December 2004 Archives

Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape, huh? Surely there are more important things to work on in the Frankenlab.

My dad is cool.  Usually my mom did the evening dinners, unfailing brown and green over rice.  My brother's favorite thing my mom made was something I had named "very own food": ground beef cooked with peas, scallions, and a little fish sauce.  Sounds a little strange, but it's quite delicious over rice.

But it was my dad who did the more adventurous cooking.  He had been a waiter at a Sheraton when he was putting himself through business school.  He loves to tell me that despite the fact that he grew up engulfed by the supremely stinky scents of fish sauce, fermented shrimp paste, and all manner of stewing blood and guts, he'd never smelled anything as offensively putrid as blue cheese.

My dad could recreate anything we saw the other kids eating, with his own Thai-Chinese/lowbrow twist.  He would make thick bolognese sauce, finished with a little fish sauce (which is not so weird considering that fish sauce is just salty anchovy extract).  He would make the heaviest, chunkiest lasagna ever, substituting cottage cheese for ricotta (which I preferred) and making a sauce so thick with meats you could practically carve it -- it was chock full of pepperoni, smoky cocktail sausages, and ground hamburger and it was absolutely divine to us kids.  If we clamored for McDonald's breakfast, he would toast some english muffins, fry up some thick slices of ham, and then he would make a round mold of tin foil which he placed in the frying pan so that when he dropped the egg in the middle of it, it would fry up as a beautiful perfect circle, just like they did it at McD's. 

I think it was my father who taught me that food is a way that you can show your love, even if you're not able to express it verbally.  Once, when I was quite young, he made me an omelet with slices of American cheese melted on top.  I was completely blown away, and I told him it was the best thing I'd ever eaten.  Every morning, for the next six weeks, he made me a sunny yellow 4 egg cheese omelet until I finally made a gentle request for something different.

Passion for food and late nights is something that I share with him.  My mother and brother were early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, so I stayed up past my bedtime with my dad.  We'd watch late night HBO until the racier stuff came on, at which point he'd change the channel to National Geographic.  While we watched stories about deadly spiders or Fiji sea coral, we sat in silence and folded wontons together, sharing a bowl of ground pork mixture and cold wonton wrappers and throwing our winged dumplings into a container dusted with rice flour.  My father would be up early the next morning preparing a broth for our breakfast of wonton soup with the ubiquitous peas my brother and I loved, sliced scallions and thin, sweet tiles of roast pork.

A couple of years ago, when I went to visit, my father was waiting at the car while my mother had come to gather me from the baggage claim area.  I put my arms around him and gave him a one-sided, awkward hug, to which he gruffly responded, "Chinese people don't hug."   But when we arrived home, the refrigerator was full of ingredients for all of my favorite dishes -- my dad's incredible steak and vegetable soup, chicken with longan, Chinese yam and red currants, and of course, his signature Beef Delight -- fatty tri-tip marinated in a secret citrus-ginger-soy blend, barbecued to medium rare (and then reheated in the oven to a nice opaque well done by my squeamish mom), served with a piquant raw garlic-serrano chili salsa.

He's the model of the stoic Asian dad, reticent with praise and affection, and eager to share his expertise with any listening party.  He's especially fanatic about knives -- when my mom and I went shopping for clothes at the mall, we knew when we were done that we could always find my brother at the Tilt at the Hill Arcade, and we could always find my father at the Advance Cutlery shop.  He was always adamant about the importance of a good, sharp knife, and I still carry that cutlery snobbery with me.  He sharpens and straightens his blades frequently and vigorously, steel swishing against steel with a speed and precision I've never seen anyone else match.  And he always has an extra knife or two lying around, in case anyone should come by the house and mention their need for a good knife; of course, the recipient would always have to give him a penny in nominal payment to counteract the Thai superstition that any knife given away for free would cut its new owner.

