Asparagavaganza!!!

Eight pounds of asparagus and eight eaters. You do the math!

Asparagus with different salts
Bruschetta with asparagus, peas and pecorino
Asparagus Soup
Rotini with Asparagus & Walnuts in a Lemon, Goat Cheese Sauce

Practical Herb Lore

Practical stuff for people who are growing the herbs in a window garden.

Don't water them too much. Wait till they look droopy, and give them a little water. They will recover rapdily. This pretty much eliminates the risk they will get attacked by fungus and pests. And only give them very little water (the CC cannot emphasize this point enough!) This means more "monitoring" but c'est la vie.

Give them a lot of sunlight. (The CC realizes this is not under your control. Do your best.)

Give up your fantasies of growing bushels of basil, etc. You are basically gonna grow stuff to add as accents to recipes and are still going to be dependent on the market when you need large quantities. They grow extraordinarily slowly indoors. (If you have large pots and a verandah, this doesn't apply to you.)

Bon appetit!

"Cooking Makes You Human"

An excellent review from the New York Times: Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid.

Human beings are not obviously equipped to be nature’s gladiators. We have no claws, no armor. That we eat meat seems surprising, because we are not made for chewing it uncooked in the wild. Our jaws are weak; our teeth are blunt; our mouths are small. That thing below our noses? It truly is a pie hole.

To attend to these facts, for some people, is to plead for vegetarianism or for a raw-food diet. We should forage and eat the way our long-ago ancestors surely did. For Richard Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard and the author of “Catching Fire,” however, these facts and others demonstrate something quite different. They help prove that we are, as he vividly puts it, “the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame.”

“Catching Fire” is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution, one he calls “the cooking hypothesis,” one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.

“Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”

He then delivers a thorough, delightfully brutal takedown of the raw-food movement and its pieties. He cites studies showing that a strict raw-foods diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply, and notes that, in one survey, 50 percent of the women on such a diet stopped menstruating. There is no way our human ancestors survived, much less reproduced, on it. He seems pleased to be able to report that raw diets make you urinate too often, and cause back and hip problems.

Mr. Wrangham also dismisses, for complicated social and economic reasons, the popular Man-the-Hunter hypothesis about evolution, which posits that meat-eating alone was responsible. Meat eating “has had less impact on our bodies than cooked food,” he writes. “Even vegetarians thrive on cooked diets. We are cooks more than carnivores.”

This is an eminently judicious argument for one extraordinarily simple reason - that plants have no defense mechanisms against predators is completely risible.

And we humans are fierce predators!

It just turns out that the various fiery techniques - roasting, steaming, boiling, etc. negate the defense mechanims in very aggressive ways (for example, look here.)

The CC may make fun of the vegetables occasionally because they are effectively guilt-seeking hairshirt-types with a completely bullshit pseudo-moralistic view of the world (and the CC is a frisky, guilt-free, pleasure-maximizing hedonistic omnivore) but the vegans and the raw-foods are the complete and utter retards. They simply do not understand at a functional level how cooking and eating actually proceeds. To cut the crap, they are simply wrong.

Mixed Vegetable Coconut Curry

Naah, it's not quite aviyal (no yogurt) but the CC likes this better.

(Recipe to follow - how else to get you to read, huh?)

Authors

The CC rarely comments on food writers but rest assured that Michael Ruhlman is one of the absolute worst food writers that ever lived and ever will live. He's clearly made his career by sucking the right cocks!

His book, The Making of a Chef is an absolute disaster. How it got past the editor's table is a fuckin' mystery!

It's filled with dangling pronouns. How can that work? You have no clue who "his/her/he/she" refers to. It's unbelievable that an editor actually let that book past the editing table. It's total garbage. The chapters are incoherent. You have no clue who did what to whom and what food substance in what order!

And they let him write a sequel. Un-fuckin'-believable!

It's shit, shit, shit -- shit, shit, shit, shit.

And the blogosphere is all over blabbering over his man's latest book? The CC shits over his book just on general principle.

Jeebus Cripus, if this man can "write", then Nixon's presidency is a bloody masterpiece of politics!

Tortellini in brodo di pomodoro

The brodo (broth) comes from here and the tortellini come from here.

You think the CC exaggerates but he would kill for this stuff on a weekly basis. Just the smell of the broth, just the smell.

Toss in some fresh oregano to make it all better.

But he doesn't have to. It's quite easy to make. Takes time but no effort (embrace the difference, cooking warriors!)

So what exactly is your excuse?

Idlis

After pissing around forever, the CC has finally managed to make the idlis of his dreams.

Fluffy, fluffy, fluffy, fluffy, fluffy deliciousness.

