The Crazy Chef

Organic Chemistry Rules!

2012-01-28T16:21:00.006-05:00

One of the great tricks of Japanese cuisine is to cook "stuff" with sake (or mirin) and dashi.

Traditionally, the simplest dish of rice would have this but it extends in general to tons of dishes.

The reason is something that Coco Chanel would know like (the smell of) the back of her hand.

It's esterification.

When an alcohol and an acid — in this case, the various glutamic acids in the dashi — react with the alcohol, you create a whole range of esters. Esters are what give the fragrant fruity smells that we all love.

Add to that, the umami from the dashi and you realize that just "plain rice" is a killer dish.

As far as the CC is aware, this is unique in the world. He has not seen this technique being used anywhere else.

Break

2012-01-03T22:15:00.002-05:00

The CC has been taking unusually long hiatuses as of late but he's going to take an even longer one.

Headed to India for even more culinary adventures. Back at the end of January with wondrous photos and recipes!

New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T00:00:00.005-05:00

The menu:

Cheese platter (Stilton, Montbriac)
Crusty Baguette
Figs stuffed w. Almonds, Rosemary & Sea-Salt
Spicy Pickled Mushrooms
Walnuts caramelized w. Rosemary & Sea-Salt
Olives
Figs w. Prosciutto

Plenty of Champagne, of course!

Happy New Year!

Food as Metaphorical Horror

2011-12-25T20:17:00.009-05:00

Humans have always had a slightly complex relationship with food in as much as it reminds them of their animal origins. For starters, carnivores that we may be, we have always had a slightly problematic relationship with slaughter and novelists, artists and film makers have exploited that endlessly.

Here are some of the best food metaphors in the interest of horror that the CC knows of in the medium of film.

Rules of the Game

Slaughter as a metaphor for the ruthless elimination of an entire generation in World War I.

Bonus: Made in 1939. Looks forward presciently and sees a repeat upcoming.

Rosemary's Baby

If you can make tea horrifying, you have real cinematic skill.

Bonus: The Lipton tea ad-placement near the end of the movie.

Repulsion

It's straightforward enough to horrify using a skinned putrefying rabbit but it takes a special talent to turn toast and (exhausted) marmalade into one for a horrific sexual frigidity gone awry.

Saló

The perfect meeting of medium and subject. Integrated into the film as a logical progression of horrors, Pasolini mentioned that he intended it as a "commentary on the horrors of fast food".

(You'll have to see this one. Can't reveal it without giving it away.)

Bonus: Nails.

Kitsune Ramen (with Onigiri)

2011-12-20T20:37:00.000-05:00

Winter Mac 'n Cheese

2011-12-11T11:40:00.004-05:00

When winter strikes, there's nothing like a warm oven and some comfort food.

This, of course, is a classic but it's been gussied up with winter vegetables. It takes a little longer because you have to roast all the vegetables separately but it's wonderful when it all comes together.

The trick with vegetables of the brassica family (brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, etc.) is to roast them. It brings out the inherent sweetness in them without the smelly part (which occurs if you boil them.) They also happen to be absurdly nutritious.

The house will smell really nice with all the roasting and if you really want to amp it up a notch, a little truffle oil will take it to the next level.

Ingredients

4 cups whole-wheat penne

1 head radicchio (sliced into thin strips)
1 small cauliflower (cut into florets)
1 large carrot (diced)

butter
2 cups milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup gruyère (grated coarsely)
1 cup parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

4 tbsp fresh rosemary (chopped fine)
4 tbsp fresh thyme

breadcrumbs

nutmeg
olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

2 tbsp truffle oil (optional)

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Toss the radicchio with olive oil, salt and pepper and bake for about 15-18 minutes. Remove.

Toss the cauliflower with olive oil and pepper (no salt! - otherwise the mixture will be overly salty) and roast for about 15 minutes. Remove.

Cook the penne in heavily salted water until under al dente (about 12 minutes.)

Meanwhile, make the béchamel. Heat the butter. Add the flour, and let it cook at medium low heat until it is golden (but not brown). Add the milk and continue stirring. The sauce will continue to thicken. Add the salt, black pepper, nutmeg, rosemary and thyme, and take it off the heat.

Combine the penne, the sauce, vegetables, the cheeses, and truffle oil (if using) in a oven-proof casserole. Top off the dish with the breadcrumbs (this is the real secret to success!)

Bake covered for about 30 minutes. Bake uncovered for about 12-15 minutes until the top is golden and crispy.

The Warrior Class Enters the Kitchen

2011-12-04T18:29:00.005-05:00

After the Meiji Restoration, the carrying of swords was banned for the samurai class. Since there was significant industry in providing swords to the samurai, as basic economic theory would tell you, the merchants evolved the product into something else.

That something was the production of knives for professional cooking.

Japanese knives are unique in the world. They are arguably closer to swords than they are to Western knives. For starters, they are frequently, but not always, single-ground (sharpened on exactly one side.) In the modern world, double-beveled knives do exist (e.g. santoku which evolved as a response to the French chef's knife) but the rule still stands.

They are also made to a much harder temper and and seriously sharp. You can cut a piece of paper just by gently caressing it against the blade.

Also, the number and variety of precision knives is far higher than what you would see in a traditional French kitchen. The level of detail and control is far far higher.

Lastly, the tradition of sword-like skills in the kitchen made evolve as a matter of routine, an equally important culture of safety skills. Japanese chefs cut away from the body never towards it. Equally importantly when doing fine fillet-work, the knife will angle away from the body while the top is restrained with the flat-face of the left hand. At all points in time, the blade is kept away from the body. It is quite amazing to watch a master knivesman in action.

Like all highly evolved technical cultures, there's an elaborate array of knives and an elaborate vocabulary to describe their properties, relative merits and demerits but that's just grind for a later post.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T07:57:00.004-05:00

The CC has been in absentia for a while. Life sometime gets in the way. But he's back!

Here's the Thanksgiving menu chez CC:

Acorn Squash stuffed with wild mushrooms
♥
Pear, chanterelles & prosciutto stuffing
♦
Fingerling potatoes with figs & thyme
♦
Brussel sprouts with pomegranate vinegar, black walnuts & pomegranates
♦
Pears poached in red wine with stilton

Bibingka

2011-10-22T09:28:00.000-04:00

Rice cake made with fermented rice flour and coconut milk. It's very slightly sweet with a smoky flavor. It's baked in a banana leaf, and is best experienced literally out of the charcoal oven.

Pili Nuts

2011-10-09T10:21:00.000-04:00

The CC had never heard of them before he went to the Philippines.

They have a very high fat content, and are completely unique in taste. The best way to describe it would be like the bastard love child of hazelnuts and brazil nuts.

They are a delicacy because they have an incredibly short shelf-life (that's because of the high fat content which would cause them to go rancid quickly in the hot climate of the Philippines.)

They are frequently blanched and turned into sugary desserts but they could equally well work in a savory dish like any other nut.

Needless to say, they are quite impossible to find outside the Philippines.

The Yikes Meter!

2011-10-08T11:08:00.001-04:00

Seen today on a menu, "pad thai tacos".

There is so much wrong with this the CC can't even begin to enumerate. Perhaps there's a reason that those two countries are so far apart?

This is the kinda bullshit that gives "fusion" a bad name.

The Mathematician's Approach to Japanese Cooking

2011-10-05T00:05:00.003-04:00

One of the key insights into the nature of cooking is that all cuisines respect the role of limited resources.

One of these limited resources is the number of ingredients that can plausibly be obtained. Traditionally, this has always been limited by the seasons.

If you have limited resources then you might think that you'd have a limited number of dishes. But you'd be wrong!

Humans recognized quite early on that we are easily bored. We crave novelty and variety. The same ol', same ol' was as dreary a millenium ago as it is today.

Traditonally, most cooking was done by women, and women were responsible for coming up with "inventive dishes" each day (to stave off that afore-stated boredom.) They were forced, at the metaphorical gunpoint, to get creative about it.

Lo and behold, the Japanese discovered the combinatorial game. Have a vast amount of ingredients at hand but assemble a dish with just a few and rotate them daily. In fact, outsource a few so that you only need to assemble the rest (the Ricardo-principle applied to cuisine.)

Needless to say, one can't do this with a hard-core mathematician's approach since that would lead to entirely unappetizing dishes so a few rules are imposed on top of that to maintain visual appeal, textural interest and nutritional completeness.

If you understand this then the rules of the so called washoku become entirely obvious.

The rules of go shiki (five colors), go mi (five tastes), go hou (five methods), go kan (five senses) are nothing more than a rulebook to ensure complexity - visual, textural, and nutritional.

The traditional dish is not made with five ingredients. It's closer to between seven and nine in practice. That would imply that you scale as

n⁷ where n is the number of starting ingredients (and n is very large to start with.) However, the above rules cut down the number of possibilities.

In any case, you are still left with a vast set to play with. Enough to stave off boredom before the seasons change which will alleviate the boredom anyway, and by the time next year rolls around nobody will remember that you played the same game last year!

Radish Salad with Dried Anchovies (Dilis)

2011-10-03T19:53:00.000-04:00

This is an entirely inspired dish that you are unlikely to find in any Filipino cookbook. That's because it's a simple side-dish that is unlikely to make it into cookbooks which tend to feature fancier stuff.

It follows the most primitive principles of food. Use fresh ingredients, and touch them up minimally.

The ingredients are simplicity themselves - white radish (daikon), tomatoes, ginger, patis (fish sauce) and vinegar, along with dried anchovies (dilis.)

Served with warm rice, it's the perfect comfort food, and yet texturally complex and nutritionally complete.

Ingredients

4 tomatoes
1/2 radish
4-6 tbsp vinegar (to taste)
2 tbsp patis
4 green chillies (minced)
2 tbsp minced ginger

1/2 cup dried anchovies
salt to taste

Recipe

Cut the radish into paper-thin slices. A mandoline will help here.

Dice the tomatoes roughly.

Mix all the ingredients together except the anchovies.

Mix in the anchovies right before serving (so that they remain crisp and don't turn soggy.)

The Luck Factor

2011-10-01T14:40:00.004-04:00

Well, we've had a late blast of summery weather, and the tomatoes were still super-ripe at the farmers' market. The CC got there early, and they were selling them for very cheap so the CC bought a ton, and made tomato sauce out of it. It was promptly frozen for future use.

When life gives you tomatoes, you must make tomato sauce!

Ibus

2011-09-27T09:28:00.003-04:00

Rice and coconut milk in palm leaves that is boiled. Eaten with fruits or sugar.

To be fair, the CC appreciated it more than he loved it. Wonder if it would've been different with spicy food.

To be fair, this is a wondrous food just not to the CC's taste which shies away from desserts in general.

Spicy Japanese Crack (in red and green)

2011-09-23T21:47:00.005-04:00

There is a spicy Japanese condiment called yuzukoshō (柚子こしょう) which consists of yuzu peel and chilli peppers which are then fermented.

It is very spicy (a little bit goes a long way), and has a strong citrusy scent from the yuzu peel. It takes on the color of the chilli peppers used — red chilli peppers yield an orange paste, and green chilli peppers yield a dull green paste.

Traditionally, it's used for nabemono dishes but its popularity means it's showing up everywhere.

This stuff is addictive. Once you use it you can't go back.

Keats

2011-09-21T11:01:00.000-04:00

Food as a means of seduction. A theme as old as time.