He doesn't cook as often these days without the kids around to appreciate and snort down his handiwork.  About a year ago around the holidays, I went to visit and told him I would cook.  I prepared a beautiful chicken from the Chinese market with lemons and herb butter.  He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.  "This is juicy," he said carefully.  "Hey, this is not bad."  He smiled.  "I'm surprised.  Where did you learn to do that?"  he asked.  Maybe I learned the technique of rubbing butter under the skin in a book, maybe I learned to squeeze the lemon in the cavity of the chicken from watching a cooking show.  But the beating heart of my cooking, cooking as an expression of my love -- that was your silent gift to your only daughter, and it's more valuable than all the recipes, all the equipment, all the ingredients in the world.

It's hard not to be with my family at Christmas time. I always think it's going to be fine, and I'm usually too broke to buy the ticket out there. But when Christmas day rolls around, I always feel that deep emptiness. And I vow to make it out to Cali the next year, and somehow I usually don't make it, and I wind up tagging along to other people's family get togethers.

Tomorrow I'm going to my dear friend Julie's house for dinner -- cassoulet and pumpkin clafoutis! I will take pictures and try not to be so mopey.

The Times had an interesting article today on the new trend of non-alcoholic flights to accompany tasting menus for the teetotalers. I abstain myself, not because of moral objection but because more than two drinks sends my dinner back up the tubes. (Of course, you wouldn't think that was true considering all the posts I've had recently about champagne.)

But I'm not sure how I would feel about drinking root beer with foie gras, especially Boylan's which is a syrupy and inferior root beer as far as I'm concerned (though I must admit that I think nothing goes with Indian curries better than a crisp, icy glass of coke). But I do like the idea of intuitive teas, tisanes and juices to stimulate the palate -- lemongrass pineapple juice diluted with seltzer (like the stuff I had once at Tabla) with Thai food; rosemary tisane with lamb; thick, not too sweet grape juice to go with steak. I wish I were the kind of diner who could speak with authority about wine pairings with food, but I'm not about to put my body through 48 hour torture sessions for the privilege of getting soggy over dinner. In The Manticore, the second book of Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy which I am engrossed in, the protagonist says of a dinner he takes with his father's mistress and his future deflowerer:

"It was the most grown-up affair I had ever known. Wonderful food that Myrrha--she insisted I call her Myrrha, because all of her friends did--produced herself from under covers and off hot-trays, and splendid wines that were better than anything I had ever tasted. I knew they must be good because they had that real musty aftertaste, like dusty red ink instead of fresh red ink."

My first few years here were spent trying to keep up with the iron-stomached Joneses of NYC. I remember one particularly dark night when I met my friends Jim and Leigh for some after-work lubrication at a bar on the lower east side. Two Jack Daniels and cokes into the night and I was feeling quite sociable and charming. When we stepped out into the glaring lamps of gritty Orchard St., I started to realize that perhaps I wasn't sewn up as well as my two quickly departing companions. At the time I hadn't the sense (or the cash freedom) to just take a cab home. I rationalized that the 2nd Ave. stop was just steps away -- all I had to do was sit down and ride home.

Of course, it was magically past midnight, the hour when all subway trains turn into maddeningly infrequent pumpkins. I waited and waited in the supremely dirty station, smelling every piss stop every bum had ever made in its tucked corners and noticing every crawling rat in the mucky water which lined the track ditch. I was not doing very well. I felt sure that I might just slide down the steel column I was leaning against with all of my weight and sit on the dried up gum splotches just to give my spinning head some respite.

After twenty minutes and an ear-splitting garbage train had agonizingly gone by, the F train finally arrived in the station, with other night reveling Brooklynites in tow. I found the nearest seat and tried desperately to breathe and not burst. The train jostled and shook my churning stomach like James Bond's martini as we pulled into Delancey St., but I survived. Then the train lurched and screeched into East Broadway, the last stop in Manhattan. That's when the queasiness began to really hit me. My body was like a pile of sandbags and I realized that I might really be ill just as the doors closed and we pulled out of the station.