Here are the practical problems in a nutshell:

The CC lives in a colder climate. The CC lives in a climate where there is serious temperature variation between day and night. The CC lives in a drier climate.

All of these are real problems that need to be solved. Many of these do not apply to the Californicators or those in God's Waiting Room, the Floridians. Congratulations on your luck!

Ingredients

1 tbsp fenugreek seeds (soaked)
urad (soaked)
idli rava (read below)

patience (and lots of it!)

Recipe

Soak the fenugreek seeds and the urad for 6-8 hours.

Grind the crap out of the stuff to produce an extremely smooth paste with as little of the soaked water as possible.

Now, add 2.5 portions of the idli rava by volume. Add some water to make a thickish paste.

Now, comes the patience part. You need to let the stuff ferment in a warm-ish place at a relatively stable temperature. What only takes overnight in India can easily take four days out in the US. An oven with a pilot light works wonders.

Some auxiliary observations:

Do not add salt up front. This prevents the sourdough from forming.

Do not use chlorinated water.

If the batter seems dried out, add water and stir periodically.

The thing will ferment eventually, and you will get fluffy soft idlis.

Patience, young Jedis!

Who's Your Pasta-Daddy, Huh?

Well, the CC was drawn back to the well of desire which is hardly surprising.

They are so sanguine about the CC that they don't ask what the CC wants but how many pounds is the CC willing to carry today!

Love or co-dependent pasta drug-dealers - you decide!

A Sichuan Meal (at Home)

Stir-fried mushrooms with Chiles and Sichuan Pepper
Lotus roots in sweet-and-sour sauce
(Source: Fuchsia Dunlop.)

Recipes to follow. (And just for the record, the CC thinks she walks on water!)

Thai Green Curry with Bay Scallops

(Source: Kasma Loha-Unchit.)

Couple of notes. Used bay scallops instead of making the dumplings.

The green sauce is more like a green-gray sauce. It seems to me that commercial sauces (whether packaged or in restaurants) must be adding cilantro leaves to make it greener.

The CC added veggies as the Thai are wont to do as well. (There are eggplants, carrots and baby corn in there.)

Asparagus Soup

This is a wondrous testament to Italian cucina povera, cooking born in poverty which produces magic with the most minimal of cheap and throwaway ingredients.

The sore "indulgence" here is the asparagus. The broth is made out of water and the rind of a piece of parmigiano-reggiano.

You'll have to eat it to believe it!

Ingredients

1 bunch asparagus
1 large red onion

1 parmigiano-reggiano rind

4 cups water
salt
lots of black pepper

dried bread crusts to serve

Recipe

Separate the asparagus heads from the stems. Cut the stems into rounds.

Fry the onions and garlic at a low heat. This will take the better part of 12-14 minutes. Fry the asparagus rounds for a while. Add the water, the parm rind, salt and pepper and bring to a slow boil.

Let it simmer for 40 mins or so. Keep skimming the stuff that comes to the top. Remove the rind.

Blend the mixture, and pass through a fine sieve. Bring to a heat again. Add the heads just before serving. Serve over dried bread crusts.

On Martinis

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most,
After three, I'm under the table,
After four, I'm under my host.
Who else but the inimitable Dorothy Parker?

Beech Mushrooms

The CC had never ever heard of these but he encountered some at a Korean supermarket and was hard-pressed to resist. Called buna shimeji in Japanese, they are tiny and must be cooked. Lovely in stir-fries or soups or even to add depth of flavor to a mushroom stock.

Krachai (gkrachai)

Krachai is a rhizome that is used in Thai cooking. Usually found in the pickled form. It has a unique perfumy scent and is generally used in seafood-based curries.

Fresh Pasta

The CC has a new toy - a pasta maker.

It's easy enough to make fresh pasta (shown below - drying) but hoo boy! does the thing make an unholy mess!!! It's like a flour bomb went off in the kitchen.

Fresh pasta cooks very very quickly - barely three minutes will get you to al dente.

The recipe is simple enough. Fry rosemary in butter, fry the peas. Add the fresh pasta, top with grated parm.

Fresh Pasta with Rosemary and Peas

Cucumber Gazpacho

Ingredients

2 lbs cucumber (peeled, coarsely chopped)
8-10 sorrel leaves
2 cloves garlic
4 cups yogurt

8-10 dried baguette slices

salt
black pepper

Recipe

Blanch the sorrel leaves really quickly (less than 15 seconds or so or they will just "melt".)

Soak the bread in some water for about 15 minutes.

Pull it out, squeeze the water out. Place all the ingredients in a blender, and blend.

Pass through a fine sieve.