Stanza XXX from the "The Eve of St. Agnes".

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

A Bad Wind

2011-09-19T11:28:00.002-04:00

It is said that "it's an ill wind that blows no good", and sometimes that can be literally true.

The north-east experienced torrential rain and extreme flooding with Hurricane Irene but apparently there's a silver lining.

From NPR: Irene Aftermath: When It Rains, It Spores.

When Hurricane Irene tore through the Northeast last month, it caused severe flooding and damage to homes, trees and power lines. But it also left behind something rather delicate: mushrooms.

Foragers say they've seen more fungi in the past few weeks than ever before.

There are more than 1,000 mushroom varieties in these woods, McDonagh says, but she eats only about 24 of them. She recommends taking a course on edible fungi before foraging alone.

The CC is a proud member of the New York Mycological Society ("only society that has had zero deaths, and we 'plan to keep it that way'") and goes foraging from time to time. However, he was not aware of this tendency for mushrooms to sprout after summer storms (although it makes perfect logical sense in hindsight.)

Oh well! There will be more storms in the years to come ...

Spicy Tingly Peanuts

2011-09-18T10:01:00.003-04:00

The CC received these in the mail as a gift. They are totally addictive - your mouth is on fire, all tingly and numb from the Sichuan peppercorns and all you can think of is you need some more.

Fall is Here!

2011-09-17T12:01:00.001-04:00

Last tomatoes of the season. Still amazing, and you can cook up a storm without the house turning into a sauna.

Pesto Trapanese

2011-09-10T13:55:00.002-04:00

While the traditional pesto is from Liguria, this one is from Trapani in Sicily.

It's made with the typical products of the region — almonds, tomatoes, chilli peppers. You can see both the medieval and North African influences in this dish.

It's simple yet sultry in that summery way.

Ingredients

1/2 cup almonds (blanched, skins removed)
1 clove garlic
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp grated Pecorino
1/2 cup (tightly packed) mint leaves
2 dried red chilli peppers
4 tomatoes (peeled, cored, diced)
1 tsp sea salt

Recipe

Put all the ingredients in a food processor, and process till blended. Leave it slightly grainy so that it has some consistency.

Toss with long-strand pasta that has been drained, and is still hot.

Serve immediately.

The Syncretic Culture

2011-08-28T11:46:00.011-04:00

If there is a a single word that could be used to sum up Filipino culture, the word would be "syncretism".

Over the millenia, the islands that now comprise the Philippine nation have encountered a myriad of cultures and synthesized them into a coherent whole. The influences range from Malay, China, Indonesia and Japan (geography), to India and the Arab world (trade routes and conquest), to Spain and America (colonial.)

In an increasingly post-modern world — "Sushi and Coca-Cola" — as a friend of the CC's so memorably put it; it is extraordinarily surprising that a syncretic food culture should not just be unknown but invisible to the point of surprise when it is mentioned.

There are primarily three reasons for this.

The first that hits the tongue directly is that Filipino food lacks a sharp flavor profile. There is nothing that "hits" you in the way that, say, Thai food does. Instead, the emphasis is on extraordinarily fresh ingredients prepared simply.

This makes it doubly ironic since the phrase "extraordinarily fresh ingredients prepared simply" could equally well be attached to Italian food which has been the subject of food fetishization for the last twenty years.

In an increasingly super-marketized world, it is simply not possible to experience the absolute wondrous nature of this food. In fact, one could argue that in large cities like Manila, this nature has been lost for a very long time.

The CC ate the most magical pork grilled with nothing but salt in the rural Philippines. The pig had been freshly slaughtered. Two days later, it was prepared again on the CC's request but it was nowhere near as good.

The explanation?

My sister prepared it. She doesn't know how to do it. She washed the meat but it's the blood that gives it the taste."

You can absolutely forget about eating stuff like this in a super-market world. In short, you are unlikely to have a "Filipino food experience" unless you actually use the absolutely best ingredients that money can buy. When done right, it should rightfully blow your brains out even lacking the afore-mentioned sharp flavor profile.

The second reason, and this comes from the simple fact that almost any great food culture is the food of poverty. Not only is there an extraordinary "waste-not, want-not" attitude to food but that there is positive celebration of offal.

(Incidentally, the Spaniards amped up this already ingrained agrarian logic, particularly the love of pork, to unprecedented levels.)

Given conventional food mores towards the "nasty bits" then, there seems to be this ick-factor that a lot of people will have to overcome.

(You can read Fuchsia Dunlop talk about the same phenomenon in the context of traditional Chinese cuisines.)

In Filipino culture, every organ is not just eaten but celebrated. Tuna jaw, tuna ovaries, pig lungs, pig offal in pig's blood, you name it. There's a dish. When mentioned, there's almost always a wistful sigh, "Oh, I miss that." (which has its own sentimental ick-factor, "Didn't we just eat that last night? How can you miss it?")

Since we live in a world of increasing offal-fetishization, this argument is going to become increasingly irrelevant. In five years when offal goes mainstream, that will be the time when the hoi-polloi "discover" Filipino food.

The third and very likely, the dominant reason of the invisibility of Filipino food, is that they have never had in the entirety of their history, a firm royalty. Sure, there have been local rulers and chieftains but there has never been an Emperor.

It may come as a surprise that an accident of history like that would have profound consequences on how we eat today but it does. Cultures that have had a firm sense of royalty and there are many -- French, Thai, Italian, Japanese, Indian, Chinese -- have not only a history of "fine dining" but an entire cadre of dishes that effectively migrated "top-down". From the Emperor downwards to the royal classes and then downwards to the middle-classes. Additionally, there is a very strong sense of what constitutes "fine dining", and a sense of how to go about it.

Modern restaurant culture at the highest end is nothing more than a generalization of royal cuisine. In short, you are still a slave to the whimsies of an emperor of a country that you have never visited and whose name you still don't know.

The pursuit of food as an active object of desire, discussion, detail has always been something that could only be pursued by the relatively well-off. That it even shows up in mass culture (TV shows, food porn!) is based on the fact that we are extraordinarily more economically productive than people in the 16th century. The average person can afford to waste their time in a pursuit that goes beyond daily sustenance. The Industrial Revolution has done its job, and extraordinarily well to boot.

If you were not particularly flush with money in older times, and wanted to eat great food, presentation and all, the only mechanism open to you would have to know someone a member of the elite, and be invited to dine at their table. The elite, after all, have always had their servants to make their food. Excellence was expected as a routine matter of course. If they were bored of the ordinary excellence that came out of their own kitchen, they would just finagle an invitation to dine at their friends' places where they would encounter an ordinary excellence that was totally different from their routine ordinary excellence.

(On a side note, that's why great artists with patrons have always eaten well. They may not be from the elite themselves but the influence rubbed off.)

In the Philippines, this sense of "older times" would be a scant twenty or thirty years ago. The food culture is still evolving because of the absence of a strong sense of royalty and a mechanism of presenting the cuisine. Thankfully, the modern world via its restaurant culture is doing its job, and increasingly in the places where money is flush, you see Filipino cuisine presented in all its glory.

The aging conservative Rimsky-Korsakov once warned his budding student, Stravinsky, about the strange delightful harmonies in Debussy's music -- "Better not listen to him, otherwise you risk getting accustomed to it, and you might even like it."

"Better not eat Filipino food, otherwise you risk getting accustomed to it, and you might even like it."

The Power of Chickpeas

2011-08-20T18:12:00.004-04:00

Abu el-Heidja has deflowered in one night
Once eighty virgins, and he did not eat or drink between,
Because he surfeited himself with chickpeas,
And had drunk camel's milk with honey mixed.

(Source: The Perfumed Garden of Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi.)

Ginataang Hipon

2011-08-12T09:19:00.001-04:00

This was the single best home-cooked meal that the CC had in the Philippines.

It doesn't get simpler than this but it's a flavor complex. Texture from the fresh bamboo shoots, corn and shrimp, flavor from the coconut milk and the fresh chilli leaves, color from the shrimp, corn, and chilli leaves, umami from the fish sauce (patis.)

It's a flat-out masterpiece.

Tuna

2011-08-08T20:24:00.000-04:00

Euphemistically, called "tuna collar" in English, it's the jaw of the tuna (panga in Tagalog.)

So incredibly delicious you have no idea. Sushi lovers step up to the plate. This one was marinaded in garlic and ginger before being grilled on a lonely beach on a deserted island.

Eaten with calamansi, soy sauce and hot chilli peppers (not shown.)

The CC still dreams about it!

Heat Quotient

2011-08-06T14:34:00.002-04:00

Hotter than Brangelina fucking on a rickety tin terrace. Nine and half pounds of tomatoes - the lust, the lust!

The Acquisitions

2011-08-03T19:25:00.001-04:00

Vast quantities of dried anchovies (bulinaw), tiny dried shrimp, organic sugarcane vinegar from Ilocos(sukang iloko), calamansi jam, and crab roe fat (taba ng talangka.)

The last is a Filipino specialty which is both utterly delicious and heart-cloggingly fatty.

Coconuts & Aliens

2011-08-02T18:58:00.004-04:00

Coconut trees are known to bear "alien mutant" coconuts. They contain much more flesh, and almost no liquid coconut water. Instead, it contains a gelatinous gel-like substance, and the coconut meat is only loosely adhered to the hard kernel.

These "mutant coconuts" are called macapuno in Tagalog and they are a delicacy. (The regular coconuts are called niyog.)

It's easy enough to figure out which coconuts are macapuno by tapping them since they have a markedly different density structure and will "sound" different.

Once a coconut tree bears a macapuno, it will continue to bear some fraction of its fruits in that form.

Human ingenuity being what it is, we can now breed trees that will yield these alien coconuts with 80% probability.

The flesh is "meatier", "stringier" and tastes quite different from regular coconuts. It's frequently used in desserts by boiling them in sugar syrup.

Delicious!!!

Summer Vacation Time

2011-07-15T08:03:00.000-04:00

Well, the CC is off to culinary adventures in the Philippines (more Spanish influences!)

Back in a few weeks!

Garcia da Orta

2011-07-13T06:35:00.004-04:00

People frequently ask the CC what he finds so endlessly fascinating about Spain, and the simple answer is that due to their complex society and insane wealth, they produced the most interesting personalities in science and art on the entire planet for their time.

The expulsion of the Jews due to the Reyes Catolicos (Ferdinand II and Isabella I in 1492) caused a massive upheaval among the highly intellectual community of Jews in Spain. They either converted (conversos) or fled.

The Orta family fled to nearby Portugal — little did they know that the Inquisition was coming there next.

Garcia de Orta was born in 1501 or 1502. He was trained as a physician, and practiced medicine in Lisbon. With the growing power of the Inquisition, he fled to India in 1534 and settled in Goa serving kings, governors and viceroys.

He was clearly successful. He was even granted a lease to the then worthless islands of what is now modern-day Bombay (!) though he never lived there.

His culinary claim to fame is his masterpiece Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India (Conversations on the simples and drugs of India) which is the unique book that tells us about the culinary knowledge of pre-New-World India.

It's written in the Galileo-style of conversations between the author and an imaginary colleague, Ruano, and basically walks us through all the known culinary spices and herbs in alphabetical order.

