eat drink one woman

Hello Salon!

2010-01-29T15:28:11Z

Hi fellow fans of Francis Lam! In case you were wondering, the Swedish article in question can be found here.

And for those of you who haven't seen, I'm on the front page of Salon Food today! Here's the article. There will be a follow-up recipe.

Did I just lose my authenticity cred for citing Martin Yan? I don't care. I'M GOING ROGUE.

Why Grandmas (like me) Love Lincoln Center

2010-01-18T17:43:36Z

I'm watching Ballerina and falling in love. You know, I wonder if the reason there are always so many octogenarians in the audience for opera and ballet is not that they are artforms for people with money, but that as you get older, you like to see the accomplishment that follows years, sometimes decades of training, accomplishments you know you will no longer be able to achieve in your lifetime.

I'm watching these gorgeous ballerinas bending like reeds, and I know that their fate would never have been possible for me. I mourn the rigidity of my thirty-something body, but also the inflexibility of my future, the narrowing of my paths. It's saudade, a sweet sorrow.

Crate Expectations

2009-12-28T04:39:40Z

Johan's apartment was a little Swedish haven in the heart of downtown Manhattan -- all white walls, extremely sparse and airy. But he was using these overturned crates as coffee tables out in the living room that looked impossibly familiar, so familiar they made my heart ring. Could they be? They couldn't be, could they? I pointed them out to him.

ME: Those look like farmer's market crates.

JOHAN: Yeah, that's where I got them.

ME: From who? Do you remember?

JOHAN: Yeah, from a guy on the, let's see...west side of the market, in the middle. He sold them to me, I think they were $15, maybe $20 each.

Which means they absolutely had to be from the Paffenroths of Paffenroth Gardens at the Union Square Greenmarket. My first job in New York was helping the Paffenroths sell vegetables at their stand. Not only were they my first employer in New York, but they're also like my east coast parents. Isn't it crazy that Johan was using some of the Paffenroths' crates as decoration in his house? Maybe that's not crazy to anyone but me, but it was CRAZY to me.

I heard Ilse Crawford speak about emotional design over the summer. She said that having a piece with history in your home brings life to a space in a way that no new object can. She showed slides of Mathias Dahlgren's restaurant in Stockholm's Grand Hotel, which I had been to, and talked about the 300-year-old tables with uneven legs. The souls of meals past etched deep in the heart of the wood can have an effect on the meals eaten on them today.

Of course, I understood in theory. But before this weekend, I've never had an interior object resonate with me so intensely before. Here were these familiar crates in an unfamiliar downtown Scandinavian loft, among white cabinets and in front of a flat screen TV. Here, they were clean, worn, weathered and beautiful objets that echoed the slightly uneven planks of the loft's painted floor. They have a story of their own, but they also figure strongly in my personal history.

I spent my first few years in New York lifting, loading and emptying those wooden crates at the Greenmarket. I know their exact width and weight in my arms. I know the way the slats feel when they're moist with water and caked with the black dirt of Orange County. I know how three can stack perfectly together in a little latticed package, and I know the particular clacking sound they make when they're stacked together at the end of the day.

I've seen them packed with dewy red radishes at 6am, the green leaves cushioned in the center of two red stripes. I've seen them full of beet tops and carrot greens and hacked onion stalks, ready to be put on the truck and carted back to the farm for compost. I've sat on many of those crates to eat my egg sandwich after the rush of morning customers was gone; I've rested my tired feet on them, waiting for the tents to be put away for the evening.

Alex has told me that he's sold the crates to people in the past for $20, enough to cover the cost of the materials. But he talks about selling those crates with the same bemused tone that he has when he talks about people buying purslane, which he grew up thinking was a weed, a nuisance. But it was with some pride that he told me, and I told Johan, that crates with the initials PP carved into them (which one of Johan's has) were made by Alex's grandfather, Peter Paffenroth, and might be 100 years old.

There's something thrilling about the idea that these very simple objects, just nails and wood, which may have passed through my own hands, are finding new life in a totally unrelated place. And yet it's also ashes to ashes -- those crates have survived Peter Paffenroth, but who knows how long they'll have a place in Johan's home. It was a wonderful wink and smile from my own past. And now I want to tell Ilse Crawford, hey, I totally get it.

Jansson's Temptation (Janssons frestelse)

2009-12-28T04:13:47Z

Lina put me in charge of the Janssons frestelse (left), a duty which I took very seriously. It can be a challenge to make a dish you've never tasted -- how will you know if you got it right? In that situation, the only way to go is to follow the recipe as close to the letter as possible. But I ran into trouble hunting down Swedish anchovies.

