Down and Across : A Wobbly Old Time

Copyright © 2001, James T. Ehler (published with permission.)

Across

1. Popular carbonated beverage.
4. A polite drink.
7. French syrup.
8. Robust red "masculine" Bordeaux.
15. Important red Bordeaux.
17. Hot or cold alcoholic drink containing beaten egg.
18. Aromatic blackcurrant liqueur.
19. "The milk of our Lady."
22. Liquor and water with sugar and spices served hot.
23. Greek wine flavored with resin.
24. Partly fermented grape juice.

Down

1. Tea.
2. City southeast of Turin noted for its sparkling wines.
3. Found in combination with:: water, oil, attar, hips.
5. Turkish brandy.
6. Fermented alcoholic beverage similar to but heavier than beer.
9. Part of Poe tale title.
10. Wine, spiced with sugar, lemons and nutmeg, named for an English army officer.
11. Spanish city, grape, wine, and raisin.
12. Original version of a British citrus drink.
13. Whiskey, bitters and sugar with fruit slices.
14. Sweet liqueur made from wine and brandy flavored with plum, peach or apricot kernels and/or almonds.
16. Distilled French wine.
20. Chief ingredient of black bread.
21. Booze slang adapted from small Alaskan Tlingit tribe, the Hutsnuwu.
22. High, Irish or breakfast.
23. Popular Caribbean alcoholic beverage.

Fascism attacks Food

The Earth Times reports: Cambodia's 'happy pizza' faces chop in drug crackdown.

Changing times and politics in South-East Asia may finally spell extinction for one of the most famous (or infamous) fusion cuisines enjoyed by backpackers, Cambodia's "happy pizza."Legendary amongst travelers for more than a decade, this hippy's little helper version of pizza is simply the traditional Italian favourite with a Cambodian twist - the rich tomato base comes heavily laced with marijuana.

Although officially illegal for several years, locals have traditionally used marijuana in soups or medicinally. Pioneering travelers crossing the Lao-Cambodian border previously even reported a small garden of the stuff being lovingly tended by customs officials.

But now the Cambodian government's current battle against drugs has given "pizza wars" a whole new meaning.

This week marijuana was claimed as Cambodia's first "total victory" in eliminating a drug from both domestic and export markets by Interior Ministry anti-drug chief, Police General Lou Ramin.

For most adventurous tourists, however, "happy pizza" provided no more than a great travel yarn, insists one of the country's dwindling chefs of Cambodia's quasi-clandestine classic, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On his menu, it costs as little as 3 dollars for a small pizza of happiness.

But he agrees that life as a purveyor of happy pizza is becoming increasingly precarious and expensive.

"It is much more expensive to make now because of the ingredients," he says. "The special ingredient costs much more now, but our biggest problem is that tourists do not ask for it anymore because they are afraid it is illegal."

"We still make the happy pizza if the tourists ask directly, but we put less special ingredient now because we don't want any problems with the police if they get crazy."

So how long can the marijuana pizza last out the law?

"The government goal is that this drug does not exist any more in Cambodia," says Police General Lou Ramin. "We will only be satisfied when it is not available at all."

The CC is not a Toker™ but something about this fascistic Brave New World bums him out.

A Modest Biryani?

Does it take fancy ingredients to make great food?

The answer would be emphatically `NO'.

While it is definitely true that wondrous ingredients combined with talent can reach great culinary heights, it is by no means necessary that good food can only come from expensive ingredients. In fact, it is actually the mark of a great chef to be able to create good food out of humble or even poor ingredients.

Any chef can make a fancy risotto with truffles but it takes a truly good chef to make a great meal out of the ordinary (needless to say the ingredients can't be total crap either.)

What matters, as it always has since time immemorial, is technique.

Now, we should note that the words "modest" and "biryani" don't really go together. A "true" biryani is the food of kings where a day is too short, and too much expense is too little.

However, contradictions being the soul of poetry, the CC decided to make an old standby, the poor student's version of biryani that he once used to make more than a decade ago. What has changed since is not the recipe itself but the CC. Some of you may even recognize it, or even may have eaten it chez le CC's.

