Love in the Time of Coriander

Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry

2010-04-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

My food-related musings are on hold for the moment. Being a co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry has been priority. The anthology has just been published by University of Arkansas Press! Please go to the Indivisible website to learn more about the book's events.

www.indivisibleanthology.com

A Spring Cake!

2006-04-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

This cake, made from a Bon Appetit recipe from last year, rocked Patty's 65th Birthday party last night! The cupcakes, which are barely visible in this photo, came also turned out marvelously with white chocolate "65"s that I made myself. The lime and chocolate tart was store-bought by a guest! Phooey to it!

The Art of Procrastination

2006-04-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, I've been a little reticent lately, to say the least. Blame it on mismanagement of my procrastination time. Usually, when I'm motivating myself to hit the books, I try to find all the other things that I can possibly do to avoid actually doing the thing that I must most imminently do. From what I can tell, this is a universal phenomenon. As an undergrad, I used to get much better results. If I had a paper on Alexis de Toqueville due in 12 hours, what better thing to do than sit down in front of the computer and write poems. That's what got me into Iowa in the first place!

Lately, however, I've reached another level of "burntoutdom," which forces me to distract in whatever ways possible, even from pleasurably creative endeavors. Yesterday, I drank way too much chai and drove down San Pablo Ave across many cities--Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond, San Pablo--looking for containers that hold cupcakes at Smart and Final. Guess what? They didn't have them. (I'm accepting suggestions for online restaurant supply stores that people use . . . ) On the way back, I noticed that the party store, only in El Cerrito and not way the hell over in San Pablo, had already closed. I wandered aimlessly, accomplishing little in the way of writing or cooking with my wasted caffeine high.

Blame it on the notion of cupcakes. Ever since my friend, Laurie Koh, alerted me to the article in the SF Chronicle about cupcakes, I've had non-stop thoughts about making them, storing them, transporting them, and, of course, devouring them. I'm particularly obsessed with Chockylit, who is not only an admirable cupcake-aholic and inspired baker, but also posts gorgeous photographs.

This week, I'll be trying my hand at her Devil's Food with Chocolate Buttercream cupcakes for my mother-in-law's birthday. I'll also be putting together a layer cake with lemon curd filling and whipped cream frosting to celebrate the co-occurring events of spring and Patty's 65th birthday!

And if I don't get too lazy about it, I promise to take a few photos. But I'm still a little technologically deficient in this realm. Any help or donations of good cameras is much appreciated!

Turn that jello-mold on its head!

2006-02-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

This week, I was forwarded a call for entries . . . about the glorious possibilities of food intersecting with art.

Call for Entries--Detourned Menu
The LAB
2006

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Detourned Menu: Activism in the Form of Food
Seeking new work by artists who concoct edible provocations and savory interventions to infiltrate contemporary visual culture and everyday day life. This exhibition seeks to address politics through the medium of food.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 10, 2006
All genres and media accepted.
Exhibition scheduled for late October-November, 2006 at The LAB, San
Francisco.

Send:
--35mm slides (no more than 10), DVD, audio CD, or CDROM (max file size 1MB.
Jpg, gif or png accepted. No more than 10 images per artist)
--Related info (artist bio, statement, CV and contact info)
--Self-addressed stamped envelope (optional for return of materials) to:

ATTN: Brianna Toth
The LAB
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Paratha & Pachadi -- a match made in heaven . . .

2006-01-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

I've come down to the good ole 'no this weekend to spend some quality time with my mom, who is a pachadi queen. For those of you who aren't in the know (bad pun on words, really), pachadis are like chutneys but less watery. To me they're a bit like a spread, often combining a fresh or cooked vegetable with peppers and spice. They're loaded with flavor and are served with rice or breads. This weekend, my mom showed off her most recent concoction. A yam pachadi! She even gave me a quick-and-easy cauliflower paratha recipe to boot. Thanks, Mom!

Cauliflower Paratha

1 cup grated cauliflower
1/8 tsp cayenne or ground red pepper
2 kari leaves
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1/2 c. durum flour or regular whole wheat flour
3-4 tbsp water
1 tsp thirugamatha*
vegetable oil
salt

the thirugamatha:
I'm using the Telugu word for this, but there's different words in various languages for this flavorful oil, which is added to many South Indian dishes. To make this, you need:

2 tbsp vegetable oil (preferably canola)
1/4 black mustard seeds
1/4 cumin seeds
1-2 dried red peppers, broken in half

Heat oil on high. Add mustard seeds and cumin seeds to the oil and cover to keep from splattering. Cook until the mustard seeds and cumin pop. Remove from heat and add pepper pieces.

making the bread dough:
Combine the cauliflower, pepper, kari leaves, cilantro, thirugamatha and salt. Add the flour and mix in the water 1 tablespoon at a time until all the ingredients of the dough are well-incorporated. Dough should hold together but should still be moist. Divide the dough and form into balls.

putting it together:
Spread out a piece of waxed paper on a work surface and sprinkle with oil. Using oiled fingers, flatten the dough balls into circles. The circles should be 1/4 inch thick. Coat a griddle pan with one tsp of oil and heat. Cook one paratha at a time on low, flipping the paratha to make sure it has cooked through and the paratha is a golden brown color. Each side takes about 2 minutes to brown.

Yam Pachadi

1 cup cubed red-skinned yam
1 serrano pepper
1 tsp tamarind pulp juice
1/8 tsp cumin seeds
1/8 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1/4 tsp thirugamatha
1/4 salt or to taste
vegetable oil

Blend cumin and coriander seeds in a spice mill until smooth powder. Lightly coat a small pan with vegetable oil and heat to medium. Saute pepper until browned on the outside. Add the spice mix, tamarind, cilantro, thirugamatha, and salt to the pepper and saute together for one more minute. Remove from heat and put the mixture into a small food processor. Add the yams and process until well-incorporated but still slightly chunky.

Serve the Cauliflower Paratha with the Yam Pachadi and a bit of plain yogurt on the side. Enjoy!

Spain & Morocco, Part 1

2006-01-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

E & I have just returned from a 2 week-long journey through the south of Spain and parts of northern Morocco, where we moved as if whirling dervishes through many landscapes in such a short period of time. Madrid to Sevilla to Cordoba to Granada to Algeciras (the ferry across) to Tanger to Chefchaouen to Fes to Rabat to Tanger (the ferry back) to Tarifa to Ronda to Madrid. Phew!

Then, of course, we spent a harrowing 26 hours in flight time getting back to our sweet home in the Bay Area. After such an anxiety-provoking trip home, it only seemed fair to bypass the torrential downpours and flooded streets to be greeted by sunny, 60-something-degree weather. After weeks of wandering through gorgeous sanctuaries of several religious persuasions, I reasoned that the weather was an illustration that there was, infact, a God.

All of our friends and families are naturally asking: Was it amazing? And telling: You're so lucky. I'm sure it was beautiful. Truth is, we're still digesting the contents of the trip. Definitively, I can say that I came back about 2 to 3 pounds lighter, even after imbibing a good amount of wine daily, which may testify to the difficulties we had in finding solid gastronomy. Partly, there is no one to blame but ourselves. After a disappointing experience in a restaurant in Mexico City, which fell far short of our expectations of haute cuisine, E and I have become more wary of plopping down the Benjamins for a mediocre meal. In other words, we were overcautious and didn't dare set foot in anything that had too pricey a menu, despite the recommendations that I had diligently printed from searches on the Chowhound.com message board.

Not only has the world become smaller, allowing us to taste better versions of those things found in abroad, but we're also privy to a vast variety of ethnic cuisines, most of which exist within a radius of 10 miles. And our produce -- well, that's another boon altogether. Biases aside, people's eating habits as well as their expectations for restaurant food still differ greatly. I can't help but be ethnographic in saying this, purporting ostensibly objective facts but knowing that I'm still a person with tastes and subjective experiences that color my reporting.

In Spain, bar food (commonly known as tapas) is a standard way of getting in an evening meal and few glasses of wine with friends. It's not myth or lore that their eating habits vary greatly from our own, a more northern European style of dining with a big breakfast, a mid-day lunch, and an early dinner. Restaurants in Spain open their doors before 8pm but might not serve anything but a little bit of tortilla espanola (a potato omelette) and a few other, sitting-around-all-day-in-mounds-of-olive-oil snacks. For naive travelers like me, the late meal and day-old snacks can get stale quickly. But if you're accustomed to this and dine at 10pm like the Spanish do, you won't stupidly crave things that are certain not to be available until much later in the evening. And you'll know how to suss good bar food from bad, fresh items on the menu from the questionable.

As it was, however, E & I came away with a Spanish-food-ain't-so-great attitude, which in retrospect, I'm sure is not very fair. The cheeses and cured meats were delicious everywhere we went, but one can only eat so much manchego and jamon iberico for dinner. On the other hand, the breads were really quite awful. Often day old, white-flour loafs, not even toasted to mask their mediocrity. Okay, what I'm going to say next is probably might be very myopic. I understand this and am willing to receive criticism! E & I have always been of the opinion that Mexican pastries always look much better than they taste. When glancing through the window of a panaderia, what you imagine to have a delicious flaky texture or be moist when popped in the mouth often falls very short of the expectation, predicated on French pasties, which are both flaky and moist. Well, for what it's worth, in my mind, the Mexicans have been exonerated from simply being bad bakers. They've got the colonizer's wisdom to thank for their not-always-the-best baked goods.

Though only a few miles across the Mediterranean, sharing the same climate and so much of the same history as witnessed in the Moorish architecture and aesthetics, Spain and Morocco are worlds apart in their cultural habits. Wine and ham are central components to the Spain way-of-life, but Moroccans, who are predominantly Muslim, don't drink nor do they consume pork. A lifestyle without alcohol strongly affects how Moroccans eat and socialize. Unlike the Spanish, who drag entire families (grandparents and toddlers included) into the bar (the very of idea of a bar as a site for family, not just the American twentysomething fun) for an evening bite, Moroccans are home-centric. There's street fare, Mexican taco-bar style, with breads and kebabs brewing in little kiosks around towns, but Moroccans don't really do the "restaurant" thing. Without a strong middle class, few can afford this kind of experience of dining out. Thus, the best and freshest meals are to be found in the homes, and the best way to be given the opportunity to have one of these stellar meals is to befriend, like crazy, the locals.

More tastes, smells, visuals, observations from the trip to come . . .

I promised myself to stop blogging and get to work on writing dialogue for a live performance next week. For those of you in the area, the Poets' Theater Jamboree begins this Friday, January 13 at California College of the Arts in SF. I'll be a part of the Neo-benshi lineup on January 20. Check it out!

It's Raining Curry! Hallelujah! It's Raining Curry!

2006-01-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

I know I've been reticent, but I've got a blog in the works about my recent travels abroad. Bear with me! In the meantime, I thought it might be nice to write in to thank Courtney at Naughty Curry for posting a snippet of one of my blogs! And, I wanted to oblige my best-est friend, known as the famous letter n, by giving the world a little bit o' curry. As a word of caution, the idea of egg plus curry seems a bit strange, I know. But trust me, it's so goooood!

"It's Raining Curry" Egg Curry

the dry spices:
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp shredded (unsweetened) coconut
3 whole peanuts
2 whole almonds
2 whole cashews
1/2 tsp poppy seeds
1/2 stick of cinnamon (1/3 if the stick is really big)
1 clove

the wet spices:
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 serrano pepper, coarsely chopped (remove seeds if you'd like a milder taste or add more peppers if you crave the hot-hot!)
1/2 cup water

4 large eggs
1 medium tomato, coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tbsp plain yogurt
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
2 tbsp vegetable oil
salt to taste

instructions:
Hardboil eggs. Peel and cut in half length-wise.

Toast dry ingredients over medium heat until the coconut begins to lightly brown. Transfer to a spice mill and blend until smooth powder. (Note: I use a coffee grinder, which I have specifically set aside for spices. It's not optimal to use it for both coffee and spices as even the mild flavor of coriander in one's java ain't so great.) Add the dry spice powder and all the wet spice ingredients in a food processor and blend until a smooth, watery paste.

Heat vegetable oil in a sauce pan. Add onions and saute on medium heat until translucent. Add tomato. Continue to saute until the tomato becomes soft and begins to lose its shape. Add the spice paste and stir well well. Simmer until the sauce begins to thicken a bit, about 2 minutes. Stir in the yogurt and salt to taste. Arrange the eggs with the yolk side up in the sauce, spooning the sauce over the eggs to incorporate the flavors. Sprinkle with cilantro. Serve with rice. Yum!

Pizzaiolo

2005-12-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

I think this might possibly be the best pizza I've had in the Bay Area. And I'm not being hyperbolic. It beats out Zachary's & Gioia . . . And as far as the pizzerias in the city, I suppose I've yet to try Pizzetta or A16 . . . but they've got stiff competition here. Thanks for turning me on to it, Mary!

Try the one with the wild nettles. . . yum!

Dosas are all the rage

2005-12-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

Fact 1: Every brown person in San Francisco knows that a restaurant specializing in South Indian food opened its doors in the Mission.

Fact 2: There are so few brown people in San Francisco that they all know one another. (Hence, word of the new South Indian place spread like wildfire.)

Maybe I'm stretching the truth a bit, but it seems egregious that we're on the cusp 2006 and South Indian food is practically an unknown quantity in SF! A few years back, even the Indo-Chinese fusion--Gobi Manchurian and all--made its way into our fair city. But the great irony, in a city that lauds itself on food forward thinking and a long list of innovations, no decent idlis or dosas (food which is the mainstay of almost 1/2 billion people) are to be found for miles around . . . until now.

If you perused The Chronicle yesterday or heard through the brown person grapevine, you'll know that Anjan and Emily Mitra sought to rectify this problem, debuting their new digs in the cursed space next door to Herbivore. During my tenure in the City, several places optimistically opened and closed in that location. Never did I enter whatever trendy thing inhabited it. Something about it says, "Keep walking. There are plenty of better options in the neighborhood." Unfortunately, not for South Indian food.

To be fair, I haven't yet tasted Dosa's food. And I'm frankly not tempted to try. I sent two very trustworthy emissaries (my brother and his fiance) to scout it out, and they gave it a bona fide thumbs down. First, they were miffed by the fact that the owners of the restaurant aren't even South Indian. Everyone can find a niche and fill it, I suppose. But when I hear of someone starting the original something-or-other, especially when that something is close to my heart, I'm hoping for just a little bit of street cred.

Sami and Hansa report that the dosas came cold to the table and that they weren't properly fermented. People, listen very carefully. A dosa is not a crepe! Sometimes, we are too eager to Anglicize our names and dumb down our cuisines in order to make the world understand that we eat food worthy of a French person's assent! A crepe is not fermented, but its phenotypically similar but genetically unrelated bedfellow, the dosa, is. A dosa should taste akin to a sourdough baguette. That's what makes it um-um good. What's more, they say that the chutneys were horribly bland, looking sadly like an obese rat racing against Secretariat, my mother's kick-ass coconut and peanut blends. The home stretch was a spicy, tasty sambhar that was warily perceived as having come from the innards of an MTR box.

But, what do we, who have nothing to compare this restaurant to, know? Without the bar of my mother's culinary skills (and the many South Indian restaurants in and out of the US I've frequented), how could I possibly know that this doesn't measure up? For starters, trek a little outside of the City to the likes of where the South Indians lie in Sunnyvale, San Jose, Fremont. You'll find bunches of brown people lined up around a corner, waiting for brunch: a mile-long paper thin sour dosa, stuffed with the spiciest potato stuff with sides of the freshest sambhar and to-die-for chutneys. I'm talkin' Sarvana Bhavan all the way.

Incidentally, dosa parties among my mother's lady friends are all the rage these days. They hire the women from Fresno's famed Brahma Bull, who on a roll-out griddle make the most delicious dosas to order. If you want the real deal--and it doesn't get much realer than this--arrange for a dosa feast in your own home. And invite all the lovely brown ladies in Fresno along. They won't lead you astray.

Thanksgiving Tarts

2005-12-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

Pies weren't the only thing on our table. Mei brought a lovely fig tart while I made a (slightly overcooked but delicious anyway) pear and almond tart.

Jojo's

2005-12-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Warm mushroom tart with goat cheese and a nice frisee salad to boot! For those of you, who pay attention to this blog or know me personally, you're well aware that I have a husband, who doesn't like fine dining. While I crave to dine outside the house, having a palate-stimulating new experience, he wishes for the good food of the home. Granted, he's got it made 'cuz I do all the cooking and often deliver high-end stuff in the home for a fraction of the cost. I've spoiled him out of taking me out!

But for my 30th, he succumbed. We went to Jojo's, a lovely French place on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. It was a Wednesday night, not crowded at all. We got an intimate table and began with some sparkling wine. I know many don't like what the bubbles have to offer, but I love the celebratory feeling (and the taste) that it imparts. As for our tasting menu . . .

A Trio of Little Salad
Mushroom and Goat Cheese Tart
Seafood Stew with Shrimp, Scallops, Clams & Romano Beans
Grilled Wild Sturgeon with a Lemon Caper Sauce
Lemon Tart
Sorbet Selection

The food was close to divine, but all the pastries, mushroom tart included, were out-of-this-world. Now that I have some time, I'm going to try to replicate this little slice of heaven in the upcoming weeks.

A Cake for Each Decade

2005-11-27T18:55:00.000-08:00

Who makes their own birthday cakes? Only food-obsessed people, who are too fearful to entrust such a task to their guests, do. In other words, me. In the middle of spending a full day baking while E went to school to do his work, I wondered if it was such a brilliant idea. Later I confessed to him that I'd like next year's party to be a surprise. "That's fair," he replied.

The Existential and a Windy City

2005-11-17T09:29:00.000-08:00

With the attitude of writing on my blog every two weeks, I'm assured not to be climbing the blogosphere's metaphorical ladder. To my readers who wish me to write more regularly, I can only say that life as usual has been interfering. Firstly, I've been mired in papers and projects related to school and trying to sort out my professional goals. If only I felt I could make it by abandoning everything and making food all day long! It's a dream I save for later, for when I've made enough money and helped enough people alleviate their pain.

I've also been away, visiting Chicago, speaking on panels for the Kriti conference on South Asian writers. I thought for sure that not having published my first book would make me a neophyte but what I've done for the past ten years has put me in the funny category of something akin to the PhD's nightmarish ABD (all but dissertation). I surprised myself; I had stuff to say. And, for the first time, the connections between being a shrink and being a writer came together. It all held loosely and sweetly together like the perfect flan.

I also ate in Chicago. Sruti, my cousin, had made reservations for a wine bar known as Bin 36, written up by all the local mags as a hot spot. But as the family dinner grew into an expansive affair and more vegetarian palates were added, we found ourselves at Opera. Described as an Asian fusion place, the decor of the restaurant is a high end version of a Macaroni Grill or P.F. Chang's, with tile floors and cheap-looking furniture. The red plastic booth-like chairs could be considered kitschily cute as could the gratuitous wall filled with newspaper cut-outs of sexy Asian pinup girls, but everything falls flat in the face of an overall chain-like vibe. Actually, I get the feeling that this is Chicago's restaurant millieu, with a cluster of eateries owned by a corporate group, not by individual chefs or food enthusiasts. I learned that one of the big groups that owns many small places is called "Lettuce Entertain You." The ones that own Opera are called the KDK consortium.