It should be noted that there wasn't a strict distinction between cuisine and medicine in those days (courtesy of Galen) and there is considerable evidence that he was a polymath speaking sufficiently in half a dozen local Indian languages (besides the usual Greek, Latin, Arabic which was expected of an educated man of his generation.)

While his life was not tragic, his story does end tragically. He died in 1568 but was "convicted" posthumously of "Judaism" and his remains were exhumed and burned in an auto da fé in 1580.

What's unique about his work is his independence of "received wisdom" of Greek, Latin or Arabic authorities. It's a strict example of the scientific method where claims have to be demonstrated not just stated as truth.

"Don't try and frighten me with Diocorides or Galen because I am only going to say what I know to be true."

His empirical work on tamarind stands in stark contrast to the "received wisdom" of Arabic writers which considered them as "dates". By restricting himself to empirical observation, he markedly advanced the science of food in the Indian subcontinent.

For all the tragedy, it is useful to know that he was well received in his time, and respected for his unique orignality.

Dealing With Invasions

2011-07-10T20:49:00.002-04:00

This is arguably an excellent idea: Answer for Invasive Species: Put It on a Plate and Eat It.

With its dark red and black stripes, spotted fins and long venomous black spikes, the lionfish seems better suited for horror films than consumption. But lionfish fritters and filets may be on American tables soon.

An invasive species, the lionfish is devastating reef fish populations along the Florida coast and into the Caribbean. Now, an increasing number of environmentalists, consumer groups and scientists are seriously testing a novel solution to control it and other aquatic invasive species — one that would also takes pressure off depleted ocean fish stocks: they want Americans to step up to their plates and start eating invasive critters in large numbers.

“Humans are the most ubiquitous predators on earth,” said Philip Kramer, director of the Caribbean program for the Nature Conservancy. “Instead of eating something like shark fin soup, why not eat a species that is causing harm, and with your meal make a positive contribution?”

Lionfish, it turns out, looks hideous but tastes great. The group had to hire fishermen to catch animals commonly regarded as pests. Mr. Heffernan said he would consider putting them on his menu and was looking forward to getting some molting European green crabs to try in soft-shell crab recipes.

Last summer, the Nature Conservancy sponsored a lionfish food fair in the Bahamas, featuring lionfish fritters and more. They offered fishermen $11 a pound — about the price of grouper — and got an abundant supply.

Active Dishonesty in Food Blogging

2011-07-09T07:28:00.010-04:00

Of course, food bloggers aren't saints. They are trying to make a living off of it. The CC happens to be an exception.

However, one must be intellectually honest. One shouldn't delete criticism ever. The answer to criticism is a response not censorship.

However, most are not capable of doing so largely because they don't have the intellectual chops.

One such is a David Leibovitz whose blog the CC used to love until he realized that he is in the business of deleting criticism.

Sorry, David, but criticism is good for you. It takes you away from the adulators, allows you to learn new things, and enhances your reputation. Rising to a challenge is part of being intelligent. You're an EPIC FAIL when you squash criticism rather than rise to it.

The CC posted on this particular posting, and the comments (mild as they were) were deleted.

The proof of the offending comments being deleted (they are long gone!) is presented below:

Bold Radical Idea

2011-07-09T06:09:00.008-04:00

Whenever the CC flies — which he loathes with a vengeance only reserved for the worst of the worst of food — he frequently muses why there isn't a category whereby you could fly Coach and get the food catered from First Class?

Surely some people would be willing to pay a premium for not eating plonk, right? And it can't be that much more work given that this is just an extension of the "special meals" category (which exists currently, one may add!)

Fancy restaurants do this all the time — they open a (very) lucrative "casual bar" that features their greatest hits without the obsequious service and stratospheric prices.

It surely fits into all the right economic categories:

Unbundling? CHECK.
User experience? CHECK.
Predictability of demand? CHECK.

This has to be one of the most obvious of ideas.

So what's the freakin' holdup?

Hiyashi Chūka

2011-06-30T12:23:00.000-04:00

In the dog days of summer, there is pleasure in eating cold dishes. Nobody knows these more than the Japanese who have hot, humid summers.

The name gives away the origin of the dish. It quite literally means "Chilled Chinese". In Japan, you will see this dish on restaurant menus only in summer. In fact, its arrival suggests that summer is here.

It basically consists of cold noodles topped with cooled vegetables (of various kinds), other cold toppings like crab and shredded eggs covered with a Japanese version of a very light, sweet-salty, umami-laden "vinaigrette".

The noodles can be varied — popular ones include ramen, somen, even soba (which is what the CC used.)

The toppings are traditional too — cucumbers, carrots, thinly sliced Japanese-style omelette, crab sticks, tomatoes, negi, even various kinds of seaweed.

True to Japanese washoku style, the entire assembly requires some effort but it's entirely worth it when the weather is as hot and humid as it is now. It mostly consists of chopping stuff, and assembling it, and is very amenable to making in advance.

There is a free-form element to this dish so the "recipe" should be taken as a starting point not as "definitive". In fact, there's no such thing. Restaurants vie with each other to produce versions that attract clients but there's a core logic that must be respected.

Ingredients

1 cucumber (kyūri)
3 crab sticks
1 tomato
1 carrot
1 scallion (diced thinly at a steep angle)
2 eggs
1 tbsp mirin

noodles

1 cup dashi

Dressing
8 tbsp dashi
1 tbsp white sesame seeds
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
1 tbsp sesame oil

Recipe

Toast the sesame seeds. Mix with the ingredients for the dressing and set aside.

First make a very thin Japanese-style omelette with eggs, mirin and 1 tbsp of rice vinegar.

When cool, roll into a tight roll and slice very very thinly.

Dice the cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes into strips. Boil the crab sticks in the dashi, and when done, cut into thin strips.

Cool all of the above while you make the noodles. Dunk the noodles inside iced water to cool.

Assemble the lot and pour the dressing all over them.

Making Lemonade Out of Lemons

2011-06-28T20:54:00.000-04:00

If you find yourself with a bunch of slightly hard lemons, you aren't going to be able to ripen them since they are not climacteric fruits but there's still something you can do about squeezing juice out of them.

Just stick them in the freezer for an hour or two while they freeze. Pull them out, de-freeze, and they will yield a ton of juice without a lot of effort.

What's the reason?

The water content inside the cellular walls turns into ice shards which in turn puncture the cellular walls breaking down the structure. When unfrozen the walls are ready to give up the juices much more easily.

Elementary, my dear readers!

Official Status

2011-06-26T14:23:00.003-04:00

In a historic vote, aligned with another historic bill, the New York Senate has voted "sweet corn" as the official vegetable of the State.

Which is ironic since corn is a grain not a vegetable. If it were a vegetable then we should probably debate whether Medicare vouchers, and "pulling the cord" apply to it.

(No corn (or corny) jokes please, we're skittish.)

It's probably a good thing that they didn't have to debate over the official "fruit" (which already has been deemed to be "apple") since that would've been just way too weird!

Goodness Gracious, Great Scapes of Garlic!

2011-06-26T09:09:00.002-04:00

Nothing screams summer like the first garlic scapes. Clearly, the CC went just a tad overboard when he bought ten of them so it was inevitable that he would put them to good use.

If you've never had them, they have the mild pungency of garlic but a texture like that of asparagus stems which makes them quite versatile.

Garlic-Scape FritattaIngredients

2 garlic scapes (sliced real thin)
1 carrot (grated
3 eggs
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Heat the broiler.

Mix the ingredients. Heat a skillet at medium low heat. Toss in the mixture. When barely set (30 seconds) stick under the broiler for about 2 minutes.

You will need to keep checking when it's done otherwise it will burn. The bottom will set automatically because of the residual heat from the skillet.

Garlic-Scape RisottoRecipe Logic

The CC had garlic scapes so the idea of a garlic scape risotto was never far from his mind.

To add to the rustic taste, some mushrooms would be ideal. The CC happened to have large Chinese shiitake mushrooms which would augment the taste of the garlic scapes with their earthy flavor.

However, the dish would be too monochromatic visually and texturally incomplete so to punch it up a notch, the CC thought about adding a truffle breadcrumb topping. The truffles would complement the earthiness of the garlic scapes and mushrooms and add a textural component to the dish.

The silky risotto punched up with crunchy salty breadcrumbs is a wonderful early summer delight.

Ingredients

1 cup carnaroli rice
4 garlic scapes (cut into medium pieces)
1 head spring garlic (diced fine)
4 fresh Chinese shiitake mushrooms (cut lenghth-wise into thick strips)
2 cups white wine (one for the recipe, one for the chef)

3 cups broth

breadcrumbs
truffle salt
olive oil
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Fry some breadcrumbs in olive oil and set aside on a paper towel to drain. When cool, add in some truffle salt and powder with a mortar and pestle.

The recipe follows the standard risotto template. Bring the broth to a boil and keep warm at a very low simmer.

In a separate pot, heat up some olive oil and fry the spring garlic at a medium heat (4 minutes.) Add the garlic scapes and fry for a bit (2 minutes.) Add the mushrooms and the rice, and fry for a bit (4 minutes.) Add the salt and pepper

Toss in the white wine and deglaze. Add a ladleful of the hot broth, and keep stirring. When the broth gets absorbed, add another and keep stirring. Broth and stir, broth and stir.

Towards the end, toss in the parmesan for the mantecura.

Serve with the truffle-breadcrumb topping.

Velvety Chickpea Soup

2011-06-21T18:57:00.001-04:00

Most chickpea soups are earthy and rustic but this one is refined and silky. It's wonderful either hot or cold and perfect for a light summer meal.

Ingredients

1 cup chickpeas (soaked overnight)
4 cups broth
4 garlic scapes
1 head spring garlic (finely diced)

1 tsp cumin (roasted)
1 tsp coriander seeds (roasted)
1 tsp sumac (finely powdered)
1 lemon (zested + store the rest for garnish)

olive oil
salt
pepper

8-10 leaves mint (for topping)

Recipe

Precook the chickpeas in salted water. The CC used a pressure cooker. If you don't have one, will probably take you about 60 minutes.

Heat up some olive oil in a stock pot. When shimmering, toss in the cumin and the coriander seeds. Fry for about 30 seconds. Toss in the diced green garlic and garlic scapes at fry at low heat until softened (roughly 6 minutes.)

Add in the chickpeas and the broth and bring to a boil. Cook together for about 6 minutes at a low simmer.

Add the zest and purée the soup in batches, and pass through a fine sieve. (This is the step that gives the soup it's soft silky texture.)

Reheat gently. Garnish with the lemon, sumac and mint just before serving.

Sorrel Soup

2011-06-19T16:57:00.004-04:00

This silky sour soup perfectly captures the mood of a lazy summer evening.

The sourness comes from oxalic acid which is poisonous in large quantities but delightful in small ones. Sorrel has very little so that this is quite safe. However, the veins of the leaves must be removed.

Ingredients

2 bunches sorrel (veins removed)
1 head spring garlic
4 cups broth (or water)
olive oil
salt
pepper
chives (to garnish)

Recipe

Fry the garlic languidly in olive oil. Toss in 4 cups of broth, salt and pepper Bring to a boil. When boiling, toss in the sorrel. The sorrel will wilt immediately, and turn color from pale green to dark green. Cook for about 30 seconds.

Purée and pass through a fine sieve. (This is what gives it a silky texture.)

Serve with toasted bread and chives.

