Dinner Bell

The Losses from Trade

2009-03-18T14:36:00.004-05:00

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 the 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 7eleven that gives 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 Cargills '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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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