worked out, because I've nearly killed our Thai basil plant trying to make this soup. It grew really big over the summer, but all that's left now is a few twigs.

Home at Last

2006-12-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

I finished everything on Thursday and am officially on break! It has been such a long semester. Handing in my second year paper, studying and passing generals, immediately jumping into classes and projects, trying to make progress on a dissertation, and trying to take care of myself and figure out what kind of person I want to be all at the same time has been really exhausting. It has been a productive semester, but I am glad that it is over and really optimistic about what is ahead. David finished his work for the semester the same day, and we celebrated that night with a very convenient (no labor-necessary) but very indulgent dinner of wine and french cheese. We had a soft sheeps' milk coated with rosemary, and a cows-milk brie. Also, homemade bread, olives, cherry preserves, and porchetta, a pretty amazing cold sliced pork tenderloin from Italy. I've heard people rave about this, and now that we tried it I know why. The vittles were all courtesy of Capone's Italian market in my very own union square. This place is fantastic. I'm planning on going tomorrow, so maybe I'll take my camera and do a whole feature.

I meant to post this on Thursday night, but there was a camera mix up. David has been taking all the pictures on his camera (and I've passed along all the compliments, by the way), and I made him use the newer nicer camera that I got for Christmas from my parents last year. Turns out, I only have the cord to connect the camera to the T.V. and not to the computer, so they are stranded on the card. Luckily David took a few on his camera first.

A day not entirely wasted

2006-12-14T01:12:00.000-05:00

I was pathetic today. I had enough time to finish my obligations for the semester today, but couldn't muster enough initiative to do it, meaning I will have to do it tomorrow. I ended up wasting time on the internet because I was too unmotivated to get any work done. At least I was able to cook again, and dinner was great tonight. Spinach Fettuccine with citrus rosemary cream. It was a perfect combination, and once again totally improvised. I think in the end, my disorganization and inability to plan anything has served me in at least this one way. I am a master of combining whatever I have in the fridge/pantry. So when I do my shopping I make sure I've got staples at home, pick up whatever vegetables look good, and then whatever random things inspire me that day. I try and keep a variety of non perishable, frozen, slower-spoiling , and fresh goods around, but besides that I don't have a grocery list or planned menu. When I am going to cook, I take inventory and make up the combinations to use up things before they spoil. It works really well. Someday I'll take the camera shopping with me.

99 Percent Inspiration

2006-12-10T13:28:00.000-05:00

I would normally only post dinner pictures, but today's breakfast was a real surprise. I opened the fridge wanting to make something quick and start the day. I was just going to make some eggs, but I saw the half-used bag of beet greens from last night and thought they would rot if I didn't use them. So I wilted them in a pan with some onions and mushrooms, a clove of garlic for an omelet filling along with the left over fontina cheese from the pizza the other night. I've got to say, they were phenomenal, and they took no time or planning at all.

The fudon tonight's table . . .

2006-12-09T23:05:00.000-05:00

The end of the semester is at hand. I am cherishing the moments I take to took and eat even more. But really it's going to be a lot of pizza and takeout chinese most likely for the next two weeks. That can be fun too I guess, but usually when lots of pitchers of beer are involved. I used up more of the Japanese goods I bought last week tonight to make yellow curry udon noodles with tofu and baby beat greens. It was pretty good, but there was no cans of yellow curry paste at the store the other day, so I improvised my own based on a dubious recipe from the internet and without some of the ingredients that should have gone it. It definitely tasted like it was missing something, but was still very good. I've never seen beet greens in the super market before, but we love to eat the greens along with the beet roots we buy in the farmers market, so I picked them up. It was a good move. They wilted more slowly and were sweeter than spinach.

Winter Pizza

2006-12-06T23:38:00.000-05:00

Tonight's meal was improvised after we discovered an unidentifiable frozen chunk in the freezer when looking for the fishbroth we used in the seafood noodles. It turned out to be pizza dough we froze months ago. We also had two frozen duck sausages left over from some other long-past meal. So I put my imagination to work and came up with this:

Duck sausage pizza with caramelized leeks, fontina cheese, and rosemary.

The dough didn't rise hardly after we defrosted it, so I was worried. But it baked perfectly, with a thin crispy crust that bubbled up on the edges. I think it's the best pizza we've made yet, and it paired really well with the last pumpkin ale in the fridge too.

Knudelsuppe

2006-12-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

Here's me trying to figure out if these little octopuses are too big to leave uncleaned. I ended up cutting out the beaks and removing whatever weird nasty stuff is inside the head. The final Result was noodles in black bean chili sauce with octopus and shrimp. It was excellent.