Thai Food from Isan

2011-06-15T18:17:00.001-04:00

So the CC was treated to a restaurant that cooks food from the North-Eastern part of Thailand (Isan.) The food is closer to Laotian than to the more well-known Thai food (which stems mainly from the South.)

As you can guess from the geography, it's heavy on the freshwater fish and pork. Also, the heat quotient in true Thai style is very high.

The first dish is your traditional papaya salad but it has pickled crab in it. (If you squint, you can see the bluish crab sticking out on the right hand side.) The crab is intense! It has the consistency of jelly but it's like a concentrated sea-flavor which has absorbed the sweet-sour-salty dressing. Also, featured as a topping is fried crispy pig skin.

The second dish is fried catfish. The fish is cut into thin rounds, and fried in such a way that you can eat it bones and all. Quite delicious!

Som Tum Poo Plara
Pla Dook Pad Ped

Butter Massage

2011-06-13T10:20:00.000-04:00

From the inimitable Julia Child:

"Not everything I do with my roast chicken is necessarily scientific. For instance, I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it."

Summer Frittata

2011-06-12T08:57:00.001-04:00

Summer Haul

2011-06-11T09:45:00.002-04:00

Sorrel, garlic scapes, chives, zucchini, eggs.

Summer is here!!!

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

2011-06-03T12:54:00.001-04:00

Italian painter (1527-1593) best known for his paintings made entirely out of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, etc.

His most famous cycle is the one about the four seasons.

He was a favorite of the Surrealists for fairly obvious reasons.

Please note that there are no tomatoes in summer nor potatoes in winter since the produce of the New World had not yet made its way into common knowledge.

Taking the Short Bus

2011-06-02T19:14:00.003-04:00

Today the new USDA "food chart" was released.

Hello? Anybody home?!?

"Protein" is not a "food substance".

You can eat fruits, you can eat vegetables. you can eat grains. If you blink, you can even eat "dairy" (which really refers to "dairy products") or substances "high in protein" but there's no fuckin' thing such as eating "protein".

Not unless you have a liquidizer and a spare high-speed centrifuge lying around, and even then the CC doesn't really recommend it.

If you needed further proof that the USDA is basically filled with a buncha utterly corrupt, mouth-breathing retards with oatmeal-for-brains (yep, oatmeal and brains - both real edible substances) then you need look no further!

Spaghetti with Spicy Kabocha, Pan Grattato and Pine Nuts

2011-06-01T17:25:00.001-04:00

This is the last of the "winter" dishes with the leftovers in the CC's kitchen.

However, it's a masterpiece of texture and flavor. It requires some effort but it gets repaid in spades!

Ingredients

1/4 kabocha (scored and diced into bite-sized pieces)
1 red onion (cut into thin semi-rounds)
1/2 cup sage
2 red chillies

1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 anchovies
2 dried red-chillies (crumbled fine)

1/2 cup pine nuts

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Toast the pine nuts in the oven at 375°F until they are lightly toasted roughly 12 minutes. Be careful as they burn easily.

In the meantime, you must prepare the pan grattato with the anchovies and crumbled red-chillies as described here.

Prepare the spaghetti in heavily-salted water until just under al dente.

In a large pan (which can hold both the squash plus the spaghetti) heat up some olive oil. When it shimmers, add the onions and fry for a fit. Toss in the kabocha and fry languidly for at least 3-4 minutes. Toss in the red-chillies, chopped sage, salt and black pepper. Add a small amount of water, and let it cook at a medium-low heat.

When done, toss in the spaghetti, and toss the mixture together.

Serve with the pan grattato and pine nut toppings.

Chinese Chefs Taste Cheese

2011-05-30T12:17:00.004-04:00

As many here know, the CC is a big fan of Fuchsia Dunlop and her two books on authentic Chinese cooking. She is the first foreigner (and woman) to train at the famous Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu.

Here, she writes about her experience with having chefs taste cheese which is basically milk that has been precisely spoilt.

Cheese is not a favourite food in China, to put it mildly. Traditionally, dairy products were associated with the nomadic people who lived on the fringes of China and who were regarded as fearful barbarians. The Han Chinese, with a few notable exceptions, avoided eating dairy foods altogether: many were, and still are, lactose-intolerant. Cheese, however, is still generally regarded as beyond the pale. A few sophisticated Shanghainese might eat Stilton just as sophisticated Londoners eat tripe and chitterlings, but many people, especially in the provinces, have never tasted it.

Over several visits to Shaoxing, I wondered what the locals, such ardent lovers of rotted soymilk and vegetable stalks, would make of rotted cow’s milk, otherwise known as cheese. Finally, I returned to Shaoxing with a boxful of artisanal cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, including the smelliest I could find in the shop. I had selected one mild hard cheese, Isle of Mull, to serve as a kind of toe-in-the-water; Stichelton, which is an unpasteurised version of Stilton; pale, veined Harbourne Blue; Ardrahan, a fairly whiffy washed-rind cheese that I adore; Milleens, another washed-rind variety with a punchy, farmyardy aroma that acquires a hint of ammonia as it ripens; and a wildly smelly Brie de Meaux. By the time I reached Shaoxing after a week on the road, the cheeses had all ripened nicely, and some were beginning to ooze.

At the Xianheng, a waitress cut the cheeses into pieces, and the assembled tasters began to pick them up with their chopsticks, sniffing and tasting. And where I had been impressed by what cheese and stinky soya products had in common, these culinary professionals were immediately struck by their differences. “Although in some ways you could say the flavours of cheese and fermented beancurd are similar,” said Mao, “vegetable stinky foods are very clean and clear in the mouth (qing kou), and they disperse quickly, while milky foods are greasy in the mouth (ni kou), they coat your tongue and palate, and they have a long, lingering aftertaste.”

Two other chefs said the cheeses had a heavy shan wei (muttony odour), an ancient term used by southern Chinese to describe the slightly unsavoury tastes associated with the northern nomads. Another said that the selection “smells like Russians”. “The difference,” he added, “is that the stinky things Chinese people eat give them smelly breath, while stinky dairy things affect the sweat that comes out of your skin.”

The entire article is fascinating!

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon and Oregano

2011-05-28T20:43:00.000-04:00

This is an wonderful spring dish that sounds like a repeat of the former and guess what?

It is!

Doesn't mean it's not equally brilliant though!

Ingredients

2 cups penne
1 bunch asparagus
1 lemon
dried Greek oregano

parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
sea salt

Recipe

Cut the delicate tops of the asparagus and set aside. Quickly strip the woody bits with a knife. Cut at a steep diagonal angle into thin spears, and set aside separately.

With a peeler, zest the lemon and keep the strips. Dice finely. Set the lemon aside.

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan. Fry the asparagus strips at a low heat until they are well-done (roughly 6-7 mins.) Toss in the spears for about a minute and add the lemon zest, and the oregano. Toss in 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

Toss in the pasta when done. Squeeze the leftover lemon all over it, and toss. Serve with lots of black pepper and parmesan on top.

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon and Goat Cheese

2011-05-26T20:04:00.001-04:00

A wonderful spring dish that's impossible to resist!

Ingredients

2 cups penne
1 bunch asparagus
1 lemon
goat-cheese

black pepper
sea salt

Recipe

The "sauce" in this recipe doesn't really need to cook. All you need is a large bowl to mix everything in.

Cut the delicate tops of the asparagus and set aside. Quickly strip the woody bits with a knife. Cut at a steep diagonal angle into thin spears, and set aside separately.

With a peeler, zest the lemon and keep the strips.

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. In a colander, dunk the diagonal asparagus spears for about 3 minutes. Then, toss in the delicate tops for only about 30 seconds. Fish out, and put them in a large bowl.

Cook the pasta until al dente.

Meanwhile, cut the lemon strips extremely fine and add to the cooked asparagus in the bowl. Toss in the goat cheese. Add in about 1/2 cup of the pasta water (which should be boiling) and stir it until it makes a thick sauce.

Toss in the pasta when done. Squeeze the leftover lemon all over it, and toss. Serve with lots of black pepper on top.

Better Living through (Pastry) Chemistry

2011-05-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

One of tricks that works when using fine corn flour as dough (think masa not ground corn) is that freezing the dough allows you to roll it out without the dough splitting up.

This is one of those great tricks that can be learnt from the pastry world where the traditional mechanism of wheat gluten is basically out of bounds.

Keep the dough cold enough and you will be able to roll it out without gluten.

Incidentally, this is the "secret" behind classically made Japanese soba as well which are made with buckwheat flour which doesn't contain any gluten. You need cold water.

This is also the "secret" behind well-made makke di roti. Cold water to prevent the dough "sticking" while you slap the stuff directly on to the grill.

The key word here is cold.

Early Riser

2011-05-14T08:44:00.004-04:00

Waking up before the sun is overrated.

When the CC got to the farmers' market at 8:00am, they were barely unpacking. After a fruitless (!) 20 minutes pondering the silence of New York, he finally got his goodies.

Asparagus, spring onions, and eggs.

Spring is finally here!

Kabocha Risotto with Fried Sage and Pine nuts

2011-05-13T18:10:00.003-04:00

This is just an epic recipe and exemplifies what is best about understanding the science of food. It combines Italian and Japanese elements in a transparent way so that what you get is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

You can make the broth and the risotto with minimal effort. (You may skip the instructions for making the "broth" if you already have some but this recipe shows you how to get away with making it "on the fly".)

But first, you must be aware of this particular culinary trick.

Secondly, you can streamline the ingredients and the pots so that there is very little wastage of either time or effort.

The important thing to note about kabocha is that unlike butternut squash, it doesn't need to be peeled. The skin is thin and edible and delicious. What you need to do is scrape it with a peeler to get the hard bits off. The Japanese adore this particular technique because it renders the squash with alternate dark and light green colors which is visually quite appealing.

Follow the instructions closely, and be amazed at what you can achieve on a weekday when you are "exhausted".

Ingredients

1/2 kabocha
1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
1 cup arborio rice
16-18 sage leaves
4 tbsp pine nuts

4 cups dashi

1 cup parmigiano-reggiano
salt
pepper

Recipe

First, soak the konbu in 5 cups of cold water. Let it sit for 30 minutes or so while you do some prep and/or enjoy a nice glass of wine.

The onion and garlic can be pulsed in a food processor. Just make sure that you don't purée them.

Heat the oven to 350°F and roast the pine nuts for 7 minutes. Set aside.

Cut up the kabocha into large pieces. Don't get too technical. Rough shapes are fine. Also, cut up a little bit of the kabocha into neat little diced pieces. Set aside.

Bring the water to a boil. Pull the konbu off just before it boils otherwise it will taste bitter. Toss the large kabocha pieces in. Let it simmer for 10-12 minutes at high heat to get the squash to soften. When done, blend the mixture in the pot, and keep at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pot. When hot but not smoking, toss in 6-8 of the largest sage leaves. Let them fry for about a minute and fish them out and set aside on some paper towels to absorb the oil.

In the same oil, toss in the onions and the garlic. Fry for 6 minutes or so until they are colored but not caramelized. Toss in the rice and fry for a bit. Add the salt and black pepper. Just before the broth, toss in the neatly diced kabocha pieces and fry for a bit.

Now comes the standardized risotto procedure. Toss in the blended kabocha broth and stir. Toss and stir, toss and stir, toss and stir.

Finally, the mantecura. Put in the parmigiano-reggiano and stir well.