You can only imagine that the overall vibe of the restaurant reflected on the food. Actually, they were in perfect concert with one another--dishes with the $15-20 price tag that couldn't, by any stretch of imagination, complete with Potrero Hill's gem, Eliza's, where you can get twice as much food for this price. A concert I'm happy not to attend.

Vegan Treats

2005-10-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake with Sugary Pecan Sauce

In exchange for subjecting herself to prodding and poking with psychological instruments, I made my participant a treat. I offered to pay her, but the thought of money didn't entice her as much as the prospect of a vegan cheesecake. Just my luck -- I get a chance to bake! I did a good job of amending a recipe from a recent issue of Bon Appetit to suit the vegan lifestyle without compromising the ultimate flirt with the palate, a trait which, in my opinion, is what defines the cheesecake.

Here's the recipe:

Crust
1 1/2 cup pecans, toasted, cooled
3 tablespoons golden brown sugar
3 tablespoons margarine
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Filling
3 8-oz packages of Plain Tofutti
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
Egg replacer for 4 eggs (I used the EnerG brand, which is great for baking)
1 15-oz can pure pumpkin
1/2 cup plain soy yogurt (this is debatably vegan since it has live cultures in it, you could substitute with a little bit of soy milk maybe?)
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
Large pinch of salt

Sauce
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup soy yogurt
6 tablespoons margarine
1 1/2 cups pecan, toasted, cooled

For Crust:
Preheat over to 350 F. Butter 9-inch springform pan. Grind first 4 ingredients in processor until nut mixture sticks together. Press evenly onto bottom of pan. Bake crust until golden, about 15 minutes. Cool completely. Wrap outside of pan in triple layer of heavy-duty foil.

For Filling:
Using mixer, beat Tofutti, sugar, and lemon peel in large bowl until smooth. Beat in egg replacer, then pumpkin, yogurt, flour, vanilla, spices, and salt. Pour into pan. Set springform pan in roasting pan. Pour enough hot water into roasting pan to come halfway up sides of cheesecake. Place in over. Bake until outer 3 inches puff slightly and center is softly set, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Remove from water. Cut around sides of cake to loosen. Refrigerate in pan until cold, about 4 hours. Cover and chill overnight.

For Sauce:
Melt sugar and margarine in medium saucepan until sugar dissolves. Add toasted pecans, then yogurt. Stir and cool. Remove foil. Cut around springform pan sides, remove sides. Spoon sauce over the cheesecake. Serve.

Thirty & Dirty

2005-10-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

That's what it says on a shirt that my friend, Anne, was given for her big 3-0. This is the year for me, and the date is actually exactly three weeks from today. I remember when I was 12, I thought by the time the year 2000 had come around that I'd be hitched and, at the very least, knocked up. Alas, it seems that I am finally hitched (wow, can you believe I made it under the "30" radar?!?) but definitely not putting any non-flour buns in the oven anytime soon.

To celebrate the occassion of this momentous day, I told E that he'd have to give me 30 little "gifts"--not necessarily monetary--to commemorate me. He's already suprised me with one: the cute (Otsu vegan) t-shirt featuring a selection of dainty mushrooms pictured here. Of course, the gifts I'm most excited about are the tongue-enticing ones! E has promised a foray to somewhere -- maybe we'll return to the delicious olive-oil rich bocadillos at Cesar or try the Rockridge's rave of Oliveto! Regardless, that my restaurant-phobic hubbie is taking me out is cause to celebrate. I mean, come on, if turning 30 doesn't get him to do it, what will. Right?

I've also got the thought--time permitting--to make many lovely dessert treats. This is the year to make 3 (one for every decade) birthday cakes for myself. Not just ordinary cakes, but the sort that line the glass cases of Citizen Cake. Absolutely perfect! Absolutely fabulous! All decadent goodness! (I am obsessed with coconut shag, especially!) If any of you out there have many brewing ideas for the perfect cake, please send them along. I'm taking notes! I'd also like to hone my not-so-hot frosting skills. It's so "old school" but handling a tube like a master, piping out colorful, quaint sugary flowers, is something put on your resume. Perhaps old school is the just the ticket for this practically over-the-hill event.

To continue the spirit of my fogie-ness, I am attempting to learn the words to "Churaliya," desperately hoping to sing my heart out, desperately trying to conjure the lovely spirit (and she is quite a spirited person!) of the 72-year old Asha Bhosle. Though I'm years younger than her, I'll simply never (heredity did not bless me in this respect) be able to croon the way she does. Cheers to her! By the way, for those of you who haven't yet done so, pick up a copy of the new Kronos Quartet homage to Bhosle & Burman. You won't be sorry.

Emotionally Yours

2005-10-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

I don't want anyone to think that I have completely lost interest in visual imagery. Moreover, I want to make it clear that I'll be trying to commit myself soon to helping the aesthetically disabled aspect of my blog become rehabilitated. If only I could carve out a chunk of time . . .

Ending the Debate of Chocolate or Sex

2005-10-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

E & I received these lovely chocolates as a wedding gift from a good friend, Jen Hofer. She had purchased them from a place in Sante Fe called Todos Santos. Apparently, they do other special stuff, such as making religious, especially Catholic, imagery in chocolate, too. Hence, the name: Todos Santos.

I've looked up the company online, but they are--to use a neologism I just learned on an episode of NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"--ungoogelable. Well, that's not quite true. There are a few posts about them, but they don't have a website. Perhaps that means they are unwebsiteable.

Trouble is, the chocolates are so stunning that we're hesitant to consume them. After having sat in the fridge for two months, brought out to be paraded among friends who echo our admiration for such artisty but don't dare to partake of them, I finally initiated eating one of the positions. I chose the one on the upper far right (what does that say about me!), while E ate the "wheelbarrow" in the lower right corner. Friends have suggested we try and perform the positions before consuming them. But in case you hadn't notice, that would require inviting a few extra folks over. . .

This Just In

2005-10-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

My friend, Leon Lee, sent this along. At first glimpse I find myself gawking at the idea of such rigid "scientific method" study of food. On the other hand, isn't it always fun to hear about the huge gap between our folk knowledge and what research tells us? Who knew that Iron Chef had science behind its eccentric combos . . .

Food: his passion, his science
Hervé This, a French researcher, helps chefs around the world really sizzle

By Émilie Boyer King Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS - Cooking a cheese soufflé can be tricky. Despite following the recipe meticulously, using the finest ingredients, and heating the oven to the perfect temperature, you can still end up with a cheese cookie instead of a fluffy, brown-topped soufflé intended to impress your guests. The result, it seems, is often arbitrary.

But help is at hand. Tucked away in their laboratories, a bunch of dedicated scientific foodies are toiling away to solve the soufflé problem and other culinary conundrums: Should jam be cooked in a copper pan? When gnocchi come floating to the surface of boiling water, does that mean they are cooked? Molecular gastronomy - a branch of food science that focuses on cooking and food preparation (rather than on the chemical makeup of food, as traditional food science tends to do) - has the answers.

The term molecular gastronomy was coined in the 1980s by a French scientist, Hervé This, and Nicholas Kurti, who was a professor of physics at Oxford University in England. Both men were interested in food science, but they felt that empirical knowledge and tradition were as important in cooking as rational understanding.

"We realized there was a growing gap between food science and home cooking," remembers Dr. This, who, since 1995, has worked at the prestigious Collège de France in central Paris, perhaps one of the only science labs in the world to smell of freshly baked cake. "Classic food science ... succeeded in giving the Western populations enough to eat. But it slowly became more interested in food than in cooking."

So This, whose training was in physical chemistry, an area of research that spills into both chemistry and physics, began casting a scientific eye on cookbooks. He started by collecting food-related sayings and old wives' tales to find out if there were a rational explanation behind them.

"Some people think a law is a law. But if a law doesn't work, then you change it. Some traditions don't work, and so you have to change them," This says.

For instance, should roast beef be covered with mustard an hour before putting it in the oven, as an 18th-century cookbook suggests? Should the head of a suckling pig be cut as soon as it is taken out of the oven - so that the skin won't lose its crunch? To this day, This has recorded more than 10,000 adages, each of which he jots down in a notebook. He tries to test as many sayings as possible, and after many lab experiments and a number of failed dinner parties, he has managed to disprove (as with the examples above) or improve upon many maxims.

For This and his colleagues, working in close collaboration with cooks is essential, and This regularly teams up with chefs to exchange information. Every month, he picks a theme based on his research and challenges his friend, three-star French chef Pierre Gagnaire, to invent a recipe from it.

"We work very hard, and Hervé's research helps us to find new perspectives," says Gagnaire, who is known for his innovative cuisine and food combinations.

As a result of this crossover between science and cooking, outstanding restaurants around the world are serving unusual dishes such as tobacco-flavored ice cream made with liquid nitrogen and sardines on sorbet toast. Utensils such as blowtorches, pH meters, and refractometers, which were previously relegated to science laboratories, are now creeping into the kitchen.

Heston Blumenthal, chef at the Fat Duck restaurant at Bray-on-Thames in England, has long been interested in the use of science for cooking, and works closely with molecular gastronomists.

"In late 1999, one of the most widely reported of our discoveries was the combination of caviar and white chocolate," says Chef Blumenthal. "I demonstrated this combination to one of the world's leading flavorists, who was amazed at the marriage.... He went off and came back with a printout [of the chemical makeup] of cocoa and caviar, and surely enough, they both contained high levels of amines.

"This's research helps the Fat Duck staff blend some unusual ingredients. Spice bread ice cream and crab syrup, smoked bacon and egg ice cream served with French toast and tomato jam, and oysters and passion-fruit jelly are a few examples. They may sound odd, but these are winning combinations. Last month the Fat Duck was awarded three Michelin stars, one of only two restaurants in Britain to hold this distinction.

Scientists and chefs alike believe that with the help of science, cooking can be improved. "One of the best ways of standardizing techniques is to use science as a starting point," says chef and cooking teacher Neil Armstrong. "A comprehension of these more scientific principles prior to a practical breadmaking demonstration, for example, enhances understanding and allows the student to understand how successful bread can be made."

In his book "Une Théorie du Goût" ("A Theory of Taste," 1999), This described a set of basic cooking rules, based on his scientific research, to help the chef and everyday cook. The rule of juxtaposition, for example, explains that one ingredient will seem tasteless if it is served with another, more tasty ingredient. Conversely, the flavorful ingredient's taste will be sharpened.

Another rule, the law of dominance, states that an ingredient with a dominant taste (a very sweet-tasting ingredient such as chocolate, for instance) must always be "awakened" by an ingredient with another dominant taste (an acidic food, for example). This principle is confirmed by the popular combination of orange and chocolate.

Molecular gastronomy is gaining momentum throughout Europe. The INRA, France's national agronomic research institute, has made this science a discipline in its own right. The European Union recently backed a three-year research project, Inicon, which is developing innovative technologies to help modernize cooking. And in Italy, the ecological group the Slow Food movement will open a university this year, the first one devoted to academic courses on food. The new University of Gastronomic Sciences will offer topics ranging from the principles of sensory evaluation to nutrition.

Recently, This was awarded an honorary medal by the French government for his services to French culture. But for This, his work has only just begun. Referring to his old friend Pierre Gagnaire, he explains his motivation: "Pierre laughs when I tell him this, he thinks I am far too ambitious. But my real aim is for cooking, by the time I die, to have become far better than it is now."

For the less ambitious, a little scientific help in the kitchen can go a long way, starting with how to make the perfect soufflé. The key, This says, is to heat it from the bottom up to let evaporating water from the cheese and eggs push the soufflé mixture upward. The egg whites must be whipped as firmly as possible so that air bubbles move more slowly through the mixture, pushing it up higher.

Success is guaranteed because the recipe has been tested - scientifically.

This American Life

2005-10-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of Ira Glass' brilliant show . . .

Act 1

Has it really been two weeks? Secretly, it feels like I've been away much longer than that.

As I wrote in my previous post, I've been struggling with the balance of blogging about food with the other writing-related endeavors and multiple school responsibilities. I've begun my work again this year as a therapist-in-training. Most of the time, I find it exciting to be given a wonderful window into the struggles that people face. It leaves me in a state of awe and humility. That people actually thrive amidst such trying circumstances encourages me. My own petty worries (of having gained an extra five pounds, for instance) seem miniscule in relation to more elemental concerns of safety and health.

At my brother's engagement party at MacArthur Park, I recently bumped into an eccentric cousin, Chandrakanth. In the middle his second pint of beer, he assured me that he was getting drunk to celebrate his health. Only three days prior, he laid in a hospital bed with a throat infection so serious that he had to be fed nutrients through IVs. Perhaps because his brain froze in the delirium of dehydration, it slipped his mind to call us and let us know that he needed help! Having recovered from near death, he has vowed never to forget the little things, like being able to take a sip of water (or beer). While I think our minds don't hold onto this wisdom very long, I think it's good to be temporarily given a new vantage point.

Don't think I forget how lucky I am to enjoy the pleasures offered to me, especially those things that we swallow to make us whole. When I look at it that way, what's an extra five pounds?

Act 2

The other reason I've been avoiding the blogosphere is because I've felt inspiration dry. Like a foodie sleuth, I've been hoping to uncover a thing or two. But nothing. Well, maybe there was the noodle house on Telegraph, Slurp, that used to be Berkeley Korean BBQ. E & I had solid bowls of soup, cheap and warm enough to make it worth another visit. But our bickering over my unhealthy craving of potstickers made the evening better left forgotten.

Oh, yes! There was another highlight. Niki and Ra'ed have recently moved to the hood, closing the gap from ten thousand miles away to a mere five. We dined on a middle Eastern feast with them. Highlights included Niki's loving attention to my dug yearnings (a Persian version of salt sodas made with yogurt instead of our carbonated water) and eating lavosh with olive oil and zatar (a combination of thyme and sesame seeds). The combo reminded me of the podis (powders) that we of the Telugu persuasion love! Though chutneys are surely fun, Sami's and my favorite accompaniment to idlis and dosas has been melted butter and chutney poddi, a mysterious blend of roasted lentils with a tad bit of sugar. This, my friends, is regional variation at its finest. (I loved the zatar so much that Ra'ed poured a cup of it into a baggie and sent me on my merry way.)

The nadir was most definitely Berkeley's "Spice of Life" festival. With a muse-like nymph on the advert and a title whose play-on-words suggested food, I thought for sure I'd be entering into the territory of serious, Roman-style decadence. Instead, North Shattuck Avenue, which has earned its moniker as "The Gourmet Ghetto" for careful attention to food (Chez Panisse, The Cheeseboard, Cesar, Cha-Am, Gregoire's, Saul's, Le Coco, Cha-ya and more), was no more than an amusement park. Grilled corn sold for $4 an ear! We, stupidly hungry folk, succumbed to a $5 pupusa topped with less than a teaspoon of fresh salsa.

Supposedly, there were also cooking demos from chefs at Bistro Liaison, the soon-to-be cooking school Kitchen on Fire, and others. We made our way through waddling children and hippy jewelry booths (shouldn't there be laws prohibiting these folks from leaving Telegraph?) to arrive at the demo tent, hoping to watch an agile and creative soul concoct something sublime. But zero, nada, zilch was happening.

Eventually, after taking in a few bites of overpriced food and finding nothing else of value along Shattuck, we managed to salvage our day with a bite of a pumpkin cupcake topped with a near-perfect cream cheese frosting at Love at First Bite. Then, we made our way back down the hill.

Act 3

I forget the famous literary mind who said it, but it went something like "If you introduce a gun in the first act, it's got to go off by the end of the play." Like Chandrakanth, I, too, am celebrating my life. Especially as the days move closer and closer to my 30th birthday, I will be honoring my friends and my family with food, carefully planning the meals that I will make (and consume) and those who will surround me to share them.

This, both my approaching birthday and my craving for the world, is a bittersweet reminder of my father. A man otherwise led by his mind and his tongue (like me), his desire to ingest knowledge and food had waned so considerably in his last days that he was not the same man. Though I didn't want to believe it at the time, these were indicators that his life was coming to its close. I used to believe that symbolism, though deeply beautiful, only happened in books, plays, movies. At the end of this month, he would have turned 55. I celebrate his birthday and mine.

Making Time to Eat & Write

2005-09-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dropping off the blogsphere is inevitable when one's job keeps her in front of clients and not computers. It's refreshing to be not so wed to the fluorescent glow of the computer screen, but it also means I lose touch with the world outside my tiny radius.

Starting school again is invigorating, but stressful in its many ways. Food making drops to the bottom of the list of things to do, and if I make time at all, my repertoire is reduced to large batches of things that can be consumed over a period of time. Like soup. I've become expert at tossing the contents of my fridge into a pot. Call it the "kitchen sink" approach to cooking. The good news is that the produce at Monterrey Market has been abundant and many of the veggies have been making it into my stomach. This is a feat, given that suddenly being transformed into a student usually results in poor food choices.

Amidst my frustration at the lack of food experimentation in my daily routine, I did manage to make an incredible pizza last week, using the remnants of fresh arugula, a small amount of a smoky blue cheese who abandoned its label in another part of the fridge, sliced fresh figs, and carmelized onions. Oooh, harmony!

I've also, as one might imagine, continued the tasting that one can do but not so generously on a student's budget. A recent trip to Universal Cafe with Sami and Hansa was a fun night out, but I'm not sure it's risen to the top of my favorites list. Another Pad Thai adventure in Cal's infamous Food Court on Durant Ave, which I will certainly include in an upcoming blog. And, yesterday, my first taste of the delights that Cesar has to offer. Let me just say, from the glass of moscato and the crisp bocadillo slathered with fresh aioli and filled with grilled eggplant, bacon, and lettuce, it's worthy of its reputation.

I've also paired with a friend, Therine, who is a fellow foodie. Together, we have other adventures planned for the upcoming months, including attending one of the Frugal Foodie events, organized by a Berkeley resident who opens his/her home to strangers who wish to come together to cook healthy veggie food. We're also on a french food-tasting trip, and hope to start with Clementine or Le Charm's (also frugal) prix fixe menus. But if you've got suggestions of places to try, please send them along.

Oh, and one of the most exciting pieces of news of all, I've been given a copy of Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. I'm excited to start a self-education course in the things I've been ingesting since childhood . . .

I see . . . you see . . . Pad Se Ew!

2005-09-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

Anne returned from her summer trip of canoeing in the border waters between Minnesota and Canada. She arrived leech-free, a little under-weight and ready to cash in on a promised birthday dinner.

I tried my hand at a few recipes in the September issue of Food and Wine ("Everybody Loves Asian!"). The recipes by Charles Pham of Slanted Door are written and edited well. The ground peanut sauce that pairs with the spring rolls turns out excellently. It's a really nice balance between sweet, salty and spicy. The only mildy disappointing thing was the Pad Se Ew recipe by a woman who runs a restaurant in Sacramento. Ever since the kiosk in Portland, I've been craving this dish. The sauce on this recipe just didn't materialize into anything that tasted like the real deal. Nor did it really embody a uniquely delicious flavor. Unfortunately, it was personality-less.