On this longest stretch underwater between East Broadway and York St. in Brooklyn, I felt doom teasing me, blowing in my ear. I felt my late lunch of rice and beans sloshing away like a red milkshake in my guts. I thought, if I can just make it to York St., I'll just get off there and be sick and wait for the next train and everything will be fine. I felt the inevitable creep in a little closer and put its hand on my knee. I thought, we must be close, we have to be close, we're nearly there, HANG ON! At a late point in our train's underwater travels, I felt my lunch knock on my esophagus's door once, twice, then bust in, up and out like Vesuvius. I stewed there in deepest mortification, staring at my lunch puddled in front of me. None of the other unfortunate souls in my car moved.

I sat there for what seemed like hours, but was probably really only 30 seconds more. I stumbled off the train and onto the unfamiliar York St. station platform. I tried to make myself vomit again, but I had spent my insides on the train. A minute passed and, miraculously for that time of night, another F train pulled up. I dragged my poor abused body onto that train and sat down, grateful to no longer have to hold myself up.

The train jerked into Jay St. I was oblivious. I was beyond mortified, so disgusted with myself, that I missed something the train conductor must have said, because after we left Jay St., the train had the gall to pull down the A train line and pull up at the Hoyt-Schemerhorn stop. As a newbie to the train system, I had never even heard of Hoyt-Schemerhorn -- as far as I was concerned, I had somehow been rerouted to Uzbekistan, cross-eyed and acrid-mouthed. I followed the crowd out of the train, then up and over to another F train which would take us back to Jay St. I couldn't believe my bad luck. We got back to Jay St. where we crossed up and over once more. I could have kissed the conductor when the F train going to my stop pulled into the station. I got on the train and blinked.

At least, it felt like I blinked. When I opened my eyes again, the doors opened on the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop, one stop past my 15th St. stop. I forced my sleep-laden Raggedy Ann body off the train. "That's it," I slurred in my head, "No more trains." My roommate had told me that our house was midway between the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop and the 15th St. stop. "Surely I can find my way home from here," I rationalized in my completely irrational state.

What the fuck was I thinking? Now why didn't I ask the MTA personnel in the booth for directions? Why did I think I could make sense of the large street map while shitfaced when I practically can't figure it out when I'm sober? Why didn't I just call a cab, or call my roommate for help? Well, by now it was about 2:30 in the morning and I felt I had imposed on far too many people already in my little adventure. Besides, I was close, I knew I was close, and with that blind self-assurance alcohol intoxicates a person with, I ventured out onto the quiet streets of south Windsor Terrace.

I stumbled one way, then I changed my mind and stumbled the other way. I came to the caged overpass over the Prospect Expressway, which I knew was somewhere near my house at some point. I climbed the fence enclosed ramp, past shadows cast by rustling trees. I felt like I was in my own personal Hitchcock film, exhausted and scared stupid. I crossed the overpass and walked and walked, trying to find something, anything that looked familiar.

Finally, I came to a main road and looked up at...Greenwood Cemetery. A fucking CEMETERY I come across. When you are the lone star of your own private horror film, the last omen you want to see are fifty headstones mocking you in the dark. I would have cried if I weren't so fucking freaked out. After about a minute of having no idea where I was or what to do, a bus came by and I decided to go on the bus and beg the driver for help. I sat down and rode the bus quite a ways until finally, like the dawn, I saw glorious Prospect Park West. I saw the weird karate/ballet/music school on the corner, and the shuttered Elora's restaurant on the other side. I saw the Catholic school on the corner where all the scary hormonal teenagers in my hood spent their weekdays. I saw the gorgeous 99 cent store with its 25 cent kiddie rides bolted to the floor. I got off the bus and power walked like Jane Fonda on steroids, amazed that I had made it this far, but still completely freaked out, worried that I had managed to thwart evil the entire way home and sure that something was going to happen now that I was so close that I could taste it. When I reached Windsor Place, my lovely perfect quiet street, I turned the corner and practically sprinted down the three avenue blocks, begging and praying to all of my gods to get me home safely. I made all those promises the desperate make in the most dire hours of their lives, to not do anything objectionable ever again if I could just get home and climb into bed. I prayed all the way up the stairs, turned the key in the door, and jumped into bed, mascara streaks and all. The word "crash" has never felt more appropriate than it did, at 3:30 in the morning, in my perfect loving bed in my safe, dry apartment.