When done, garnish the risotto with the fried sage leaves and the roasted pine nuts.

Asafoetida

2011-05-11T11:38:00.003-04:00

Depending on who you ask this is either the stinkiest of stinky spices or the most wonderful smell ever.

De gustibus non disputandum est.

What is clear is that this seems to be the grandchild of the legendary silphium which has long since vanished into extinction.

The plant is legendarily stinky. When the CC bought pure asafoetida in India, he packed it in four, count 'em four bags of plastic, and an air-tight plastic case, and he could still smell it. He was terrified that it was not going to make it through customs but the cold weather in the airplane cargo at 30,000 feet seemed to do the trick.

When fried, which is how it's supposed to be used, it smells sublime. It's like a combination of leeks, onions and garlic. That's why we put up with the stinkiness. That's why the Romans did too, and no less an authority than Garciá de Orta defended it vociferously.

The love-hate affair is quite clearly expressed linguistically. The French call it merde du diable (= devil's shit.) Even the English name channels the "fetid" part from Latin.

What you get commercially is laced with wheat flour. It would be a stretch to call this adulteration since there is a method to the madness but it's still not the real deal.

The real deal is priced more like a precious metal than a food ingredient, and there's a reason that connoisseurs adore it. It just smells great (and it's an excellent anti-flatulent to boot!)

It's almost impossible to make people "switch camps". Either you love it or you don't.

The clerk who sold some to the CC in Spain of all places, was like, "What do you see in this? It smells awful." His boss, who was clearly knew better said, "Ignore him. This stuff is amazing. I love it."

Which camp are you in?

What Nonna can learn from Obaasan!

2011-05-09T18:40:00.002-04:00

The recipe for spaghetti with clams is justifiably a classic.

However, there's a subtle way in which it can be improved, and we have the Japanese to thank for that.

The classic Italian (or French) way is to dump all the clams in, toss in some wine, and let them steam. Fish them out as they open, and then reduce the broth to get it to its logical clamminess.

The classic Japanese way improves on this in many many ways. It's subtle and it works because it interleaves the two steps to make it all better.

The CC first learnt about this trick when he was making asari gohan — an elementally simple dish of clams served over rice. Very simple and eminently suitable for a day when only a simple home-cooked meal will do.

When he first read the instructions, he was a little mystified but decided to follow them anyway. The logic of the procedure jumped out with such immense force that he realized rapidly that it would enable him to take his Italian clam recipes to the next level.

The trick is very very simple.

Instead of steaming the clams all at once, we are going to steam them in batches. Typically 3-4 batches depending on the number of clams. The idea is that each batch not just steams in the previous clam's broth but that the broth reduces at the same time so that there is very little wastage of time. What seems at first like "taking longer" is actually a very clever way of combining the two steps. Each batch steams, opens up, and releases the juices. Meanwhile the next batch steams while the previous clam broth reduces itself.

The moral must be that even Italian grandmas, as talented as they are, have something to learn from the rest of the world.

Historic Scientificity : The Anti-Farting Gambit

2011-05-08T12:02:00.009-04:00

If you look at Indian food, you will notice a preponderance of cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, etc.

Why were these adopted?

The first principle, as always, is basic economics.

They grow abundantly on the Indian sub-continent and hence, they are extraordinarily cheap. So cheap that the Romans used black pepper as ballast on their ships sailing homewards. If all went well, you got a lot of black pepper. If your ship got caught at sea in a storm, you could toss the stuff overboard, and not suffer terribly because it was so cheap.

The second, which is a lot subtler, is that they are all carminative agents (anti-flatulents.) When eaten with lentils, they inhibit the bacteria that line the intestinal walls from generating gassy flatulence.

Obviously, the Indians learnt this by trial and error, and the "technology" has been passed down ever since. Most use this but few understand why.

The most effective are cloves, cinnamon, garlic and asafoetida. The second tier is made up of ginger, turmeric, and black pepper.

There is a related herb in Mexico called epazote which is traditionally added to black beans for the same reason.

Read carefully, and you'll notice that almost all of the "greatest hits" of Indian food are featured. What's missing, of course, is coriander, cumin and cardamom but not everything has to be functional. Some of it is just pure pleasure.

That's why the born-today vegans are basically fucked. They don't understand the functional component of how to make a successful lentil dish. You can't just boil that stuff and call it a day. You need to spice it right to make it both tasteful and functional.

Skill is required in almost every sphere of cooking even if you decide to follow some arbitrary rules, and this skill determines whether you toot through your rear horn all day or not.

Toodles and toots!

Nasi Lemak

2011-05-07T10:12:00.002-04:00

Indonesian Meal

2011-05-05T19:57:00.002-04:00

Making nasi lemak with the traditional ikan bilis, sambal chicken, and all the other fixins.

Pictures to follow.

Dhansaak

2011-05-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

This is a traditional recipe of the Parsis, almost always served along with paatra ni macchi at a wedding.

The recipe is long and complicated, and is going to take the better part of a day. However, only those that have eaten the real deal can appreciate why the CC loves it made the traditional way.

The title literally means "wealth (=dhan) of vegetables (=saak)", and as you can expect from the title and the context, it consists of a rich stew of lentils, cooked with vegetables, and meat (traditionally lamb but frequently goat), served alongside with a spicy caramelized rice. There are traditional accompaniments — a cucumber-tomato raita and/or kachumber (diced cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions with salt), and fresh slices of salted cucumber and carrots.

The ingredient list is long so the CC will break it up into its functional components. The CC will try and indicate what actually makes the dish the dish, and what parts are frequently substituted by local fresh vegetables, etc.

The spices are absolutely critical (do not deviate!)

A quick note about the spices. They are really a combination of two spice mixtures in a 3:2 ratio. If you're just making this recipe, you can combine them because they follow the same procedure (roasting + grinding) but just be aware that they really are two logically different spice mixes that just happen to be combined in this specific recipe.

(Yes, this is anal-retentiveness of a superlative nature. Deal with it!)

Please read the instructions. If you read them carefully, you can streamline the recipe. In the modern day with modern equipment, you will not need to spend all day in the kitchen. However, that requires more than a little attention to detail.

There is nothing like this in the literature — caramelized rice with heavily spiced lentils and lamb with the occasional complimentary hit of sweetness from the pumpkin and carrots.

Routine recipes are all fine and dandy but this one is for the betterment of your soul.

Magic awaits!

Ingredients

Lentils

1/4 cup vaal (absolutely critical!)
1/4 cup whole masoor (brown french lentils — also absolutely crucial!)
1/4 cup toovar (pigeon peas.)
1/4 cup whole moong

Meat

1 lb lean lamb (cut into bite-size pieces)
1 cup yogurt
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
2 tbsp garam masala
4 tbsp ginger-green chilli paste

Vegetables

1 tiny pumpkin (chopped coarsely — traditional)
2 eggplants (chopped coarsely — traditional)
1 carrot, etc. (chopped coarsely — seasonal)
2 tomatoes (chopped coarsely — seasonal)

Fresh Spices

1 large red onion
2" ginger
8-10 Thai green chillies (substitute by 5-6 serranos)
1 tbsp turmeric

Spices

Dhansaak Masala

1 stick cassia
2 tbsp coriander seeds (critical!)
1/2 tbsp cumin seeds
8 dried red chillies
1/2 tsp poppy seeds
1/4 tsp cloves
4 green cardamom
1 black cardamom (badi elaichi)
1/2 tsp caraway seeds (shahi jeera)
1/2 tsp fenugreek
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 strand mace
1 tsp dagad phool
1 tsp naag kesar

Parsi Sambhar Masala

1 tsp chilly powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 tsp cloves
1 star anise
1 tsp black peppercorns
1/4 stick cassia

Garnish

1/2 cup cilantro leaves (chopped fine)

Other

oil
salt

Rice

1 cup basmati rice
2 large red onion (cut into thin half-moon rings)
1 stick cassia
6 cloves
10-12 peppercorns
6-8 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups water
salt

Recipe

Wash and soak the four lentils overnight in an excess of water. The excess is necessary since they absorb a lot more than you think they will.

For the meat, blend the ginger and green chillies with the cilantro leaves, and toss with the lamb, yogurt and garam masala. Refrigerate overnight or at least for 6-8 hours.

In the morning, drain the water from the lentils. Re-soak.

If you have a pressure cooker (highly recommended!) toss the lentils in with some water, and salt. Pressure cook for no more than 10 minutes. Set aside.

Please be aware that the vaal and the toovar are going to "decompose". This is part of the point of the recipe. The "stew" portion, if you will.

(If you don't have one, cook them until the hardest two lentils — masoor and moong are edible. Roughly 60 minutes.)

Meanwhile, chop the fresh spices (ginger, green chillies, onion) in a food-processor. They should be coarsely chopped not ground to a paste because you need to fry them. Set aside.

Heat a dry skillet on medium-heat till it's hot. Dry roast all the spices — the trick is to toss them in order of size, and add the next batch before the previous is well-done. This is a skill, and needs some experience. You could just roast each one separately but that wastes more time. Make sure you don't burn the poppy seeds.

Put them in a bowl, and allow them to cool. When cool, grind to a fine powder in a coffee grinder. Set aside.

First, make the lamb.

Heat some oil in a skillet. When it shimmers, toss in the lamb pieces straight out of the marinade into the oil. The yogurt will look very disturbing interacting with the oil. Ignore this. Keep adding the lamb with the yogurt coating, and letting it cook with the oil. Slowly, toss in the rest of the marinade. Roughly 6-8 minutes in, you will notice that the lamb is well-done, and there's a lovely brown slurry in your skillet. Set the whole thing aside.

Heat some oil in a stock pot. When it shimmers, add the onion-ginger-green-chilli paste, and fry languidly. When it's fried but not caramelized, toss in the vegetables and fry for a bit. Add the lentils. Mix together, and let it heat up. Add the spices. Then the lamb and the sauce.

Let it all simmer together at very low heat for at least 15-20 minutes. The lentils must be "melting" but the vegetables must still retain their identity.

Now, we make the rice.

Fry the onion half-moon rings in some oil. When limp, add the sugar, and coat and let it cook till they are nicely caramelized. Toss in the spices, and the rice, and let the caramel and oil coat the rice grains. Add in water to let the rice cook, and let it cook at a medium-low heat covered till the rice is done.

Serve the rice along side the stew garnished with cilantro leaves.

Spam : Redux

2011-04-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note that ads and other spam are not allowed on this blog.

This blog has been receiving increasing spam of the form:

Hey, love your recipe for X.

Link to Business.

The CC is quite clearly never going to make a freakin' penny out of blogging so he might as well keep it "purist" and "ol' school" as opposed to the bling-bling, ad-driven, lets-pretend-that-clicks-matter, lets-link-to-twitter-facebook-mobile-phone school.

The blog gets plenty of traffic as the records show. There's just not a breathless fanboi element which suits the CC just fine.

The CC doesn't want to be forced to moderate comments since that slows things down — not that there are many comments but still! — but he may very well be forced to.

Apologies to those who subscribe to the comment updates as email!

Water

2011-04-24T08:35:00.004-04:00

There are three properties of water that make it unique.

Every single one of these properties is used in every single cuisine so it helps to understand how things work.

Water is a polar molecule.

Water may be H₂O but the two hydrogen atoms are attached at a 109.5° angle. This polarizes the water molecule because there is more positive charge on one side (H₂⁺) rather than the other (O^-.)