The CC set himself a challenge to make it with ingredients he used back then.

The vegetables were frozen. The basmati rice was, of course, a staple. Even the spices were from one of those readymade mixes. Only the humble onion was fresh. But the details were definitely different.

The results (and the recipe) are presented for your delectation.

Ingredients

(Read the notes below before doing anything.)

1 cup basmati rice
frozen vegetables
1 onion

2 sticks cinnamon
4-5 whole "black" cardamom (badi elaichi)
5-6 cloves
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 bay leaves

2 tbsp "prepared" biryani masala

1/4 cup cashewnuts

oil
salt (to taste)

Recipe

First the basmati rice needs to be cooked in the "loose" Indian manner. This means you have to cook it like pasta in heavily salted water. Yeah, the heavily salted is necessary (and we will deal with the problem of the salt below.)

It should be just under par-boiled (which for the CC's rice took 9.5 minutes.)

Please note the 9.5 as opposed to 9 or 10. That is a detail which the CC would've missed a decade ago.

The rice was drained, washed in cold water (to stop the cooking, and wash the surface salt off) and left to drain in a colander for at least an hour (the CC waited for two.)

Periodically, the rice was fluffed, and those of you who possess a Jamie should outsource this step.

Then the vegetables were gently thawed in warm water, and left to drain for an hour.

Freezing damages the cellular walls of vegetables because the internal ice shards puncture the walls, and they are going to lose a substantial portion of that cellular water over those two hours. Put them over a bowl to drain. (Another detail.)

What is the goal of all this draining and drying? Well, we need to fry the stuff, and we can't fry wet stuff so it needs to be relatively dry so that Maestro Maillard can do his magic. Yep, that's a detail too.

After you peel the onion but before you cut it, STOP. Look at the onion from above. Just observe. No, don't argue, just do it.

The rings are elliptical, aren't they?

The first vertical cut should be along the long axis of the ellipse so that when you get rounds, you get concentric circles of roughly the same length. After that you need to break loose the rounds into clean linear segments with your hands.

Yes, this matters. Yes, this is detail. Yes, this is a refreshing change from the CC's wasted youth.

The recipe itself is going to be shockingly simple after all this prep.

Only add half the oil initially. The reason is that the onions are going to absorb most of that oil so you will need the rest to fry the rice.

Now, we handle the frying. The sequence is simple.

Spices first, in the order of size so that they won't burn, which means:

whole cinnamon → cardamom → cloves + peppercorns → cumin → bay leaves.
Then the ingredients in reverse order of "wetness" which means:

cashewnuts → onions → rice → ground spices → vegetables.
The water content of the onions is going to "freeze" the frying of the spices and prevent them from burning but the cashews will keep frying.

Why? Nuts have fat content.

Note the comment on the oil again which means you will need to add the extra oil slowly as the rice fries.

Everyone listen to all the details? Read it again. And one more time.

All the culinary magic is in this mumbo-jumbo which probably would've sounded like gibberish even to the CC a decade ago. Age certainly brings culinary wisdom (the other kind is still MIA.)

Step after cashews.

Onions tossed in.

Onions are fried. Note the darker color of the cashews as "proof" that they keep frying.

Rice goes in.

Spices go in.

Vegetables go in.

Keep on fryin'.

Who wants some biryani?

Memorial Day Repast

Rosemary fries
Steamed asparagus with various sea salts
♥
Zuppa di farro con cannellini borlotti e ceci
♥
Farfalle con funghi e nocciole
♥
Fresh strawberries

Farfalle with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts

Shockingly simple. Only the Italians can nail such simplicity.

Make it or endure regret forever.

(And contrast the slippery woodsy mushroom texture with the crunchy hazelnuts and the chewy pasta.)


Ingredients

1 lb shiitake mushrooms
1/2 lb "other" wild mushrooms
1/2 cup blanched hazelnuts (roasted, crushed, read below)
2 garlic cloves (crushed)

6-7 dried porcini mushrooms

salt
pepper

farfalle (cooked al dente)

Recipe

First preheat the oven to 450F. Roast the hazelnuts for 8-10 minutes. You will be able to "smell" when to stop. Be careful not to burn them. Pull them out and cool.