And that, folks, is why I don't drink so much anymore. Though I must admit that it wasn't the last time my vomit made contact with MTA property. But that's a story for another day -- I think I've inundated you enough grossness for today.

Courtesy of my incredibly generous, beautiful and psychic cousins Atita, Sirion, Tui & Lynda (and the occasion of baby Jesus' b-day which we Buddhist consumers sometimes celebrate too) I now have a digital camera. Now I can inundate you with self-indulgent amateur photography. I can plunder less from google images to accessorize my stories. Hooray!!! (That refreshing looking drink is Ceres guava juice with seltzer. Yum!)

It's interesting that there are so many sweet options for breakfast in this country -- cereal, donuts, muffins, pop tarts, pancakes, waffles, even bagels are sweet in their simple carb way. We often eat breakfast in hand and on the go, if we have a chance to eat it at all. Those sugary cereal bars with "milk" in the form of white icing piped along one face are a sure sign of the decline of Western civilization. It can't be good for the soul to wake up like a greyhound out of the gates, splash some water around, snort a diabetes time bomb and rush out the door, chasing the invisible mechanical bunny all the way to the office before the arbitrary 9:00 office start.

Because for me, nothing beats a hearty, savory breakfast. I don't get to have a full breakfast everyday -- usually I can only finish the ritual on the weekends. On weekdays, I usually get a steamed roast pork bun and cup of coffee from the Chinese bakery right in front of the subway station by my house. But what I really prefer is to eat in the morning as though I'm going to spend the rest of the day chopping trees in the forest, sweating under the midday sun, and wrestling with bears instead of sitting on my ass in front of a glowing computer screen as I usually do. I like the adage: "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper." I may be misquoting there, but you get the idea.

And it's the salty things that I love -- grits with butter and/or cheese, sausages, bacon, ham, scrambled eggs, lox, corned beef hash...The only meal I really miss from my days living in London is the traditional English fry-up breakfast -- fried eggs, sausage or thick, salty bacon rashers, baked beans, buttery toast, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, and a cup of hot milky tea. Now that is a meal that settles the stomach and sets you up to work the rest of the day.

Sunday mornings in my La Puente home were rice porridge or rice soup mornings. I'd wake up to the sound of my father frying up a gigantic frittata with ham, peas, and onions; it was always as deep as a soup bowl and so thick that he'd have to finish the puffy brown egg concoction in the oven to cook the middle through. We'd ladle thick, cloud-white rice porridge into bowls and sit down at the table with the gigantic frittata and maybe some pickled mustard greens and a fried salted mackerel. I would mentally divide the frittata into quarters and slather on a layer of ketchup on my quadrant, I'm sure much my father's dismay. I still love the taste of rice and ketchup.

Or we'd have rice soup, a clear broth made with chicken, fish, or pork ribs stewed til tender with smashed cloves of garlic, ginger, Chinese celery, and cilantro. We would sprinkle over the top julienned fresh ginger, sliced scallions for bite, preserved vegetable for tart-salt richness, and minced celery and cilantro for freshness and crunch.

I also loved Japanese breakfast, even the cheap version I ate at Yoshinoya in Tokyo the entire time I was there. A steaming bowl of miso soup, a modest bowl of short grain rice, a small piece of salted salmon and a cup of green tea is such a pleasant way to start the day, even if the day consists of lolling around and gawking at tourist attractions.