This means water can dissolve polar molecules. Specifically, any salt.

Most importantly, the salts will be split into their ionized components when dissolved because the positive ions will be attracted to the negative portion of the water molecule (O^-) and the negative ions to the positive portion (H₂⁺.)

Water has a very high boiling point.

Water is a very small molecule. However, compared to molecules of its size, it has an absurdly high boiling point. This is due to its polar nature. Water molecules naturally attract each other and it's quite hard to separate them. That's also why the phase transitions (ice → water, water → steam) take so much heat.

Water has a very high specific heat.

This just means that water can hold a tremendous amount of heat i.e. it has a high thermal capacity.

Heat is just the average energy of motion of a molecule.

This is a tricky point so it requires some explanation.

Whenever a molecule is symmetric, its bonds restrict a certain degree of vibration along the bonds because too much movement would break the bonds.

So a linear molecule is restricted in its motion along the line. If you had a molecule symmetric in two directions, its motion would be restricted in the plane but it could still rotate along both axes.

Water is so asymmetric that all three rotational degrees of freedom are possible as well as vibrating along both bonds, and perpendicular to them, and none of them break up the molecule so it can absorb energy to "spin" in three directions, and "vibrate" in three as well. Hence, it can absorb a lot of energy to "move".

Most importantly, it's the smallest molecule that has this property.

Soba with Miso

2011-04-21T21:57:00.002-04:00

This is a classic example of Japanese nabemono which are "one pot" dishes.

nabe (pot) + mono (food) = nabemono "one-pot food"

Which tells you right away that it's for regular consumption, and relatively straightforward.

One of the important things to note about this format is that it is endlessly malleable. This is the criterion by which cultures save themselves from boredom. Once, you get the knack of it, and the rules of the washoku which seem to arise from both an aesthetic and a nutritional perspective, you can shuffle this stuff endlessly and not repeat yourself in a year.

The dish may seem to have a lot of ingredients and it may "seem" complex but it really is not. You could assemble it fairly easily with about twenty minutes of effort. It will take about an hour in real time but you can spend most of it with your feet up with a glass of wine if you so choose.

Ingredients

4 cups dashi
tofu
1 carrot (cut thin at a steep angle)
1 cup spinach
8-10 shiitake mushrooms

2 tbsp miso paste

2 scallions (sliced at a steep angle)
hijiki (soaked cold for 30 minutes)
wakame (soaked cold for only 5 minutes)

2 eggs
mirin
soy sauce
rice vinegar

soba

Recipe

First prep the egg. Mix the egg with 2 tbsp mirin, 1 tsp soy sauce and 1/2 tsp rice vinegar. Make a very thin omelette on medium-low heat and set aside.

When cool, roll it tight and slice it into thin rounds.

Assemble the ingredients in a pot — tofu, carrots, spinach, shiitake mushrooms, soba. Heat the dashi with some mirin and pour it over the mixture. Bring to a low boil. After about 10 minutes, turn off the heat. Stir in the soy sauce (to taste) and the miso.

Do NOT boil after adding the miso.

Serve with the scallions, hijiki and wakame as toppings.

No, it isn't!

2011-04-19T19:26:00.002-04:00

We already know that Indian cookbooks screw up the translation of "lemon". They really mean lime which is what is actually used.

They also screw up the translation for tej which is frequently translated as cinnamon.

There's only one problem.

What you really get is cassia not true cinnamon. Admittedly, they are related but the distinction is real. In most of the world, what is actually called cinnamon is really cassia (since it's cheaper) so perhaps a relabeling is in order?

Worst of all, what gets translated in Indian cookbooks as "bay leaves" is anything but. If you start using true bay leaves à la Mediterranean in your Indian food, you are doomed.

The etymology gives it away. They are tej patta in Hindi (quite literally: leaves of cassia.) That's what you need. And that's why rice flavored with tej patta is a totally different beast from rice flavored with the bay laurel leaf.

The CC is a fan of all of the above but one must keep the ingredients correctly and precisely defined.

Rice Bran

2011-04-17T22:02:00.007-04:00

Bet you didn't know that the rice bran had a tiny amount of fat in it from which can be extracted oil. It's frequently labelled as "rice oil" but it's really from the bran.

It has a very high smoke point being devoid of solid material, and has a neutral flavor. Hence, it's very much preferred in Japanese cooking since they harvest a ton of rice to begin with.

Rice bran (nuka) is a big thing in Japan. It's used to make a super turbo-charged, on-steroids version of sourdough except in the form of pickles (nukazuke.)

These pickles require a lot of love. They need to be turned daily twice a day so that they don't spoil. Supposedly, the pickles are insanely good, and like good sourdough the base material basically lives on forever but anything that requires love twice a day is way more commitment than even the CC can manage.

Edible German Food

2011-04-17T11:07:00.003-04:00

There is only one thing that's wonderful about German food. It's called marzipan.

They really do it better than anyone else. Yes, it's only almonds and sugar — how hard can it be, etc.? So why do all other attempts suck, huh?!?

A friend was visiting recently from Germany. She asked what the CC wanted as a gift, and the answer was "lots of marzipan."

And he got it.

Nabemono

2011-04-14T19:13:00.000-04:00

Howto: Poach Fish

2011-04-01T20:00:00.001-04:00

All poaching is the same idea. Cook the object in the presence of aromatics in a suitable broth.

While fish may be poached in anything from tomato broth to chicken broth, one of the ways to do it well is to add a cup of white wine to the poaching liquid, and slowly bring the liquid to boiling.

The reason is simple.

Alcohol has a far lower boiling point than water. It boils at 78°C as opposed to water's 100°C.

Because fish poaches so quickly, the temperature will not rise above 78°C and you will not overcook the fish.

The same technique works for eggs as well.

Cooking Myths (Part 3)

2011-03-30T11:15:00.000-04:00

Another cooking myth is that bread is done when you pull it out of the oven.

As any good baker would know this is patently false.

This is a simple consequence of the classical heat equation (bet you weren't counting on partial differential equations showing up on this blog, huh?)

Heat flows from stuff of higher temperature to that of lower temperature.

In the oven, heat flows into the bread because the oven is hotter than the dough.

As you pull the bread out of the oven, the heat starts flowing out of the bread into the ambient air. Frequently, the very center of the bread may be cooler than its surroundings, and heat will keep flowing towards it as well. Consequently, the bread is still "cooking", and experienced bakers know to hold themselves away until the bread equalizes with the temperature outside.

Experienced bakers know that good bread will "crackle" as it cools down. The bread is contracting from being cooled and the strands of gluten are snapping as the bread contracts. Which releases even more aromatic molecules of smell.

That's what makes fresh bread irresistible but you must resist for a while before the bread has cooled down. (Otherwise, you get to eat a lumpy doughy mess.)

It's one of the sad truths of life — instantaneous gratification is a very bad thing in the world of fresh bread!

Arto der Haroutunian

2011-03-27T20:12:00.000-04:00

A uniquely intense writer who was an architect, really wanted to be a musician but loved food so much that he became a cookbook writer.

He was Armenian but the family lived in Syria and Lebanon, and moved to post-war England with all its deprivations and seventh-rate produce.

It is easy enough to scoff about ingredients in these food-crazy times but dial back about half a century and life was not so easy. You could forget about zucchini and arugula, and fenugreek and fresh turmeric might as well have been fantasies for the average cook.

It was in this environment that the author wrote these books.

He was a polymath and the intensity leaps off every page. The cross-connections between cuisines are made entirely organically (and correctly!) and the sheer encyclopaedic knowledge shines through.

The cookbooks are primarily concerned with the Mediterranean but they leap as far ashore as Mongolia and India when the logical connection between dishes is needed.

The author died tragically young but he authored twelve cookbooks only four of which are easily available.

You can't go wrong with any of them, and these days you will no longer have to make any substitutions. (The author is careful in stating the original first, and the substitution second. It's only the substitutions that make the books dated.)

This is home cooking of the most elevated kind. There are no duds here!!!

And most of all, the author's intense engagement with every aspect of the cooking process both physical and intellectual shines through.

What more could one ask?

Squid-Ink Risotto

2011-03-23T18:00:00.001-04:00

If you've never had it, this is one of the foods of the gods.

Recipe

2 cup vialone nano rice
3 shallots
4 cloves garlic
2 dried red chillies (crumbled fine)
2 squids (cleaned, cut into rounds)
2 tbsp squid ink

1 cup white wine
6 tomatoes (pulped with a food mill)
4 cups broth

3 tbsp thyme (substitute with rosemary)

olive oil
black pepper
sea salt

4 tbsp parsley (chopped, for garnish)

Ingredients

The recipe follows along the lines of a standard risotto with a few kinks.

Keep the broth on a simmer in a separate vessel.

Fry the shallots and the garlic in olive oil at a medium heat. Add the rice, and fry to make sure that each grain is coated in the olive oil. Add plenty of ground pepper, the red chillies and the salt. Add the white wine to deglaze, and stir. Add a ladle of hot broth along with the tomato puree. Bring to a boil stirring constantly. Add the squid ink.

The mixture will turn instantly from a pale red to a deep dark inky black. Keep adding ladlefuls of broth stirring constantly. Add the thyme/rosemary towards the end. Just before you are ready to serve, add the cleaned squid, and take the pot off the heat. (You don't want to overcook the squid.)

Serve immediately sprinkled with parsley preferably with a steely white wine.

Baking Resumption

2011-03-21T20:22:00.002-04:00

After a long hiatus, the CC has started baking again.

This is Jim Lahey's famous (infamous?) No-Knead Bread, and yes, it's exactly as amazing at it always was.

Cooking Myths (Part 2)

2011-03-19T10:55:00.002-04:00

This series has been dormant for a couple of years but it's time to resurrect it.

One of the pervasive myths about baking is that opening the oven door makes the temperature drop "drastically".

The fact that the temperature drops is not in doubt. What's in question is the "drastic" part.

Let's start with the basics.

Air has very little thermal capacity. It's ability to hold heat is minimal if that. That's precisely why you can put your hand in a 500°F oven and not feel a thing.

Just so we are clear on this concept, try sticking your hand in 212°F water (a.k.a. boiling water) and see how you feel. It's a lot less than 500°F!!!

So what exactly holds the heat of the oven?

It's actually the walls and the floor. They have a high thermal capacity. In fact, if you want to increase the thermal capacity, you should put in a very large steel plate on the bottom of the oven, or a ton of bricks, and run the oven for a long time.

The air is largely irrelevant!

The Larder

2011-03-17T19:48:00.001-04:00

The CC is frequently asked how he cooks all the stuff he does, and the answer is a vast larder.

No, the CC doesn't live in a massive space. It takes considerable ingenuity of means to keep such a larder stocked and piled.

Living in New York doesn't hurt.

The CC's does the inventory in his head, as a consequence, and there's always something interesting for dinner.

Defending Molecular Gastronomy

2011-03-11T20:35:00.011-05:00

The CC is aware that the world shits upon this stuff on general purpose in the name of "tradition". The CC could argue at length about why this is wrong but there's a far simpler way of arguing.

Take flaked salt, and mix it with fine olive oil.

Slice tomatoes, and drizzle the above mixture over it. Add strips of basil.

