Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  Seventh or ninth or twelfth taste of the night, after the baby crudité, after the Veta la Palma red mullet, after the 18-hour ash-buried onion.  Tall cups of grains tinted blue-green with phytoplankton await on the ends of two long white dishes.  The concoction looks righteous and cleansing, like spirulina-spiked fruit juice.  Beside each plate sits a flat ceramic round pedestal for a pair of wooden chopsticks.  Winnie's eyes drift to the movement over my shoulder.

WINNIE: What's that?  Looks like some kind of animal.

A blond wooden plank is placed on the white tablecloth. One end carries a groove with a large serving spoon.  The other end carries the animal...what is it?  The gray, mottled skin is smooth, shiny, elastic.  Unkosher.  A stingray?  A Picasso-eyed turbot?

No, wait -- it's upside down.  It's a fish head, a cod's to be exact.  With big old fish lips and spiky little teeth.  And it's looking at Winnie.  Or it would be, except the place where the eye would be has been meticulously carved out like a jack-o-lantern.  Visage sans les yeux...

Our neighbors crane their necks with curiosity.  I pick up the plank and tilt it towards them so they can get a good eyeful.  And then we dig in.  The excess of clear collagen in the unctuous collar would make Megan Fox's lips blush. A flap of gelatinous skin reveals a succulent cheek, larger and silkier than a scallop.  The meat along the forehead falls away from the curved skull, sweet and soft.  We pluck translucent, flexible bones from the flesh, deconstructing the cod's face until all that's left is a pile of deflated derma and the fish's puffy pout.

Of course the two Asian ladies would devour a fish head. How did Chef know we would happily accept this double dare?  And who else could they possibly have been saving it for?

NEIGHBORS: What did it taste like?

ME: Unctuous.  Gelatinous.  Fatty.

NEIGHBORS: Like the veal marrow?

ME: Yes, like the veal marrow.

That veal marrow melted in its own trough, a limb bone sawed in half lengthwise and topped with black bubbles of American caviar.  Graphic, sure, but also conscious.  Gustatorial decadence in the summer sometimes means infanticide, said Winnie -- the baby cow, the unborn sturgeon eggs, the embryonic zucchini with the blossom caul.  If we're going to take life for hedonistic pleasure, we should exalt it by recognizing it for what it once was, or maybe what it could have been.

There's probably no better way to face the creature you eat than by eating its face.

--

*Disclosure: We both know the chef and though we didn't tell him we were coming, we ran into him when we arrived at the restaurant.  Though we've never revealed any affinity for fish face to him before.

"Don't stop thinking of me
Don't make me feel this way
Come on over here and love me
You know what I wanted you to say."
-- "Don't Be Cruel", Elvis Presley

Your first impression of a city is often the bird's eye view you get from the airplane. That initial picture can be a Welcome! postcard or a portentous vision of dread. It can be your preliminary study of an alien land, or it can be the final home frame at the end of a roundtrip. LAX is made of traffic jam strands, like endless strings of white and red Christmas lights. In my favorite view, the one by New York's La Guardia Airport, Manhattan hurls its glass and steel points at one side of the plane, the weight of passengers' craning necks seeming to tilt the flying machine into its turn towards the runway.

Once we cut through the storm clouds, Memphis was a surprise of bushy green trees, as zaftig as afros. The city has built itself quietly around the undulating curves of the puce Mississippi. It struck me that this aerial shot must have made Elvis Presley's heart lurch every time he came home.

Like so many Memphis pilgrims, the King was a main draw for me. My Pau was/is/always has been obsessed with Elvis. He was all we listened to in the car, with occasional interludes by Paul Anka and Chinese pop star Theresa Teng. And it's not like my dad was a completist, with B-sides and albums. No, he listened to all of the hits he'd been listening to since he was young, and he has listened to them on repeat ad nauseum for half a century.