Chill and serve.

Snakes on a Plate

The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports: Man finds snake head in his broccoli.

The sight of a severed snake's head under his broccoli made Jack Pendleton lose interest in dessert.

Pendleton said he found the head, the size of the end of his thumb, while eating Sunday at the T.G.I. Friday's in Clifton Park.

Pendleton said he ordered vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich. When he started to eat his broccoli, he saw something gray on the plate he at first thought was a mushroom. "I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch," he said.

Next he saw a V-shape that turned out to be the mouth of a snake. "I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top," he said. The severed head also had bits of tendon and part of the spine attached, he said.

"I stopped eating. I told my girlfriend, 'I think this is a head,'" he said.

Pendleton snapped a photo with his cellphone camera, then summoned the waiter. He covered the dish with his hand and described his find.

"He thought I was joking until I took my hand away," Pendleton said. The waiter grabbed the plate and took it back to the kitchen, the diner said.

He and his girlfriend had planned to attend a carnival after their meals, he said, but as he pulled into the lot he decided he didn't have the stomach to go on the rides.

King Oyster Mushrooms

King oyster mushrooms (pleurotus eryngii) have a wonderful meaty texture and all the umami of the mushroom family.

Why these wonders of the mushroom family are not better known is beyond the CC's ken!

Naw-mai Farang Pad Nahm Man Hoi

Stir-Fried Asparagus & Oyster Mushrooms in Garlic Oyster Sauce.

Simple to make and absurdly scrumpalicious if you have the ingredients (isn't that always that way?)

(Source: Kasma Loha-Unchit.)

Decadence Florentine Style

The CC has already talked before about the Tuscan love of beans but today he encountered a Florentine recipe from the decadent 1920's that calls for Beluga caviar served on top of white bean paste (fagioli con caviale.) The author tartly observes that "surely this must be the most expensive way of salting your beans!"

Greater Depression Casualties

The New York Times reports: Balducci’s Makes a Quiet Exit From Manhattan.

If social scientists were hunting for recent clues of gastronomical excess, they would need to look no further than the lonely bottles and tins left on the shelves of Balducci’s, the landmark gourmet market that closed its two Manhattan shops on Sunday.

Among the remains at the West 66th location, across from the Juilliard School, at midday Sunday despite discounts of up to 60 percent: Pomodoro Basilico dipping oil. Strawberry Sizzle vinegar. Canned stuffed peppers, regular price $15.99. Goose foie gras, normally $49.99 a tin. Bottles of Tasmanian rainwater “captured from the purest skies on earth” (and a relative bargain at $4.39, before the discount).

“Do you really need chipotle raspberry finishing sauce? What is finishing sauce?” asked Barbara Colasanti, a 45-year-old teacher who lives in the West Village, as she perused the scanty pickings at Balducci’s vaulted, marble-walled and echoingly empty Chelsea store at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street. “People don’t need all this stuff. It’s a lesson.”

The closing of Balducci’s, the World War II-era gourmet market that was once the foremost pit stop for New York foodies, elicited myriad reactions from its customers, who met news of its last days in the city with surprise, sadness and, in the case of Ms. Colasanti, shrugs. Some viewed the closing as tragic, others as a necessary corrective in these newly pared-back times.

“They priced themselves out of the market, it was hubris,” said Ms. Colasanti, who was a devotee of the flagship Balducci’s at Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, which closed in 2003 and is now the site of a Citarella.

Overrated, overpriced and overhyped - it will not be missed.

Turning Pigeons into Squabs

Many many many moons ago when the CC was but a tender child, his father's friend asked him if he wanted to see a neighbor's pigeons which were on the roof. The CC jumped up instantaneously. There were cages of cages of them on the roof (lots of space and the cages were huge!)

Only recently, in retrospect, did the CC figure out what the pigeons were being bred for!

Nettles

Yes, the stinging nettles are actually edible, and they are delicious.

The sting is a potent mix of formic acid, histamine and serotonin. Remember they are just trying not to get eaten from an evolutionary point of view!

However, if you pick the young leaves (using gloves) and blanch them in hot water, they turn edible. A wonderful illustration of humanity's transformation of a wide range of inedible raw substances into edible ones through the transformative power of heat.

(Which is why the "raw food" movement is a buncha horseshit. Ahem!)

They have a wild green taste with a zingy peppery bite.

The Chez Panisse Cookbooks

This is definitely flat-out heresy but the CC has never actually liked any of them. He still owns most of them, and plans to hold onto them but they are NOT recommended for the average person.

What would be the problem?

For starters, many are just badly edited. You read a recipe, and you end up screaming "No Way!" while everyone looks at if you were a madman. The proportions are clearly wrong. You can't just scale down stuff from a restaurant as explained here.