Here's a nifty trick. After they cool, wrap in plastic wrap, and crush with a heavy rolling pin. That way they are easy to control.

Meanwhile, reconstitute the dried porcini mushrooms with warm water. After 10 minutes or so, dice them. Retain the water.

Fry the garlic, then the mushrooms diced coarsely. Finally, the diced porcinis, salt and pepper. Read this post on salt first.

Last of all the water in which the porcinis was reconstituted. You need to filter the water. Just use a triangulated paper napkin as a conical filter (woo-hoo, it's high-school chemistry time!)

Reduce as needed.

Add the hazelnuts right before the al dente farfalle. Mix well, and serve.

The CC has also seen the dish finished off with cream. Both are excellent. The one without the cream is more interesting because the wild mushroom taste stands out.

George Orwell's Rules for Tea

If you look up “tea” in the first cookery book that comes to hand, you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.

This is curious, not only becase tea is one of the mainstays of civilisation in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than 11 outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial.

Here are my own 11 rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who uses that comforting phrase, “a nice cup of tea” invariably means Indian tea.

Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities—that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while Army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britannia-ware pots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse: though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.

Thirdly, a pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.

Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing this is not an ideal that can be realised on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than 20 weak ones. All true-lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes—a fact which is recognised in the extra ration issued to old age pensioners.

Fifthy, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout, to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.

Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that this makes any difference.

Seventhly, after making he tea, one should stir it or, better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.

Eighthly, one should drink out of a breakfast cup—that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one’s tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.

Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.

Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain ther are two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and then stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk, whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.

Lastly, tea—unless one is drinking it in the Russian style—should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy hte flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt.

Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need the sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight, and it is very unlikely you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

Theplaa

The quintessentially Gujarati dish. Stereotypically even.

So stereotypical that we used to refer to the more rural types as theplaa's back in the day. Heck, the typecasting seems to have spread far beyond the borders of India because a Japanese-American friend of the CC's who lived in London commented on it once.

That having been said, let us not be deprived of the brilliance that is theplaa.

Just for the record, the concept is pseudo-generic. You really can use any flour. However, if you are a moron that uses only wheat flour (like most of the Gujarati population), you will what the CC considers the main feature of theplaa namely that chewing it turns the spicy deliciousness into sweet (thank you, chemistry of saliva!)

You must use millet for that. The CC will flat out not eat theplaa that does not feature millet. It's cheaper, has a fantastic non-boring texture, and a rich taste.

Why on earth would you possibly go against that?

Ingredients

3 cups baajri flour (millet)
1 cup wheat flour (read instructions below)

1 cup chopped fenugreek leaves (methi)

1" ginger
3-4 garlic cloves
3-4 Thai green chillies

1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp ajwain seeds
1 tsp asafoetida
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground red chilli powder

yogurt mixed with water (to make the dough)

salt (to taste)

Recipe

ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste
Add salt, turmeric, red chilli powder, sesame seeds, and the ajwain seeds.

Add the rest of the ingredients. You can see the darker color of the baajri flour along with the lighter wheat flour. Somewhere underneath you can see the fenugreek leaves too.

Don't add all the wheat flour. Keep some aside.

Now, you need to knead the dough with the yogurt-water mixture.

It is absolutely critical that the dough be made with the yogurt-water mix not just water.

The dough is going to super soft and a bit sticky (there is complex chemistry at the heart of this.) Gently keep adding more wheat flour, until the dough becomes manageably solid-ish. It will NEVER get truly solid, and always remain slightly soft.

You need to gently roll it out, and pan fry it. Another trick that works is to just roll it out with your fingers on a lightly oiled piece of aluminum foil before pan frying.

Theplaa

Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk

Every time you get fed up of this city, it reminds you why you are here one more time.


The CC has just spent the evening with a friend at an absurdly brilliant Mediterranean restaurant.