So it was funny that flying into Memphis made me recall a weird obsession I had during my childhood. I thought that I was the reincarnation of Elvis Presley. The math didn't quite work out - he died a few months before I was born. But I guess like every little girl, I wanted more of my father's attention - and what better way to get it than to imagine that it was MY music he loved, that mine was the voice that accompanied him on every drive, that mine was the sound he never tired of, that I was the limitless source of joy and comfort to him.

My co-workers know that second breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.  And yogurt with fruit and granola is my favorite second breakfast. 

I often wind up buying pots of yogurt from Pret downstairs from the office, but I have to eat it with the distaste I have for its price.  Granola is cheap and easy to make. 

This is a riff on the recipe The Amateur Gourmet posted for Baked's granola.  Adam's right, it's a wholesome, everyday granola with a good dose of salt to balance the brown sugar.  It's crunchy and just clumpy enough (thanks to the honey).  You can add whatever nuts and seeds you have on hand.  Just make sure you don't add the fruit until the granola has cooled completely -- the dried fruit turn into chewy dogbone bits if you bake them.  I also dialed the salt down by 1/4 tsp.

It's been a busy few weeks.  I had a setback in my writing schedule when I got ill with some flu-like thing again. Maybe next year, I get the flu shot.

I never feel more alone than when I am ill.  I hear that mothers always feel this way -- that there's no one to take care of them when they are sick.  Knowing I'd be in no state to cook when I got home, I picked up some cupcakes on the way to the train.  I like stocking up on crack snacks when I'm ill because they're easiest to get past the killed tastebuds.

So when day 1 of my illness turned into day 2 and I'd plowed through my two cupcakes, I needed more simple carb sustenance.  My neighborhood offers very few delivery options, and I was not about to walk more than a block from home in my state, so I figured I'd have to pull something together from the cupboard.

Everybody needs an arsenal of pantry-ready recipes.  I searched for something simple and found this Chocolate & Zucchini recipe for Yogurt Cake.  It's my favorite kind of recipe -- barely measured, simple to follow even when the flu has turned your brain to mush.

But in a feverish moment of inspiration, I decided to add those stewed apricots.

It still sucks to be alone when you're sick, but what am I going to do?  Sometimes it's enough to stuff my face with this cake and watch Jerry Springer for an afternoon.

 Apricot Cardamom Yogurt Cake

The pan pictured here is one of those floppy silicone jobs which La Doug got for Christmas one year.  Worked well for popping the cake out at the end, but you have to put the pan on a baking sheet or you won't be able to carry it into the oven.  Such a weird design.  I haven't figured out what they would be best for yet.

What is mujaddara?

• An Afghan guerrilla hiding in the crevices of the mountains.
• A dark polyester veil wrapped around the sweating brow of an observant Muslim woman.
  

No, it is neither of those things. But it's still a mystery to me -- green lentils, both pasty and firm, moist but not enough to make the bread soggy, topped with French's golden fried onions, or some natural equivalent. What else is in it? And why is it so freaking delicious with a little tahini and hot sauce?

Where's the old man? I want to watch him make my sandwich. You have never seen a man take so much pride in his sandwich creation.

---

The old man wears a paper cap, the kind that fattens into the shape of an eye when you squeeze the two edges together.

OLD MAN: What do you want?

ME: Mujaddara sandwich.

I wait for it.

OLD MAN: Mujaddara!

The word is magical from him. My coworker Jesse and I practice imitating the old man's mujaddara song. Mujaddara! MujaDRA! Mujjadddra!  It never gets old.

Try to order a combo, which is totally encouraged by the overhead menu, and the old man will look at you with disappointment in his filmy eyes.

OLD MAN: You don't want that. Your sandwich will fall apart.

He waits for the inevitable cave-in.

ME: Okay, just mujaddara, then.

OLD MAN: Mujaddara.

And then he turns back to the counter, picking out a container deliberately. He chooses a pita and returns to the steam table, dipping the huge spoon into the aluminum tray, as he does every day at lunch time.

