Weekday Dinner

Arugula Salad with Roasted Pistachios & Gorgonzola in a Basil Vinaigrette
Pasta with Onions, Flat Beans & Rosemary

Pick a Lane, Any Lane!

One of the worst things that you can do is go to a restaurant that serves multiple unrelated cuisines - pan-Asian, Thai and Vietnamese, French and Thai, whatever. They tend to be confused in their menu trying to please a "generic" crowd. They are likely to serve lackluster meals or even outright garbage.

An exception could be made for French and Vietnamese on the grounds that the latter was a colony of the former for a while.

Of course, there's this particularly egregious specimen that simply makes the mind boggle!

Foraging in Van Cortlandt Park

Best food experience of the CC's life (so far.)

Firstly, there were the wineberries everywhere. A sun-ripe sweet wineberry is the nectar of the gods on a warm sunny hike.



Next up, the golden jackpot! The CC found a large field of golden chanterelles.

Finally, the end result of what the CC did with them.

To borrow a Valley Girl facebook term -- OMG, you guys, OMG!!!!!!

Strozzapreti with chanterelles ♦ Ciabatta ♦ Flat beans with almonds

Going Native

It has been noted by many participants that the CC's posts have a strong region-inflected Italian, Indian, Thai bias.

It's not that surprising. These are the cuisines which the CC understands at a "native" level. The grammar of the conception of the dish is completely transparent to the CC's "mental taste buds" to the point where not only does a recipe translates into a "mental taste" instantaneously but the underlying logic of how to conceptualize a meal has a clearly delineated grammatical structure.

To use an art metaphor, while Indian recipes have the texture and taste of oil paints, Thai recipes are much more akin to water colors in their limpidity and transparency.

(If you have no clue what that last statement meant, you really need to re-examine your understanding of these cuisines!)

Even invoking such a metaphor means that you must first understand the underlying structure (or grammar) by which such recipes are constructed. Needless to say, these structures are accidents of geography and history but isn't that the very definition of "culture"?

Purple Basil

It's a little stronger than regular basil (so tone it down a notch!) with a strong licorice component and it's a near-perfect substitute when you can't find Thai basil (= bai horapa) which is completely different from Holy basil (=bai krapow.)

Edible Babies (not again!)

Jonathan Swift's evergreen satire A Modest Proposal which ruthlessly trashes the gung-ho can-do spirit of the times, and the equally ludicrous schemes to alleviate Irish poverty. In a quite pointed fashion, and in the tradition of satire, he actually introduces the desirable reforms by thoroughly trashing them.

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

Kikunae Ikeda

Who?

One of the two greatest scientific contributors to food (the other would be Louis-Camille Maillard.) Unfortunately, this is the one that the world has never heard of.

He discovered the concept of umami by identifying glutamic acid as the common component of meat, kombu (type of seaweed) and tomatoes!

Prosciutto, White Bean & Mesclun Salad with Basil Vinaigrette

This is really really brilliant. The CC first ate it at a local eaterie and has been hankering for it ever since.

The origin is only vaguely Tuscan in nature pairing off their love for white beans and prosciutto and basil into one lovely salad. The multitudinous textures alone do the trick but this is a meal in and of itself.

The original salad had arugula in it but the arugula was so pathetic locally that the CC bought home some mesclun instead.

It makes a perfect summer meal.

Ingredients

1 cup white beans
1 tomato (diced fine)
generous handful of basil

2 servings mesclun
parmigiano-reggiano (thinly shaved)
prosciutto

olive oil
vinegar
salt
pepper

Recipe

The recipe may sound fussy but the hardest part - cooking the white beans - can be done in advance.

Cook the white beans until just under tender. The CC used a pressure cooker. Let it cool down in a refrigerator for a while.

Shave the parm really thin. This may sound fussy but is really necessary.

Blend the basil with some vinegar and salt into a liquidy paste. Mix the white beans, chopped tomato, and 75% of the basil liquid. Season to taste. Set aside.

The rest of the paste should be mixed with some more vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and made into a vinaigrette.

Serve the white bean salad topped with parm, and the mesclun and vinaigrette topped with the prosciutto.

Death By Chocolate

Quite literally.

The Trentonian reports: Death by Boiling Chocolate.

A 29-year-old temporary worker slipped and fell this morning while loading raw chunks of chocolate into a melting tank, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor’s office said.

A blade used to mix the raw chocolate struck Vincent Smith II causing him to fall into the boiling chocolate that was being prepared for shipment to be turned later into candy. The Camden man's screams attracted the attention of his co-workers with one trying to shut the machine off and two workers working quickly to release him, said Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

Initial reports say Smith was trapped in the 8-foot-deep vat for 10 minutes. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Food Metaphors in Shakespeare

There are any number, of course.