I wasn't aware that my next gratifying Pad Se Ew experience (to replicate the moment of love my tastebuds experienced in Portland) would happen so quickly after trying my hand at home. Pireeni, Neela and I met for a dinner-meeting at the new Thai House at 19th & Castro. The space used to be a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant with hardly any clientele save a few stragglers. But since I've left the city (my year anniversary just passed), it's gone through restaurant rehab and has emerged as kick-ass neighborhood Thai.

We ordered Chicken Pad Se Ew, Basil Eggplant and Green Curry with Tofu. Everything arrived in square white dishes in clean, modern style. Perhaps the decor leans a little too much in the direction of a college hub for the otherwise-hip Castro, with easy-to-mop white tiles and simple, plastic furniture. But the food was as good as Osha, my most recent Thai love in the City. An precise indication of the tastiness factor was that each of us kept sopping up whatever was left on the table, despite the fact that we were bursting out of our pants. And the prices? On the cheap. We emerged with a total check for about $25, $10 each with tax and tip. Not bad at all.

The noodles were a hit among the three of us. They had great consistency with a stellar sauce. Not too greasy nor too sweet, as Thai sauces sometimes are. The cooks also had a gentle hand with the spice factor, easing the foreign tongue into the merits of just the right amount of burn. Here's where I'm a bit dogmatic. I believe strongly that if one makes a commitment to trying a dish, it's not fair to try to amend it until all you're left with is a distilled version of what it might be. In the same way that I wouldn't ever call over a waiter to ask him to bring me a Tzaziki with no garlic (something my dad actually once did!), it makes me cringe to watch eaters "dumb" down Thai dishes by asking for spicy things to be made mild. I was glad to see that the Thai House shares my philosophy, too. Though Pad Se Ew is typically served mild, it came to our table in much hotter (and sexier) garb than usual. I wondered if this was the way it was really, by the Thai food police, supposed to be dished up.

As for the Pad Thai project, I've only abandoned it temporarily and will soon be restarting it. Don't worry. I haven't forgotten. In the meantime, I've been unfaithfully pursuing Pad Se Ew. But it's been worth it. I've been discovering the merits of "the other Thai noodle dish."

Accent Aigu

2005-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

A month ago, E went camping with his two "wild men" buddies. They take days worth of food and hike tens of miles into the mountains to set up camp. Though I'm finally coming around to the idea of car camping and hiking in the state parks, I'm nowhere near wanting to spend the night miles away from civilization on my own volition.

Similarly, E doesn't like the decadence of fine dining experiences. We have an ongoing fight that involves "you don't ever want to go camping with me" versus "you never take me out to restaurants." Thus, it was fitting that I decided to use the weekend to treat myself to some yummy meals.

The first night I took myself out to O Chame (accent aigu over the e), where I sat at the bar and made a dinner out of appetizers.

Grilled Eel with Belgium Endive
Blanched Spinach with Sesame Dressing
Tofu Dumplings with Hijiki Seaweed

I remember a kooky (and famous) poetry teacher I had at Iowa, who commented on how complicated it was to read nouvelle cuisine menus. Instead of the way old dishes had been named for their wholeness, to her they had become a postmodern sum of their parts. Pizza Margherita was all of a sudden "a flatbread, topped with extra virgin olive oil, tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and herbs."

In modern cuisine, it seems difficult to become something whole again when the entire movement of food has been to return to the consideration of how carefully chosen the parts are. Spaghetti with red sauce can be good or it can be bad. It all depends on whether the spaghetti is homemade or a delicious import (or from Market Hall!). And of course, "red sauce" could be anything from jarred Prego to an organic tomato concoction with fresh oregano. Besides, menus that list their ingredients make me salivate. And they force me to learn about the ways that food combinations are made. We are now activate participants in our food experiences.

But, back to O Chame! In case you hadn't noticed, the food is Japanese inspired. Actually, that might suggest that the food is "fusion." I suppose there are certain items on the menu, such as the steak, which nods to the fusion end, but the rest of the food, I'd say, is delightfully California Japanese. The eel married so wonderfully with the fresh, lightly dressed endive. The spinach was refreshingly simple and its sesame flavor paid its respects to one of my sushi-joint favorites, the seaweed salad. The tofu dumplings, however, were not what I expected. I imagined them to be more like Chinese dumpling that come encased in a gyoza wrapper. Instead, they were just firm slices of homemade tofu in a clear broth. Very subtle but nice.

I debated on dessert but the dinner was so light that I went ahead with a sherry custard. This is not, mind you, for the non-alcohol types. The flavor of the sherry, which was rich and spicy, infused the entire custard. As if that weren't enough, more sherry had been drizzled atop the dessert for good measure (alcoholic breath). The texture of the custard was so soft and slippery. It was like biting into a little bit of a cloud. Well, a cloud with a shot of sherry on top.

*

The next day, I had another one of my wandering East Bay Saturdays, stopping by the downtown Berkeley farmer's market to pick up a bundle of peaches and heirlooms. On my way back home, I also swung by the Cheese Board for a slice of pizza, but the pizza operation was on vacation for the week. I grabbed a Provolone and Olive Loaf and headed out. On NPR, I caught the tail end of This American Life. The story was about a young boy whose mother was struggling to help him keep the memory of his father, before he fell ill, alive. I thought of my own struggle to replace the man who tossed and turned in the hospital bed with the one who smiled (with the straightest teeth on earth) and cupped my cheeks every time I came home to visit. My father, whom I still miss dearly.

*

How we ended up having a multi-course dinner at A Cote (accent aigu over the e as well as a few more accents, too) is beyond me. I think I was blessed with not having eaten a terribly large amount of food earlier in the day, and both Sami and Elise were amenable to changing our plans from a movie to dinner and conversation.

It was Sami who suggested the restaurant, having touted it as "the best thing ever." Her friend, Jeff, is also the General Manager there. We weren't sure he'd be working that night and were prepared to be disappointed when we asked the hostess about him. Instead, we were so pleasantly surprised and truly blessed to have him around. From the start, he was incredibly gracious to us. Just as the hostess had laid them on the table, he snatched the menus away from us and said--if we trusted him--he'd do the ordering. We let go of control and conceded to the full food experience.

First, a selection of house cured olives. Then, a simple and delightful caprese salad. Then, fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and pesto. (These were incredible!) Prawns and baby artichokes with a saffron aioli. Gazpacho with a small dollop of crab on top.

In the middle, more substantially, there came the meats. Grilled halibut on a crispy, fried fig leaf. Tender, roast chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and carrots. A flatbread with fig and pancetta, which is one of my favorite flavor combinations that I had hoped it might replenish itself endlessly (and miraculously).

A cheese plate -- and by this time I am such bliss from the wines that Jeff has been bringing us to try that I am too stupid to do anything (like take a photo or write down the names of the cheese) that might actually be edifying for me as a food-learning experience. Perhaps what I am learning is simply how to succumb to a multi-course meal. I do remember, however, that I loved the cheeses, that the roasted nuts that accompanied them were paired marvelously, and that we might have even gotten a treat of apples along with it. Is any of this true anymore? I wonder . . .

Then, the finale. A dessert port with Coupe a Acote, described on their website as "Triple Bittersweet Chocolate Ice Cream, Hot Fudge, Caramel Chantilly and Pecan Praline with Caramel Brownies." Let's face it, it's just a grown-up version of a Sunday with EVERYTHING GOOD on top! Admittedly, it's in a galaxy beyond the Baskin Robbins or, even, Cold Stone variety . . . but it calls on the kid in each of us who still wishes for brownies, ice cream, and hot fudge (albeit, a stellar version of them) in the same dessert. You can imagine that by this time, I had a grin on my face from Tokyo to New York.

And just when we thought we were done, that there was nothing more, that the meal had finally ceased, a simple and elegant shot of Calvados. A perfect finale to an incredible meal. I kept thinking how lucky I was to be alive, to be surrounded by people I admire deeply, and to be fortunate to be welcomed so hospitably with gastronomic splendor. I was born in the right time period, in the right place, to the right people. Our chances of having been treated thusly (like royalty) have only become more abundant. The lucky stars above.

Spring Rolls as the fog rolls in

2005-08-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

My love, E, partaking of a spring roll (and a vodka tonic).

Portland on the way down-low

2005-08-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted for the last week. E & I took a little excursion to Portland to visit family. E's father just had surgery and is, with difficulty, recovering. The challenge is not that he isn't in good health but rather that he is. Though he's in his 70s, he hasn't been a sick man in his life. I think it's tough for him to suddenly be somewhat incapacitated, at the whim of his slowly-healing body and the goodwill of others around him.

Because the trip was so family-centric, I had little time to taste the cuisine of the Rose City. We did manage, however, to catch the downtown Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. The produce selection was impressive. I kept salivating over the tomatoes and wanting to do something with all those squash blossoms! There were several flower stands, too, with dahlias galore. I don't think I ever knew how much I liked dahlias until I saw such a nice variety in a number of interesting colorations.

It was a sampling marathon, too. Lots of bakeries offered up bites of cookies and other pastries. Cheese makers tempted with their wares. I even got a yummy bite of a peach sorbetto by a local gelateria, Alotto Gelato. But the most exciting things that I tried were the jellies made by the Rose City Pepperheads. They were sweet, like jellies, but had the delicious razor-sharp edge of spicy peppers. I mean, I've had savory-sweet jellies before, but the combinations of pepper flavors that these folks made were divine. After trying several flavors--like Holiday Jalapeno, Smokin' Margarita, and Ginger Garlic--I opted finally for the Holy Habanero. It so perfectly captured the complexity of the habanero pepper.

However . . . I must be quite spoiled. The produce at the farmer's market was not cheap! Red bells were offered up at $4 per pound. That's a whole lotta money for a few red peppers. They've been reduced to 89 cents per pound at Monterrey Market. Nevertheless, all those bells and tomatoes were still calling out to me. We put together a nice salmon with a gazpacho-esque salsa to top it. Simple but very delicious. E's sister gave me rave reviews, and I knew she'd be the toughest critic. And for dessert, a peach and blackberry cobbler. True to its name, I cobbled it together without a recipe--an amalgamation of oats, brown sugar, flour and, of course, butter. The essence of summer love.

**

A few days later, I cavorted about the downtown, mostly window-shopping. I didn't buy anything special aside from a card and a small gift for a friend. I also cruised Powell's briefly but was too overwhelmed to buy anything there, either. Suddenly, I became famished. I must have eaten a light breakfast because by the time noon rolled around, I wanted to eat anything in sight.

E's sister and I happened upon the square (whose name I did not note!) where all the food vendors set up their stalls, catering to the downtown work crowd. Thai sounded good, so we choose the kiosk with the most customers. We stood in line at Sawasdee Thai Food and were greeted immediately by a very friendly Thai woman, who was remarkable speedy at taking orders. I was in a noodle mood and opted for the Pad Sa Ew. There were other things on the menu, though, that looked fantastic. My stomach was beckoning, and I wavered, almost changing my order to a pumpkin curry.

In the back of the food hut, there was a large, open-air window for ventilation. Under the awning, we watched the cook, a lone woman (apparently the other cook couldn't make it that day), make food at an ungodly speed. The prep had already been pre-done, and the woman who took the orders prepared bowls of vegetables for the cook while giving her a number of all-verbal orders. Very high heats and flames that flitted upwards of a foot did not phase the cook. She was intrepid. She worked like a maniac.

The noodles I got were spectacular. For $5 a pop, they were quite possibly the best version of Pad Sa Ew that I've ever had. Not too greasy, a good number of veggies, piping hot and just the right blend of sweet and spicy. And judging from the happiness in the desirous eyes of the repeat offenders around us, I know the rest of the stuff was just as good. If that little kiosk had a permanent location on the Berkeley campus, I'd be feasting from it daily.

I'm a sucker for tarts

2005-08-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

Friends called at the last minute yesterday, visiting from Seattle and wondered about our plans. "Come on over!" I said and promised a meal. I knew I wanted to cook an I'll-miss-you-sweetie meal for E before he embarked on a camping trip this weekend. Suddenly, with more people to cook for, the plans came together. I was justified to spend hours in the kitchen putting something delicious together.

I eyed a recipe from the most recent issue of Bon Appetit: an oven-dried tomato, goat cheese, and black olive tart. The contents of it looked right up my alley but I was wary of the puff pastry crust. I must say that I'm not a huge fan of puff pastry for savory tarts. They seem like an unnecessarily greasy shortcut to other, more appropriate crusts. I spent time looking around and finally found a black pepper and parmesan crust that seemed a good match for the tart. I also found this on Epicurious.com as part of an heirloom tomato tart recipe. The following two recipes, with my edits, are exerpted from the magazine.

Here's what I put together:

Crust Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick (8 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 to 4 tablespoons ice water

Filling Ingredients:
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
6 medium tomatoes or large romas, cored, halved crosswise, seeded
2 small garlic cloves, thinly slivered
2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme, divided
1 cup coarsely grated skim-milk mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup soft fresh goat cheese (about 4 ounces)
2 large eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
1/3 cup oil-cured black olives, pitted
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Making the tomatoes
Preheat oven to 300°F. Line rimmed baking sheet with foil; brush foil with 1 tablespoon oil. Place tomato halves, cut side up, on baking sheet. Sprinkle garlic and 1 tablespoon thyme over tomatoes; drizzle remaining 1/4 cup oil over. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Bake until tomatoes begin to shrink and are slightly dried but still soft, at least and an hour and up to 2 hours. Cool tomatoes on sheet. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Store in single layer in covered container in refrigerator.)

Making the tart crust
Blend together flour, butter, shortening, parmesan, pepper, and salt in a bowl with your fingertips or a pastry blender (or pulse in a food processor) until mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size lumps. Drizzle 2 tablespoons ice water over and gently stir with a fork (or pulse in food processor) until incorporated. Gently squeeze a small handful: If it doesn't hold together without falling apart, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring (or pulsing) after each addition until incorporated, continuing to test. (Do not overwork dough, or it will become tough.)

Turn out dough onto a work surface and divide into 2 portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather both portions of dough into 1 ball, then pat into a disk. Chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch round and fit into a 9-inch round tart pan with a removable rim. Roll rolling pin over top of pan to trim dough flush with rim. Lightly prick tart shell all over with a fork. Line shell with foil and fill with pie weights, rice, or dried beans. Bake in middle of oven 20 minutes. Carefully remove foil and weights and bake until golden, about 15 minutes more. Cool in pan on a rack.

Making the filling:
Meanwhile, using fork, mash mozzarella cheese, goat cheese, and remaining 1 tablespoon thyme together in medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add eggs and milk and stir until mixture is well blended. Spread cheese filling evenly in crust. Arrange tomato halves in filling, cut side up. Place olives between tomatoes. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese evenly over top.

Bake until filling is puffed and set, about 35 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Push up pan bottom, releasing sides. Serve tart warm. Makes 6 servings.

*
The tart was an incredible hit! The oven-dried tomatoes are what make it out-of-this-world. You might be able to get away with using sun-dried tomatoes, but I can't imagine that the taste won't be compromised. The way this recipe is written, though labor intensive, ensures that you'll lock in all the flavor of fresh, delicious tomatoes. If the task of cooking tomatoes for two hours doesn't appeal, though, make sure to use Romas or other non-watery varieties of tomatoes and shave an hour or so off the end of the cooking time. I cranked up the heat a little and took out the tomatoes around the 1 hour and 15 minute-mark, and they were still quite incredible. If you do this, however, you'll just have to watch them to make sure you don't burn them.

Also, I amended the original recipe a bit because I didn't have whipping cream or whole-milk mozzarella, which is what the recipe calls for. What I used, whole milk and skim-milk mozzarella, worked out incredibly well and didn't pose a problem for the texture or the taste of the tart. Last but certainly not least, the original recipe says that it offers 6-8 servings, but our dinner party of 4 devoured the whole thing. Yup, what can I say? It was that bad-ass.

And guess what? I got so busy with the serving and eating the tart that I forgot to take a photo. Sorry, folks!

The Nothern California Coastline, Cont'd

2005-08-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Santa Cruz
Last weekend, E and I drove to Half Moon Bay then down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz, where awe-inspiring views of the ocean are combined with the hovering summer fog. A little outside of Santa Cruz, we stopped at an unmarked beach that E lovingly termed "4 Mile." It was obvious that surfer's knew its moniker, for we asked a middle-aged man in a wetsuit where we could find it. He pointed us in the right direction.

After ambling through brush behind a family of tow-headed surfers (even the mom had her surfboard), we came upon a beautiful beach. E and I hiked over rocks to a point farther out, upon which waves crashed. The tide was low, and most likely, this spot was semi-submerged at high-tide. There must have been two dozen surfers with bellies on their boards, bobbing as the small waves came and went. All of a sudden, a big one would hit and boarders would paddle backward or forward to catch the wave at the right spot. Every so often, someone would hit the jackpot and ride the wave all the way into the beach.

After 4 Mile, we continued into downtown Santa Cruz, where we window-shopped and people-watched. E, who went to UCSC in the 80s, recalls the downtown before the Loma Prieta earthquake. It's now a semi-fancy outdoor shopping mall, but still filled with the flavor of hippie locals. We stayed only a beat in the downtown, catching a quick bite to eat at a little green kiosk which served fresh Mexican food. We ordered a bowl of warm rice, beans, and sauteed zucchini, topped with green sauce. Nice in a home-style way, but a little pricey ($7) for that sort of thing.

Later, we ended up at the Tea House Spa, only a block away from Pacific Ave., where we entered a strange little universe of bliss, seemingly far away from the downtown reality. The spa has four private rooms, each with a hot tub and a wet sauna overlooking a bamboo garden. For a few moments, before a band nearby started sound-checking for its evening set, we couldn't believe that on the other side of the sublime garden there was a parking lot. Make no mistake, though, the band did not deter us from enjoying ourselves. The hot tubs jets were loud enough to function as a white noise buffer. And, anyway, it was kind of cute. Afterall, we were in Santa Cruz and not some other yuppy locale.

After an hour of soaking and drying ourselves (what a strange thing we do for fun), E & I picked up a few groceries at the Shoppers' Corner, a nice little grocery store downtown, and headed over to Rhys' parent's home. They've been spending a lot of time at her folks' home because her brother and his fiance are about to tie the knot. Guess everyone's jumping onto the marriage bandwagon!

After a simple dinner and some nice wine, E & I headed out to the Boardwalk with our friend, Don. Let me tell you, the peeps were out in full force! E bought each of us tickets to ride the Giant Dipper, an old, wooden rollercoaster on the beach. Though I barely remember the details of the ride--the wine clouding my judgment--I remember how fun it was to suddenly have the wind blowing through my hair while my stomach fell through the seat. We ended the night noshing on a churro and taking photos in a black and white photo booth.

