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
♦
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.