Then, there's the obvious problem that nobody but nobody can achieve that in an average kitchen. Either it's a question of BTU's, baby, or the cost of ingredients since we're trying to run a tight ship over here. We don't like to eat the same crap the next day either so least counts matter.

Then, there's the Francophilic-lovefest which is soooooooo passé. We don't eat that way any more. Nor do the French, incidentally.

In a world awash in excellent Thai food and and Senegalese food and Sichuan food, the Francophilia sticks out like a cram in your craw.

So suck it, bitch, this ain't no one-dimensional world no more. Even over in Paris, they went ga-ga over Vietnamese four decades ago. Long before the CC was born!

Overall, the CC would just say "Skip it! There be better books out there. Their time and cultural importance has passed."

The Mercado in Florence : Part 3 : Poultry

The tiny birds which are unmarked are quails.

Why "hot dogs" are sold with "poultry" is best left to the imagination.

Pasta all'Arrabbiata

The name translates to "angry pasta".

Anyone who knows the CC knows that that just drives him into paroxysms of delight because that moniker could be applied equally well to the CC.

Fans of the Sopranos will also note that Tony named his bodyguard, Perry Annuziata in a punning gem as "Penne Arrabbiata".

Fiery, we're talking fiery here.

The basic idea of this fiery Roman delight stretches back into the mists of time. Lots of garlic and hot pepper and a dash of anchovies (= umami) for a tasty, tingly delight.

(Traditionally, guanciale is also used for the umami as opposed to the more expensive, anchovies or its ancient equivalent, garum.)

Ingredients

1 lb rigatoni (or penne)

1 lb tomatoes (skinned, cored, coarsely chopped)
1 red onion (finely chopped)
4 cloves garlic (crushed)
5-6 dried red peppers (or more!)
2-3 anchovies
olive oil

1 cup red wine

oregano/parsley (if desired)

salt
black pepper

pecorino romano (grated)

Recipe

It's obvious enough. Fry the onions and garlic at a low heat until golden but not caramelized. Toss in the red peppers and fry for a while. Add the anchovies. Fry till they "dissolve".

Deglaze the pan with the red wine. Scrape with a wooden spoon to get the bits off the pan.

Add the tomatoes, salt and black pepper to taste. Cook for 15 minutes at a low heat. Crush the tomatoes for that "rustic" feel if you are using canned.

Cook the penne till al dente. Mix and serve with the pecorino romano on top.

Cooking with Wine

There are only two simple rules.

1. Don't use wine you wouldn't drink. (e.g. that crap in your fridge sitting for a week is a bad idea.)

2. Don't use expensive wine 'cause it doesn't matter.

Or to review it one more time:

Use a good, very cheap wine to cook.

Some more herb lessons

Well, the afore-mentioned oregano plant has died. The CC is quite sad but c'est la vie.

The CC has decided to persevere and has purchased a second oregano plant along with basil and cilantro plants.

Onwards and upwards.

The rest seem to be flourishing so far. It's been a cold wet spring with not enough sunshine. That might've been the problem.

The Mercado in Florence : Part 2 : Animals

Poultry and rabbits and lambs - oh my!

Herb Lessons

Ever since the CC started growing a window-sill herb garden, he's been buffeted with advice.

Everyone knows that house plants die from overwatering. A little judicious neglect is better than "loving" them too much. (a moral that owners of very fat pets should learn!)

What they don't tell you that oregano needs a lot more water than what is claimed. The CC has managed to make it wilt twice (it has recovered and flourished both times so far.)

Experience v. Theory. It's not even a fair battle.

The Mercado in Florence : Part 1 : Tripe

Courtesy of the same friend, some pictures from Florence.

All the parts of a calf, pig or cow are for sale. Most considered Florentine delicacies. A bit like being at an anatomy lesson said my friend. Special note to be made of the beef nerves and pig lungs.

Shocked animal-eaters and vegetarians should note that this is both eco-friendly and rooted in a culture of respect of the animal by not wasting any of its parts.

Cuts of Beef

Virtually every culture differs on how to cut the cow. Perhaps the most precise (and most anal-retentive, it goes without saying) were the Austrians during the era of the Hapsburg Empire.

The CC presents an excerpt from a classic ("Tafelspitz for the Hofrat") by the great Joseph Wechsberg.

To read it in its entirety, and it's definitely one of the best food tales the CC has ever read, you'll have to go to the source. The apotheosis of the story would be hard pressed to be matched.