Big Sur

I recovered only for a day before heading out on Monday morning with Kirthi to Big Sur. We had, in our maniacal happiness of taking a road trip, a moment of thinking we'd book ourselves into a B & B in Monterrey. I don't know what I was thinking. A B & B is fine, but Monterrey is an Any Tourist Town USA by the Bay, filled with horribly mediocre seafood and stores that sell junk and t-shirts with rote sayings like "My mom went to Monterrey and all she got me was this lousy t-shirt." Luckily, we quickly nixed the idea in favor of staying at a cabin down in one of the campgrounds in Big Sur.

Given all the epic connotations of the area as the site of one of Kerouac's most loved novels, there was an entry in my Northern California knowledge missing under "Big Sur." I was happy to fill it in with "dramatic coastlines," the phrase most often used to describe each of the hikes in the Big Sur area by one of the guide books we were using. Though Kirthi poked fun at the writer, who possessed only the adjective "dramatic" to describe anything beautiful, it wasn't so far from the truth. The coastline is picturesque.

While I drove South from Monterrey along the scenic and curvy Highway 1, Kirthi read about the "dramatic coastline" at Andrew Molinas State Park. We stopped for a leisurely hike to the ocean which led us to a little beach, where we noshed on some home-made bread, Haig's babaghanoush (the best!), some heirlooms and a bit of baked tofu that we had picked up at Berkeley Bowl. The fog had finally lifted as we watched a few surfers trying to catch a wave. We took the rest of the hike up over the bluffs looking out over the beach. We were filling in "damn!" under Big Sur.

Further down the road, we stopped at Pfeiffer State Park, one of the main attractions in Big Sur. It's got hikes galore, but it's also famous for a river and swimming holes. After asking campers how we could find our way to the swimming, we found the trail and hiked out onto the rocks, where we met with families in bathing suits lounging or diving (where it was deep enough) into the waters. Because it was a river, the water came from somewhere higher up and cascaded over rocks, creating little swimming holes filled with the clearest waters. Upon entry, it was chilling but after a few minutes, it felt wonderful.

Something had possessed me in those waters. I hiked up through the currents and the rocks in nothing but my bathing suit to explore all the nooks and crannies. Finally, after an hour of basking, I was curious about all the young folks who were hiking down from a place farther up the path. I crawled around, with Kirthi following behind, and found that the end of the line was a huge hole deep enough on one side that the daring hoisted themselves up a rope until they could jump into the pool from a height of 25 feet. That, I decided, wasn't for me. I did swim across the pool, enjoying the way the ravines merged around this lovely place. I was so glad to have come this far.

We went to Nepenthe later and had a glass of wine overlooking the "dramatic coastline." The place was swarming with European tourists, and I realized it must be one of those California hotspots that's written up in the guidebooks as "not to be missed," whatever the phrase might be in Italian, German, and French. Aside from the view, the dining experience itself didn't appear to be anything unique. As I said to E, it was sort of like someone plopping a Jupiter's (the Berkeley college bar with outdoor seating whose name was always followed by "to get more stupider") but placed in a location with a to-die-for view.

That night, we made dinner on a gas camping stove -- a simple pasta with blanched arugula, toasted walnuts, parsley and ricotta salata--and played Scrabble before turning in. We talked briefly to the family from San Diego camping next door to us, an Irish immigrant and single mother, her despondent 16-year old boy, and her 13-year old daughter and two friends. The 13-year olds, whose bikinis were laid out to dry on a log, wandered about the campsite, being typical adolescents who stayed as far away from the others. I could see clearly the way the family's various stages of development were catching up to them. They all played out their prescribed roles. I felt sorry for the boy and asked why he hadn't invited a friend. To that, he only retreated further inward, shrugging his shoulders in a way that made it clear that he was horrified that a couple of young woman were harrassing him about his social life. I guess you know you're old when you interrogate a teenager as if he were a 7-year old.

In the morning, we made a yummy egg scramble with leftover heirlooms, parsley, and corn. I had my fake coffee, and Kirthi had a bit of the real brew that I'd stashed in our stuff. We headed out early and took one of the short hikes into Pfeiffer to a waterfall. There were only two other people out on the trail at the time, and the air smelled of morning. We shared the waterfall with no one but each other and talked about yoga and spiritualism.

On our way back up on Highway 1, we were determined to find the Soberanes Point Trail, only a mile and a half loop, leading out to the most "dramatic coastline." Actually, the whole trip will forever be remembered by how incredible this trail was. We walked through poison oak and wildflowers until the scenery suddenly changed. We found ourselves on the edge of bluffs under which a few little beaches lay in little coves where blue waters lapped up onto the shores.

It looked like it was high tide. Regardless, these beaches, we were told by the book, are notorious for deaths. The water crashes onto land much higher than expected and washes people away. The awe in the scenery--and it kept getting more and more colossal as we kept on the trail--was in its ability to swallow us up. As one of our professors in the last quarter had written, awe is in part derived from the recognition that this awe-inspiring thing is so much larger than you and has so much more power than you will ever have.

As we ambled back, satified after having soaked in the most beautiful view of all, Kirthi spontaneously said, "Nature sure does know how to curate itself."

Brown vs. White

2005-07-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

. . . rice, that is. My mother, who is a staunch white-rice person, recently visited us to escape the hotter-than-Angelina-Jolie climate of Fresno summers.

She's a vegetarian, who has primarily eaten South Indian food, lots of vegetables, lentils and rice. In the olden days, my mom ate well. People in her environment needed an abundance of carbohydrates to get through the day. Still, my family in India shovels mounds of rice onto their plates to weather the sizzling Andra climate. Most of them don't have cars and walk everywhere in order to get around. They burn what they eat, and they rarely have health problems.

Then, there's my mom. She lives in the 'burbs and drives her car everywhere, even if all she needs is a carton of milk. The food that she eats is now no longer viable for her environment. Her diet, from our current perspective of carb-consciouness, is too sugar heavy. She is a prototypic white rice addict, and it's hard for her to give up the good feeling that it gives her. I have on many occasions extended an arm and tapped at the vein, indicating the junkie-like hold it has on her.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the simple fact that she can't, in her primarily sedentary lifestyle, burn all those carbs off. She is teetering on the edge of adult-onset diabetes. And, she eats the worse type of carb possible: one with a high glycemic index. White rice spikes her blood sugar levels and requires insulin to come to the rescue immmediately. She might as well be eating candy. She's only 50, mind you. That ain't good.

Meanwhile, I've been singing the praises of brown rice for a long time, trying desperately to encourage her to try it. In much the same way that she refuses to believe that seaweed is vegetarian--we're talking about an old dog here--she has firmly stood in the white rice category. Only now, egged on by a recent weight loss and the positive effects it has had on her blood sugar problem, she has opened her mind to other kinds of slower-burning grains.

So, I made a Thai veggie curry and a pot of brown rice. And guess what? She loved it. But she is not the type of person who is so easily converted (no pun intended) to a new type of food. Unlike me, she listens to words of the familiar. She realized that brown rice was something her father used to eat before white rice became popularized in India. She also believed that white rice, or "polished" rice, was something the British initiated in India. My mother claims they processed the rice and then marketed it back to the Indians as a better product. Throughout her childhood, she remembers disdaining the old "brown" rice and singing the praises of white rice, much to her father's dismay.

Anybody familiar with this historical narrative? I'm curious to see what I can learn about this change from brown to white rice. I've looked around a bit on Amazon but haven't been able to find much about this time period in rice's history.

Eating One's Shoe

2005-07-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

I heard Werner Herzog on the radio a few days ago being interviewed on Fresh Air. Terry Gross was absent and was replaced by a man who asked similarly naive questions. I caught the tail end of the interview.

Listening to Herzog, however brief, did remind me of his incredible commitment to doing one's creative passion. The interviewer asked him about the strenous, life-altering journeys he embarks on in order to get his films made. Herzog interrupted him abruptly to tell him, "That is bologna." He claimed he was unmotivated by the transformative aspects of the process, but that he is just solely dedicated to making the art happen, whatever that might be.

E had asked me the night before whether I would just become more and more obsessed with food. This was in the back of my head as I heard Herzog speak and remembered the Les Blank movie, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Coincidentally, I had also been reading about Les Blank in Ruth Reichl's book, Comfort Me with Apples. In it, Blank is shooting Garlic is s Good as Ten Mothers. I know that Les still lives somewhere near me and continues to make his kooky but thought-provoking documentaries.

In Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Blank films the unfolding of a bet between Herzog and Errol Morris. At one time, Herzog was Morris' professor and encouraged him to finish his first film. If Morris did, Herzog promised to eat his shoe, the leather one he was wearing at the time of the bet. Not suprisingly, Morris made the film, Gates of Heaven, a documentary about pet cemetaries and the people who bury their pets in them.

Alice Waters marinated the shoe in duck fat, garlic and other herbs. If I recall this correctly, she then slowly simmered the shoe until it was tender. Don't think you'll ever see that on Chez Panisse's menu! Herzog, standing in front of a crowd in the UC Theater, a precious gem filled with history and sitting unused at the moment, proceeds to give a talk and eats his shoe. I believe that he actually eats the entire leather portion, the edible part, of the shoe.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring parts of the film--and it is definitely a film worth seeing--is the footage that Blank has of Herzog speaking about his vision of what an artist should be. At one point, Herzog describes difficulties he had in the making of Even Dwarfs Started Small. There were accidental fires, and one of the cast members got very hurt--not uncharacteristic of Herzog's films. (See Les Blank's Burden of Dreams.) Because Herzog felt so badly for the pain that his cast of midget actors endured, he promised to throw himself into a cactus when the filming was done. In Eats His Shoe, he of course reveals that he painfully threw himself into a cactus bush.

There is also a stellar moment in the film, when Blank is interviewing Herzog in the back seat of a car. I don't remember the exact quote, but Herzog is talking about activities which most closely attain perfection. Not surprisingly, he lists his own passion of filmmaking. He then goes on to say that an alternative to such an ideal would be "cooking" and, then, lastly, adds that "walking on foot" is also quite special. From the time I saw this movie, I loved this scene. It was always poetic to me. But it was also ephemeral, something I didn't quite understand: that filmmaking and cooking and walking on foot would all, almost equally, bring me closer to nirvana?

Now, faced with E's question of whether I will continue to become more and more obsessed with cooking, I feel confident that I am engaged in one of the most powerful, ascendent practices.

Tomales Bay (West Marin, Part 3)

2005-07-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, E convinced me that it would be "fun" to kayak across Tomales Bay and sold it to me as a food adventure by adding that we could have the destination of the Hog Island Oyster Company in mind. I am skeptical of sports-related activities like kayaking. I want so badly to be cool and composed enough to enjoy them but I can't stop thinking about all the horrible things that might go wrong when doing them.

In the end, I decided to try it if only to compromise and do something that I knew my new hubby would like to do. We drove to Marshall, where we were outfitted in wetsuits and PFDs (personal flotation devices). The man who worked at the rental company recited from memory in the quickest and most monotonous way what we should do if our kayak capsizes. Then, after hearing him move his lips but not having registered a word of the light-speed lecture, we were paddling away from shore.

This is the bay not the ocean. Nevertheless, I've heard that there is a white shark breeding ground in Bodega Bay, just 20 miles north of where we were. So, as soon as we were on the open water, I kept scaring myself into believing that a shark would jump up from under our kayak and frighten us into the water. Or, we'd accidently capsize on the waves (which seemed really unlikely given the sturdiness of the vessel), and Jaws would be near, ready to snap up a limb or two. Even if a shark wasn't loitering near our kayak, the sheer thought of falling into the bay was terrifying.

Any which way you cut it, I'm a fear type. It's my job to worry about the worst case scenario. In times of daily stress, it can be a desirable trait. I'm always thinking of the best hour to go shopping, the most time-efficient way of driving to a location, or any of the many items that we might accidently leave behind before boarding a plane. I am what in other cases would be a "good planner." I don't cope well with letting go of control.

I sweated the three hours that we maneuvered about on Tomales Bay. It was good to have the distraction of a paddle, a repetitive activity to take one's mind off the negative. I will also be the first to say that it was a stunning place to be. We paddled to the opposite shore (West), where we came upon beaches accessible only by the Bay. They were filled with sparkling white sand and lots of trees. The sun was out, no fog, and the winds were very low. It was a beautiful day.

We had a quick snack of fruit and cheese on one of the beaches. We then paddled further toward the ocean--watch my fear-meter creep upwards--where we approached a beach filled with cows grazing. There were only five or six of them near the beach's edge, all black with white spots. What a serene sight! Then, we turned around, paddled to another little beach, where three abandoned buildings were once inhabited by a man who had an artist's colony. We've yet to get the full story on this.

Finally, the Marshall shore beckoned us back. We asked the guy who had originally sent us off about the Hog Island Oyster Company. He said that it was fine, but we'd have to shuck our own oysters. Instead, he emphatically recommended the oyster bar sitting only yards away from the rental place.

The Marshall General Store and Oyster Bar has a funny collection of things. On the one hand, it is stocked with a few high-end items such artisan goat cheese and local breads by the Brickmaiden. It also has a small (not gourmet) candy selection and other useful household items. They have no running water (talk about feeling like you're in another country), and they make delicious deli sandwiches. Then, of course, there's the renowned oyster bar.

We sat down in the sun-porch near the oysterista (is there such a word?) and put in our order. There's an expansive porch on the back side of the building, too, where other oyster-loving folks sat waiting for their food while looking out upon Tomales Bay. E got us a beer each, and we suckled on them until the oysters arrived. Three barbecued, three Rockefeller, and a half-dozen raw oysters. We gobbled the raw down with generous amounts of lemon juice and hot sauces (they stocked many types). The barbecued and Rockefeller arrived a beat later, and before we knew it, they too were gone. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Rockefeller, we weren't either. They are oysters chopped and mixed with spinach, onions, herbs, butter and bread crumbs. They are then put back into the shell and baked.

Just as we begin to list our favorites--raw first, bbq second--our oysterista brought a set of mussels in Thai green curry sauce to the table. "A gift for being newlyweds," he said. The mussels were so delightful that they melted instantly in my mouth like a tender mushroom. In addition to the texture to the bite, there was the refreshing feeling of eating from the spring of life, the ocean. The curry only egged the flavor of the mussel on, reminding us of the evolution of life on earth. I thought of all the time we have traveled through the lineage of food to get to the perfect combination of flavors embodied in the curry. Many years of trials to bring such taste explosions to life. All of this paired simply with something foraged from the water, not altered by human meddling.

What can I say? We grew closer to something simultaneously elemental and evolved, and all my fears of falling endlessly into the bay evaporated.

Pilgrimage

2005-07-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

What else can you call it? I met Jen G for breakfast and a wedding photo swap at Tartine. The photos came out beautifully! I am impressed and delighted by the quality of what she took for us! The only problem, clearly not her fault, is that my rotund belly shows through in the reception gown. Cute? Or just too many visits to bakeries in the Bay Area?

I know I'm low on willpower, but I also know that I have a ceiling that I can hit, where it no longer feels comfortable to be a chub. I'm there right now again, feeling the need to move my body again. Giving up the treats, though, is tough. Maybe impossible. So, I had a gougere, lighter than the ham croissant I'd intended to get. Jen G ordered a shiitake croque monsieur, and I helped myself to a tiny bite.

A few years back, when Tartine was a fledging, a friend of mine worked there as a baker. I confessed my infatuation with gougeres, and she gave me a tip. "Check out Linda Dannenberg's Paris Boulangerie Patisserie," she said. "That's where they get most of the recipes." I paid $75 for a second hand copy of this book. It was out of print at the time, but I noticed that it's back in print and available for a very reasonable $25. Flipping through the book makes me salivate profusely. Recipes for all sorts of French pastries, sweet and savory, are contained in the pages. I've tried my hand at the gougeres, which are easy and turn out excellently. I'm still mustering up courage to tackle a croissant!

I still can't believe that I used to live only two blocks from Tartine. Even harder to fathom is my move! I guess soaring housing prices had something to do with our new neighborhood dense with fruit trees (lemon, apple, plum, fig, persimmon, avocado, to name a few). Despite our misgivings, we are now only a 1/2 mile from the best produce on earth: Monterrey Market. Those of you who are loyal to Berkeley Bowl might contest this, but I stick to my statement. Monterrey Market has less selection (and less traffic), but it's a farce to say that in the face of the many horrible supermarkets in the world stocked with iceberg lettuce and a few stalks of celery, that Monterrey Market is lacking.

E and I shopped today for a small dinner for friends tomorrow. We were both moved by the sheer abundance of gorgeous produce. Several varieties of peaches, nectarines, and berries bursting out of their containers. And, of course, figs! And melons! And tomatoes! So much produce, so little time.

Inspired by my recent pilgrimage to Tartine, I had come with the intent to make an apricot tart from Paris Boulangerie Patisserie, but mysteriously, there were no apricots today. I wonder if the window has closed already or if there will be another batch soon. In any case, I picked up some yellow peaches instead and paid homage to the fruits of summer.

Point Reyes Station (West Marin, Part 2)

2005-07-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Food and Wine article that I mentioned earlier was of great help in finding a few local check-it-outs in these parts. We took its advice in the town of Point Reyes Station and dropped in for a light lunch at the Pine Cone Diner and a little afternoon treat at the Bovine Bakery. At the diner, we ordered the soup-of-the-day, a sweet corn and squash soup, which was simple and hit the spot. We also scoped out the Caribbean Chicken Salad. The salad's ingredients (spinach, mango, dried cranberries, coconut and wild rice) were all harmoniously there, but I found myself avoiding the chicken. Had it been grilled or tended to with more loving care (it was just boiled), it wouldn't have lacked the flavor and firmness needed to make the salad really come together.

Locals rave about the Bovine Bakery's offerings, but I had little chance to experience much of the charm save for a stunningly beautiful teenager who worked behind the counter. (Are people actually allowed to be that pretty in real life?) The blueberry-plum crumble we tasted was nicely done. The fruit was bursting with flavor but the crumble part of the treat was a bit soggier than I usually like it. Had there been room enough in my stomach to sample more, I might have gotten a more distinct impression of Bovine's unique style, too. As it is, I think I'm spoiled by the deluge of fine bakeries in North Berkeley and in the City. (Afterall, I've got plans tomorrow morning for Tartine.)

Unfortunately, the Tomales Bay Foods building (housing the famous Cowgirl Creamery and the Indian Peach Deli) was closed on the Monday that we rolled into town. We used the extra time to loiter around and ducked into a bookstore on the main drag. Upon entering, the first table to our right was filled with books expousing the growing and cooking of local, organic foods as well as other pro-food movements, such as "slow food." There were also fliers for a Marin farmers' market, touting itself as the only all organic market around.

While E browsed for a good summer novel, two 9-year old boys came through the door and asked to be put on the waiting list for the Harry Potter event. In just a few days, the bookstore would be sponsoring a sleepover in the store, entertaining giggling boys and girls before the strike of midnight, when each of them would finally be allowed to open and devour their copies of the new novel. After the hubbub involved in disseminating the books, I imagine the children retreating to their sleeping bags, the room completely quiet but for the sound of turning pages. The man behind the counter just wanted to make sure the kids were aware that they would have to purchase the book to be able to come to the sleepover. One of the kids politely answered "yes" while the other blurted out an emphatic "duh!" E & I chuckled and repeated "duh!"