He is slow. S-l-o-w. But he overstuffs that pita with more love than it has ever felt in its brief, floury life.

OLD MAN: Lettuce toMAYto?

ME: Yes please.

OLD MAN: Hot sauce?

ME: Yes, please.

A few minutes pass.  Maybe I turn to the many refrigerator cases behind me to grab a kelly green bottle of elderflower soda, or to eyeball the odd imported beverages -- soda of wormwood, sherbet-colored mango lassi, names emblazoned on the labels in the font equivalent of jazz hands.

The sandwich is wrapped in wax paper and sliced in half.  Here it comes.  He turns to his co-sandwich makers, his small hands wrapped around each C-cup half of the mujaddara sandwich. 

OLD MAN: Look how beautiful.  That is a beautiful sandwich. 

His smile is genuine, and those milky glazed eyes light up.  He nestles that perfect sandwich gently into its foil container, packs a few pickles on top and puts a lid on it.

How can you not love a man like that?

--

But where's the old man today?  I ask his colleagues, one a middle eastern man with a salt and pepper mane and a lazy eye, the other a tall African man with a round nose and apple-y cheeks. 

ME: Where's the boss?

Both smile.

SALT AND PEPPER: He's in the kitchen.

I imagine him working his alchemy on another potful, a small and shrinking man smiling lovingly at the lentils and whispering his incantation --

OLD MAN: Mujaddara...

Kalustyan's
Lexington and 28th
Upstairs

Also recommended: The olive oil moistened spinach with toasted slivered almonds and onion, the turmeric eggplant.  But not in your sandwich!  Take your sandwich to go and sit in Madison Square Park -- heaven.  Also, I can't get enough of their dried California apricots and "colossal" California pistachios, roasted and unsalted.

"My friends were poor, but honest; So's my love."
-- Helena, All's Well that Ends Well

We had an impromptu dinner party for 12 of our best friends at Sarah and Alex's palatial new flat in Fort Greene.  Sarah and Shannon's cinnamon-hued hound puppy made a few social appearances between naps while the rest of us pulled our chairs up around a rough-edged marble kitchen table, sipping prosecco from wide-mouthed champagne glasses, picking at a hunk of pecorino and peppery water crackers. 

Newcomers toured their epic backyard garden -- wet burgundy Japanese maple, slick pebble and white-painted wood, pre-blossom wisteria enveloping the walls, the dual hammocks dripping cool spring rain.  Even the indoor cacti were looking as succulent and lush as I've ever seen cacti look.

Really, it is heaven to be there with all of my beloveds.  My friends don't have a lot of money, and we're in varying states of employment, but many of us have lucked out on good New York apartments; on days like these, surrounded by my crew, I feel like a contessa. 

La Doug chose this recipe for the dinner party because it was easily doubled and can be made in one pot.  We all loved it. The ground cashews add a bit of texture, giving the curry zaftig body and meatiness, rounded out by the mellowing yogurt.

It went over like gangbusters with some sauteed spinach and rice cooker-prepped jasmine rice.  You absolutely MUST use a good curry powder -- we love S&B Oriental curry powder,
the blend of choice for Japanese curry.  It can be found at any Asian grocery store and a surprising number of delis in Manhattan.

Chicken Curry with Cashews

This recipe is from Epicurious. 

Heat 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter in a 7-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat until foam subsides.

Fry 3 chopped onions, 4 chopped garlic cloves, and 2 tbsp. minced ginger until softened, about 5 minutes.

Add 6 tbsp. S&B curry powder, 1 tbsp. salt, 2 tsp. ground cumin, and 1 tsp. cayenne and sauté for 2 minutes.

Add 6 lbs. chicken parts and cook, stirring to coat, 3 minutes.

Add 2 (14.5-oz.) cans tomatoes with juice and simmer gently, covered, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 40 minutes.

Grind 1 1/2 cups cashews until very fine, then add to curry along with 1 1/2 cups whole milk yogurt . Simmer gently, uncovered, stirring, until sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes.