Salt is a polarized molecule. It will not dissolve in non-polarized liquids like oil. That means the crunchy salt will still remain crunchy, and not dissolve in the tomato's watery juices nor will it make the tomato "sweat".

You can use your finest fleur de sel this way, and it will work. The reason it works is science.

You haven't seen this in any book you own because they simply didn't get it.

If this were so obvious, why is this not there in Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and the zillion others that make a fetish out of tomatoes, olive oil, and salt?

Why is this not present in four hundred years of Italian tradition?

So, fuck you, "tradition"!

Tradition, which can be useful can also be rank superstition. It's done this way, why, well because it has always been done this way. Kinda silly sometimes.

Facts and evidence (= science) matter more.

Making Babies

2011-03-07T20:55:00.002-05:00

Making preserved lemons is like having a baby.

You have to periodically burp them.

Awwwwww, so cute.

Seaweed

2011-03-06T11:34:00.001-05:00

One of the great glories of Japanese cuisine is their consumption of edible seaweeds.

They consume at least seven kinds but there are four that you must actually understand well.

Seaweeds contain very high amounts of iodine, calcium and magnesium. You don't really need iodized salt (which sucks anyway!) if you consume these things on a regular basis. (In fact, you can smell the "sea" in them which is a mixture of iodine and calcium compounds.)

The first, and arguably the most important is kombu. The CC has spoken about it extensively here. It is absolutely indispensable in the pursuit of umami.

The next up, in no particular order of importance is nori. If you've eaten sushi, you will recognize this one. It's the crisp wrapper that is used to enclose rice. It's paper-thin, and when toasted gives off this wonderful aroma.

Then there's hijiki. It has this wonderfully crisp/slippery texture that is impossible to describe. Crisp and slippery? You'll just have to try it for yourself.

Finally, there's wakame. You may have had it in miso soup but this is a tougher nut to crack (so to speak.) You really have to appreciate its slippery texture because it's all about the texture here.

One of the great beauties of seaweed is that it comes dried. Effectively, that means that in a cool, dry pantry, it will last forever. (Not that it does in the CC's house but anyway ...)

You need to rehydrate three of them (nori is consumed as is) and you need to know the timings involved. They need to be rehydrated in cold water because hot water will decompose them, and make them, well, unappetizing.

We've already talked about kombu. Thirty minutes in cold water, followed by a boil but it needs to be yanked out just before the water boils or else the dashi will turn bitter.

Hijiki requires about 30 minutes of rehydation in cold water. Wakame requires only about 5 minutes.

These are wonderfully glorious objects. Masterpieces of texture and taste.

Souring Agents

2011-03-04T19:11:00.002-05:00

One of the most important tricks in the chef's repertoire is the deployment of sour tastes.

It's extraordinarily underused and the CC doesn't understand why.

In fact, the CC will argue that this idea is so important and so undeveloped that it should be better known. (The CC will probably regret this when he gets old. Perhaps you shouldn't give away all of your best ideas?)

The dynamic use of sour ingredients is the lynchpin in nailing the entirely desirable "wanna-eat-more" feeling.

It's not unknown — it's common to Indian street food, and Japanese cooking. It's well known to both Moroccan food, and Thai cuisine. It's actually the key idea that distinguishes Filipino food with its "hit-me-again" taste.

Why is so underutilized then? The CC stays mystified.

Humans are conditioned to eat slightly acidic foods. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, substances that contain alkaline substances naturally (e.g. alkaloids) tend, on a general basis, to be highly poisonous. That's why soap tastes "bad". It's an evolutionary response to ensure avoidance of dangerous things.

(On a side note, that's why sweet tastes good instinctively to babies. It's an evolutionary response to fruits which are safe for consumption.)

Most chefs will tell you that they use two tricks. One is surface salt which the CC has talked about here extensively.

The other is the use of sour ingredients which "brighten" the flavor, and bring into sharp relief the other flavors that are being used.

Try it. You'll thank the CC later.

Making the Cut

2011-02-27T21:22:00.001-05:00

One of the most significant differences between Japanese chefs and French ones is the way they use a knife.

The Japanese cut away from the body while classical French technique requires you to cut towards yourself.

Small but hugely significant.

That Italian-Japanese Cross-Connect

2011-02-27T10:03:00.006-05:00

File this one under the "who-bloody-knew-but-obvious-in-retrospect"-category!

Turns out that "sushi rice" makes a more than excellent substitute for the arborio, or carnaroli in a classic risotto.

In fact, both rices belong to the same japonica family, the key characteristic of which is that they are glutinous (= starchy, sticky) and not "long-grained" like basmati.

Smack to the forehead, deliciousness for dinner.

Revisiting Ol' Favorites

2011-02-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

How quickly doth a fairly ambitious dish that you once made turn into a "staple"!

Good cooks never talk about this but as their technique deepens, they get very good at formerly complex tasks. "Fancy" dishes turn routine that they can do at a moment's notice with minimal kerfuffle.

It's called learning and it's useful to remember that all those slave years in the galley kitchen were not wasted. Most importantly, all that separates you from you from the great chefs is plain ol'-fashioned hard work (and an understanding of technique.)

This is a great dish. What makes it great is the both the elegance of its concept, and the fact that it can be endlessly reshuffled to align with the seasons and the ingredients at hand.

The older recipe required — arugula, corn, carrots, sage.

This version — radicchio, peas, carrots, rosemary.

You should be able to see the infamous shuffle yourself.

Speaking of shuffling, what would your inner Italian Grandma think of these "crab balls"? Bet she's thinking about how delicious they would be in her mouth!

Risotto with Crab Balls

EPIC FAIL!!!

2011-02-21T10:10:00.001-05:00

There is virtually no modern chef or cookbook in the world that talks about failure.

(Except you, Julia, you're an inspiration every passing day, baby!)

You will fail. Yes, you will fail. No matter how much you prepare, you will fail.

Occasionally.

If you are suitably ambitious, you must accept that failure is inevitable. It's called learning. There can be no learning without failure.

What is needed is a healthy attitude to failure. It happens. Scream for a minute or two, and then dial the takeout. Regroup later, analyze your failure, and always, always, always revisit the dish another day. Which you will nail correctly and beautifully but only because you failed the first time. That's called learning. Extraordinarily rarely, you will fail twice. That's called learning too!

(The CC has even failed thrice, and lived to cook another day!)

Incidentally, of all the smug fucks, a certain Richard Olney informs us that: "A failure is no disgrace and may very often be more instructive than a success."

Yeah?!? Well, fuck you, Richard Olney, when you have screaming hordes in your living room on a hot summer's day, and your dish just disintegrated, you might just have a slightly different view of success.

Or not.

There does seem to be a utility in having a suitably detached point of view. In time, you will rapidly learn to look at your failures in a funny light. It'll turn into a good party story.

Comedy is merely tragedy with added time and perspective.

Wasn't it hilarious when that dish fell apart right before Thanksgiving? Or that burnt dish on Valentine's Day? Or that food that disintegrated right before the party guests started streaming in?

Go on then. Be ambitious. Fail with confidence.

You're gonna fail, and you're gonna love it!

(Chime in with your failures, readers. This is a contest in who can embarass themselves the most!)

Moving On

2011-02-20T11:55:00.007-05:00

An old friend died recently.

And how does the CC revisit it?

All he can think of is that she was thin, and she loved to dance, and she loved food to a fault.

She was much older than the CC to the point that she both babysat the CC, and that he attended her wedding as a callow boy, and yet, all the CC can remember is all the food she loved. He can recall instantaneously every single thing she ever loved. and where she ate it, and how she ate it. (You don't need a camera. The memory is good enough.)

She even taught the CC how to dance. And how to gorge away later late at night after expending the calories!

Food then, as Proust would've insisted, is the ultimate carrier of memories.

Dance away sweetheart, we'll miss you!

Ode to an Omelette

2011-02-20T07:26:00.006-05:00

A paean must be written to the very French concept of barely set eggs. They may be in various forms — poached, baked, omelette but the key point is that they are barely set. Just at the edge of being cooked but basically somewhat raw.

In the interest of hygiene, the CC must mention that you can't do that with commercial eggs in this country.

You need freshly produced eggs from an good organic producer that you know personally otherwise you are out of luck!

However, if it's possible to source these in the heart of Manhattan, the CC fails to see what the excuse is?

Even if you have excellent organic local eggs, you must first wash each and every one of them before you crack them. The logic is that these wonderful organic eggs may not have bacteria on the inside but like all "stuff" they have bacteria on the outside!

Yes, this may sound pain-staking but it's absolutely necessary if you are gonna barely cook them. Also, these organic eggs tend to be a tad fragile unlike your supermarket force-fed chicken eggs so a little gentleness is needed.

Just try it.

The CC never liked soft-boiled eggs until he made high-quality ones for himself. Now, he recoils at the idea of eggs being overcooked.

Oh, and make sure to have some crusty bread at hand to soak up all the eggy goodness!

Sunday morning. Ooey-gooey goodness. Happiness.

The Japanese Pressure Cooker

2011-02-18T21:31:00.005-05:00

Not the insane work ethic that causes them to blow their tops in private, the CC refers to the otoshi-buta which is a particularly elegant concept.

Basically it's a wooden "drop lid" that sits right inside the pot on top of the vegetables or meat that you are simmering in dashi.

The idea is simple. It raises the temperature of the water above 100°C so that food cooks faster. In this process, it also allows for caramelization of the sugars are added first in the Japanese process. Also, the food stuff doesn't roll around in the boiling water which allows control of the texture because the food doesn't get "beat up".

You don't really need this specialized instrument though.

Classically trained French chefs use a similar technique. They advise you to make a simple round out of parchment paper and place it in top of whatever you are simmering.

In the modern world, aluminum foil will also do the work perfectly adequately.

If you've never seen this technique before, it seems wondrous (faster! tastier! magic!) but it's just plain ol' physics at work.

Spaghetti with Crab Meat and Peas

2011-02-17T06:00:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, there is a level of awesomeness that pictures simply don't do justice to. You need full-on Smell-O-Vision™ to appreciate this one.

That this is both easily made on a weeknight, and that it is definitely better than sliced bread means that the Italians just do some things better!

Garlic! Chillies! Olive oil! Exclamation Marks!!

Madre di Dio!!!

Ingredients

linguini (or spaghetti.)
1 cup crabmeat
8 cloves garlic (chopped roughly)
1/2 cup peas
1/2 cup parsley (chopped fine)
4 dried read chillies (crumbled fine)
1 cup white wine (optional, substitute by water)

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Prepare the pasta in heavy-salted water.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a pan, fry the garlic and crumbled red-chillies languidly, add the crabmeat, peas, salt and black pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the white wine. Let it cook for a bit.

Toss with the spaghetti. Top with parsley and more black pepper right before serving.

Haandvo

2011-02-14T19:08:00.005-05:00

The greatest of all vegetarian dishes (at least in the CC's unhumble opinion.)

Poetry should be written about this stuff, and wars raged but it hasn't happened yet so the CC assumes that he lies alone in his passion. (Sigh!)

This is a lentil and rice flour mix that has been fermented (lactobacillus!), and then mixed with ginger, green chillies, spices and vegetables, and topped with the classical Indian technique of spices fried at the last minute in oil (vaghar, baghar, chowk, etc.) In this case, the spices are sesame seeds as you can plainly observe below.

Finally, the whole thing is baked with coals above and below.