Dishin' It Out

2005-07-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

It makes me absurdly giggly. All I want to do is plate food onto them in order to display their magnificence. Where, you ask, did I get these dishes? Three differences circumstances converged in our acquisition of our new dishware.

1. As a birthday gift from his best friend, E took a class at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito last year. Heath specializes in making ceramic dishware and tiles. E took a class about phototransfering onto tiles, in which he learned to make the cutest tile of sock monkeys in the jungle, a mainstay of our kitchen decor.

2. When it came time to register for wedding gifts, we had a breakdown at Macy's, wondering what on earth we'd possibly want there besides underwear or jeans (which, incidentally, you are not allowed to register for). After two hours of wandering about the store, we left having put only two small suitcases on the registry.

3. I have been "over" my dishes since the day my mother bought them for me. I mistakenly mentioned to her once that I needed dishes after a roommate of mine (and her dishes) had moved out. My mother, who is a Costco shopper, bought two 4-place setting sets of Mikasa china in an ivory color and rimmed with gold. Eek! Aesthetically, they are totally not my style, especially the gold rim. From the start it drove me nuts because it makes the plates unable to be microwaved.

These three variables, put together in an equation, yielded: Heath. Started in the 1940s by Edith Heath, an artist and designer, the company gained and maintained its reputation for simple but elegant ceramics. Shortly after the company started, Gump's began to carry them, which was the main way they became distributed. (They are no longer carried by Gump's but can be found at Barney's.) Several restaurants in the area, such as Slanted Door, use Heath to show off their creations. The plates aren't cheap, but they'll also, according to everyone we know, last forever. Not just because of their quality but also because they are timeless pieces.

Yesterday, we drove to the Heath headquarters in Sausalito to pick up our "loot" as E called it--things that our friends and family had purchased for us off the registry. We supplemented with a gift certificate we had gotten, too. The experience of browsing in the store is a wonderfully fun thing, but we also arrived on time to take a tour of the factory. We witnessed the way the clay is processed and made usable, saw the molds used for the teapots, watched an employee throw a pot, and even got to spy the kilns. Heath is small enough that all the pieces have been touched by people either in the process of throwing or glazing. All the dishes come out with slight differences, making them like endearing big-eared or gap-toothed friends.

At the end of the tour, we carefully packed up our loot and headed for home. We washed them immediately and ousted the gold-rimmed Mikasa. Suddenly, unperturbed by the idea of more dishes to do, I've started to plate pasta I've made in bowls rather than leaving it in the sauce pan.

Experiments Already Underway

2005-07-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

E & I stopped into a small, independent bookstore in Point Reyes Station, which had a table devoted to the subculture of organic farming and general food-related items. On that table, I noticed a book called Everything I Ate, recently published by Chronicle Books. In it, the author Tucker Shaw, a writer of teen fiction and amateur photographer, chronicles through photography, every morsel he put in his mouth in the year 2004. I was intrigued but couldn't help but feel envious. These days, it's hard to shrug the envy of my peer's cultural production and see the thing produced for itself. It didn't help that Tucker was still youthfully good looking, too!

Admittedly, Tucker Shaw's experiment is brilliant. To see not just the notes of each mini-feast, be it pretzels or fois gras, but the actual photographs is, frankly, stunning. It is a stark reminder of the ways in which eating is, for most of us, simulataneously a low- and high-brow activity. Unlike E, who I have mentioned is more discriminating about food consumption than I am, I'm likely to dine at Taco Bell for lunch and Zuni Cafe for dinner. This comes to life in Shaw's book, where some meals are fantastic for both their artistic as well as culinary qualities. Other bites of the day are as simple (or processed) as a handful of peanut M-and-M's.

E jokes that I am planning meals just after eating. He thinks this is silly but is also aware that he benefits greatly from my constant attention to food. Like a 1950s housewife, I free him up to think about other, ostensibly more important things. But unlike that antiquated stereotype of a housewife, I'm closer to my mom's version of a homemaker. I make things I absolutely love and want to eat. My dining whims are as unpredictable as the fog, and because E does not crave differences in taste daily, I can follow the tides of my own tastes. I can make whatever pleases me, and, most likely, it will please him, too. Two birds with one precise stone. I do believe this is what people call lucky.

In the vein of Shaw's experiments, I would like to chronicle all the meals that I make this summer in the hopes that what I will do for myself is to transcribe the recipes which I continually create but are lost with the making. I am a cook of two extremes. Either I follow recipes to the tee or I put things together without any outside direction. Either extreme is valuable. In one case, I can know how to return to something that exists our there (I rarely keep and organize things I make from recipes) and I will capture in print and in photographs, my own style of cooking.

So, today I frolicked at the Berkeley Farmers' Market, knowing that I craved a good corn chowder. The organic farms are at their peak with summer veggies. It wasn't hard to spot ears of fresh corn, heirloom tomatoes, and peaches. Here's what I made:

Corn Chowder with Tomato Relish

Ingredients for Chowder: organic white sweet corn, organic carrots, organic celery, haricot vert, yellow onion, sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, free range chicken broth, heavy whipping cream, butter, olive oil, salt and pepper. (All herbs were from my garden.)

Ingredients for the Tomato Relish: heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Fresh Peach Filo Tart

Ingredients: Filo Pastry (frozen but thawed), one yellow sweet peach, organic raw sugar, and unsalted butter.

Cheers to fine summer cooking!

The Village of Bolinas (West Marin, Part 1)

2005-07-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm relieved that we opted for a "mini-moon" instead of a getaway involving getting your passport and visa ducks in order, hopping on planes (something E & I don't love), exhaustively sight-seeing and, finally, wishing you had a vacation to recover from your vacation.

We went to brunch with E's family on Sunday morning, unhurriedly threw a few sets of clothes, a couple of bikes, and a picnic basket (gifted to us by Anne & Sami and filled with cheese, wine, olives, chocolate & other delights) into the back of E's truck and drove North over Mt. Tam until we arrived in the sleepy little town of Bolinas.

If you're unaware of the rep that Bolinas has, here's a good opening descriptor: the residents categorically tear down the sign indicating the turnoff each time a new one is resurrected. In general, they are inhospitable to non-residents, hoping that the touristy tourists will keep their prissy noses out of Bolinas' business. Though it might seem outright xenophobic to vacationers itching to conquer a cute little locale by the beach, I find it self-protective and utterly understandable. This attitude has kept the town from being overrun with an icky and irreponsible hotel economy.

So what has Bolinas got to offer? For starters, it is more a village than a town, where the locals know each other by name. Only a handful of shops and eateries exist on the downtown strip: a hardware store, one gas station (with ridiculously expensive gas), a doctor's office, a dentist's office, a library, a cafe, a general store, a bike and surf shop, an old saloon by the name of Smiley's (which purports to be the oldest drinking hole in California), and a few other stores offering surf clothes and essential (!) hippie paraphernalia such as incense, crystals, and Indian fabrics. This latter detail, the "hippie" store, is a good indication of the reputation that Bolinas has had over the past few decades. Certainly, it was an alternative haven to many artists, particularly those influenced by the Beats. Richard Brautigan, for instance, called it home and even shot himself to death there in 1984.

Bolinas still retains much of its post-Beat flavor. Many of the houses are very rustic and still don't have a central water or sewage system (because of Bolinas development laws). Deer can be found roaming around throughout the more secluded parts of town. Several ragamuffins, young and old, hang out on Wharf Road wearing flip-flops or dreads or both. Stragglers sometimes camp out on the beach, where there are several beautiful tide pools into which one might peer at low tide. In general, as long as no pandemonium ensues, sleeping on the beach is welcome.

The town's emblem--Bolinas Border Patrol--shows a tough California quail in profile wearing cop shades. A great way to get to know this part of Marin is to read the Sheriff's Calls from the local paper, the Point Reyes Light. The calls still have the flavor of a Wild West, where mayhem of the drugs and alcohol variety make up a bulk of the problems. One story I loved was of a drunken man who broke into a house in the middle of the night and, when confronted by the owner, asked him for cigarettes.

What, then, you might ask, were we doing there? For starters, we hoped that our general familiarity with Bolinas and our respect for the town would make our stay welcome. Afterall, E's mom lived there for awhile, and E still has several friends who are residents. We booked three nights at the Blue Heron Inn, one of the only local B & B's in town, also on Wharf Road, which was recommended to us by friends. The rooms (there are only two) are very cute and quaint, nothing fancy. The bathrooms are spacious and have wood floors and clawfoot bathtubs.

The to-die-for part of Blue Heron was the food. A recent blurb featuring Northern California beach towns in Food and Wine had recommended it. The Blue Heron's restaurant, just downstairs from our room, featured a lovely sun room with wood and wicker furniture overlooking a small garden that can only be described as "cute." While the settings were much more bumpkin than the city-slickness of Fleur de Lis or Jardiniere, the prices and the quality of the food were equal rivals to these SF hot shots. The food was not cheap. There is no mistaking this! But the experience of perfect--nay, sublime--food made it all worthwhile. We were easily wooed and even made plans to come back the next night.

Sunday night:

*Baby greens, grilled red onions, kumquats tossed with red-wine vinaigrette and topped with baked goat cheese and toasted macadamias

*Sesame-encrusted grilled halibut with mango-pepper salsa and rice cooked with coconut milk

*Sweet-glazed pork chops with black mission figs

Monday night:

*Potato leek soup

*Tagliatelle in a tomato and fresh vegetable sauce

*Orange fried chicken with mashed potatoes

*Belgium chocolate cake with chantilly cream

What made the food so incredible? This is a tough question to answer, but I'll take a shot. The perfection of the experience lay largely in the fact that it was not formulaic, not a combinations of fashionable somethings that added up into something. I'd say that the freshness of the ingredients were definitely a factor. Most of the produce was organic and grown in the near vicinity. The pasta sauce for the tagliatelle, for instance, was catapulted from ordinary to extraordinary largely because of the quality of the veggies.

Another important factor in success: the ingredients were not used in a showy way. They were showcased for their complimentary nature. For instance, the kumquats in the goat-cheese salad were exemplary not for their uniqueness as this year's pomegranate (as brown is the new black or the 30's are the new 20's) but because they married well with the rest of the flavors in the dish. It was fitting that the ingredients of the food were committed and collaborating, not only in the spirit of the village of Bolinas but also in the spirit of our recent wedding.

Lastly, I've got to give it up for the wines. We had a Viognier that rocked my world! Of course, I was too enamored to have noted the name of it. I'll have to call them back and ask them what it is. Three cheers for the chocolate cake, too. Had they not run out of the coconut custard pie, we'd have missed out on the cake. Pastry chefs can learn a lesson from the simplicity of a perfectly moist, barely frosted chocolate cake with an ever-so-sweet whipped cream topping it. It was the girl-next-door who, having just emerged from the shower, is always more ruddy and naturally beautiful than an actress caked with makeup.

Stay tuned! More West Marin adventures to come. . .

Bells & Reverie!

2005-07-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

Suprisingly, the date has come and gone! E & I are hitched, and it went off without a hitch. Several of our friends said it was the best wedding they had ever attended. Many remarked that they loved our priest, who was entertaining and managed a very sweet hearthfelt ceremony with much humor and effervescence.

Other guests commented on the delicious veggie Indian food (by Amber India), the picture-perfect desserts (by Delessio Market in SF) & killer tunes from a local Berkeley DJ. There was effortless booty-shaking all around. Let's just say we had a crowd who knew how to rock the dance floor. E & I got our own tushes out there and cut a rug, too. Perhaps that was the pinnacle of fun for me? Bells & reverie all around!

So, um. . . anyone in need of a wedding planner? Now that I know how to handle every detail of a 200-guest affair, it's a good time to hang my sign and open shop. But I can't glibly take all the credit for such a masterpiece. Check out our beautiful altar--all thanks to my new hubby, who constructed it from green bamboo. He's been the aesthetic mastermind to the entire affair. Of course, the love of many kind people didn't hurt us, either.

I'll soon be back to blog, writing of all the temptations of the tongue we experienced in West Marin! After that, expect regular posts of kitchen experiments and more.

"I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke"

2005-06-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks those who are discussing on my blog! I appreciate that a conversation about cooking (and brewing) and its importance to human civilization was able to be generated and sustained. Also, kudos to those who chimed in about the breakfast foods debate. I'm a blogging toddler still, giddy from the stimulation. Keep it coming, please!

Onward . . .

It's true that Western breakfast foods taking over the world are a result of globalism. I remember about 7 or 8 years ago, I ordered a plate of pancakes and syrup in a 5-star hotel in Madras (now Chennai) and got silver-dollar dosas soggy from syrup. But in my recent jaunts to India, no such luck. Pancakes, french toast, and eggs arrive at the table looking and tasting like they came out of a diner in Missoula. Instead of impressing me, it creeps me out. I loved the American-food-gone-awry of the India before. It reminded me that India was still India. That we weren't getting so close together to become indistinguishable.

I once heard that food in a culture is the first thing that changes. Before we let down the veils of xenophobia and other cultural meldings, our tastebuds lead us to want what others have. For instance, twenty years ago in the US, Americans weren't necessarily that enamored by Chinese immigrants (one could argue that we still aren't) but we sure did begin a love affair with their food. Many would agree that the history of human civilization, especially over the last two millenia, can be viewed through the lens of taste. We caught whiff of wonderful things in far off places, things not witnessed before by our palates. We traveled far and wide to get them. India, especially, has felt the effects of this history with traders and colonizers desiring tea and spices. Afterall, what would our kitchens be like without black pepper?

Transformation is embraced for other reasons, too. Some things are meant to die out in the Darwinian sense because they just aren't that effective. I remember a Kenyan friend once told me that before corn meal was introduced to Africa, the Kenyans spent many long hours trying to make millet edible. To my knowledge, now millet has been largely replaced by corn meal in many traditional African dishes, making cooking a less onerous endeavor.

The practical side of change in combination with our longing for new taste horizons results in innovation. This I love! This is one of my primary reasons for living--to see how my fellow humans make food evolutions. How did people find that chocolate and sugar were a marriage made in heaven? Take the Gilroy Garlic Festival, for instance. I've yet to visit it but lore about the garlic ice cream winds its way through the grapevines of the Bay Area and beyond. Fusion, though marketed as the hottest thing since sliced bread (pun intended), is what we've been doing all along. Putting things together in typical chem-lab fashion. Some things come together brilliantly while other experiments fail and should be dumped by the wayside.

What is my point? I suppose I'm on a long-winded diatribe (have you known me to be short-winded yet?) about the balance between the new and the old. Globalism has expanded our hearts, minds, and stomachs. But I'm afraid that it wrongly sends things to a premature death. (This is another issue altogether, involving a critique of American capitalism, into which I cannot enter at the moment.) This morning, I had an Indian-style breakfast in my mother's kitchen. She made a paratha stuffed with shredded radish, chopped chili, mustard seeds, cumin, and kari leaves. It came accompanied by a fresh lemon pickle (made with the lemons in her yard in Central California) and plain yogurt. Words can't describe how delicious it was. I would hate to see all the young folks in India opting for second-rate pancake breakfasts (from McDonald's, no less) in lieu of home-made parathas.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world. . . Sruti, Mark (her beau, who is half-Indian and half-Scottish), and I made a trip to Vik's Chaat House a month ago when she was in town for a momentary respite. We ordered amazing chaat for cheap and drank ass-kicking chai. While noshing in the large fluorescently-lit dining area, I reminiscenced about the start of this operation in the grungy kitchen behind the grocery warehouse. It's now a veritable phenomenon, a not-to-be-missed vista on the food tourist's map. Unbeknowest to me, Mark had gone the extra mile and had purchased, of all the things in the world, a Limca, an Indian soft drink, in a bottle. I wasn't certain they were made anymore, but not suprisingly, somewhere in the world, there's a small factory still eeking out bottles for export to chaat houses in my neck of the woods. I guess this is what globalism means. While all the young Indian urbanites caress their plastic Pepsi and Coke bottles, we'll raise our glass Limca bottles high, ruffian-style, and shout, "I'd like to buy the world a Limca!"

Photos arrive, as promised . . .

2005-06-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

In honor of E's birthday, I baked a Cherry Almond Tart. We can't wait to dig in and taste the goodness!

Breakfast, Anyone?

2005-06-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

Breakfast may be a subject of debate that rages throughout E's & my life together.

Let me just preface this blog by saying that E is much more a rule-oriented person than I am. He believes that there are right and wrong things to do. When it is pointed out to him, he is also capable of admitting that what he believes is right is usually more of opinion, reflective of the way he was raised.

For E, it is important to adhere to the rules of what foods are appropriate for breakfast. Usually, it is E that wanders into the kitchen first after waking. I linger a little longer, washing my face, readying myself for the day. His first order of business is to put the kettle on for coffee. He then searches the cupboards for 9-grain cereal (his favorite), oatmeal or granola. Sometimes, when we are out of these things or if he is feeling a bit adventuresome, E will toast a slice of Vital Vittles and spread yogurt and jam on it. This is breakfast. This makes him quite content.

I, on the other hand, will eat anything for breakfast. Well, almost anything. I remember my cousin Kitu told me he had a tough time living in Kolkata for a few months. Though he was brought up in India and accustomed to its myriad of breakfast choices, he was unequipped with what he described as a fish and jalebi (deep-friend sugared dough pastry) meal. This does not sound appetizing to me--for breakfast or for any other meal!

But E is right to characterize me as a free "breakfast" bird. Yup, I am one of those people who eats leftover pizza for breakfast. This, because it is more of an American thing-to-do, doesn't bother E as much. But here's where it gets weird. I'll eat burritos slathered in salsa and hot sauce, the previous evening's Kung Pao chicken with rice, pasta salad, curry, and grilled cheese sandwiches at 8am--all of which sound a helluva lot more appealing to me that 9-grain cereal. Actually, one of my favorite weekend activities in Berkeley is to go to the Thai temple (see my previous blog) on Sunday morning for brunch. The temple's many patrons would suggest that I am not alone in my love of savory (even spicy) foods for the first meal of the day.

Regardless, E is always trying to gather fodder to prove that my breakfast tastes are an aberrance. He queried several sets of friends. "Do you do this? Is this normal behavior?" They all agreed that breakfast was a meal with more restrictive guidelines for food. They, too, are believers in toast, eggs, granola, etc. E was tickled when Rhys remarked about my habits, "I think that's an Asian thing." I'm willing to accept that. Actually, I'll embrace it.

I did some research about what people around the world eat for breakfast. Examining European breakfasts, especially, I realized that a facet of our grab-a-muffin-and-go hails from the French style of having only coffee with a single pastry for the petit dejeuner. In contrast, we also inhereit a not-so-petite breakfast from the United Kingdom, consisting in meats and hearty breads (with raisins). Another interesting observation, too, is that colonialism has largely brought European-style breakfasts to Africa and Asia, though the villagers and more indigent folks continue to eat their cheaper local cuisines.

I thought it might be fun to end this blog with a few facts about what people eat around the world for breakfast.