Few Americans think of boiled beef as the gastronomic treat it is known for in Central Europe. In Vienna there was a restaurant that was held in high esteem by local epicures for its boiled beef -- twenty-four different varieties of it, to be exact.

The restaurant was Meissl & Schadn, and the boiled beef specialties of the house were called Tafelspitz, Tafeldeckel, Rieddeckel, Beinfleisch, Rippenfleisch, Kavalierspitz, Kruspelspitz, Hieferschwanzl, Schulterschwanzl, Schulterscherzel, Mageres Meisel (or Mäuserl), Fettes Meisel, Zwerchried, Mittleres Kügerl, Dünnes Kügerl, Dickes Kügerl, Bröserlfleisch, Ausgelöstes, Brustkern, Brustfleisch, Weisses Scherzl, Schwarzes Seberzl, Zapfel, and Ortschwanzl.

The terminology was bound to stump anyone who had not spent the first half of his adult life within the city limits of Vienna. It was concise and ambiguous at the same time; even Viennese patriarchs did not always agree exactly where the Weisses Scherzl ended and the Ortschwanzl began. Fellow Austrians from the dark, Alpine hinterlands of Salzburg and Tyrol rarely knew the fine points of distinction between, say, Tafelspitz, Schwarzes Scherzl, and Hieferschwanzl -- all referred to in America, with extreme vagueness, as brisket or plate of beef -- or between the various Kügerls. Old-time Viennese butchers with the self-respect and the steady hand of distinguished surgeons were able to dissect the carcass of a steer into thirty-two different cuts and four grades of meat. Among the first-quality cuts were not only tenderloin, porterhouse, sirloin, and prime rib of beef, as elsewhere, but also fine cuts used exclusively for boiling: two Scherzls, two Schwanzls, and Tafelspitz. In old Vienna, unlike present-day America, where a steer is cut up in a less complicated, altogether different manner, only the very best beef was considered good enough to be boiled.

You had to be a butcher, a veterinarian, or a Meissl & Schadn habitué of long standing to know the exact characteristics of these Gustostückerln. Many Viennese had been born in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's provinces of Upper Austria, Serbia, Slovakia, South Tyrol, Bohemia, or Moravia. (Even today certain pages of the Vienna telephone directory contain as many Czech-sounding names as the Prague directory.) These ex-provincials were eager to obliterate their un-Viennese past; they tried to veneer their arrivisme; they wanted to be more Viennese than the people born and brought up there. One way to show one's Bodenständigkeit was to display a scholarly knowledge of the technical terms for boiled beef. It was almost like the coded parlance of an exclusive club. In Vienna, a person who couldn't talk learnedly about at least a dozen different cuts of boiled beef, didn't belong, no matter how much money he'd made, or whether the Kaiser had awarded him the title of Hofrat (court councilor) or Kommerzialrat.

The Rialto Market

Pictures from Venice courtesy a friend who's currently visiting. Clearly identifiable are the cuttlefish (seppie), octopus, bronzini, flounder, clams, pilgrim scallop (ventaglio), various kinds of prawns and crabs.

CC, CC, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?


L to R: mint, parsley, thyme, oregano, chives, sage, tarragon, rosemary

Molecular Gastronomy

A group of influential international chefs have sequestered since yesterday in Alicia, Spain. Their mission has been to find a more palatable term for the dreaded “Molecular Gastronomy”. The consensus seems to be leaning towards ORGASMIC, an acronym for ORganoleptics, Gastronomy, Art, & Science Meet In Cuisine. A final vote on the proposed name change is scheduled for tomorrow morning, followed by the unveiling at a press conference.

The Creative Dinosaur Special

Somebody has an amazing sense of humor.

The Conservativeness of Addiction

Ever go to a favorite restaurant and order the same thing every single time?

The CC is addicted to the pansoti at this particular restaurant. They are homemade ravioli stuffed with wild-greens (nettle, dandelion, borage, wild chard) and served with a garlicky, lip-smacking walnut sauce.

The rest of the menu is excellent but the CC succumbs to the inevitable every single time because you can't find this elsewhere.

This is a pattern. We stick to the familiar when we should really experiment. Particularly when we know that the quality of the product is likely to be amazing or even excellent.

Excellence breeds conservatism.

Especially when we don't get to the restaurant often or it's in a reasonably far-out place (read this post as to why that would happen.) We keep trying to recreate that first menu that blew our socks off when we really should be adventurous and try something else given that the absolute worst case is likely to be a "good" meal rather than an "amazing" meal.

The only logical explanation is when the restaurant is rather pricey in which case the CC supposes that people are justified in being somewhat conservative. Even then his inner instinct argues for the opposite fully well knowing that he doesn't exactly always follow his own dictum.