Serves about 8 on a rainy Sunday.

--

After we got home from Sarah and Alex's:

DOUG: I really feel like the kitchen's not that bad at all.

[pause]

DOUG: That's why I'm going to wait 'til tomorrow to clean up.

Dear Crabby,

What up with all the crazy colors on your recipes now, dog?

Colorblind

Dear Colorblind,

1. Sorry, you are probably S.O.L. on this one, because I like my color scheme.  Sorry.

2. Here's my rant.  I have long, long believed that the recipe is a technology in desperate need of an upgrade.  You Cook's Illustrated types will have no fucking idea what I am talking about.  Fair enough, please go and organize your jars of heirloom beans in alpha order while I talk this out.

The rest of yous might be able to appreciate this.   I am impatient when it comes to recipes.  I want to understand a recipe at a glance.  I don't want to miss an important detail like the length of time I should saute a scallop before it turns into a rubber eraser.  So why are those important details so often lost in the middle of dry, wordy, finger-wagging sentences?

The way I see it, recipes should be as easy to immediately grasp as guitar tablature.  There's a huge difference between this:

Place your index finger on the fourth string from the top at the second fret; place your middle finger on the fifth string from the top at the third fret; and place your pinky finger on the bottom string at the second fret; but refrain from hitting the top two strings.

and this:
A paragraph is an imperfect form for a list of tasks that have varying difficulty and length.  We move from task to task. 

Also, why are the ingredient amounts listed separately from the instructions?  Some people measure every ingredient out onto individual bowls in a dish-dirtying mass of mise en place.  I am not one of those people.  I want to grab the cumin once, throw the right amount into the pot at the right time, then put the cumin back into the pantry. 

Why is it that temperatures and times are given the same text weight as nonsense like "bring to a" and "stirring occasionally"? 

The digitally trained eye no longer reads.  It scans.  It looks for keywords.

Recipes can be poetry, and they can be prose, but rarely are those kinds of recipes utilitarian for me.  I cannot bear to use my pinky knuckle to scroll down the page of a particularly chatty recipe when my fingers are full of pork juice.

At their core, recipes are just collections of data and should be treated as such.  I have a gazillion ideas about how to organize recipe into data that can be scanned and sorted by the cook who doesn't want to stand around reading the details of a recipe before digging in and making it.

If you're a developer who wants to work with me on my grander ideas, get in touch.  In the meantime, I'll be experimenting with recipe presentation in the coming posts using text, font styles, color.

For now, here's the color decoder to my upcoming recipes:

blue: ingredients
red: timing
green: action

These changes have already given me much satisfaction.  Stay tuned for more, and let me know if they work for you.

Saturday night, 9:30 p.m. 
State: Loopy from hunger
Place: Morandi, 7th Ave.

Twilight zone.  Bermuda Triangle.  Full moon.  There's something...weird about this place.  Am I in New York?  Somehow, this corner of Manhattan has been rendered as culturally homogenous as a Dubya-era D.C. steakhouse. 

I always notice the women first, and they seem to have come in pairs -- one 80% cocoa brunette, one Kleenex blond.  The blond sitting next to me wears a sequined white tank top over denim leggings; her brunette other half wears a black tank top with black leggings and expensive looking gold jewelry.  The blond eats steak with spinach; the brunette picks around her shrimp pasta.  Both sip red wine.  The bread looks barely glanced at. 

Another blond/brunette pair at the corner of the bar pay their bill and head out, only to be replaced by a younger blond/brunette pair who drink lemony cocktails in tumblers and prosecco in fat wine glasses.

They're like a bunch of black-and-white cookies -- sweet, a little bland, but still two flavors in one.   

Our gay bartender doesn't give a rat's ass for either flavor, though, and the black-and-whites  bristle at his lack of attentiveness.  Meanwhile, I'm a woman on a pasta-seeking mission.  I can't decide on what ratio of cream-to-carb I need.  Polenta with mushroom?  Baccala with crispy polenta? 