On the left, we have standard Spanish anchovies cured in salt and preserved in olive oil. On the right, you see Swedish "anchovies", which are not anchovies as we know them, but sprats. They're cured in a sweet/salty water-based brine that tastes of Swedish spices -- allspice, clove, that kind of thing. Absolutely not the same thing.

I had to stalk the Swedish anchovy for a day and a half before I found some. Let no one say I lack persistence:

> 6 train to Wall St.
> IKEA ferry to Red Hook
@ IKEA - Find out they ran out of anchovies an hour before I got there
> IKEA Shuttle to Jay St.
> F train and walk to Eagle Provisions in Park Slope
@ Eagle Provisions - Closed for the night. DOH!
> Walk home to Sunset Park, where I eat my disappointment in the form of half a roll of Göteborg Singoalla cookies, which I had purchased from IKEA
> Wake up the next morning, play hooky from work to hunt for anchovies, walk back to Eagle
@ Eagle Provisions - no anchovies
> Take the bus to Bierkraft
@ Bierkraft - not open until noon
> Walk to Union Market
@ Union Market - no anchovies
> Walk to Blue Apron Foods
@ Blue Apron Foods - no anchovies. Counter guy suggests Russ & Daughters, though my friend Emil tweeted in reply to my frantic request for advice that they have none this year
> Walk to Brooklyn Larder
@ Brooklyn Larder - they don't open for another half hour, but the guy who answers the door says there are no Swedish anchovies
> 2 to the 1 to Christopher St.
@ Gourmet Garage - no anchovies
@ Murray's - no anchovies
@ The Lobster Place - no anchovies
@ Citarella - no anchovies
> Cab to Gramercy to pick up some keys from my friend Sarah R.
@ Sunflower Diner - we have grapefruit and tea, Sarah suggests I try Schaller & Weber.
> Call Schaller & Weber:

ME: Do you have Swedish anchovies?

GUY: Of course we got Swedish ham.

ME: Not Swedish ham. Swedish ANCHOVIES.

GUY: Hold on. [Muffled voice] Do we have Swedish anchovies? ANCHOVIES. Yeah? [Back into the mouthpiece] Yeah, we got 'em.

ME: Hmph. Alright, thanks.

> With great skepticism, take the 6 train up to 86th St., walk to 86th and 2nd.
@ Schaller & Weber - SUCCESS! Stacks of anchovies in the refrigerator case, as well as all kinds of Swedish foods.
> Take 6 train to the N train all the way home, where I reward my hard work with the other half roll of Singoalla cookies.

Here's another recipe adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking (Husmanskonst). Theories on the dish's etymology vary, but the basic recipe is onions, julienned potatoes, cream and Swedish anchovies. I was intimidated by the amount of anchovy called for in his recipe, since nobody else seemed to include as much as he. Even with half the anchovies, the dish tasted plenty saline to me.

The anchovy liquor and sauteed onions add a unique sweetness to the dish -- again, this is a bit of a level 2 Swedish dish. It's not for everyone, but I quite liked how the rich cream and gentle sweetness cut the umami sprat flavor. Also, pretty nifty, you can do as I did and cook it 3/4 of the way through, cool and refrigerate, then travel on the subway with it to your destination, top up with a little cream and bake at 400 for 20 minutes until heated through, finishing with the broiler to brown the top.

Jansson's Temptation (Janssons frestelse)
Adapted loosely from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

4 medium yellow onions
5 large Yukon Gold potatoes
Butter
2 tins of Swedish anchovies
2 cups of heavy cream
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Peel onions. Use mandoline to slice onions thinly. Melt a knob of butter in a pan. Saute the onions slowly over medium heat until golden brown.
Peel potatoes. Use mandoline to julienne the potatoes.
When onions have cooked down and are golden brown, add the potatoes, cream and anchovy liquor to the pan. Taste and season with pepper and a bit of salt if needed. Stir and let cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
Butter a large oval casserole. Line the bottom of the casserole with half of the potato onion mixture. Put half of your anchovies on top of the potatoes. Cover with the remaining potato mixture. Top with the other half of the anchovies.
Bake for 45 minutes until golden brown on top and bubbly. Alternatively, bake for 30 minutes, then cool and refrigerate, covered in foil. When ready to serve, bake uncovered in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, finishing under the broiler at the end to brown the top. Serve as classic fixin' with meatballs for Christmas Eve dinner.