Africa: Breakfast usually includes uji, a thin gruel made of cassava, millet, rice or corn. Cornmeal is most common. Depending upon the poverty of the region and availability of other things, fruits, peanuts, or meat are also part of the meal.

Australia: Toast topped with spaghetti, baked beans, and bacon. (Wow! That's fascinating!)

Bulgaria: Tea or Turkish coffee, sesame bread and butter, sheep's milk cheese, honey, olives, tomatoes, boiled eggs .

China: Little distinction is made between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Often a rice with vegetables and meat is served. In Canton, dim sum and congee are popular.

France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg: Coffee and some type of bread or pastry.

India: Khichri (rice, lentils & spices). Interestingly, the English when in India adopted their own version with haddock, cream and eggs, calling it kedgeree. Other foods include dosas (crepe-like cakes filled with potatoes, meat, or veggies) and idli (steamed fermented rice cakes). Generally, chai and coffee are also consumed in the morning with the meal.

Ireland: Fried meat, white and black puddings with the array of meats, Irish soda bread sprinkled with golden and brown raisins.

Scotland: Oatcakes, scones, porridge, Arbroath smokies (small gutted haddock, salted or pickled before being smoked) eaten with lemon juice, black pepper, brown bread and butter.

Scandinavia: Cereal, eggs, breads with butter and jam, cold cuts, cheeses, yogurt, fruits, coffee or hot chocolate.

The 11th Hour

2005-05-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

It's probably a bit premature to begin calling the next few weeks to my wedding the "11th hour." It is something more like the 5 week countdown, which in wedding time is almost the end of the road. Coupled with a few weeks left of school (including a 12-page paper and a few hundred pages of reading left--and I am ahead, mind you) and only a mere few days left at my practicum with clients, I find myself wanting to sleep the days away. When I'm not napping, the reading suddenly drops by the wayside and buying plants from the nursery down the street for my yard looks like the only option to keep awake. That, or, an ice cream sandwich.

So, instead, I blog. (Well, I did grab a bit of Reed's ginger ice cream from the freezer to help.) I've been piling up a few reviews and a question or two, so I'll make it brief. At least, I'll try.

1: Osha Thai.

For many years, I craved a good Thai restaurant in my old hood near the 16th/Valencia corridor. It was astonishing to me that in the middle of a multi-ethnic dining nabe (high and low end) there was a scarcity of good Thai. For anything resembling it, you'd have to haul butt up to the Castro or walk to the far end of Valencia (26th) to dine at Suriya (which has a good rep for good reason). Finally, in the last year of my Albion Street life, I discovered the original Yamo Thai at the corner of 18th & Mission--one of the places that has been written up a gazillion times by food writers for its very colorful owner. You never knew when she'd turn on a dime and yell at you for something as innocuous as requesting hot sauce to go. As rude and unpredictable as she was, she made a mean pumpkin curry. I've yet to taste one as good as hers. But the downside of Yamo were multiple: it was mostly a lunch place and didn't have seating aside from a 5-stool bar. Then, suddenly, instead of the grungry exterior which defined Yamo, I saw hipsters putting up signage with a fancy logo. She had sold the place, and in the process, it has become an exclusively vegetarian Thai joint. Is it any good now? I don't know. I haven't eaten there since. If you have, let me know what you think.

Now, after I have moved out of the Mission, my prayers for excellent, sit-down Thai have been answered. As the folks on Iron Chef would say, "Osha Thai reigns supreme!" On Neela's suggestion, I had gone in for an early dinner once a few months back, but because I only ordered one dish, I didn't comprehend the full scope of the restaurant. Then, Hansa, my brother's girlfriend, requested a recommendation for good Thai for her graduation dinner. I passed my knowledge along (including Suriya as a possibility), and we (mostly family) ended up dining at Osha.

It was an absolute hit from the moment we put the food in our mouths. Actually, it may have started even prior to that with the funky ambiance. Large tropical pictures are placed behind elusive screens and lit in a futuristic way. Even some of the furniture, retro plastic or metallic mesh, pays homage to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Despite the 70s vibe, the decor's finishing touch is modern and clean. It's not super fancy, but it's no Yamo, either.

The drinks were on the money. Hansa's sisters praised the Lychee martini, which was more fruity than alcoholic. The food, though, was the star. We began with chicken satay and spring rolls, moved onto pad se ew, pad thai (again, not the best dish in the house but also not in the East Bay so I'm not rating it), green curry with chicken, green curry with vegetables (we had a few vegetarians at the table), spicy green beans, and an eggplant and tofu dish. The standouts, many of us agreed, were the green curries and the pad se ew. For dessert, we shared a few fried bananas with coconut ice cream. They were fresh and divine.

Everyone thanked me for the recommendation, and one of Hansa's sisters even said it was "the best Thai food she'd ever had." Them's are fightin' words.

2: Firefly.

I took Kirthi for a pre-birthday celebration to Firefly. We had both heard of this place--often described as "cute"--in the almost completely residential part of Noe Valley, but neither of us had ever eaten there. Friday night, and we ended up in this quaint restaurant.

Even as we approached from the outside, I felt a warmth toward it. Strangely, Firefly has the charm of an authentically French cafe (like in France!), partly due to the waitresses we had who wore very plain but stylish black outfits and one of whom definitely had a European accent of some sort. But there are other things that give it that non-American feel. There are charming (and not so artistically brilliant) paintings on the wall of fireflies. The lighting is dim, and the space is small, adding to the cozy feel. Standing in line for the bathroom before dinner, I ran into a woman who claimed that the last time she had been to the restaurant, the lights flickered like fireflies. But when she asked the waiter about whether this was actually true, he replied that they had recently fixed the glitchy system. Both she and I were disappointed that the lights no longer mimicked the restaurant's theme.

I mentioned to Kirthi that I thought it was a good date place, but there was also a family (with older children--maybe 10 and 13) seated next to us. Though the prices are a bit steep for family dining (entrees in the $15-20 range), nevertheless, it seemed like a family get-together joint, too. For starters, we ordered a salad with strawberries and pistachio-encrusted goat cheese, which was unassumingly delicious. Kirthi, a vegetarian, opted for vegetable and goat-cheese tamales for an entree. More than I am, she's a fan of Mexican food--but I was tempted by this dish on the menu, too. I ordered a cajun-spiced halibut with quinoa, artichokes, and an ever-so-slight flavor of anchovies.

The food was very good, but not amazing. My fish was well flavored and well-cooked but its accompaniments needed a little va-voom. A lemony spring sauce or something like that? I only tasted a bite of Kirthi's dish and can't write extensively about it, but I know she enjoyed it. Oddly, we were stuffed when the meal ended (even though we had even what seemed to be a normal amount), so we forewent dessert. I was so full, I wasn't even tempted by the strawberry-rhubarb crisp or chocolate pot-de-creme. What was I thinking?

3: Gioia Pizza.

Saturday night, Laurie's family and Tabatha came over to have dinner & dessert in my little pastoral yard. We ordered pizza from Gioia--a pizzaria on Hopkins & Monterrey, next door to the Hopkins Bakery and down the street from the Monterrey Market. This might possibly be the best pizza on earth! Super, super thin-crust Italian (as in Italy!) style with just the right amount of toppings and a very fresh tomato sauce. We ordered one anchovy and chili-pepper pizza and one mushroom pizza--and gobbled them up within minutes.

For dessert, I made blueberry lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting. The frosting never, despite the recommendation of the recipe to refrigerate, hardened to the consistency of regular cream cheese frosting. Thus, I plated the cupcakes & poured the frosting like a sauce over them. In terms of taste, it was a hit. I searched extensively for advice on how to thicken a frosting and couldn't figure out what would be the best thing to add. Instinct told me that more powdered sugar might firm up the frosting, but it had already reached an optimal level of sweetness. Any more would have wiped out the lemony flavor. Please email me if you've got thoughts on what might help.

Salt Sodas

2005-05-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

Oy! I'm so swamped with planning my wedding and trying to complete the last quarter of my first year in graduate school for psychotherapy that eating and blogging have really become secondary to all the other stuff.

Nevertheless, I wanted to work in at least one blog. For one of my classes, because it is both difficult and highly experiential, each of the students have been given the assignment to bring a "ritual" to share in our smaller group. One of the instructors kicked off the class with a Jewish passover ritual involving the consumption of a chocolate-covered raspberry jelly candy.

That sparked in most of us a desire to share rituals related to food. A fellow student, Hillary, brought a "Depression Cake." The cake, eggless and dense with ginger flavor and a sugary white icing, was a recipe developed by the women in her family to continue the tradition of birthday cakes in a time when eggs were a luxury. I felt inspired by the spirit and history in this ritual.

I didn't want to do what others before me had already done, though. Thus, I was wary of bringing food, particularly because it was so easy to gravitate toward sweets, which in almost every culture, are a powerfully celebratory and unifying ritual. So what did I do? I brought a drink instead: "the uppu soda." Translated from the Telugu, these are salt sodas made with carbonated water, fresh lime or lemon juice, ground cumin, and salt. I lugged a murky 2-liter bottle to class and offered it to my peers in plastic cups.

Vendors sell these drinks in the streets like ice-cream in a push-along cart. The salt mitigates the effects of dehydration while the water hydrates. Here in the US, my brother is the uppu soda maestro, who concocts the drink at family gatherings and individually tailors each to suit the lemon-salt preference of our palates.

In offering the uppu soda, I warned my classmates that there was the possibility that it could be perceived as anywhere from digusting to refreshing. Uppu sodas are akin to salt lassis or the garlicky Mediterranean yogurt drinks filled with fresh herbs, which, to me are delicious, thirst-quenching beverages. But for Americans, salt in a drink is strange. Whereas the same tastes fly in a savory dish, they're unwelcome in the realm of whistle-whetter.

Admittedly, part of sharing this ritual was to confess my desire for the non-Indian tongue to be turned off by this funny soda. In a way, my cravings for salt sodas, against the grain of American tastes, remind me that I possess a relationship, through my tastebuds, to another world, a world that has not yet been coopted by others. I feel strangely aware lately that globalism, while it has brought me closer to the rest of the world, has also rendered much of the world already explored and commonplace. Instead of wondering what wonders lie outside of California, we now wonder what we can't find here.

This one, my salt soda, to my knowledge hasn't yet caught on. It's firmly stood its ground as its own entity. Blame it on a lack of audience, perhaps, but I haven't even seen it sold in South Indian restaurants. It is still ours to make and enjoy in the quietness of home, when my family convenes to reminsce in their tastes of South India. Of course, I have just revealed it to you, to the internet, for all the world to see. I still doubt its ability to transcend, at least not yet.

So for now, it will remain a slice of South India. One that I folded into my heart long ago.

Pad Thai #1: The Berkeley Thai House

2005-05-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

I mentioned to my friend, Elizabeth, that I had in the pipeline a pad thai-rating project. She quickly perked up and wanted to join me in doing a sampling of this widely-loved noodle dish. Immediately, we scheduled our first adventure, an old fave of mine from the college days -- The Berkeley Thai House. I've been a huge fan of their red curry and the eggplant basil, but don't remember feeling particularly drawn one way or another to the pad thai.

Another lovely friend, Kelly, also joined us for the tasting. The three of us came up with a lichard scale rating -- a 0 to 5 in three categories. Here they are:

1. Flavor: What's the sauce like? Is it too sweet or too salty? Does it match the other ingredients?
2. Consistency: Are the noodles done right? Crunchy and soft in all the right places?
3. Ingredients: What went into this particular pad thai? Was it missing anything? Were the elements fresh?
4. Overall Gut Feeling: This is purely subjective feeling of "did we like it?" and not based on a composite of the others!

While I believe in the importance of ambiance and price, we determined that it isn't a huge factor in the quality of East Bay pad thai for us. Incidentally, whether this is urban legend or not, I don't know but I remember hearing that Bill Gates was asked: What's the most you've ever paid for a pizza? He answered in the range of $300. Goes to show that no matter how much money you have, there's still a limit to how much you might spend on a certain item.

All this to say, that unlike some foodies, I don't have an infinite amount of money to be spending on food. On the other hand, my guess is that there will be few places where we will be priced out of good pad thai. Afterall, we're buying a plate of noodles--not a house--in the East Bay!

Okay, Summi, back to the Thai House. We ordered pad thai, red curry with vegetables (it's too good to resist), and tofu tod, which are squares of fried tofu served with a sweet, peanuty sauce. "Tod" was crispy on the outside but its soft interior melted in my mouth.

Drum roll, please. The results are:

FLAVOR: 4
The sauce was sweet and had a subtle undertone of barbeque to it. The dish was a little dry and could have been more liberally doused with this flavorful sauce. It also could have been slightly spicier, but that was our fault. My experience with the Thai House strongly suggests that had we asked for it, I'm sure our request would have been honored.

CONSISTENCY: 3
The noodles were a bit on the rubbery side. Also, no peanuts and listless scallions. (see below)

INGREDIENTS: 2
Thai House's pad thai had noodles, fried eggs, scallions, fried tofu, shrimp, bean sprouts, and a lemon on the side. The tofu could have definitely been cut smaller. More shrimp was in order. The scallions were cut into long (2 inch) pieces, which added little to the crunch or to the flavor. Furthermore, where's the ground peanut garnish? Or cilantro? Why lemon instead of lime?

OVERALL GUT FEELING: 3.5
Though we felt that this pad thai could have been enhanced, especially in its attention to the ingredients, the sauce was nevertheless unique and a pleasure to eat. Another plus for this dish: it wasn't too greasy.

More pad thai adventures to come. Stay tuned . . .

Platanos

2005-05-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

means bananas! Well, technically, that's not true. They're "plaintains" which are closely related to bananas but are starchier and used as a vegetable, especially in Latin cuisine.

Alas, I'm not talking about the fruit but rather the restaurant at the corner of 18th & Guerrero. This hub, only a hop from my former apartment, is turning out to be quite the foodie hotspot, sporting Tartine and Delfina, as well as the yet-to-open enterprise of Pizzeria Delfina. On this block, too, is the small but hip Fayes Video that not only carries a good selection of queer cult flicks and documentaries but also offers lattes to go. Of course, Bi-Rite is the law of the land, a bodega packing everything you might want to cook up your gourmet meal in such a small storefront that you've gotta wonder if there's some sort of optical illusion at play.

All this background to lay the foundation for my rant about Platanos. Amidst the epic quality of this block, Platanos might as well be a five-star restaurant in Kansas City. In other words, it may fly in the middle of the country (or even in Hayes or Noe Valley where, in my experience, the restaurants serve mediocre food for astronomical prices), but it just doesn't live up to rep of this hood.

To its credit, the white wine sangrias were quite tasty. The small plates (aka appetizers) were by far the strongest offering of the restaurant. The fried plantain chips with guacamole and salsas were nicely done, but of course, their restaurant's name hangs on the reputation of these delicacies! The flavors and textures of the corn and chicken empanadas hit a high note. But the ceviche? "Eh." Maybe I'm spoiled but I kept thinking of divine experiences I've had with ceviche, particularly at Fresca on Fillmore St.

We ordered the entrees family style, making it easy to take a bite of all of them. The chicken mole was extremely disappointing. It had none of the complexity, none of the kick, that its fellow moles possess. By kick, I mean that sweet and spicy undertone, often inducing a revelation about the well-matched wedding of chiles with chocolate. The halibut with a mango salsa was . . . well, it was. And the pork? It was meat and rice. Nothing fancy. Nothing even dressed up to be fancy. The standout might have been the Latin version of an eggplant neapolitan, which had both the looks and the taste to live in the neighborhood. But was any of this worth the 16 to 17 dollars a dish price-tag? Give me a break.

On the bright side, did I mention the sangria? I could have swum happily in a lake of it--not ever being privy to the food--and remained a merry woman.

Pang's Rockin' Curry

2005-05-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

Pang & Ben have bought their first house! It's been a month since they've lived there, but they already look settled and very happy. I had the pleasure of joining them for a lunch in their new dining room, sun spilling through the skylight.

We sipped iced cold Tecates with lime and ate brown rice with a rockin' Thai green curry. No doubt, the food was on the money. Perfectly spicy (perhaps sinus-clearing for the meek!) with the flavors seeping through the vegetables and chicken. Pang credits the brown sugar for being key to a winning balance. We ate out of deep, stunning ceramic bowls made by Heath Ceramics (www.heathceramics.com). I've been obsessed with Heath's stuff, having just registered for some it myself.

Unfortunately, I hadn't yet gotten my new hand-me-down, a digital camera from my brother, to document the beauty of the food against the backdrop of sublime dishware. You'll just have to daydream it on your own until I can offer photos. (I'm still learning the nuances of this "blogging" business, so forgive the rough-around-the-edges quality this new endeavour has.) Oh, and, perhaps this is the perfect excuse (that I was sans camera, after all) for another round of delicious grub. Pang?

Homo Culinaris

2005-05-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

This eyebrow-raising article appeared in The Advocate today. When I've doubted my humanity, I can always enter the kitchen to reclaim it.

Professor Says We Are What We Eat

Richard W. Wrangham, a professor of anthropology at Harvard University, drew applause from the International Association of Culinary Professionals crowd when he said that "cooking may be the key to what makes us human."

Wrangham admitted that his hypothesis is radical. Some anthropologists dismiss cooking and describe it as something humans do for symbolic reasons, he said.

Wrangham disagrees and maintains that Charles Darwin looks increasingly perceptive in his claim that the art of making fire may have been the greatest discovery ever made.

Wrangham bases his conclusion that it is cooking that prompted human evolution on years of study of chimpanzees and aboriginal tribes in isolated areas of the world. Human beings are the only living species who cook their food, he reported to the IACP members in his presentation on the "Significance of Paleo-Gastronomy."

Chimpanzees will seek seeds that have been cooked in bush fires and thus tenderized to eat, Wrangham said, but they never developed the skills to make fire and control it to cook food. What this means, he explained, is that chimpanzees and all other apes, as well, spend 5 to 6 hours a day chewing and eating because raw foods take longer to eat and digest. Humans, on the other hand, take an hour to eat a day's worth of food, which is a 2,000-calorie diet.

As early humans developed the ability to cook foods, which could have been anywhere from 300,000 to 1.9 million years ago, human physiology began to evolve. Humans began to have smaller mouths and jaws and shorter digestive systems than apes. "We are the cookivore," Wrangham observed, because now humans must consume softer foods, low-bulk and high-energy diets. "We have more energy, but less digestive ability," he continued.

Critics of cooked foods, and there is a raw foods movement in the world, Wrangham pointed out, say "Look at chimpanzees. They eat raw and thrive."

Chimpanzees, he re-emphasized, spend far more time eating than humans do and as a result don't have time or energy to expand far beyond their range. In German research studies on the effects on humans of following a raw food diet, the results show that humans eating only raw food are hungry, experience weight loss and, in the case of women, quit having regular menstrual cycles, which means that the rate of reproduction is precariously lowered.

"It seems difficult for me to deny the evidence that the evolution of man came with the discovery of fire and cooking," Wrangham said. "Cooking changed the biological design of humans, and that fact is the basis of paleo-gastronomy," he added.