Posh Squash: Part I

2006-12-02T23:53:00.000-05:00

Here are some action shots of tonight's dinner: squash soup. I love squash and I love this soup. We bought a bunch of squashes at the last farmers market, so we have a lot to use up. Stay tuned for squash tortellini, squash lasagna, squash tart, roast squash, maybe another stew. If you are nice, maybe you'll get a dinner invitation.

Vive la Révolution Boulanger!

2006-11-30T23:42:00.000-05:00

So . . . I think I have ruined two kitchen towels making the aforementioned NY times bread recipe. So I just did a google search for the terms 'cleaning tip how to get flour out of a towell [sic.]' and clicked on the the fifth link that google gave me. It turned out to be a topic on a food message board that was dedicated to this very same bread recipe! Mind you, I didn't include the words 'bread,' 'recipe,' 'new york times,' etc. in the search, and, out of the whole world wide web, google came up with this!

It's insane, there have been 231 postings on it (including mine) since November 10. The recipe is as close to a revolution in the food world as I have ever witnessed in my life. I finally feel like I am part of something again!

Sisyphus Cleans Up

2006-11-30T21:31:00.000-05:00

So I cleaned my kitchen today. Hardly spotless, but it is a lot better than it was. My house becomes a hell-hole rediculously fast. I feel like I spend my life cleaning and nagging david to clean and its all thankless. But I thought I would post up pictures of the kitchen to show you where it all happens. David and I spent the better part of the last year getting the kitchen into workable shape. We added the hanging baskets, the hooks by the stove to hold utensiles, the hooks and magnet strip above the counter for the knives and measuring spoons, and the shelves to hold cooking oil, spices, etc. I've put my staples, like dried beans, rice, pasta, oats, in plastic containers on the bottom shelf. It was david's idea to hang the pots and pans on hooks from the top shelf. We've really made the very best of the kitchen's absolute lack of storage and work space. The cast iron griddle is a fantastic investment, by the way. We make pancakes on it very often, but also homemade tortillas, and grilled sandwiches, and we flip it over to grill vegetables or meats. I also love how it just sits directly on the burners and I don't have to get it out and put it away every time I want to use it.

I went to the Japanese store today, so there'll be some meals on here soon enough, don't worry. I bought a few types of noodles, and some frozen molluscks. I think I am going to put my camera in my school bag, so I can document when I randomly do my shopping. And now, to work, unfortunately.

Welcome

2006-11-29T00:23:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my new blog, dinner bell. I really don't have time to spend doing this, but I was inspired by my sister's blog, documenting the travails of new motherhood and the life and times of my very sweet nephew domingo. For now, I'll be posting pictures of my daily meals here and you all can keep updated on my life by seeing what I am eating. We'll see how this goes, but potentially in the future you can get recipes, cooking, and shopping tips too. Here was tonight's dinner. Winter vegetable stew with the very awesome bread which had its recipe featured in the new york times. (but hurry and print it out, those bastards will probably restrict it to 'timeselect' subscribers soon enough). The stew was adapted from Debora Madison's excellent cookbook vegetarian cooking for everyone. Though to quote Mrs. Swan, my version had "a leetle beet of bacon."

A Somerville Thanksgiving

2006-11-29T00:18:00.000-05:00

The thanksgiving dinner I made for David before leaving for South Bend. Pan-grilled shrimp with safron pasta and tomato sauce. It was really, really good, the seafood, safron, tomato combination made it taste like a reconceptualized paella. I'm glad it turned out too, because I picked up the package of frozen shrimp on an impulse at market basket. They looked really big and nice so I dropped them in the cart. But when they actually got scanned at the check out, the bag was $25.00; it was too late to send them back for the smaller ones, so I decided they would have to be for a special occasion. It worked out, and David gave many thanks.

'Happy Birthday to Me'

2006-11-29T00:16:00.000-05:00

David's Birthday cake. I didn't make this one (that's right, david made his own birthday cake), but I did provide the flower garnish.

Old Pictures, Fresh Sushi

2006-11-29T00:12:00.000-05:00

Here is some sushi me and david made some time ago. I believe it was swordfish, which has now become but a fond memory. The near collapse of fisheries seriously keeps me up at night. We are headed for a bleak deliciousless world if somethings not done. I can't immagine a world without the fish that have brought me and my belly such joy. So starting this fall I've been really careful about what fish I'll eat. Check out http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_regional.aspx?region_id=2 for a list of safe purchases.

David and I are a great sushi team. I prepare the fish, sushi rice, and the filling ingredients. I also come up with the concepts for the combinations. David provides the crucial technical skills such as rolling, pressing, and presentation, which I am not so good at.