Right when he was leaving, he chatted with the owner (Bulgarian, if you're curious) who was so happy to talk about food that he not only plied the CC with enough alcohol to set him alight but sent him home staggering loaded with delicacies, and shook his drunken hand at the end of the night.

New York, New York, what else is there?

Aloo Palak

This is really one of your pan-Indian classics. What makes it "regional" is the varying spices they use, and even the varying underlying frying fat they use.

In this presentation, we are going to do better than your average Indian mamma, and use classic Italian technique to turn a two-pot double-frying fiddly-mom-dish into a single potter without sacrificing absolutely anything.

At the heart of it is a rather simple idea (although the implementation may be complex.) In order to get flavor, you need to let vegetables fry first, and then boil/steam later. The point is that once you get even a reasonable amount of water in the dish, you are no longer frying but steaming/boiling so you really need to control the amount of moisture so that the stuff is actually frying not making the transition into boiling.

Everyone still with me?

Hoo-kay, onwards and upwards.

This is not one of those fiddly dishes. For some bizarre reason, what goes below is loved by adults and children, most likely for different reasons. This is what Indian mammas cook up when they are bored, or possibly when they are shtupping their boyfriends. Then they claim they made it because it's good for you (which it is.)

Whatever. Either way. Basic but delightful.

Ingredients

3 large potatoes (cubed)
2 bunches spinach (blanched, squeezed, diced fine)

1 large onion (diced fine)
1" ginger
4-5 Thai green chillies
3 cloves garlic

1 tbsp cumin
oil
salt (to taste)

Recipe
Grind the ginger, garlic, green chillies into a paste. Try and use as little water as possible.

First fry the onions.

Then fry the ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste. Toss in the cumin (not shown) towards the end.

Then fry the potatoes. This will try your patience big time. It takes bleedin' forever, and it tries everyone's patience. Learn how to deal.

Finally the spinach. You need to fry it for a while. If you plan to use frozen spinach, please read this note first.

When you are bored out of your skull, which you will be, add the water, and let it cook until the potatoes are tender (at least 10-12 minutes.)

Aloo palak

Salt

A post on salt. Ridiculous or relevant? You decide.

The CC is rapidly coming around to understanding the view that controlling salt is a key to controlling perception of taste.

Try this next time. Make a soup/stew without the salt. Taste it. Add salt. Taste it again.

Even y'all will find it obvious. Even fairly obvious flavors (like acidity) will reveal themselves only in the bold light of salt.

First up, we talk about commercial salt.

Drop it. NOW.

Iodine?

You get plenty of iodine, my love. You eat out enough, and they use plenty of iodized stuff. This is not our forefather's generation. So skip it. You don't need that much, anyway.

Next up, the cost.

The cheap sea salt (far from bad, incidentally) is a dollar cheaper than the commercial crap at the CC's local store.

So you don't live out here in New York, you claim? So drop two more dollars and skip a coffee, fer cryin' out loud!

Next up, the need for powder v. crystals.

This is the first serious objection that the CC will actually entertain because it matters. It's all good and dandy to drop sea salt crystals into a broth, or a soup, or a stew but what happens if you need to eat steak? Or popcorn?

This is serious no-messin' around territory. The CC is serious about his popcorn.

You need to invest in a "pepper grinder" and then fill it with salt. Or keep the commercial crap around anyway (this is a bit of a cheat but we're OK with that on this blog here as you might have noticed, just as long as it's not too egregious.)

At any rate, upgrade your salt.

Kapi (gkapi)

The motherlode.

The stuff that tests your commitment to serious Thai cuisine (and most serious Far East cuisines.) The line that separates the women from the girls.

The initial smell while frying? Intense; not entirely unpleasant but decidedly an acquired taste.

The initial smell while roasting? Over-the-top intense. Definitely a test of character and commitment to the culinary arts.

The taste? Indescribably silky-smooth "mouth feel" that is completely impossible to replicate + a layered complexity to the dish + umami up-the-wazoo.

How is it made? Perhaps you don't care to know in the spirit of not wanting to know how sausage is made. If so, bailout now.