"Being able to spend a low percent of time eating made hunting possible and expanded the range of humans out of Africa and into Asia," Wrangham said. Cooking also prompted the sexual division of labor: men, being bigger and stronger, hunted, and women provisioned and cooked.

Cooking created the human family or civilization, where humans not only assumed tasks suited to their skills but also put those skills to work in taking care of one another. You hunted for the group or family, as well as yourself. Or, you cooked for the hunter, as well as yourself.

Wrangham believes that it is important to recognize the universality of the evening hot meal. For 2 million years, humans have gathered around the fire each night. Why, we may not fully understand, but the fact remains that "humans are adapted to the hearth," Wrangham said, "and apparently it's this cooking and gathering that makes us human."

A Typical Berkeley Weekend

2005-05-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning, I met up with Laurie, my ex-roomie, in the East Bay. I promised to indoctrinate her with delights from the Cheeseboard (http://cheeseboardcollective.coop/), which we did promptly after her arrival. I grabbed a Zampano (a sourdough roll sprinkled with parmesan & red pepper flakes), a Cheese Roll (oodles of delicious cheese baked into this roll), and a Cherry and Corn Scone (which is self-explanatory!) Needless, to say, we were making gurglings of pleasure on our walk down Shattuck Ave.

After our leisurely stroll, I had the idea to go to the Downtown Berkeley Farmers' Market, which I have not visited since the olden days when I was a mere undergrad lass. It still has the same flavor it has always had--all things Berkeley do actually, except perhaps 4th Street. What do I mean by this? Well, all different sorts of people, lots of children, many interracial couples and families, and one or two naive souls from CalPirg trying their darndest to make a dent in environmental policy.

The veggie stalls looked great, many were CSAs, which I feel compelled to support because they are small, ethical farmers who grow mostly organic food. As with most farmers' markets in the area, there were also several stalls dedicated to artisan goods. One stall was patrolled by a man constantly handing out minute bread samples for ducking in an assortment of amazing olive oils and balsamic vinegars. Behind another stall sat a post-hippie woman with perfect skin, peddling natural soaps made from local foliage with the odors of incense cedar, sage, and pine. A few other stalls sold things like flavored honies and mouth-watering goat cheeses. I was in a browsing, not buying, mood, so we settled for a couple of baskets of fresh strawberries, revealed to be as sweet and delicious as they looked.

In the middle of the day, I helped Anne & Sami move to a new place, still in Berkeley. I also joined them for some pizza and beer at Lanesplitter (San Pablo & University). This place wasn't around when I was an undergrad, but it might not have mattered anyway. There is a distinct thirty-something vibe about it. I guess as we grow older, we are finding new, more appropriate places to patronize. The pizza is nowhere near as brilliant as Gioia (on Hopkins & Monterrey), but it's probably an unfair comparison anyhow. Lanesplitter's pie is a decent ultra thin-crust with a wide array of toppings. They've got a solid selection of beer on tap, too. I've found that , if you're into this sort of thing, it's a good place to watch a Giants' or A's game in a leisurely, not-so-dedicated way. The best reason to frequent it? They've got a special called the 7-10 split, which gives you two slices of pizza and one pint of beer for a measly $7. Not bad, I'd say.

I woke fairly early Sunday morning and cleaned the house. It was in urgent need of vacuuming. I had been putting it off so long, it felt extremely gratifying to hop to it finally. The treat following this onerous activity was Thai Temple (Russell near MLK next to the Berkeley Tool Lending Library). Yum! Yum!

For those of you who are newbies to the Thai Temple experience, let me just say that there is almost nothing that gets my mouth watering on a Sunday morning than thinking of paying homage to the flavors of Thai food. Anne & Sami feel similarly, and we had vowed on Saturday night to meet up at 10am on Sunday. Alas, we all made it on time and felt invigorated by the short wait for the dishes at that hour. If you arrive closer to noon, you'll find a mob of people patiently spying their forthcoming meal a good while before consuming it. The Thai Temple is, afterall, a real Buddhist temple, and members put together the brunch as an ongoing fundraiser. Service and speed, though not lacking, are certainly not the priority. What is a distinct feature, besides the food, is that it is cheap. For a measly number of tokens (one token equals a dollar), you can get a wide array of Thai teasers.

Though I'm addicted to my routine of curry plus sticky rice, I have vowed to branch out. The Temple offers what looks like a very hearty noodle soup, an arse-kickin' papaya salad (don't ask for it "normal" unless you can handle really hot food), Thai-style barbeque chicken, spring rolls, and sweet and savory coconut dumplings. There are also the standard Thai beverages, the iced coffees and iced teas. The food is suprisingly consistent, and sometimes just stellar. For instance, a few weeks back the Temple had added the purple sticky rice to the mango sticky rice ensemble, which resulted in a sublime experience for me. The only viable critique I've heard about the food is regarding the Pad Thai. It's okay, but doesn't match up to quality of the rest of the food.

Good Pad Thai is quite possibly a metaphysical issue. What is the meaning of good Pad Thai? How and where can we find it? Does it exist a priori? My morning's visit to the Thai Temple has sparked my interest in a search for good Pad Thai. In the coming months, I'll attempt to taste-teste and return with ratings of the best and worst of East Bay's Pad Thai.

Let me also sign out on a weekend of pure belly- and eye-pleasing joy. Until next time . . .

My First Weight Watchers Experience

2005-04-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

There's always something about coming home from a trip that makes your waistline feel a bit more bulgy than usual. Madhu, who had just gone to New York a few weeks before me, warned, "Don't even worry about joining me until you get back from your trip." Yup, it's true. There were far too many gustatory experiences in the stars. I couldn't let it get to me while on the road.

What was I joining? Well, um, Weight Watchers. (Blush.) This whole wedding-in-the-future thing has been an excuse to jump start a self-care or self-torture regimen, depending upon how you look at it. Madhu needed company, and I need some motivation to be less-than-mushy. Besides, underneath my efforts to get fit is always the ever-curious anthropologist willing to know something knew about an American phenomenon--Weight Watchers.

Like many women, my history of having weight issues dates back to elementary school. (Wow! Saying that makes me realize how potent the cultural attitude on thinness is.) I was always the "chubby" one as a child, always a tad bit on the heavier side of normal. Only now as a full-fledged adult (approaching 30 this year), I have finally become right smack in the middle of normal. Years of training (and continued training by Cosmo, Vogue, Elle, and so much media around us) unfortunately cannot be undone with a swift "you're not fat anymore" comment, which are now launched at me each time I see an Indian uncle or auntie. Believe me, they are blunt, too. Greetings even begin with a "it looks like you've lost weight" or "it looks like you've gained weight." Lately, the "it looks like you've lost weight" has been outweighing (bad pun, I know) its opposite.

Ironically, I haven't lost much at all, except perhaps some of the obsessiveness around weight. I've mostly been in a ten pound range for the last ten years (some fluctuation due to the inevitable weight gain before realizing I had hypothyroidism), and I seem to be right in the middle of it now. I've found my body (and my mind) don't want to budge from this place. They like it here. Mostly, I feel good about myself. It doesn't seem as though my butt waddles behind me as if it's its own entity, and I don't have to work very hard to be this. I can eat all the yummy stuff I mention on this blog without becoming a behemoth.

So, why Weight Watchers? Because it's hard to escape the hope that is marketed to you. That one day with enough of one product or another, enough direction, strength or perseverance, you'll look like Jessica Alba (or Aishwarya Rai) in a bikini. Something deep inside me knows this isn't true. No matter how hard I try to be thin, I will always only be a slightly smaller version of myself. I will, no matter how fat or skinny I finally get, have ridiculously small hands and wrists in contrast to my broad shoulders and full, womanly thighs. Regardless, people pay billions of dollars yearly to convince me otherwise. And, regardless, I fall for it to some degree.

Also, there's a perverse do-it-yourselfness about American culture. We know this about ourselves. Our pull-yourself-up-by-bootstraps ethic said to characterize Americans and keep them forward-looking to accomplish the American dream. If I just work hard enough, persevere enough, I can lose 100 pounds! All my life, I've been convinced that losing 10 pounds would make me a happier person--and, it's my own fault that I haven't yet been able to do it. We get accounts of movie stars that have miraculously overcome the dominant notions of weight. Christina Ricci has finally done it, lost all that baby fat, and though it seemed as if she had a bout of anorexia for awhile, it seems to have--poof!--disappeared. I, on the other hand, must just be weak-willed. (I also don't have enough money to hire a personal trainer or a personal chef!)

In actuality, I'd prefer to think of it as resistance. Leave it to the psych student to go in this direction. I remember five years ago, after a trip to New York actually, I picked up a copy of Fat is a Feminist Issue. As obvious as this now is to me, it made me realize that there are legitimate reasons for not losing those last ten pounds. Truthfully, I don't want to be all too much thinner for fear that it comes with the burden of living up to the expectations of others. Sort of like being too rich, I suppose. Then, you'd have to manage money, friends, and status in such a different and potentially more difficult way.

Sometimes, I experience this when I dress myself in the morning. I long to wear something nice, but not too nice. I fear that pairing my cute train-conductor hat with my one-of-a-kind sweater shirt by a Portland designer, will draw too much attention. One or the other, I think, but not both. We could explore early developmental issues, but for the sake of this blog I won't.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that my time with Weight Watchers was not all that long. I only did it for about a week and a half, but the verdict is already in. The jury--surprise! surprise!--voted against it. These were the key issues.

1) I don't know how people can stay on this diet. To its credit, it advocates eating lots of fruits, veggies, and whole grains. But it is also truly starvation! For a few days in a row, I charted both the "points" which seem to be somewhat arbitrary and proprietary, and calories. I found in caloric terms that eating 20 points a day, which was the recommended guideline for my weight range, was equivalent to eating 1100 calories. I just can't live on that! I can stop eating junk food for a good long period of time, but I can't stop eating food for health and hearth.

2) The marketing component is icky. Weight Watchers, though akin and perhaps even modeled after the AA, is a for-profit company. The facilitator for the group I attended is a goggled, too-bouncy dirty blonde who wears out-of-fashion (not things that have returned in fashion) 1980s garb. To make matters worse, she aspires to be a motivational speaker and wiggles every time she expresses her excitement about weight-loss. In a span of 30 minutes, she advocates so many of the Weight Watchers proprietary products. Is she put up to this by the company?

"For only $7 dollars, you can have this nifty looks-like-a-rosary bracelet-and-point calculator to help keep track of your progress. And you know what, it also doubles as a fashion accessory! Imagine that! Someone asked me if I got it at a jewelry store in Carmel."

Madhu is convinced it's a cult, and wonders if other meetings are less superficial. I don't know if I think it's sophisticated enough to be a cult. Admittedly, I'm more judgmental and my feeling is that it's just plain stupid.

3) I guess I'm in a privileged place, where my weight is by no means seriously affecting my health. And I already generally eat by the guidelines of sage health. That said, I think that acceptance of one's plot in life is a far easier and more gratifying road to happiness. Also, exercise, did I mention that my general malaise and mushiness as explained earlier could be easily rectified by incorporating a bit of rockin' out to Outkast in hip-hop class? Though it seems so hard to overcome the mental obstacle of exercise, it is so much more gratifying to the body, mind, and soul than "points."

As Pascal once said, "I have made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter." So, finally, to get to the point: Points? Screw 'em. Afterall, if I wanted to be a rock star, I'd have chosen another route entirely.

No Sleep 'Til Berkeley

2005-04-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

As Dorothy put it, "There is no place like home." Except that, perhaps, the gas prices at home are so phenomenally expensive that it makes you realize that your quads and calves are a less bank-breaking alternative. Anyway, I need to get in shape for the wedding! More about that soon. . .

First, the last day of New York. I said goodbye to Katy over a Murray's Bagel, supposedly one of the good bagel places in NYC. I've heard stories for years of New Yorkers having family members carefully package and ship bagels to the West Coast. Why? Because, apparently, there are no good bagels on the West Coast. (Ever tried Katz's Bagels in SF or Santa Cruz's The Bagelry?) I'm irked by the anti-California sentiments but understand where they are coming from. We've got so much to offer in the way of food and wine that it's easy to see how the rest of the country could feel sleighted.

That said, I give a vehement thumbs down to Murray's. I've heard it's an insult to New Yorkers to ask for a bagel to be toasted. The bagels are so fresh, so darn delicious, that they don't need it, right? Wrong. These bagels were so chewy that they could have used a bit of toasting to freshen them up. And the shmears? They were nothing to write home about. Certainly not something to get shipped home!

Speaking of home. I only had a few more hours to loll about in Manhattan, so I decided to walk to the Strand bookstore. I didn't have the patience to sift through the books, nor did it make sense to pack my suitcase heavily with things I could easily find on Telegraph. But I did want one thing: a Zagat guide for NYC dining.

I have to admit that I had never been fond of the Zagat. My first and strongest association with it is from the movie American Psycho. The protagonist is a sociopath who, in striving to be the "perfect" guy, cannot stray from the cultish word of the guide. But after recently seeing the Zagats on an episode of the Japanese Iron Chef, I felt a certain warmth for them.

They're kind of a cute, chubby couple, with palates and minds open enough to try the sometimes dubious delicacies that are generated out of Iron Chef stadium. That alone is impressive. Having a less stifling association to the guide, I've begun to notice that a rating by the notorious skinny red paperback means a restaurant is not-so-bad. It doesn't, however, mean it is good enough to spend the extra greenbacks you're saving up for gas in California!

Case in point: In the middle of the fight on my last trip to New York, hunger overcame us, and we choose to duck into a moderately expensive Spanish restaurant in Brooklyn Heights. The food was awful, and I tried to hide from the wait staff that I was crying all the way through dinner. The restaurant hadn't been rated, and there was a reason for that. Had we had a little help being a bit more discriminating, maybe we would have reconciled our tiff a little earlier, too.

Let me be clear that it isn't on its way to becoming my bible. Only a reference for a few words on the closest place to get decent sushi when you're standing outside of St. Mark's church, on the north side of Central Park, or by the WTC. I know that the only way I'll amass a stellar reference guide of eats is to correspond extensively with local friends (especially foodie friends) and to have oodles of time to walk around and taste something in every corner of New York. (Somebody, please, pay me to do this!) Afterall, Souen, my favorite macrobiotic hotspot, not on the empire of Zagat's list, was a "Paul & Katie Rated" find.

A Poet's Repast

2005-04-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

3:30pm--I must still be on Pacific time. I was hungry but hadn't yet done my "homework" on what I was going to read. I was too lazy to go all the way back to the Hampton Chutney Co. so I walked down University Place and slipped into the Lemongrass Grill (http://www.lemongrassgrill.com/) on 11th St. I was still in time for lunch (gotta love that about New York), and ordered the special with Pad Sew Ew, which was more food that I imagined. It arrived promptly bento box-style with four compartments and a fifth little nook for plum sauce.

There was the noodle dish, a green salad topped with a Thai peanut dressing, two small spring rolls on a bed of julienned carrots, and white rice. The food was pretty good--very much college-neighborhood style. A good bang for the buck. I ate half of the lunch in the restaurant whose walls were also painted the color of lemongrass with the exposed beams of a dark wood ceiling and rice baskets acting as lamp shades. I packed the rest and had it before my reading.

Sometimes, I must remind myself that I'm a poet. It's a good thing that people invite me to come read every once in a great while to help jog my memory. This time, I am especially grateful to Cori Kopp, who curated the reading and was kind enough to set the date.

My last writerly trip to New York was almost two years back, so I was feeling rusty and anxious. But as soon as I walked into St. Mark's church, I saw my friend Erika and immediately felt at ease. She welcomed me with such warmth! We walked across the street together, catching up, and I bought a tall can of Sapporo to calm the nerves. Erika told me that she, too, was nervous about public speaking sometimes and was supposed to be giving a talk to a group of people at her work about leprosy and feminine discharge the next day. Brilliantly, she was thinking of weaving Oppen into the discourse, because the “cleanness” which is necessary to overcome these unclean things can only be achieved through community. Thus, the connection to Oppen—that being both discrete and numerous, of “community,” is what helps a society to understand and overcome its ills. I hope I got that right. Maybe Erika will chime in and correct me if not. In any case, it would be interesting to know how the lecture finally transpired.

I read from a piece called "The Language Parable," two strange stories interwoven, about female Indian characters who crave to be loved for themselves not for what they do or don’t represent. I think it went rather well, though a very silent audience always makes me slightly nervous, especially since the piece was meant to be funny. All the while that I read, I left my Sapporo, half-nursed, beside me on the table near the water bottle. I read with Sasha Steensen, who went to SUNY Buffalo, and recently won the Fence Alberta prize for A Magic Book.

After the reading, we went to the Telephone Bar, which was the perfect place for more imbibing and ingesting. Dan, another friend who I was excited to see, met us there. It was great to see him, and he very generously brought me a gorgeous bunch of orange tulips. It was also really wonderful to meet two new people--Charles & Kathleen, who are a lively couple associated with Fence magazine. I made friends with Kathleen easily before the reading, chatting of blogs and food. She had great aura and really wonderful blue eyeshadow. Before I went on, I gave her the Bud that I had grabbed from Katy's fridge. She was tickled by this gesture, saying she thought that carrying around cans of beer in her backpack was something only she did.

I couldn't help but tell Kathleen about the phenomenon that is Katy's fridge. When I first met her, the only thing she had in the fridge was a six-pack of Diet Coke and a piece of uncooked salmon. Upon seeing Katy this time, I recounted this to her, wondering if she had changed. She walked me over to the fridge and opened it. No Diet Coke or salmon, just six packs of beer--bottles and cans. I was impressed by the fact that there was still no food in her fridge. Katy pointed very sweetly to the pickle jar in which sat a lonely pickle and said, "But, see, there's a pickle!" A true Manhattanite, just like the girls in Sex in the City.

Anyway, the night was very fun! As we were winding down, Charles took pictures of Kathleen and me, then Erika and me, in the telephone booths, posing like about-to-metamorphose superheroes. At the urging of E, I had finally filled my quota of pictures.

Dan and I walked home, and I caught him up on the very fast-forward events of my last year, including the engagement to E. We tried for a last attempt at a food experience--to get a cannoli at place whose name I forget but who has yummy cannolis. When E & I had visited a month prior, I had gotten food poisoning from a chicken shawerma on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn Heights, and I was in no mood to eat the cannolis we brought to a friend's for dinner. This time I was ready, but the bakery had closed too early. We were out-of-luck. Oh, well. There’s always next time.

The Village, Take Two

2005-04-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today I got off to a late start. By the time I was out the door, it was already 11am, so I opted for an early lunch. I googled a place I had been to on my last trip (a few months prior) to NY. It's a Japanese macrobiotic establishment called, Souen (www.souen.net/13thstreet.htm). Their spin, though with a more extensive menu, is kind of like the amazing veggie sushi restaurant, Cha-Ya, on Shattuck Ave in North Berkeley.