The only solution that the CC has come up with is to dictate by fiat that nobody (including himself) will be ordering an old dish, and if they want to they can sit at a different table. When forced to, the denizens of the world find a creative solution. It works via a radical upending of the social structure but it's not always possible.

Anybody have any interesting ideas on how to approach the problem a little more creatively?

Petai

The CC went to a Malaysian restaurant where a dish called sambal petai caught his eye. It was described as made with "Malaysian peas" but had a note: "please consult the server before you order".

Needless to say instructions like that are catnip for the CC, and when asked, the waitress replied that they were "peas" that were bitter and warned us. Needless to say, the CC felt compelled to order the dish. (Of course, later when we told the waitress that we loved the dish, she beamed at us with great fondness and pride as if she had known all along that we would love it.)

They were not "peas" of course but a species of bean called parkia speciosa. The colloquial name seems to be "stink bean" which seems a bit unfair because there was nothing stinky about it. Of course, it had been stir-fried with the very strong shrimp paste in a sweet-sour-umami sauce along with other veggies and shrimp. (The sourness came from tamarind.)

The taste is best described as slightly bitter with an astringent component. They are decidedly an acquired taste (what bitter food including beer isn't?) but quite delicious.

Recycling your leftovers

The original rice
The same thing stir-fried a few days later (after the rice has "dried out") with some eggs.

And that is how you waste precious little, my fellow depression-istas!

Just Pregnant with Possibilities

The world continues to amaze the CC.

It's a Japanese (who else?) soft-drink made from "horse placenta". Two varieties - orange and black. The black one is "more concentrated" because it is harvested "while the afterbirth is still potent."

It has all kinds of supposed "good" qualities - and will set you back $50 and $300 respectively.

Even the CC is feeling just the tiniest bit squeamish.

Laziness

Everyone is too lazy to cook sometimes. That's when the twin forces of laziness and the need for good food collide. Thankfully, in the CC's case, the latter always wins. And those are the times to get back to the basics.

Since, this is a post about laziness, first read this about technique.

Then, the basic concept is "loosely cooked rice" stir-fried with cumin, vegetables (carrots, peas, corn) and cashews.

If you can't grasp the recipe, read the archives.

Peace, man!

Vegetable Pulao with Cumin

Grilling Tandoori Chicken

The general recipe has been posted here.

The CC works his ass off, and people want originality but they don't bother reading all the good stuff that has been published before.

Of such laziness is a readership made!

Hash Browns and Scrambled Eggs

There is only one trick to making successful hash browns. You need extraordinarily dry potatoes where the cells are broken to remove the moisture.

To that end, you must first grate the potatoes and then wash them (to remove surface starch.) Then you need to squeeze them until they are dry. Then place them between towels, and squeeze them with a rolling pin to squeeze out even more liquid. Then squeeze them again.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Then, squeeze some more!

Then put them in a very hot skillet with oil and fry. Spread them in an extraordinarily thin layer, and press periodically with a spatula. Only if they are really dry, are you going to be able to do the successful "omelette" flip.

(For less dexterous people, slide it onto a plate, invert onto another plate and slide it back into the hot skillet. This is safe, efficient and guaranteed to succeed.)

For instructions on scrambled eggs, read here.

Making Hash Browns

(Source: xkcd.)

Creating Novelty

Long before, the advent of "nouvelle cuisine", the grandmas of virtually every cuisine in the world were technically adept at creating novelty out of nowhere.

Faced with the seasonality of ingredients, how do you create "interesting" food day after day after day, in a world where the airplane and refrigeration had yet to be invented, and the audience (as always) craved novelty?

The answer is shockingly simple - vary the proportion of spices.

You can serve the meat with more black pepper than ginger, and vice versa, and bingo! they taste different.

And since this scales exponentially in the number of ingredients (Ed: math geek alert!), this is a game that the grandmas were good at, and doggone it, they were not playing for mere stakes, they were playing to win!

Which brings us to the present. Multiple recipes for the same idea. Whenever the CC posts a classic spice recipe, there is a hangover that follows ("my family does it differently.")

Well, DUH!!!! Of course, they do. Which doesn't make it more "authentic". It just makes it as the baseline against which you compare.

The CC once made string beans with a classic North-Indian twist. Stir-fried with ajwain and cumin. The audience just pushed it away.

"This is not how I conceptualize string beans."

Total abject failure. Not one would eat it.

"Where's the coconut milk?", said one, his Asian roots showing.

Anyway, to get back to the subject before yet another post about the dubiousness of "authenticity" surfaces, back in the day, they made these spices in industrial-strength sizes. We are a little more circumspect, and need to tone it down a bit as explained by this post.