--

For future ref, should you ever be in need of Swedish ingredients for Christmas, save yourself some grief and try Schaller & Weber first. Fine selection of Abba herring, source for German 25% vinegar, which can be substituted when diluted with one part water for Swedish ättiksprit spirit vinegar (which is 12% acidity). I like the rather alarming warning at the bottom of the label:

Lussekatter

2009-12-28T03:39:28Z

I've never had lussekatter, traditional Christmas Swedish saffron buns, so I had no idea if I had made them right or not. Luckily, there was a translated recipe in the December Saveur, which came from an Allt om Mat editor, so I knew the recipe would be straightforward and trustworthy.

These buns are very mildly flavored and not very sweet. They reminded me of Hawaiian bread (do you know what I'm talking about?) which I adored as a kid. But it didn't really go with dinner -- I suspect it should be a fika treat, something to nosh with coffee either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, before dinner. It's definitely not a dessert.

I tried to follow the recipe closely -- the only deviation I made was to soak the raisins in amaretto overnight -- I love a boozy raisin.

They really need to be baked and eaten day of -- they go stale quite quickly. But the leftovers made a pretty lovely bread pudding with the addition of almond paste, cardamom, custard, and more raisins.

Lussekatter
adapted from December 2009 Saveur

2 1/4 oz. packages active dry yeast
2 cups whole milk, heated till finger-warm (110 degrees)
2 tsp. saffron, lightly crushed
3/4 cup plus 1 tsp. sugar
6 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
3 eggs
12 Tbsp. unsalted butter, room temp and cut into 1/2" cubes
64 raisins soaked overnight in 1/3 c. amaretto liquer

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix together yeast, milk, saffron, and 1 tsp.sugar. Let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in remaining sugar, flour, salt and 2 eggs. Mix on low until dough forms and gathers around the paddle. (I don't have a stand mixer, so I just did this by hand.)
Replace paddle with dough hook and add butter. Knead on medium-high speed until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, 8 minutes.
Grease a large bowl with butter. Transfer dough to the greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit in a warm place until double in size, about 1 hour.
Divide dough into 32 pieces and roll each piece into an 8" long rope. Form each rope into an S-shape and then roll each end into a tight spiral. Place buns 2" apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Uncover the dough pieces and place a raisin at the center of each of the spirals.
Lightly beat remaining egg with 1 Tbsp. water and brush each bun with egg.

Bake until buns are golden brown and cooked through, 16 minutes. Cool for at least 10 minutes. Serve with strong brewed coffee for fika.

Lussekatter Bread Pudding

Okay, there is no tradition of lussekatter bread pudding in Sweden, as far as I know, but it's a nice way to use up some of those stale buns, and it's quite pretty to boot. I used some leftover frozen almond paste butter with cardamom, so I'm just going to give you an approximate recipe and you can trust your judgment for the amounts to add.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Take 6 stale lussekatter.

2. Slice into 1" pieces.

3. Heat 2 cups of milk with a knob of butter, some grated almond paste and a bit of ground cardamom over low heat until hot but not boiling.

4. In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk with 1/3 cup of sugar. While whisking vigorously, pour in a bit of the hot milk mixture. Once well beaten, add more of the hot milk mixture until it's all well mixed. Add a splash of vanilla extract and, if desired, a splash of amaretto.

5. Add cut-up lussekatter and some soaked raisins, let the bread soak for a few minutes.

6. Butter a small 5" x 9" casserole. Pour soaked bread custard into casserole. Bake for 30 minutes until top is crisp and golden brown and custard is cooked through. Serve warm. Or eat cold from the fridge. I'm not judging if you're not judging.

A Swedish Christmas in New York

2009-12-28T00:25:17Z

My parents are in Thailand now, so I wound up having orphan Swedish Christmas with some NYC stragglers. One person got stranded here after his flight was canceled because of the weekend blizzard, one person was finishing closing on a new apartment, and a few, like me, were staycationing for no particular reason. Given the travel nightmares abounding -- major delays, swine flu, explosive-rigged terrorist -- I can't say I'm sorry about it.

Besides, I'd been hoping to do Swedish Christmas since I left Stockholm. My Swedish friend Lina and her friend Johan hosted and we made the julbord (Christmas table) of my Ingmar Bergman fantasies. We even watched the beginning of Fanny and Alexander, the part before it descends into domestic violence nightmare. Tjohoo!

Lina and Johan in the kitchen.