I savor the days when I can sit down and cook a nice big breakfast, plan the rest of my day (or not), and clean up my mess slowly. Now that I'm unemployed, I've got all the time in the world. Since I am constitutionally incapable of denying myself food despite the fact that I have no money to buy it, I bought myself all sorts of morning goodies to start my lazy day in the best possible way. I made a cup of milky Typhoo (Dean & Deluca didn't have PG Tips in bags), fried two gorgeous organic eggs and topped them with organic raw milk cheddar, sliced tomatoes from eli & ali (pretty good for this time of year), sliced avocado, Maldon sea salt & freshly ground pepper. I sopped it all up with an oven-warmed butter-rich croissant from Petrossian (via D & D). When you start your day with a beautiful plate like that, you can't help but feel that signs of heaven are tucked into many different pockets of life, and you don't have to dig deep to dig in.

I am laughing, but I hope I haven't freaked you all out with the ginormous picture of my friend's cute baby Ethan. I was experimenting with banners and nothing seemed to be working so I assumed the picture wouldn't show up. But sometime between last night and tonight, Baby "King Kong" Ethan climbed up to the top of my blog. But he's eating his toe which somehow seems appropriate anyway...

Keep hitting refresh -- eventually this problem will get solved. And in the meantime, isn't he precious?

To the Bonfire of the Vanities reject who FLIPPED OUT last night, 6:30 p.m. at the Dean & Deluca meat counter, Soho:

Dude, CHILL OUT. A piece of meat dropped from one clean piece of wax paper to the adjoining clean piece of wax paper and the counter guy picked it up with his gloved hand and returned it to its proper home on the first piece of wax paper. That was no reason to go completely POSTAL on a guy who probably makes 1/20 the income you do, slinging raw bloody flesh around in freezing carcass lockers and having to serve jerks like you eight hours a day. There are lots of things to be pissed off about: mad cow, growth hormones, the unsanitary conditions and ethics of slaughterhouses, but taking out your (sexual) frustrations on a 20 year-old kid who probably can't afford to shop in the grocery store he works in doesn't fix your problems or the problems of the world. It just makes you look like an asshole. ASSHOLE.

Sincerely yours,
Ganda

It's a crying shame! This poor truffle was left to rot in a restaurant safe, unloved, uneaten. I wonder how many plates of pappardelle and shaved white truffle we could have shared...

Some fun facts about truffles:
* The largest truffle ever found (and recorded) was a 2 kg white truffle dug up near Alba in 1951. In these cases, the white truffle lives up to its scientific name Tuber magnatum, or "enormous truffle."
* The Oxford Food Companion claims that dogs are a little bit better for truffle hunting than pigs are because "separating [the pig] from a truffle it has found is awkward."
* The truffle fly, Helomyza tuberiperda, lays its eggs where truffles lie so that its larvae can gorge like they're at Per Se when they hatch.
* Chocolate truffles are so named because they are shaped to look like real truffles. They first gained popularity in the 1920s.
* Truffles are one of those gifts from the earth whose growth cannot be forced, so we are subject to nature's whims year after year. They grow along the roots of certain trees in Perigord, France (black truffles), Alba, Italy (white truffles), Spain and Portugal (not sure what kind); I've read stories about truffles in the mideast, China, and Oregon as well, though truffle snobs don't believe they are worth exploring.

I've heard from Yuka and from the mushroom shop lady that this was a most excellent year for truffles, so treat yourself to a truffle and invite me over for dinner!

* Thanks to Yuka for the link to this story!

This is a similar soup to the first, which I've never seen on the menu of a Thai restaurant. It's peasant food from the northeast region of Thailand. I first tried it at my uncle's house behind the county jail complex in Conkan, Thailand. My aunt and uncle made amazing meals in their outdoors kitchen area, which was comprised of a glass-doored cabinet to keep away flies and ants from fresh food, a spigot and tub for washing up, one plug-in electric burner, and one wood coal-burning cylinder on the dirt floor, out of which spilled a little hill of gray ash and orange embers. They had a refrigerator, which was used mostly to keep the drinking water cold and to chill fruit. All of the ingredients were bought fresh at the nearby open-air markets -- gorgeous yellow het nang fa, oyster mushrooms which are called female angel mushrooms in Thai; fuschia dragonfruit with succulent snowy white flesh; wood-fired fish grilled to flaky perfection.