So when the next need to complain about "authenticity" arises, why not just lie down until it goes away?

Dinner Menu

Chole à la "Kwality's"
♦
Sukke with brussel sprouts, broccoli rabe and carrots
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Parathas

Breakfast chez le CC

Tomato fried rice

I ♥ Kuhn-Rikon

The most expensive piece of equipment in the CC's kitchen. The Rolls-Royce of pressure cookers which you may only pry away from the CC out of his "cold dead hands".

Adminis-trivia

The CC has had a hard-drive crash (quite a bit of picture loss) and is coincidentally down with a nasty cold but he'll be back.

Sautéed Almond-Stuffed Dates

Ever see a recipe and you instinctively know it's going to be brilliant?

Ingredients

24 dates
24 whole blanched almonds
2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
fine sea salt

(Source: Patricia Wells)

Recipe

Pit the dates but don't cut all the way through. Stuff with the almond.

Heat the oil in a pan over moderate heat. Add the stuffed dates and sauté until they are lightly browned. Season lightly with sea salt and serve.

Pan-tastic!!!

Yahoo! reports: Lagasse replaces pan woman used to fend off attack.

Chef Emeril Lagasse says he felt so bad when he heard a woman lost one of his trademark pans while warding off home intruders that he's replacing the item.

Lagasse is sending 70-year-old Ellen Basinski a whole new set of his signature cookware.

She used her favorite pan to fight the intruders at her home west of Cleveland on Tuesday. Police then took it from her to be used as evidence.

Basinski was on the phone with her husband when the teens pushed their way into her home.

Her husband, Lorain County Judge David Basinski, overheard the scuffle, called 911 and raced home. Meanwhile, his wife says she grabbed the 5-quart saucepan and hit one teen, who was going through her purse.

The four were arrested. The judge said his wife was upset that her pan was seized by police.

Wild Rice, Quinoa and Coconut Pilaf

This recipe pretty much has Berkeley and the Summer of Love written all over it but it's quite terrific.

Ingredients

1 cup wild rice (rinsed)
1/2 cup quinoa (rinsed)

1" ginger (grated)
3 Thai chillies (diced into rounds)
1 tsp mustard seeds
3 cardamom pods

1/2 cup dried unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

salt
black pepper

lime juice
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (missing in picture below)

Recipe

Boil the wild rice with salt at medium heat for 30 minutes. Add the quinoa and continue cooking it for an additional 20 mins. Drain if necessary.

Heat a wok with some oil. Fry the mustard seeds until they pop. Add the black pepper, cardamom, ginger, chillies and fry for a bit. Add the walnuts and coconut and fry for a bit.

Toss in the wild rice-quinoa mixture. Add the cilantro, and adjust the salt to taste. A squeeze of lime livens up the taste.

What they never tell you ...

Ever tried to make a perfect French omelette? Did you fail?

If so, you're not alone.

If you try and make one out of Julia Child, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail. Which is pretty shocking because the perfect French omelette is not only absurdly easy but one of those joys of life that should be experienced sooner rather than later, and preferably weekly at that.

What's the real problem?

What she does describe is a specific technique that works for the kinda pan that she is thinking about and the kinda burner she is working with rather than explaining the general principle that can work with any pan and any burner. She probably never grasped the general principle herself.

You don't need any of that banging or smacking or wrist-rolling if you actually bother to understand the science behind the French omelette.

Let's split this up into two parts. What makes the French omelette so delicious?

It's light, fluffy, moist, the egg is layered, and barely cooked; the center is all moist and juicy and terrifically (Ed: no such word, love!) delicious.

So how do you make it work in practice?

The correct answer (which they never tell you) is that it depends on the thermal capacity of the pan (= how quickly does it heat up + retain heat) and the thermal output of the burner (= how many calories is that baby pumping out each second?)

In short, each situation is different, and you pretty much kinda need to grasp the science behind the entire problem before you can nail the omelette. Or to put it more bluntly, reading Julia Child is a humongous waste of time since she doesn't actually expound the principles involved.

And onwards we go to the real principles.

Eggs cook quickly so the general principle is to use low heat. The omelette is the exception where you need to crank the burner all the way up to "medium high" because of the flat area involved.

To get the layered effect, there are two ways. Scrape the edges inward in a radial fashion (lightly and quickly) to get the effect while "rolling" the wet stuff into that spot, or use a teflon scraper and roll the wet egg mixture "underneath" the edges to get the layers.

Goal: never let any of the original mixture stay in contact with the hot pan for "long enough".

Lightly cook + no contact with hot pan = moist wet juicy deliciousness (Ed: this is not a porn video!)