I adore Lina's singular sartorial sense. She's near six feet tall with short, asymmetrical blond hair and she's always the most interestingly dressed person in the room. On Christmas night, she wore a single shoulder length earring with little tufts of recycled fur and a metal mesh belt in the shape of a snake clamping down on its tail. She was dressed in the colors she had painted her apartment walls, which she referred to as her "favorite ice cream flavors. The bedroom is Haagen Dazs vanilla and the kitchen is Haagen Dazs coffee."

Janssons frestelse on the left, prinskorv in the pan next to it.

Herring, consumed with snaps. Skål!

The Swedish palate favors sweet and pickled flavors, far east spices like cardamom and saffron, fishy little fish like herring and anchovy, zero garlic and buckets of butter and cream. As with all cuisines, you can rank the foods' level of accessibility, universally-lovable cinnamon buns being Level 1, bulging, natives-only cans of surströmming being about level 10.

So our julbord's Level 1 dishes included:
Classic köttbullar (meatballs) with rårörda lingon (stirred lingonberry preserve), pressgurka (pressed cucumber) and cream sauce
Lussekatter (Swedish saffron buns)
Prinskorv (little cocktail sausages)
Ham
Gravad lax (cured salmon) with dill on rye bread
Glögg (mulled wine)
Eggnog
Various cheeses
Pepparkakor (gingerbread thins)
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream (Paj, as it's spelled, is actually quite Swedish)

Level 2 dishes were:
Janssons frestelse (Jansson's temptation), a julienned potato, onion, cream and anchovy dish that sounds weird but is less weird than it sounds
Sweet pickled beets
Sill (herring) plate with curried herring, cream herring, matjes herring, mustard herring and dill herring, with boiled potato, knäckebröd (hard bread) and Västerbotten cheese
Snaps (aquavit)

Johan's meatballs were superb, and it was instructive to watch a native expert's technique. He rolls the meatballs a little larger than I have -- about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, making sure to push any errant pieces of onion into the meatball so they don't break apart. A generous amount of butter goes into the nonstick pan to melt down. Then, before he places the very round meatballs in the pan, he jiggles the plate they're on a bit to make sure they roll around easily. Then into the pan they go, enough to almost cover the entire pan in a single layer. Johan immediately gives them a good shake to make sure they roll and brown all around. None of them fell apart. Genius! Another key -- LOTS and LOTS of white pepper.

Dinner was such a lovely affair, about ten of us sitting in white chairs around an all white table, two caterpillars of tea lights flickering against elegant conical glasses filled with syrupy frozen snaps. I led Helan går, since that's the only drinking song I know, and Lina and Johan each contributed a few from memory. (One of them translated to something having four legs, something having three legs, and a cock having no legs but it can stand on its own?) Am feeling a bit nostalgic for Sverige, du gamla, du fria.

Recipes forthcoming!

Dear L.A. people who made Made of Honor

2009-12-27T00:28:14Z

Dear Hollywood types who made Made of Honor, which I am ashamed to admit I have been watching on Netflix streaming:

Any guy driving through Times Square in a convertible looks like an idiot and a complete douchebag -- who would ever want to cross town like that to get to the Met?
Nobody would let you stroll through the sculpture room at the Met with two cups of coffee.
Nobody at the Met would ever let a non-employee roll in to a painting restoration with two cups of coffee.
If it's 3am in Scotland, it's not daylight out in New York.
That Figaro place is in L.A. You are not allowed to pass that off as New York. And I don't even know where that antiques mall is supposed to be.

And I haven't even finished the first half hour. I don't think I can keep going.

Please do not use this city to up the cool factor of your movie if you're just going to paint a totally fake portrait of it.

I <3 NY,
Ganda

Persian Tea Cakes

2009-12-17T02:41:47Z

I have an orange blossom candle which I've placed on my radiator. Whenever the heat is on, it releases the slow, lazy smell of desert blooms -- the Orient, powdery and sweet.

In my dreams, I invite the women of Marjane Satrapi's family over. They sip strong tea from a samovar, perhaps in glass cups hugged by metal filigree. The steam rises in double brushstrokes from their thin cups. I sit on the floor at their feet, knees together, ankles tucked next to one hip.

I serve these cakes. They are the secret held behind Ilsa Lund's plush lips when Rick Blaine corners her at the bazaar. They are a pink silk nightgown trimmed with cream lace, pinned to a clothesline. They are the sillage of an arch-browed woman in seamed stockings, the thin embroidered lines like the continuation of her spine down into the tips of her heels. They are the inner courtyard of a tiled blue palace, a rose garden where a teenage girl fans her long, wild hair in the grass for a sun bath.