Eat it with a sip of buttermilk (yogurt + water) and watch the mixture evolve as you chew. Each bite will be subtly different as your saliva works its magic with the two components in tandem.

The crispy brown bits are the best part (Maillard, Maillard, Maillard!)

The Gods themselves designed this dish because they got bored of ordinary, every day perfection!

Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So

2011-02-12T09:10:00.010-05:00

Eh?

No, the CC hasn't lost his marbles. At least not yet!

These are the horizontal letters of the Japanese alphabet in the "s" row, and they stand for the order in which to add ingredients when simmering vegetables in dashi (which the Japanese do a lot!)

satō - sugar (typically in the form of mirin)
shio - salt
su - vinegar
seyu / shōyu - soy sauce
miso - miso

Okay, they cheat a little with the shōyu to fit it into the scheme but we'll just call it cute. and let it slide.

There's a sorta logic to it. The sugar requires time to get absorbed (larger molecules) so it needs to go in there first. And the miso gets in there last because it really shouldn't be overcooked. The rest is a just a cutesy mnemonic to remember it all.

Kawaii!!!

Radicchio Salad

2011-02-08T21:48:00.003-05:00

Simplicity itself, and the perfect way to brighten up a winter's day.

Ingredients

1 head radicchio
1 orange (split into two)
1/2 cup walnuts
1 Meyer lemon
3 tbsp walnut oil
3 sprigs mint
gorgonzola (diced)

sea salt
pepper

Recipe

Wash the radicchio, and slice into thin slices.

Roast the walnuts at 350°F for about 10 minutes. Cool.

Split half the orange into slices. Slice each into half.

Juice the lemon, the other half of the orange, and make a vinaigrette with the walnut oil, sea salt and pepper. Mince the mint, and mix with the vinaigrette.

Toss all the ingredients together.

Konkan Café

2011-02-04T20:11:00.010-05:00

The CC normally never endorses restaurants but has been known to make exceptions for exceptional ones (duh!)

This is one of them.

In Mumbai, in a tourist-encrusted corner, a man (Ananda Solomon) is trying to make classically home-down cuisine from the coastal regions of Maharashtra.

He has women (yes, women - there are no males traditionally!) come in every morning to grind the spices the ol'-fashioned way using a mortar and pestle.

The results speak for themselves.

Is it expensive? Yes, it is. But attention to detail always is.

The CC (who's a cheapskate at heart) will happily pay out for a meal of this anal-retentive detail every single time!

Yes, this is seafood-oriented (as a true coastal cuisine would be) but if you are vegetarian, just tell the chef to make whatever pleases him, and he will deliver. The coastal regions have vegetarian traditions too. This is India where every goddamn place has a "traditional" vegetarian tradition!!!

(There were a buncha Gujarati losers on the adjacent table who made their way into one of the great restaurants of all time, and ordered mundane crap. It was extraordinarily painful to watch. These money-grubbin' ass-monkeys were, quite literally, not aware of their own culture. The chef, who attended them personally, was a masterpiece of Japanese emotion — inwardly seething while outwardly polite.)

On a more positive note, the squid was ethereal, and the dessert (jackfruit, not very sweet) was so divine that the CC who normally doesn't like dessert would eat it by the bucketful.

This is the food that gods themselves would desire!

banana flower fritters
sol kadhi

jackfruit in coconut milk
Konkan Café.
(Mumbai, India)

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

2011-01-29T07:52:00.004-05:00

As crazy as it sounds, the current depths of winter are the "season" for citrus.

Surprised?

Locavore tendencies be damned, most of the citrus fruits come from areas where the produce season is currently peaking, and hence, the markets are just overflowing with citrus fruits.

Time then in the snowiest winter recorded to go a slipping and a sliding, and put the overflowing bounty of Meyer lemons to good use. Sadly to say, it's "use it or lose it" since you can't easily find them here in the rest of the year.

The CC bought six pounds and turned them into preserved lemons.

If you've never eaten a preserved lemon, you have missed out on one of the great joys of life. It's ancient "culinary technology" at its very best — making lemonade out of lemons, metaphorically speaking.

A preserved lemon is more about the rind of the lemon than the juice. The preserving process both intensifies the lemon-ness of the lemon, infuses it with a complex spice mixture, and brings out an intense umami from the pickling process. The final product is silky and sensual, an ethereal counterpoint to the vegetable, chicken, lamb or fish dishes that it generally accompanies.

The important word here is "generally". Good luck waiting to cook the dishes. The CC has seen hordes demolish the product straight out of the bottle like crack-candy! Add the pickling juice to a "bloody mary" and you'll thank the CC for the rest of your life.

Naturally, there's a catch. That's called pickling. It takes about a month to make after which it will pretty much last forever. Experienced picklers don't even empty the jar. They just keep adding more lemons, lemon juice and salt to the jar, and the stuff will just keep on truckin'.

If you've never pickled before, let's start with the basics. Pickling involves storing food for an extended period of time. There are only two broad ways of pickling — pickling in an acidic medium, and pickling in oil (which is a lot harder.)

The simple story is that if the medium is acidic enough, no fungus or bacteria can grow in it (except for the highly beneficial and omnipresent lactobacillus.)

Pickling requires only one real skill. That's called obsessively washing everything in hot water. The actual recipe is a detail to the act of cleaning that goes on before and after. The reason most pickles are acidic is that you don't need to be as careful as when you do it in oil however pickling remains a key testament to actually understanding the science of food. (Yes, your grandmother did it seamlessly but you are not your grandmother so ...)

Preserved lemons are very easy to make. All you need is a mason jar, lots of lemons, some spices and tons of salt. The overwhelming acidity of the medium makes this a particularly easy "preserve" to make for beginners. There is only one important thing to note. No part of the lemons must "stick out" above the water line. You must press them down and/or squeeze them until all components are submerged below the acidic water line.

The other important note is not to skimp on the salt. More is fine (can be washed later, and the recipe adjusted) but less would be disastrous.

Before the CC provides a recipe, he will just note a caveat. This all depends on the size of your jars, etc. so the recipe below is necessarily approximate, and in any case the most important detail has been stated above — submerge the lemons in the lemon juice completely.

Ingredients

24 Meyer lemons
6 tbsp salt
1 stick cinnamon
1 tbsp cloves
2 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tbsp peppercorns
2 bay leaves

Recipe

Reserve about 6-8 lemons for the pickling process. Juice the rest, and strain the juice through a sieve.

Quarter the reserved lemons till about near the bottom but make sure you don't cut all the way through. Squeeze them a little for the juice (they will not float if you do this,) and salt them liberally on the inside. Set aside.

Wash the jar with extremely hot water. Pour boiling water into it until just before starting the pickling process.

Pour out all the hot water.

Layer the salt to about 1/2" at the bottom. Add all the spices, and the reserved lemons. Pour the lemon juice all over mixture. Make sure everything is submerged. If not, press down until it is. (You are really squeezing the lemons to bring their density below that of the lemon juice.)

Store for 30-40 days in a cool dark place.

Lemon Laws

2011-01-28T19:16:00.001-05:00

The CC encountered the most unusual use of a lemon today in a sandwich. After the lemon had been (partially) squeezed, the lemon was sliced razor-thin in a mandoline, and used as a layering in the tuna sandwich.

Most excellent it was!

Winter Wonders

2011-01-27T20:53:00.003-05:00

It may be winter but the clams are fat (and cheap!)

Spaghetti with clams, anyone?

Kerala Meal

2011-01-25T02:43:00.002-05:00

matta rice, meen (fish) curry, pappadum,
vegetable avial, prawns, lentils

The Haul

2011-01-22T07:52:00.009-05:00

Could you imagine the CC going to the Spice Coast and not hauling back massive quantities of spices? Didn't think so!

Without further ado, let's just jump into the haul.

black pepper
green pepper
cinnamon
cloves
nutmeg
cardamom
dagad phool
marati moggu
kudampuli
asafoetida
rosematta rice

The asafoetida is the real thing not the stuff diluted with wheat and rice powder that you get in stores!

India

2011-01-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

The CC is off to India for more culinary adventures. Back in a few weeks.

Roasted Garlic and Onion Soup

2011-01-05T19:26:00.000-05:00

This is a peasant recipe. Simple to make, yet complex in its flavors.

The best part is that you have to neither peel the garlic nor the onions.

Ingredients

1 head garlic
6 red onions
1/3 cup flour
4 cups broth (or water)

1/4 cup chopped parsley

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Cut the garlic in half, and the onions in half as follows. Don't bother to peel.

Drizzle a sheet with olive oil, and lay them face down on the olive oil. Roast in a 350°F oven for roughly 45 mins.

Pop them out, and pop out the garlic and onion shells with a paring knife. They are soft and sticky, and hot so this step is the trickiest portion.

Drop them in a soup pot, and heat it to medium heat. There is plenty of olive oil in them so no need to add any more. Add the flour, and fry languidly till it is light-brown (Maillard reaction.)

Add the broth, salt and plenty of black pepper, and heat on a low flame. A lot of impurities will come to the top. Skim, baby, skim.

Blend the liquid with a blender.

Then turn the heat up, and cover and bring to a rolling boil.

Top with the chopped parsley, and serve with crusty bread.

Detrending Trends

2011-01-04T19:28:00.003-05:00

There seems to be a deplorable trend among cookbooks published by "author-scholars". They are increasingly being made in a coffee-table format.

Firstly, the CC doesn't possess the above vaunted table. Secondly, these things are heavy. Thirdly, if they weren't so excellent, one would just ignore them but they are indeed outstanding.

But you can't cook out of them. You can't even haul them around, and you certainly can freakin' forget about reading them in bed. (Yes, the CC does that.)

This is a trend, and a terrible one at that!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

May all your walnuts be covered in rosemary, and served with stilton. May your soufflé's and doughs rise, and your tomato-paste lift your spirits!

Pan Grattato

2010-12-29T16:00:00.002-05:00

One of the great tricks of Italian cooking, is fried breadcrumbs seasoned with spices. Sounds ordinary but it adds both a crunchy texture, as well as acts as a flavor carrier. It allows you to gussy up the simplest of dishes, and make them exotic.

The idea is simple enough. Breadcrumbs are neutral in taste, and yet they absorb flavors. They also turn crunchy when pan-fried in butter or oil.

The variations are endless as you might assume. It's best to make them in small batches, and they will last for about a few weeks kept in an air-tight container.

Spaghetti with Clams (topped with anchovy-red-chilly pangrattato.)

Latin-Asian Fusion

2010-12-28T06:44:00.000-05:00

Normally, the CC is not big on the whole fusion thing but when done well, it can be amazing. This is at a restaurant near the CC's house.

Corn Soup
Seared Pepper-Tuna with Cilantro-Basmati, and Orange Dressing

Designer Milk

2010-12-27T03:32:00.000-05:00

From the New York Daily News: Buying breast milk online.

Need breast milk? It's only a click away.

Online forums like OnlytheBreast.com and EatsonFeets.org allowing moms who make more breast milk than their nursing babies need to sell it.

At OnlytheBreast.com, which describes itself as "a community for moms to buy and sell natural breast milk," instructions are offered on how to ship, pump, freeze and store breast milk. Ads for buyers and sellers appear on the site.

"Super Mom," advertises frozen breast milk for $3 an ounce with a minimum of 16 ounces, and the cost of overnight shipping.

John Steinbeck, eat your heart out!