First up, the classic on alcohol and sex from Macbeth on what drink provokes:

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes
the desire, but it takes away the performance.
A brief admonition from A Midsummer Night's Dream that the CC emphatically does not agree with:

And, most dear actors, eat no onions
nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I
do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet
comedy. No more words: away! go, away!
Finally, the classic opening of Twelfth Night that tickles the CC in two different ways by combining his favorite two objects in one coherent metaphor:

If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Louis-Camille Maillard

One of the (two) greatest contributors to the science of food. He first identified the concept of what is now called the Maillard Reaction.

The Holy Trio

Glutamic Acid
Isosinic Acid
Guanylic Acid

Farmers' Market Haul

It's been a really cold wet summer so the first decent vegetables were just hitting the markets.

The CC came home with some tomatoes, onions, spring garlic, flat beans, zucchini and some eggs.

There were some obscure things that the CC considered buying but the prices were larcenious so they have been postponed to a future date.

Fig Me Up, Fig Me Down!

Fig season will soon be upon us so in anticipation the CC gives you two classics:

Figs with Sea Salt

Slice them thin, and lace with your best sea salt.

Just trust the CC and do it!

Spelt Crackers with Figs, Goat Cheese and Orange-Blossom Honey

First, the spelt cracker recipe.

Layer them in that order. You can also use a classic blue cheese or even brie in a dash. The four different textures and the classic sweet-salty-savory combination is the key to magic of this recipe.

This is one of those miracles of life. Don't miss it!

Food Memoirs

Let's be blunt. They are mostly boring and at best, they are one-shot reads. You'll never read them again!

So why would you buy them (as opposed to getting them from the library?)

Well, the publishers figured this one out too a long time ago so it is conventional for these memoirs to have recipes. They figured that these would make people buy them.

Problem is all too often these recipes are the same old recycled junk. Rare is the memoir that features such original fare that it compels you to purchase it. As a general rule, these authors have already put their best work into their cooking magnum opus (or magna opera as the case may be.)

The solution should be obvious.

Read the memoir from the library, and buy a used paperback later if necessary.

Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Don't read food blogs (including your own) when you are hungry!

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Reuters reports: Red hot chillis to be used in hand grenades.

India's security forces are planning to mix one of the world's hottest chilli powders in hand grenades to control riots and during insurgency operations in the remote northeast, a defense official said on Thursday.

India's defense scientists say they will replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilize a person without killing him.

Scientists said the chilli found in the country's northeast generates so much heat it was enough to startle a person for a while when used as a weapon.

The bhut jolokia chilli is said to generate 1,000,000 heat units on the Scoville scale -- a measure of hotness -- at least a thousand times more than a common kitchen chilli.

Scientists are also hoping to use a coat of the chilli powder in fences around army barracks as its pungent smell keeps wild animals away.

Bronze Dies & Pasta

What's the deal with the "bronze-die extruded pasta"?

The answer is simple. Bronze dies give the pasta a rougher surface which allows the sauce to adhere to the surface better. The trouble is that the extrusion has to be slower and the die wears out so it needs to be replaced.

In the spirit of false economy, the majority of the industry switched to teflon-dies which don't wear out as much but the quality of the pasta suffers.

The difference between the two is totally obvious even to the naked eye, and certainly to the palate. Needless to say, the CC's favorite place carries the bronze-die extruded good stuff.

Garlic Scape Pesto (with Almonds)

This is truly delightful. Blend some garlic scapes, parmigiano-reggiano, olive oil and almonds, and a dash of lemon and serve with fettucine and a light rosé and you have a truly wondrous summer meal.

Mushroom Hunting in Central Park

The CC went mushroom hunting in Central Park with the New York Mycological Society.

Part educational, part forager's dream, we had a great morning.

Here are the CC's edible finds. (Please don't try this without experts around. Many many wild mushrooms are deadly poisonous. Part of the training is to identify the deadly ones.)

The recipe is a classic. Fry some garlic and a hot chilli pepper. Saute the mushrooms with salt and pepper. Add the spaghetti and parsley and serve topped with more black pepper and parm.

Purple-Bloom Russula (russula mariae)
Mild and peppery with the texture of oyster mushrooms.

Black-stained Polypore (meripilus sumstinei)
Intensely mushroomy. Can get leathery when older. Needs to be cooked longer. Steak-like texture and taste.

Spaghetti with Wild Mushrooms

Oyster Fest

Last night, the CC celebrated with an oyster-fest. The favorites (which were surprisingly consensual) were the local Fisher Island and Malpeques.