And in both cases, you need to take the skillet off the heat LONG before the end because it still has some thermal capacity. (The same principle applies if you need a "filled omelette".)

Yep, this takes some practice. But these general principles are far more useful than the generically wasteful Julia Child full of banging and smacking and other generalities that can only lead you to the orthopedic surgeon pretty quickly.

It's quite easy, really. Try it!

You'll end up loving both the French omelette and the CC.

Raffetto's

This is the best place to buy fresh pasta in the city. They supply half the restaurants. Those lucky few who've had it know what the CC is talking about!

Besides, endorsing them heartily (not that they need it - they've been in business since 1906!), the real purpose is to put their hours online. Seriously, they are nowhere to be found.

Raffetto's
144 W Houston St, New York, NY

Hours:
Sun-Mon closed
Tue-Fri 9:00am - 6:30pm
Sat 9:00am - 6:00pm.

Will you be my ... Clementine?

A cross between the sweet orange and the Mandarin, they are easy to peel and generally seedless. They appear in the markets around the New Year and into February-ish.

Dee-lish-ishly dee-lish but they perish quickly.

The Eightfold Way

A baking pan in the form of an octopus.

Nope, the CC can't make this kinda shit up! You better believe it.

Scrambled Eggs in Tomato Sauce

There is only one trick to excellent scrambled eggs - low heat.

Just enough to scramble them and leave them deliciously moist.

Ingredients

6 eggs
1 red onion (sliced into very thin semi-rounds)
tomato sauce
1/2 cup chopped parsley

olive oil
grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper


Recipe

Beat the eggs along with the parm, salt and pepper.

Fry the onions at a low heat until limp but not caramelized. Fry the tomato sauce until reduced. Add the eggs, and scramble until barely set and glisteningly moist.

Take it off the heat, and mix in the parsley.

Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Walnuts and Feta

This was inspired by one of the CC's favorite food blogs. The CC has "fixed" her mistakes (Ed: is this how you hope to "win friends and influence people"?)

This is one of those dishes whose strong flavors shine with whole wheat pasta rather than the regular kind.

It really is terrific. Mere words cannot describe its terrificity (Ed: there's no such word, love!)

The two-step is totally worth the effort. Yeah, it takes more time but you get better results. Results, people, results! (Ed: stop beating them over the head.)

Ingredients

1 large cauliflower
1 red onion (sliced into semi-rounds.)
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup walnuts

1 lb whole wheat pasta

1/2 cup crumbled feta
1/2 cup chopped parsley

1 pinch red pepper flakes
2 tbsp white wine vinegar

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

grated parmiagino-reggiano (to serve)

(Source: modified from Smitten Kitchen.)

Recipe

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Mix with olive oil, salt and lots of black pepper, and roast in a 450°F until the cauliflower is lightly roasted. Roughly 15-18 mins.

Toast the walnuts in a skillet. Break them into edible pieces.

Cook the whole wheat pasta until just under al dente.

Fry the onions at a low heat until they are limp, golden but not caramelized. Add in the garlic and the red pepper flakes and fry for a bit. Add the cauliflower, and fry for 10 mins or so.

Add the walnuts, and fry for another 4-5 mins. Add the vinegar/lemon juice last. Adjust the salt and pepper.

Mix in the cooked whole wheat pasta, the feta, and the parsley and serve.

Some of these steps are parallelizable, and it's pretty clear which ones they are. (Ed: good luck with building a readership!)

Brutti ma buoni

You have to love the Italians for these. The name translates to "ugly but good" which is an accurate enough description.

To those scared off by dessert and baking, the pressure is off. When they come out misshapen (and they will), you can claim that it was "intentional".

They are light and crispy because they contain no flour (like meringue cookies.)

Ingredients

6 egg whites
1 1/2 cups fine white sugar
2 tbsp ground cinnamon-cloves

1/2 cup hazelnuts (blanched)
1/2 cup almonds (blanched)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Recipe

Roast the hazelnuts and almonds till lightly toasted. Pulse in a food processor till they are broken. Do NOT grind to a fine powder.

Meanwhile, whip the egg whites till they form soft peaks. Yeah, this involves whipping air into the eggs and it takes forever and is very laborious. Deal.

The whipped egg whites are (G + S)/W in the classification scheme. They are not a sauce so they don't show up in the list.

Add the sugar, and mix till dissolved. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Put the mixture over a VERY LOW flame, and stir till thickened and golden (20 mins or so.) Do not let it burn. You need to keep stirring and scraping as it thickens.

Butter a cookie sheet and drop them into irregular lumps at intervals. Bake at 300°F for 30-40 mins until hard.