Persian Tea Cakes

The base of this cake is Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake recipe, which I am officially obsessed with. With cardamom, rosewater, orange and pistachio, they are impossibly feminine and perfumey and delicate. They're perfect with a strong cup of tea. I used foil cupcake cups, but you could easily use a greased cupcake tin and pop 'em out before icing for prettier presentation. I am in love with them, and I can't wait to show them off again.

CAKES:
2 cups plus 2 tbsp. cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 c. buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. rosewater
1 tsp. cardamom seeds, ground in mortar and pestle

ICING:
Juice of 1 orange
1 tsp. orange zest, grated AND chopped fine
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 pinch salt
1/2 c. Turkish pistachios, chopped

EQUIPMENT:
22 cupcake foil cups
Baking sheet

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt together. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar together.
Beat in one egg at a time on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
Add buttermilk, vanilla, rosewater and cardamom. Beat on low until blended.
Beat in dry ingredients, a third at a time, until just blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
Drop cupcake cups onto baking sheet. Fill cups about 1/3 full.
Bake for 23-28 minutes until barely golden brown on top. Cool completely.

For the icing:

Put powdered sugar, grated zest and salt into a bowl. Add enough orange juice to make a thin, drizzle-able icing.
Ice the cupcakes with plenty of orange icing. Top with chopped pistachios.

--

I submitted these for my office's bake-off today. Though they came in second place, two of the judges (one of whom was Jim Oseland, EIC of Saveur) said they gave it 10 out of 10, meaning the third judge was my downfall. DAMMIT! But, BUT, Jim Oseland said my cake and the olive oil cake (which just happened to be from a Saveur recipe) were his favorites (!). So take that, pedestrian caramel oat chocolate chip WHATEVER in first place. Harumph.

A Buddhist Christmas in L.A.

2009-12-01T03:42:17Z

The town I grew up in was predominantly Catholic, and you'd have no doubt about that if you saw it during the holidays.

Right after Thanksgiving, La Puente would start lighting up like Vegas. Holiday enthusiasts all over the neighborhood would string giant colorful gumdrop lights from the eaves of their homes. A few eager beavers might have a red-nosed reindeer lamp or a giant candy cane or an apple-bellied Santa on their green lawns. In later years, strings of icicle lights would drip from the rooftops -- the closest thing to a white Christmas we'd get to see in Southern California. Plastic Maries and lambs and camels and bearded men in togas or whatever would come out of hibernation for their yearly display, patiently awaiting the arrival of the baby Jesus doll. The Holy Ghost could feel confident about receiving a hero's welcome on almost any doorstep in my neighborhood.

On those dark December nights, you could spot our house from the other end of the street. Candy-hued bulbs twinkled on every single house on the block -- every single house but ours. Our house was like a black hole, a void, a spot as dark as sin at the end of an otherwise cheerfully lit street. X marks the heretic spot. This slot machine is out of order. NO TRESPASSING -- Christmas spirit, that means YOU. It was like the easiest game of Find the Heathen ever. Whenever we rounded that corner, I'd sink a little lower into the back seat of our van.

"Pau, can we pleeeeeeeeeze have Christmas lights this year? Pleeeeeeeeeeze? We'll help you put them up!" my brother and I would beg.

"And who's going to take it down after Christmas then?" my parents would ask.

"You don't HAVE to take them down! You can leave them up all year! See, everybody else does that!"

They never relented.

But we got Christmas. Or something Christmasish. We had to beg my father to bring our Christmas tree down from the garage rafters. It was a balding plastic fir, probably purchased at Sears or Best in the late 70s, a perfect geometric cone you could practice equations on. If we were lucky, we'd get it up the week before Christmas, a decade of tinsel still strangling the abrasive green needles. It would stay up in the corner of the living room through Christmas, through New Year's, through all of January, and maybe by February my Pau would put it back in the garage.
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"Pink is better than purple!"

"No, purple is better than pink!"

And then, when it was time to part, we'd predictably cry and moan and cling to one another.

Our parents did their best to create the experience of Christmas we Americanized kids expected. My Pau would haul a foil wrapped turkey home from the kitchen of whatever hotel he happened to be working at. We would reconstitute discount boxed stuffing with canned chicken broth. Instant mashed potato flakes, jars of gelatinous gravy and cranberries suspended in their can-shaped aspic would come out of the pantry, served alongside cucumber som tam, bland tofu soup and rice.