Basically, there are these tiny shrimp called keuy, and they are macerated with tons of sea salt, and left to dry. The stuff is then macerated again with more salt, and left to dry, and so on and so forth until you get the above smooth dark-brown almost-purplish paste.

The stuff lasts pretty much indefinitely. Nothing is going to grow in that amount of salt.

The quality of the ingredients matter as does the care taken to produce it. Folks in the "know" are just as sniffy and snooty about their shrimp paste as they would be about the finest parmigiano-reggiano, or the finest miso or the finest mangoes.

Just for the record, here's a translation table:

Indonesian: terasi
Malay: belacan
Vietnamese: mắm tôm
Filipino: alamang

In practice, the CC has most commonly encountered the Thai + Malay words. Why, he cannot possibly tell you.

Go forth and enjoy. May all your sauces be rich and complex.

Vaal ni daal

This one here's a Gujarati classic.

We're going to make it the ol' school way. The irony of ironies is that the ol' school way is also the lazy person's way. Somewhere along the line there was a glitch in the transmission matrix, and generations of Indians have been wasting their time for no particular good reason.

As to who pissed in the pasta, the CC only has a vague guess, and no particular way of proving the hypothesis.

Rest happy in being modern (both indolent and ironic) and also ancient (preserving the flavor.)

Ingredients

1 cup vaal (split hulled field beans, soaked)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup cashewnuts

3 dried boriya chillies (read notes below)

1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ajwain (carom seeds)
asafoetida
salt

oil

Recipe

A few notes on the ingredients.

You need the vaal soaked at least for 5-6 hours. These are very soft beans, and are pretty much going to "disintegrate" in the recipe.

The boriya chillies are these round ones that you can just fish out at the end. They are called that because they look like berries. The word is a cognate of "berry".

You need these babies.

If you don't have them, just substitute by regular ones, or in the worst case, a tiny bit of chilli powder. However you're definitely missing something. These are unique, and you can't just wish them away. Even most the CC's relatives dumb it down but the CC has ol' school purist tendencies.

A final note. You will see the recipe call for sugar. That is a sign of failure. With just pure skill (and the notes below), you will be able to get that characteristic sweet taste without any sugar.

That's our old friend, Maestro Maillard one more time with two ingredients, the vaal itself which has a unique sweetish taste, and the raisins.

After all these notes, you may think that the recipe is hard. Au contraire, mes amis, the recipe is almost shockingly simple.

The pictures are not great but there's really no time in the first few steps. Apologies.


Fry the cumin, and the ajwain and the asafoetida (not shown.)


Then, the boriya chillies. Note the coloring of the cumin.


Then, the cashews.


And, the raisins.


Finally, the beans which you have to ensure are dry after the soaking because you want to fry them, not just boil them. Not yet, anyway.


Watch the color turn darker.


Finally, add the water. You can always add more later.


Let it simmer on a slow burn until the beans are soft to your liking. The CC likes them on the chewy side.

While it is cooking, you will "smell" the heat from the chillies. Trust your senses. Fish them out when it "feels" right. You will know exactly what the CC means by this the first time you make it. It's pretty unambiguous.

The chillies will add a slow smoldering subtle heat to the final proceedings. This is quite emphatically not a "hot" dish. If anything it verges on a balanced interplay of sweet-spicy-savory.

Vaal ni daal

A Note on Frozen Spinach

The CC recognizes the need to not do stuff from scratch. Sometimes it's just not possible, and sometimes you have a choice between getting ingredients in frozen form or not at all. This note really applies to all frozen greens.

First up, thaw the thing. Just throw it on the counter in the morning, and you'll be fine in the evening. If in a hurry, put it in a colander, and a basin of warm water. Periodically replace the water with more warm water.

Now, this is the good part. Most recipes call for you to stir-fry this stuff. With both fresh and frozen stuff, you need to squeeze the water out of the stuff.

Squeeze that mother; squeeze that mother dry; when you think you can't squeeze no more, squeeze it some more. SQUEEZE THAT THANG!!!

Ahem.

That's enough screaming for one day.

You'll get brilliant results with the above technique.

Why? Well, sweethearts, the science will just have to wait for a future post, won't it?