The Pacific Coast Roy Miyagi's were a close third.

The CC definitely has a taste for the more briny minerally Atlantic oysters rather than the Pacific ones which tend to be a little sweeter and smoother.

Sorrel Soup

This is one of those joys of nature. The power of pure technique over ingredients (there are only five - six if you count salt!)

It has a very strong lemony (from the sorrel) and peppery (from the black pepper) flavor.

Sometimes an egg is blended in at the last moment but that tends to undercut the sorrel taste so the CC skips it.

Ingredients

1 large red onion (diced fine)
2 potatoes (diced)
3 bunches sorrel (deveined if the veins are thick)

broth (or water)

salt
lots and lots and lots of black pepper

Recipe

Fry the onions at a medium-low heat. Do not hurry this step. Yes, it takes forever.

Fry the potatoes at the same heat. Again do not hurry this step. Drink a martini while it fries languidly.

Add the broth. Let it simmer for 20-25 minutes till the potatoes are cooked through.

Add the sorrel. It will wilt almost immediately changing color from a light green to a dark one.

Turn the heat off, and blend in batches. You can reheat the soup when needed.

Garlic Scapes

They are the immature stems of the garlic plant. They have a mild garlicky taste and a texture of french beans.

Please note that they are different from spring garlic or ramps.

East Coast Oysters

Why deny it? When the CC went to Boston, he went crazy over the local oysters.

The CC openly admits his biases - he loves briny and minerally ones which means East Coast. The West Coast ones lack character (relatively speaking.)

Only relatively local oysters were consumed, and the CC's favorite were the ones from Onset and Island Creek (both in Massachussetts.)

Briny slurpy goodness!

Foraging in Chinatown Markets

On a recent trip to Boston, the CC had a little time to kill in Chinatown. Needless to say, he went into the stores looking for interesting stuff.

Among the haul were dried rose buds, lily mushrooms and hedgehog mushrooms (along with shrimp crackers and crab crackers!)

You may have read the saga of the CC and the roses before.

The mushrooms are new. The CC had never heard of them. Clearly, they must be tried out. So they were bought, and the package enjoyed a free trip to Boston because there was no way in hell that the CC wasn't going to purchase everything right that minute.

It has been commented upon that the Chinatown markets act upon the CC a bit analogously to introducing a Snickers bar at a Fat Camp!

Lily Mushrooms
Hedgehog Mushrooms

Summer Corn Chowder

Ran into some terrific corn in Chinatown on the trip back from Boston, and decided to make a light evening meal of it.

Here's the recipe.

Scrambled Eggs with Ramps

How does the CC describe this?

The texture is like that of french beans but the taste is agressively like leeks and garlic. If you're a garlic fiend (and what true foodie isn't?) you'll be in hog heaven!

Bean Bag

The CC received these heirloom beans as a gift. He is thrilled, thrilled, thrilled!

Beans, beans, the magical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot.
(Source: Rancho Gordo.)

Lila Beans
Midnight Black Beans
Moro Beans
Santa Maria Beans
Vallarta Beans
Yellow Indian Woman Beans
Yellow Eye Beans

Green Borscht

The CC has been trying to replicate this ever since he first ate it last year.

Mere words cannot describe how delectable this soup is!

Ingredients

1 large red onion (diced fine)
1 head green garlic (diced fine)
1 bunch sorrel (stripped of stems, chopped)
2 potatoes (diced into smallish cubes)
1 bunch scallions (green and white parts, chopped into rounds)
1 large bunch fresh dill (chopped)

4 cups broth (substitute with water)

oil
salt
lots and lots and lots of black pepper
dash of vinegar

Recipe

The recipe is straightforward.

Fry the onions and garlic. Fry the potatoes. Add the sorrel and fry till it wilts. Add the broth, salt and black pepper. Simmer till the potatoes are soft (20 mins roughly.)

Add the scallion and dill towards the end. (The soup should be just lightly sour. Add a dash of vinegar if not sour enough.)

Scrambled Eggs with Sorrel (and Rye Toast)

Mmmmm mmmmm .... mmmmm. Lemony goodness!

Brighton Beach

The CC went out there for a birthday bash, and since he's a food-a-holic, he picked up sorrel, ramps, frozen vareniki, lots of dill and some great Russian dark rye bread.

They also have these walnut shaped pastries that are stuffed with walnuts. Quite delicious.

Even More Herb Lore

As pointed out here, water them when they are droopy.

If you water them in the morning, you can see the results of the non-droopiness in about 6-8 hours.