And Sara Lee frozen pies. Those soggy, mushy Frisbees with their sandy crusts were all I would know of pie for many years to come. But pie meant we were having the kind of Christmas that we saw on TV, even if we weren't really celebrating any of the attendant Jesus stuff surrounding it. One year, when my oldest cousin was in college, she came for Christmas in L.A. with the whole family. The day after Christmas, she tried to leave early in the afternoon so she and her boyfriend could drive our old brown Celica all the way back to Berkeley.

"You can't go yet!" her sisters and I begged, tears streaming. "You have to stay! We haven't eaten the Dutch apple pie yet! At least wait until we make the Dutch apple pie!"

We turned the upper oven on to the appointed temperature and waited as long as we could before pulling the aluminum pie plate out of its red cardboard box, covering the fluted crust with foil. It was still frozen, so we managed to delay my cousin's departure by about an hour. Christmas couldn't be over already, could it? The crust burned, and the trans-fat crumble sank into the chemically syrup. When it was done, we reluctantly sliced it up and served it. It wasn't very good, but we ate it as slowly as we could.

I see now how generous it was for my parents to let us celebrate Christmas, considering how some of our barrio's more fervent Jesus fans liked to remind us that we were doomed to damnation. Even without them, I was reminded of our religious otherness every day. On money: In God We Trust. In the homeroom pledge of allegiance, "And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, ---," I would conspicuously zip my lips for two beats. Those jewelry crosses, popularized by Madonna for purchase at Wet Seal and Contempo Casuals in the 80s, I couldn't wear them for fear of A.) being mistaken for a believer or B.) being mistaken for a mocker.

But I had one thing my classmates didn't have -- a firm belief that there was no such thing as Santa. Which is good because, given our lack of Christmas lights, there's no way he'd find our house anyway. I was that kid who burst my peers' bubbles. "Santa's not real, stupid!" Just like the hell you say I'm going to isn't real; just like God isn't real, I spat in my mind. But it was like that Dutch apple pie. I dreamed it would be delicious, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

When you're Buddhist, you don't get Hanukkah like the Jewish kids do, or Kwanzaa like the hippie commune kids do. I don't think Buddha would approve of the noble eightfold gift exchange, or a wheel-shaped princess pine wreath to hang on the door.

And anyway, I love Christmas now; I love it for all sorts of reasons that won't get me into heaven (Christian or otherwise) any faster. I love wearing sparkly dresses. I love the giant stars of Damocles at the Time Warner mall, clanging with obnoxiously loud carols and looking like they're going to fall and take someone out. God help me, I love gingerbread soy lattes from a certain bourgeois capitalist coffee chain. I love fattening up on peppermint bark and boozing at holiday fetes, hoping that someone at the party will try and get me under the mistletoe.

Lucky for me, I'm not just Buddhist, I'm also a New Yorker, and it is every New Yorker's God-given right to escape their past and start over. Since my parents are going to be in Thailand, I'm going to stay in Brooklyn this year. I've decided to have myself a Swedish Christmas. I'm going to make meatballs and an anchovy potato casserole called Janssons frestelse. I'll light a big fire in our fireplace, watch Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander with friends and get sloshed on glögg. And just to show Santa there are no hard feelings, I'll keep the flue open and make sure the fire is out by midnight.

I survived NaBloPoMo! I, for one, am glad it's over. Thanks for tolerating some of the lamer posts. And thanks for reading, friends. December is going to be a little quieter, as I am participating in Learn to Read Again Month (LeTRAM).

I hope I'm one of the first to wish you Happy Holidays!

xoxo,
Ganda

Liddabit Sea Salt Caramels

2009-11-30T04:16:27Z

I know we'll look back at the aughts and think, "God, salted caramel is SOOOOOO 2000s, isn't it?" But I hope these Liddabit Sea Salt Caramels never go out of style. It's a 2-inch bar of soft buttery goodness, shot through with the perfect amount of crunchy salt crystals and wrapped in a square of wax paper. Best 75 cents you'll spend at the Chelsea Market. I picked them up at Lucy's Whey, my friend Amy's fab newborn artisanal American cheese shop there.

I also got a block of Prairie Breeze Cheddar from Iowa -- sweet, grassy and insanely good. I am really looking forward to breakfast.

--

NaBloPoMo is almost over, and thank god for that! I need my sleeping time back. I'm hoping to have something special to finish the month off tomorrow. Check back!

Bacaro

2009-11-28T17:04:44Z

Of course it's a little sad to not be with my family on Thanksgiving, but my god, New York is such a pleasure when everyone clears out. Holiday weekends make it possible to go out on the Lower East Side on a Friday night and not be suffocated by the descent of the usual choadfest.