I decide on the pici al limone, hand-rolled spaghetti with lemon and parmesan.  The pasta is spongy and saline, reminding me very much of the packaged udon I overboiled the night before to soak up my four Friday night cocktails.  I say that with kindness; that udon is a comfort to me at any hour.

The black-and-white directly to my left split the bill with identical silver credit cards, pick up their evening-appropriate clutches and leave.  They are replaced by another black-and-white, only this pair is being accompanied by nearly identical male escorts in weekend striped button-downs and side-parted hairstyles.  Two cranberry juice and vodkas.  One glass of prosecco.  One enormous tumbler with Stoli on the rocks.  Can I get a lime?  Can I get an extra lime? 

The black-and-whites are all so perfectly coiffed and painted.  I am a fish out of water.  This place is so weird.  Did these people come in here on purpose?  Do they think it's weird?  Is it weird that I think it's weird? 

This is not my New York -- but is it their New York?   

Well, hello there.

I've been away.  My job has been really eating up a lot of time of late, so I'm sorry for the absence. 

This weekend, I went to see the Memento 10 year anniversary screening, followed by a panel with the actors, the filmmaker and a pair of neuroscientists.  Have you seen Memento?  I won't ruin it for those of you who haven't seen it, but the mystery starts with a man who has no short-term memory (actually, it's long-term memory said Dr. Corkin on the panel, but that's another story) so he completely forgets recent events, places he's been, people he's met.  His brain is a sieve, and only his camera and his pen can help him retain the facts of his own life.  He winds up writing knowledge down on index cards, taking Polaroids to remember faces.  Without memories he can trust, he realizes that he can only place trust in his own familiar scrawl.

Which, of course, is what this blog has always done for me.  Everyone's memory, by nature, will fail them, as the brain rebuilds every event anew -- the more often it is accessed, the better the chance of a creative rebuild.

And all of these unrecorded events of my life, I don't want to lose them in the vast and ever-expanding stacks of my hippocampus.  No moment of life is too inane.  Time feels more scarce in the new lines around my mouth, the white sprouts at my cowlick, the tightening hinge at the base of my spine.

So I return to the metaphor I love -- the consumption of Life, so simple and full of wonder, spoonful by spoonful.  I want to savor these moments in the years to come, and I want to give my brain all the help it needs.

I spend my work week chasing page views and search engines, and sometimes I felt like I had to put some of that effort into my personal web space.  But whenever I did that, it was easy to lose the joy of writing, of recording something that was only meaningful to me, not to an audience outside of myself.

But I have always been able to find comfort in the familiar angles and pressure of my own scrawl.  My mundane Sunday morning breakfast of stewed apricots and yogurt may not be what everyone is searching for, but it means something to me --  it's a memory of a late night after a long day at work, unwinding at my friend Sarah's old apartment in Murray Hill.  It's a snapshot of the slippery squish of a black leather couch, one that was inherited by Sarah's boyfriend Alex from my other friend Shannon's bachelor pad days.  There's even a chuckle over Sarah's observation about the graphically Sapphic nature of the soaking apricots.

That couch is gone -- Sarah and Alex have moved to another apartment without it.  Shannon is no longer a bachelor.  Now that Sarah is no longer in Murray Hill, I don't have the luxury of popping over for a late night snack-chat after work. But I have these apricots and a few words, like a Polaroid in full development.  




Stewed apricots with greek yogurt, raw honey and pistachios

This recipe was given to me by my friend Sarah, who adapted it from a much more involved Nigella recipe.

Soak 2 cups dried California apricots in enough water to cover overnight.

Coarsely grind 1/2 tsp. cardamom.  Add to apricots and simmer for half an hour until soft.

Cool to room temp.  Keeps about a week in the fridge.

Serve over Greek yogurt with 1 tsp. raw honey and some pistachios.