The real reason to water them in the morning is that all the spillage you make over the leaves (which you will) will evaporate and not cause fungal damage.

To Boldly Go Where No Spice Has Gone Before ...

Chipotle in your Bloody Mary - good idea.

Chipotle brewed in your beer - not such a good idea; one might even say terrible idea.

You have been warned!

Store Wars

Birthday Bash

The CC got what he wanted - a fun food-filled evening!

First, a Sri Lankan place where we gorged on fish rolls followed by chicken lamprais and a sri lankan crab curry, succulent and heavily redolent with black pepper both washed down with a peppery grüner veltliner.

Then, a frisky hazelnut gelato at GROM.

More Herb Lore

Mediterranean herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, lavender, sage) really like slightly alkaline soil.

You can dry some egg shells, whiz them to a powder (= calcium carbonate) in your coffee grinder, and sprinkle the soil. They really love it.

Wine, Cheese, Coffee and ... Thievery

The Telegraph reports: UK recession: There's a new thief about...

Lock up your shaved white truffles! Throw a cordon sanitaire round the cashmere cardies! Don't take your eyes off those lovely Cath Kidston placema... – oops, too late, they've been half-inched by that respectable-looking woman in the Boden skirt with the Orla Kiely handbag. Forget reports about the rise of living on the never never and the re-emergence of a buy-now, pay-later mentality – huge numbers of us don't want to pay at all. Middle-class shoplifting is the new crime.

As the recession brings the City to its knees and cuts a swathe through the shires, an unlikely new criminal class is emerging. Former pillars of the community are pilfering balsamic vinegar from supermarkets.

The manager of a Somerfield supermarket in West Yorkshire, Richard Lay, recently declared that he was shocked by the new breed of shoplifters. "In one day our store detective caught two of them. One was a middle-aged supply teacher in a suit, stealing £3.30 worth of cheese and celery for his lunch. The other was a 63-year-old office worker in really smart clothes, who paid for some products but added things like a pack of ham and cat food to her basket. I've been in this business for 15 years and have never seen shoplifters like this. They say they are stealing to 'top up' their shopping because times are tough."

Tesco electronically tags pecorino in some stores.

The chains tend to security-tag items on a store by store basis, providing a fascinating snapshot of local mores. In Borders Books in Islington, The Opera Collection boxed CD sets are tagged; copies of Jade: Fighting to The End are not. Across the road in Waitrose, there are security caps on the bottles of Mersault but not the Chablis Premier Cru. The Pimms is capped, as is the Limoncello and Veuve Clicquot. The more downmarket Margarita Mix is uncapped; more puzzlingly, so is the Moët.

Pecorino is tagged but not the champagne.

Jamie Oliver, take a bow. You definitely popularized the right shit but to the wrong people, boy!

LOL.

BWAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHH!!!

Cold Tomato-Cilantro Soup

These proportions may seem off but the soup is really meant to be served cold so you need to amp up the usual spices a bit because cold blunts the edge of the spices.

Incidentally, it also makes a terrific Bloody Mary!

(Source: Martha Rose Shulman.)

Ingredients

1-2 small bunches of cilantro
1 large red onion (diced)
3-4 cloves of garlic
tomato paste
2 tsp cumin (roasted, ground)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 28-oz tomato can
2 limes

salt and black pepper to taste

Recipe

The recipe pretty much proceeds as this except that you add the cilantro bundle and simmer for 30 mins.

Remove the bundle, blend in a blender and pass through a fine sieve.

Chill, and add the lime just before serving.

Reheating Seafood

In general, reheating stuff is hard.

The microwave, while ubiquitous and convenient, is overall pretty much an agent of disaster. Let us first recall what the microwave does. It fires radio waves that are absorbed by water, fat and sugar, and just like a baseball being thrown to an stationary ice-skater, this is turned into motion which at the molecular level is the same as heat.

But there are consequences attached to this. You are effectively only heating the water, fat and sugar portion and depending on statistical mechanics to transmit that energy to the other molecules. It works well enough for many things but not for all. For example, the surface tends to get crusty, or the fat and sugars start to caramelize around the edges, and seafood gets both nasty and tough.

Well, when that happens, it's back to being ol' school. Put up a double boiler. Underneath a bubbling pot of water, and on top a heat-resistant glass bowl with the food. Takes longer to heat but you are guaranteed great results.

Hors d'oeuvres for Hee-Haw!

If you're really pressed for time and/or are lazy, just roast some walnuts, pulse them lightly in a food processor, buy a goat-cheese log, roll the log in afore-pulsed walnuts and serve with crackers.

Yep, that's a lot of instructions but that's as close as the CC comes to "fast food".

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!"