Which is how we wound up at Bacaro last night. I don't go out very often on the weekends because I'm too much of a grandma, but seeing as how my chances of finding a date while sitting at my computer watching Law & Order SVU on Netflix streaming are strangely low, I've decided that it's time to get out there.

And it was a wonderfully brisk night, no? Just the right side of winter. A little hard and shiny but with a hidden heat, like the black patent heels I had on with plum tights. Like the delicate swirly stem of the wine glasses holding the warming, dark cherry Valpolicella we drank all night. Like the curlicued, shiny white plate holding up a round pool of velvet, buttery polenta and creamy, saline baccala.

We were there with our friends Andy and Jen, who were in town for the evening. Eventually, we had 8 people on the bar stools around the front seating area. We stayed for a good five hours, doting on the fresh face of our curly-haired waitress as Negronis and herbacious Aperol cocktails melted us like chocolate onto the cold marble slab table. Our crystal tumblers were never without water; a freshly lit white tapered candle replaced the one on our table that had gone down to three inches.

I could have stayed all night, alternating vino and nibbles, sending text invites to absent friends that went from cajoling to belligerent as the night progressed. Little fried meatballs arrived like shooter marbles in a glass cup, poppable and crunchy. When I felt the wine sway in my stomach, crumb-coated fried rice balls oozing a mess of mozzarella brought my thirst back.

Plenty of exposed dark bricks capture the flickering bling of the huge acrylic chandelier, the crystal on the tables, the sweet engraved mirror and the copious candlelight. The place definitely feels like it's been finished with a woman's touch, and the presence of many pretty women in ripped black lace, striped bustiers and Sol Moscot eyeglass frames were a testament to its feminine appeal. I'm sure it's a totally different scene on a busy weekend night, but I'm so very glad I got to see it like this.

Bacaro
136 Division St. btwn Ludlow and Orchard
F to East Broadway

Smooth & Melty

2009-11-27T16:05:19Z

Considering we met through his apartment listing on craigslist, it's funny how many random things Doug and I have in common.

Like these things. They're called "Smooth & Melty" (worst candy name ever) but we're both obsessed with them. It's like a white chocolate kiss with peppermint and nonpareils. It sounds wrong, I know, but they are so very right. They always come in pink, yellow and sea green, and they're not that easy to find. Doug brought some back from a recent trip upstate and it's taking all my willpower to not hoover them all up.

Happy T-Day!

2009-11-27T03:40:55Z

Had an amazing Thanksgiving with Adam, Jessica and their family at Lunetta. Polenta with ragu, stuffing with plumped, rehydrated raisins and fennel sausage, crazy porky beans, moist heritage breed turkey, banana pudding, tons more...and I'm eating leftovers in front of the TV right now. I'm bummed to not be with my family, but I am not bummed about missing the airport madness.

Back to my banana pudding and TV! Enjoy your Thanksgiving, dears.

Tequila, frenemy

2009-11-25T15:26:42Z

Tequila is so sneaky. I thought I was fine, I was fine, I was fine until I fell asleep last night, having rolled on top of all of my clothing with half a cold sweet potato in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

But it's wonderful to have a day off. God, it's fantastic. And I'm really looking forward to T-Day dinner, which I'm spending with a few friends and a few strangers in Brooklyn. I can't tell you how excited I am about the prospect of getting home on my bicycle.

Must go hunt a coconut down for my Thanksgiving sweet contribution.

I am dating this yesterday because I'm cheating. Nablopomo has squeezed me dry. And a girl needs a night off.

Leif Mannerström's Swedish Meatballs

2009-11-25T02:14:27Z

Photo from Winnie Yang

These köttbullar were so crazy delicious. The recipe is from a book called The Art of Home Cooking by Leif Mannerström. It was a parting gift given to me by my co-workers in Sweden, with reassurances that it is the best husmanskost cookbook out there. (The Swedish title of the book, by the way, is Husmanskonst, a play on the word husmanskost, which means Swedish home cooking, and konst, which means art.)

The book says, "The following recipe is your chance of making the best meatballs in Sweden." And brother was not kidding.

Winnie did all the work prepping them -- all I did was help shape and fry. You can't go wrong with meat fried in tons of butter, but I think the texture was what really made those meatballs great -- crisp on the outside, soft as a cheek and super moist on the inside.