My grandma would come out for her once-a-day "outside time," slipping on the ubiquitous flip-flops which every member of every Thai household owns a pair of, and stepping onto the fine reddish dust of the "porch" area. My aunt would set up several dishes on the low wicker table which served as both chairs and dining table for the whole family, and later in the day, chaise lounge for grandma, under a straw mat overhang which did little to block out the fierce equator sun. My uncle would come out in his natty brown polyester jailer's uniform, my cousins in their neatly ironed uniforms of pilgrim collared white blouses and long, pleated navy skirts, and my aunt in her country wrap sarong and tank top. We all sat down with five inch Corelle plates to share our hearty breakfast in the relatively low humidity of a northeast Thai morning, reaching across the wicker for a hunk of hot sticky rice, or a little grilled fish, or some spicy bamboo stew. The molting pet chickens would come by, clucking and pecking at stones on the ground, trying to sneak a bite off of our plates and hurrying away, even if it was chicken they were stealing. (Chickens are not very discerning eaters.)

I loved dipping my ball of sticky rice into this hot, savory soup, crunchy with fresh herbs and full of incredible flavor. Chickens in other parts of the world just seem to taste better. They don't look like our white, hormone-pumped Schwarzenegger chickens. They're scrawny, a bit stringier, but one little chicken adds more flavor to a soup than ten Purdue specimens could. That said, use free-range chicken, organic if you can get it. This soup keeps fairly well -- just add more chopped herbs when you heat it up for the second day for that extra punch of freshness. Here, the tartness is provided by macam pieak, cooking tamarind, which can be found at the Thai and many Asian grocery stores. It comes in a little shrink wrapped 5x4" block in the dried foods section.

Swa

12 cups water
1 tasty chicken, cut into pieces
1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 3 inch pieces and pounded
5 double-leaves of kaffir lime leaves
1 3 inch piece of galangal, cut into 1/8" slices
3 shallots, sliced
1 finger-size block of macam pieak,cooking tamarind
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. uncooked rice
1 tsp. dried crushed red chili, plus more to taste
4 scallions, sliced thinly
handful of cilantro with stems, roughly chopped
handful of mint, roughly chopped
Fish sauce to taste

Boil the water. When it comes to a rolling boil, add 2 tsp. salt, lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal, shallots and tamarind. Bring to a boil again and add the chicken. Boil it at a rolling boil, skimming the scum. In another dry pan, toast the rice until it is the color of almond skin. Crush the toasted rice in a mortar pestle until it's pretty fine, like the texture of white sand. When the chicken is tender and cooked, 20 minutes, remove from heat. Add the crushed chili, the crushed toasted rice, the chopped herbs, and some fish sauce to adjust the salt level.

****

I thought a lot about those poor chickens when the bird flu epidemic hit southeast Asia. This is a picture I took at dusk behind my uncle's house, when the roosters flew up into the lower branches of the tamarind tree to roost for the night. When I was there in November of last year, chickens were everywhere. Everyone had pet chickens, and the fully plumed roosters were kept under big straw domes in front of many houses in Ban Ponesawang, the tiny dirt-road village my mother grew up in. Every morning, starting at about 3 or 4 a.m., those roosters would start crowing as though someone were cutting their gonads off. Now I grew up sleeping through the sound of train horns blasting, the reverberations of the chugging wheels shaking the house; I've slept through snake-like lines of speed-freak cab drivers honking their horns incessantly at the corner of Bleecker and the Bowery; but I could not get any fucking sleep once these g.d. roosters started up at the crack of dawn. My mom went to visit Thailand after the bird flu forced a mass chicken-cleansing across the nation, and especially in my family's region. She said there were no chickens anywhere; no more roosters crowing in the morning, no more scraggly chickens to wave away at the breakfast table. I felt guilty for all of the murderous thoughts I had, lying awake in the mosquito-buzz mornings at my uncle's house. The moral of this story? Don't count your chickens before they're hacked. And eat more Swa while you can.