Low-Key Breakfast

Croissant and some soft scrambled eggs.

That Oppressive Crushing Feeling

Whenever, you are pressed for time, and worn down yet you need to crush roasted nuts for a recipe, and think that a mortar and pestle or a food processor (cleaning, cleaning!) are too much work, here's a useful Help for Hapless Harried Housewives™.

Put them in a plastic bag and/or plastic wrap, and crush them with a rolling pin.

No mess, no fuss! Just good food.

Asparagus Advice

Asparagus season will soon be upon us.

From Jane Grigson's Good Things:

How would you describe the best asparagus? Thick, certainly. Fresh certainly, as, whatever kind is grown, its flavor will deteriorate with delay. No argument here.

But after that, would you prefer it to be blanched white? Or white with a yellowish head? Or green and white streaked with pinkish purple? Or as green as possible?

The answer will tell me more about you than about absolute standards of asparagus perfection. Italians like white asparagus with a yellowish head. The French like their violet and green and white spears. And the English and Americans like unblanched, tender greenness. In our favor, I will modestly add that European chefs working in England have said, do still say, that our fresh asparagus beats all for flavor.

That’s the theory anyway. In practice, your answer would more likely have been curt, rather than considered: “The best asparagus is the asparagus I can afford — when I can find it.”

The CC bows in all humility to the wisdom of the sensei.

Astoria Shopping Trip

India : Day 5 : Post 2

These are vegetables on sale in a "slum" in New Delhi which ain't exactly a rural backwater. This is better than anything you can get for top dollar in New York or California at the height of the summer.

There's a serious problem somewhere, and since the CC likes to keep this blog apolitical (good luck, smartass!), you can figure out for yourself what the problem is.

India : Day 5 : Post 1

The fruit markets in Chandni Chowk at dawn.

Possibly the only "unknowns" are the guavas (first picture in the foreground) which might be "exotic".

Sharper viewers will note the Japanese in the background (hawking engine oil, if you read carefully.) There can't be too many Indians with a demand for engine oil who also happen to know Japanese. Which tells you that "exoticism" always sells.

On a related note, in his wasted youth, the CC once hung out with a buncha drunken Italians in a square in Florence. The CC found Florence exotic. The residents of fair Firenze found the CC (who lived in Chicago at the time) endlessly exotic. (Chicago!!!)

The movie being shown in the square was Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt. (German!!! Silent!!!)

The drink of choice on that lovely summer night was Long Island Iced Tea (not making this up.)

You takes your exoticism where you can find it.

Dim Sum in Flushing

As promised here, a few pictures of dim sum in Flushing.

For those not from New York, Flushing is in Queens, and any self-respecting gourmet would tell you that the cornucopia of Chinese food (of all stripes and varieties) is some of the best to be found. (Chinatown is touristy; Flushing is "authentic".)

The fish balls were excellent. The chicken feet are too fatty for the CC. The tripe was excellent!

Mac 'n Cheese (with Veggies)

As always, it's always useful to revisit the classics.

The CC trusts y'all are smart enough to figure out how to add veggies to the béchamel.

(Recipe: link.)

The Omnivorous Vegetarian

No food blog would be complete without talking about eating morals. Mostly it's just a lot of self-righteous hooey and chest thumping but at the core there is a key moral question.

Is it right to kill animals for your pleasure?

If you believe not then the logic is pretty darned clear.

If you believe it is then you must accept the premise that you may not waste any of it. Eat the nasty bits, so to speak. Hence, tripe, hearts, lungs, livers and the whole head-to-tail thing.

This is the injection of the vegetarian moral position into the omnivorous debate. Kill but waste not. A perfectly logical position that traditionally hss homes in as disparate places as Italy and China.

The CC is an omnivore. However, he is intelligent enough to recognize the "other" position.

What baffles him is the in-between position - "I'll eat this but not that."

This isn't preference which is natural. "I hate everything Egyptian", Goethe once said. That is taste. This is fear. And being scared of food is a horrible horrible thing.

So pick a side, any side. It just doesn't matter (except to you.)

But be consistent.

India Trip : Day 4 : Post 1

Eventually the CC had to go all "Anthony Bourdain" on you! You knew it was inevitable. Admit it!

Street food in all its gargantuan genius. The gaudy glittery glory of the glitzy gutters!

Eat your heart out, Ferran Adrià, you tarty little bitch! You'll never conquer this experience. You're just another Escoffier-whore and you know it!

Deep breath, CC, deep breath. Focus, focus, focus!

...

...

... and we're back.

You really had to be there but the short version is that if it's fried, it's filled with hit-me-back umami, and it's addictive, what more can you ask for?

We really need to put that on a bumper sticker.

The fried potatoes in the spicy mint sauce, and the same fried potatoes separately in chaat masala are to die for.

Wondrous cheek-bulging battles were forged while gulping gourmands greedily grabbed as much as they could gobble ("Hello?!? we can order more, goodly geniuses!")

Hyper-purists will note that there is a "big" difference between "Delhi chaat" and "Bombay chaat" (pictures of the latter will be posted at a future date.)

Whatevs, daaahlink!!! Let's cut through the crap.

Why pick one when you can have them all?

The Haul

Trip to Astoria - salted anchovies (fresh and canned), dried Greek oregano, bay leaves, two kinds of oil, three kinds of beans, shrimp paste, sun-dried tomatoes, rose water, screwpine water, canned squid in their own ink, canned anchovies and capers in salt, golden raisins.

All for less than the price of an average meal.

Verily, in this city you can live like a God - something even the Roman emperors would be jealous of.

But ya gotta know how to cook!

India Trip : Day 4 : Post 1

Refillable soda bottles. Called goli soda (= marble soda) because they contain a little marble that you press down on which gets stopped by the shape of the bottle (see second pic.)

You drinks your drink; then it goes back to the bottler who pops the marble back up using a vacuum.

The original eco-friendly design.