But there are a few things you wouldn't really know on your own if you just read the recipe cold. I have a few suggestions:

The anchovy liquor referred to in the recipe comes from Swedish anchovies, which are actually sweet sprats, not the salted Italian anchovies in oil. Winnie used regular anchovies and just melted them down with the browned onions, but if you want to stick to the recipe, you'll have to hunt down Swedish anchovies. You should be able to get them at IKEA.
We found that the meatballs fell apart a bit in the frying pan. I remembered a little later, though, that ground meat in Sweden is ground quite finely; mince comes out of the grinder in strands like thin spaghetti. For rounder, more shapely meatballs, it might help to ask your butcher to put your meat through a finer grinder an extra round. Or, you could pulse the meat in the food processor for a minute.
A nonstick frying pan helps keep the meatballs together. It's also helpful to deglaze the pan every once in a while to pick up the fond, which wants to stick to your meatballs. You could probably deglaze with cream to make a cream sauce instead.
I think Winnie made the meatballs with half pork, half beef, and they were phenomenal, so that's the balance I included in the recipe. Original recipe calls for half ground beef, half ground beef-pork mixture, which is a thing in Sweden. So you could do three parts beef to one part pork instead; find the balance that works for you.

Anyway, you MUST try these! They went over like gangbusters with the 20 or so people who came to Winnie's Choice Cuts dinner and movie night. (Details on the dinner here; more pics here.) The Swedish factor makes it a bit cosmopolitan, but it's really accessible comfort food. It's also a VERY kid friendly meal. Meatballs are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.

One interesting note -- Mannerström adds freshly grated nutmeg to his mash. I bet that's gooood.

Also, if you've never had the pleasure of attending a Choice Cuts event, sign up for her mailing list. The company is always interesting, the food is always delicious and ambitious, and Matt curates an excellent short before the well-chosen main feature. It's the perfect thing to do on a Sunday night in Brooklyn.

Meatballs a la Lilian
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 1/2 dl (scant 2/3 cup) milk
1/2 dl (scant 1/4 cup) cream
2 dl (4/5 cup) dried breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) water

4 medium-large boiled potatoes (go for floury over waxy)

2 large onions

800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced beef, ground finely
800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced pork, ground finely
1 tsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. "anchovy" liquor (or substitute a few anchovy fillets)
4 tbsp. concentrated veal stock
2 tbsp. Kikkoman soy
salt and pepper

butter for frying (at least a stick, maybe two. Don't be shy)
Water or cream for deglazing

Blend the milk, cream, breadcrumbs, egg and water into a loose batter. Let mixture swell for a while.
Mash the potatoes well. Set aside.
Peel the onions. Grate one of them finely, chop the other one finely and fry till golden brown. (If you substitute anchovy fillets for anchovy liquor, fry the fillets with the onion here.)
Blend all the ingredients quickly into a smooth mixture. Add salt and pepper. Fry a small dab to test the seasoning.
Shape the roundest meatballs you can. (Helps to have extra hands to shape meatballs here.)
Melt a tablespoon of butter in a nonstick or cast iron pan. Fry meatballs in butter till golden brown on the bottom, then roll over and brown on the other side. Don't crowd the pan or they won't brown correctly. Try to brown the meatballs all over. Add another tbsp. of butter for each batch you fry.
After you've fried a few batches, deglaze the pan with a little water. You could use the juice to moisten the meatballs, though they don't need the help.
Serve with mashed potato, pressgurka (quick-pickled cucumber) and lingonberry jam (or cranberry sauce, as Winnie did). Serves 10.

Pressgurka
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 English seedless cucumber
1 small bunch parsley
salt
pepper

Dressing:
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) ättiksprit*
3 dl water
2 dl (4/5 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
10-12 slices chili
salt

Shave cucumber thinly. Place on a dish and salt lightly. Leave for about 15 minutes and then drain well in a colander. Pat gently with paper towel.
Chop parsley finely.
In a glass bowl, alternate layers of cucumber, parsley and pepper.
Mix dressing together, checking for seasoning -- you want sweet and sour.
Pour dressing over cucumber. Sprinkle lots of parsley on top. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

*Ättiksprit is a special Swedish 12% strong vinegar. Heinz distilled white vinegar, by comparison, is 5%. If you are not as hardcore as Winnie, who brought a giant bottle back with her from Sweden (I'm certainly not that hardcore), I am guessing that you can do 2.5 dl (1 cup) white vinegar and 1.5 dl (scant 2/3 cup) of water instead of the 1 dl ättiksprit and 3 dl water. Or, check IKEA to see if they carry it.