Souen's food is the epitome of "clean." I don't mean that it's meticulous but rather that it's simple, healthy, and delicious. My body craves everything about this kind of food. It hums when I succumb to it. I loved it so much that I thought about going there for another meal. Alas, I don't have enough time for this many meals. E reminds me constantly that my eyes are much bigger than my stomach--thankfully--or I'd be a much bigger person than I am.

I frolicked about Soho again today, intent on buying some "intimate" things for my wedding. It was, let's say, retail therapy. I think if I didn't come from another metropolitan locale, I'd be more impressed with Soho than I am. The rectangularity of buildings and the tiny streets, not the stores tucked into them, are what's exciting. Otherwise, it's all the same fancy shmancy stuff. Fcuk, BCBG, Origins, Banana Republic, Chanel, Camper, etc -- it's all in SF's Union Square, too. I keep asking and have yet to find all the hidden away local-designer haunts. What about the Mimi Barr and Therapy of New York? Where are they?

Perhaps the most fun I had (outside the Agent Provacateur store that does not, unfortunately, exist in SF) was in the MOMA Design Store. Now, that's something I can get behind. One-of-a-kind wallets, scarves, jewelry, furniture and housewares with a sharp vision. Gotta love it. I bought a little somethin' somethin' for E & a box of Bollywood postcards (yippee!) for me.

I peeked into the big Dean and DeLuca in Soho before leaving. As a foodie, I guess I'm supposed to be impressed by the evolution of the grocery store, right? But the D & D just just gave me the creeps. Rows and rows of the excesses of food. Spices (no doubt from India or Southeast Asia) packed in glorified test tubes with labels designed by an Academy of Art grad remind me that colonialism in a new mutant form is still alive. Pastries that are made to look too freakishly perfect. No piece of fruit out of place or of an off-color. Food should be pretty but, in my opinion, should not take itself that seriously. I left quickly, noting that this was the Super Walmart of "fine" foods. I'll take my Monterrey Market, all the Indian sari and spice shops along University Ave and the tacquerias in the Mission, please. Even the Ferry Building is, though expensive and glossy, still a local artisan food mall.

On my way back, I passed by the Hampton Chutney Co. (www.hamptonchutney.com), recommended as a NYC hot spot. This, in conjunction with having just read the NYC Eats blog and walking by several Indian restaurants touting dosas and uttapams, convinces me that this must be one of the new "in" things. Unfortunately, I wasn't yet hungry enough to eat so I just perused the menu and watched the NYU hipsters eating flaky dosas on benches outside the joint.

The Village

2005-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

There are too many gastronomic adventures and too little time! I left Philly yesterday and am now at Katy's house. She's a writer, too. (Oh, did I mention that this little trip was all about doing a series of poetry readings on the East coast? Perhaps I've gotten so wrapped in the food as to forget.)

When I arrived, we went out for a little lunch at a tiny French bistro (whose name has escaped me.) I had a spinach salad with a goat cheese phyllo pastry on top. It was a bit too much goat cheese, but light enough and delicious. Then, for dinner, we splurged at a place called Yujin, two blocks down from Katy's on 12th Street near 5th Avenue.

Yujin was simply decorated. A nice large room with light colored wood tables and warm lighting. We arrived on the late end of dinner and had the run of the place to ourselves. I ordered a seaweed salad (I am in love with the cleanness of the seaweed salad) and a 12th Street roll (Spicy tuna, green onion, and shiso). I polished the food down with a nice glass of dry Riesling, which I unfortunately did not note.

For dessert, I ordered Imagine, which was a chocolate cake with a flan-like custard topping it (which had the visual effect of a cheesecake) served with a large dollop of chocolate pudding/sauce and vanilla ice cream.

The meal was delicious, but didn't rise above the rest. The dessert, also, was of a similar caliber. Definitely the flavors came together nicely, but there was something a bit strange about the chocolate pudding/sauce which looked and tasted like chocolate frosting.

The Mighty Termite Migration

2005-04-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

As you know, I've been traveling throughout the Northeast, and I arrived mid-day in Philly. The purpose of this trip is two-fold--to catch up with Em & to give a reading in the series that she runs. I'm just about to go on in a few hours, and I've got the nerves as usual. I was such a confident child performer, but now I need a couple of glasses of the vino before going on. To make matters worse, I've been feeling particularly bloated and zitty from the usual ebbs and flows of the female biochemistry.

Anyway, I met up with Em a bit after noon, and we both conferred that we were starved for some delicious food. She suggested a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant's lunch special in her West Philly hood. I was down. Apparently, the place that we had gone used to do an on-the-sly restaurant in the backyard before the health authorities got concerned and forced them to be legit. So, now, it's a cute little storefront on Baltimore Street.

We sat in the window next to the door, and our waitress' son, a 3-year old, intermittently brought us gifts. First, he plucked two small white fake flowers from the arrangement in the window and decided to bestow them upon us. Later, he showed us pictures of toys that he was itching for. Throughout this time, we ate delicious soups (I had tom yum & Em had spinach and tofu) and noshed on vegetarian dumplings while waiting for our rice and Thai vegetable curry dishes.

In all, it was a lot of food. I had to stop because I was bursting out of my pants. It was difficult to do so since the curry was so tasty. Em contemplated having the full meal and foregoing dinner. Thus, she kept eating.

It was at this time, in our last bites, that I suddenly looked to the floor beneath us. It was teeming with termites! At least, that's what the customers who were not-so-squeamish had said to us as they walked in and sat at a table. These suckers were big and had wings, too. In fact, both Em and I thought they were small moths. At one point, when another diner had left and the door opened before us, one little termite had flown up to the table. I shooed it away thinking it was a lone moth.

But lo and behold, it was no isolated incident but a phenomenon. Many, maybe a hundred or so, were marching all in one direction--towards the door. A number of insects at one's feet, especially in an eating establishment, is one thing, but to have them all eerily moving in one direction, marching like soldiers, made it quite a spectacle.

Needless to say, the waitress was perturbed and began shooing them out the door with a measly broom and dustpan. I could understand how frustrated she might have been since the restaurant was, though hole-in-the-wall, still respectable.

It was at this point that Em decided that she would save the rest of her lunch for later, not opting for finishing it all in one setting. We paid and left promptly, laughing along the way.

Baltimore, MD

2005-04-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

I went to bed frantic last night trying to tie up all the loose ends--pay bills, finish papers, do laundry--before carting off to Baltimore. I slipped into bed just in time to catch the last ten minutes of the Iron Chef. Erik must have come home an hour later and got in bed with me around 1am.

We both tossed and turned, trying to get some shut eye. I was anxious about getting up in time to catch the shuttle to the airport for my early morn flight, and Erik was still trying to wind down from a major school project. We're both a mess around sleep and plagued with insomnia when the cortisol kicks in.

The flight to Baltimore was not, unfortunately, direct. Thus, it was hard to recoup the unslept hours. It was doubly difficult due to the talkative Philipina lady who sat next to me, boasting of her bad marriages (seven!) and how well she had raised her four children. I saw pictures of them at their college graduations, even. Curiously, at the end of the flight, she asked for my phone number, ostensibly because we had this incredible connection and should keep in touch?

I had a short stopover in Chicago, where I got a suprisingly good sandwich at the airport at a place called Potbelly (www.potbelly.com). A grilled turkey breast stacked high with fresh veggies and hot peppers. The tryptophan must have had a soporific effect because on the last leg to Baltimore, I fell asleep as soon as we began pulling out of the gate.

As soon as I was carted from the airport to my cousin's house by my uncle, I got dressed to go to the Austin Grill (www.austingrill.com). The service was slow, and it seemed as if they were understaffed, given the amount of tables in the restaurant. To offset, the chips and salsa were delicious. Freshly fried, warm and tossed with lots of salt. Yum! Of course, catching up with family, too, made the lukewarm service barely noticeable.

The chips and salsa, however, are the death of me at a Mexican restaurant. It's easy to loose track of how many calories you've consumed. By the time the entrees were brought to the table, I was no longer hungry. But there was all this food in front of me! I ordered a big taco salad with grilled portabello mushrooms and only made a dent in it. The food was good, but nothing to write home about. The drinks, unfortunately, were below average. I had a strawberry and lime margarita, but it might as well have been a slushy fruit drink. I take partial credit for this not-so-hot whistle whetter. I should know myself well enough to know that I've never liked blended margaritas.

I Knew a Man

2005-04-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

When I checking email in the morning yesterday, I sighed long and deep and said in a deflated voice, "Oh, my God." From downstairs, E asked what had happened. "Robert Creeley has died," I answered.

I knew he was weak, that he had been so for many years. I recalled the only time that I had met him, and it filled me with delicious memories. Coincidentally, it revolved around a cheesecake (and I still have remnants of the recent Mango Cheesecake experiment). I remember the exact day very well, an unusual feat for me. It was Valentine's Day, 1998.

Actually, it was the first time I had tried to bake a cheesecake. I had gotten a recipe for a lowfat Raspberry Cheesecake with Chocolate Cookie Crust and White Chocolate Curls on top. I was going through a lowfat fad at the time, and had lost a considerable amount of weight because of it. (I have since eschewed most diets and have tried to maintain a good balance between decadent and healthy.)

He gave a reading at the auditorium, and a new, very different book, Life and Death, had just come out. It wasn't like the rest of Creeley because it wasn't characterized by the short, piercing lines that brought him recognition. Like in I Know A Man:

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

Life and Death, in contrast, was longer-lined, pensive in a different way. This is not to discount how powerfully intimate some of the earlier poems were. My absolute favorite of Creeley's, for instance, was "Something":

I approach with such
a careful tremor, always
I feel the finally foolish

question of how it is,
then, supposed to be felt,
and by whom. I remember

once in a rented room on
27th street, the woman I loved
then, literally, after we

had made love on the large
bed sitting across from
a basin with two faucets, she

had to pee but was nervous,
embarrassed I suppose I
would watch her who had but

a moment ago been completely
open to me, naked, on
the same bed. Squatting, her

head reflected in the mirror,
the hair dark there, the
full of her face, the shoulders,

sat spread-legged, turned on
one faucet and shyly pissed. What
love might learn from such a sight.

Oh! It cuts deeply to the gut.

But on with my story. I had cooked a Valentine's meal for Patrick and me, which was the original occassion for the cheesecake. Afterwards, we had gone to the reading at the university and then to the party. I can't remember now where the party was save for that it was, like all the after-reading parties, at a student or faculty member's abode.

I had carefully wrapped a fat slice of the cake to offer it to Creeley. We arrived on the early side after the reading, but he was already there perched in a chair. Many of my classmates hovered about shyly, hoping to glean something from his divine aura. Like Kevin Killian's homage to Spicer, "Poet Be Like God."

I approached with such a careful tremor and offered my slice of cheesecake. Instead of letting me scurry into a hiding corner like a mouse, Creeley insisted I sit with him while he ate it. I fetched a fork, and he began eating until nothing remained. We talked not of poetry but of global poverty for almost twenty minutes. All the while, fellow students were bringing other gifts--plants, books, etc--but he put them all to the side while he spoke to me. I could see the envy in one particular student's eye, who was to pit herself later as my nemesis. Retribution was to recall that I, not she, had had a special moment with Creeley.

It was not until Thisbe Nissan, another daring student and now accomplished writer, interrupted to talk of something else. She and I were the only ones to have that time with Creeley before he left the party shortly after to retire. My precious time with Creeley was up. It had to have been temporary, just as the cheesecake, the gift he wanted the most, had to be disposable.

In order for the moment, the gesture--not the physicalness of what remains--to be carefully folded into our hearts.

Diving Right In

2005-03-28T12:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, I think there's been enough intro for the time being. Parts of one's history will always leak out at other times. No sense in protecting against how the past might unfold. Am I expounding the Freudian fundamental rule of free association? Well, perhaps. . . So, let me leap straight into the present.

Last night, E & I had some friends over for dinner, and I prepared a pretty solid Indian meal. Here's what I put together:

*Mini-pappadums (bought at one of the many Indian grocery stores on University Ave)

*Salad with greens, orange bell peppers, tomatoes, and avocados dressed with a Lime-Cumin Vinaigrette (from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)

*Braised Chicken Maharaja (from the San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook, Volume 2. Laxmi Hiremath is a great Indian food whiz!)

*Vegetable Biriyani (also from the SF Chronicle Cookbook, Volume 2)

*Mango Lime Cheesecake with Ginger Snap Crust, topped with fresh mangos, shredded coconut & a lime sauce.

To be honest, I think that I fashioned the entire meal around the dessert. I had been itching to try to come up with a good recipe for Mango Cheesecake. I had it in my mind that I could really create something stellar with the combination of a creamy mango-ey dessert and a ginger snap crust. Thus, the experiment.

How did it go? The dinner went fabulously, and I must put in a plug for the Vegetable Biriyani, which was a winner. The chicken was also good, but came out a big dry. (I think that I haven' t quite figured out how to cook chicken optimally and blame this on my own lack-of-technique.) The sauce that the chicken cooked in was AMAZING, however. The recipe was well worth making if only just for the flavors of the sauce, which might intimidate those who don't have an adequately stocked spice rack. Of course, I shall not forget the salad, which was simple and delicious, and E receives credit for putting it together.

Now, the finale: the cheesecake. I would say that the cheesecake was okay. My guests thought it was yummy and that it did taste of mango. However, I wanted it to be even more strongly flavored with the fruit and would opt for augmenting both the amount of fresh pureed mango in the cake (I used two mangos) as well as the amount of lime zest. I also wasn't all that keen on the lime sauce. It tasted like a lime Jolly Rancher had melted all over the top of the cheesecake. No one can take credit for this more than me. I didn't do my homework and find a good lime reduction recipe. I just decided that putting lime juice and sugar together on top of the stove would yield some kind of topping. (I also added a drop of green food coloring to the mix, which was doubly the reason why it ended up looking like a hard candy.)

One of my guests, a fellow foodie & kitchen experimenter, recommended that I go next time for a ginger topping, which I think is a good direction. Maybe a carmelized ginger sauce or something using crystallized ginger? Maybe even something that has a crunch to it? Maybe with nuts? I'm not sure yet.

Anyway, I don't know how soon I'll be back to perfecting this recipe. E & I are getting hitched in the summer, and I don't want to be making cheesecakes only to be fattening up and unable to slip into my wedding garb. E says that I should focus on fruit tarts, which ain't such a bad idea given that spring & its bounty is arriving.

I Began Cooking in Iowa City

2005-03-25T17:30:00.000-08:00

In 1997, I began studying for my MFA in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City. Actually, I quite liked Iowa City. It's quaint, walkable, and has the charm of a progressive college town. It's also supposed to be one of the most highly educated towns in America, boasting an average of a masters' degree per citizen (last I heard). In short, there's a whole lotta brainy folks in Iowa City.

Unfortunately, loads of smart people do not necessarily mean good food, but there were some diamonds in the rough. New Pioneer Coop is a great place to shop for organic veggies and hard-to-finds like Tofutti ice cream sandwiches and Israeli couscous. It's also got an abundant deli with lots of mouthwatering prepared food. There's also the Sanctuary, the best pizza pub around town. The pies are simple and delicious, and the beer is good. It was the first place I ate in Iowa City, and still remains at the top of my list. There used to be (though I don't think it's around anymore) a stellar Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall, Han's, at the corner of College and Burlington. Often, I wish I could carry this place around in my back pocket and conjure their Lemongrass Tofu at a moment's notice.

There were a couple of upper-end restaurants like the Linn Street Cafe, probably still around. The food, as I remember it, was very mediocre, especially if you compared a similarly-priced menu in the SF Bay Area to its prices. You know, there have got to be a few places to take visiting notables, so . . .. I realize it's unfair to compare the eateries of the SF Bay Area (especially San Francisco, Berkeley & Oakland) to Iowa City. It's ludicrous, actually, but the whole reason why I paint a picture of Iowa City's restaurants is to illustrate the dearth of taste adventures available. In the midst of this barrenness, I realized quickly, as I made friends with several of my classmates who also hailed from mostly metropolitan areas (or at least areas of the country which prioritize food innovation), that the best meals you could experience were in people's homes. Food, the best foods I had ever eaten, were in Iowa City. They were just underground.

This--realizing how people were making food & realizing that there was no alterative if I wanted to eat well--were the impetus for my learning to cook. I bought myself the first few cookbooks (Almost Vegetarian and the Greens Cookbook) and dove right in. Fortunately, I wasn't a "don't know how to boil water" type. I was already skilled enough to know how to put things together (and I had been very good at Chemistry Lab), and it just a matter of time before I was teaching myself how to make quiches and pizzas from scratch.

And if writing poetry didn't pay my bills (ha!), then at least I was learning another skill.

My Parents Immigrated from India

2005-03-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

My parents immigrated to the United States in the 1970s from South India, a time when finding now-ordinary items like cilantro were very scarce. They traveled many miles, often to nearby metropolitan areas to stock up on dhals, rice, spices, and Indian vegetables. These treks were rituals, searches for my family and our Indian friends, against the grain of American cuisine, to recreate the familiar tastes and flavors of their childhood.

What I ate in the home as a child might still sound foreign and unappetizing to many Americans who are more accustomed to steak-and-potato palates. To other, more adventuresome types, my mother's cooking can be elevated to the level of haute cuisine and is quickly becoming inspiration for the opening of restaurants and the writing of Indian cookbooks. Friends who were fed Hamburger Helper meals too many times in one week say they envy the Indian-food-every-day diet.

But I was (and still am) the stubborn child who always craved something other than Indian food. Don't get me wrong. I liked Indian food. But I wanted more than just Indian food. Could my mother maybe make the Sloppy Joe's that Katy's mom made once a year? Or, could we have french toast with strawberries on a Sunday morning instead of idlis and coconut chutney?

My father had always cursed me for this exploratory tongue, though he was also a food taster and lover. After coming home from a long day of work, he'd ask spontaneously if my brother and I were craving noodles from Peking Palace or Thai red curry with chicken. These were rhetorical questions, for if we answered no, he'd have overwritten the veto. I remember once, on a family vacation, we dined in an all-American middle-of-the-road chain establishment. As the meal was coming to a close, my father eyed the captivating apple pie a la mode on the menu and asked if we'd go in for a share. We all refused him, and he sat stubbornly with his arms crossed and huffed like a child who'd been just denied a toy.

Despite this kinship that we shared, my cravings frightened him. They were a metaphor for something much greater--that I might forget who I was and where my family had come from. If not for the smells of cumin and coriander wafting through the house, who would I be? If I chose burgers over dosas, was I saying, unconsciously, that I was assimilating all too quickly into the fabric of America? For myself, I know that my desire to taste the world has never meant that India has no place in my heart. It's just that, like I said, I wanted to taste the world.

Welcome!

2005-03-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome, folks! This is a new adventure for me. Venturing into the world of blogging, that is. I've sat still and quietly observed the power and presence of blogging in a circle of writerly friends. I've been awed with how many of them have chosen to use their blogs as a medium of creativity and exchange but uncertain of how I might want to use my own blog.

After much consideration, I've decided it no longer needs to be as thoughtful as I'd hoped. A myriad of interests might crop up in this blog, including poetry, memoirs, love, music, & psychology. Ah, but food. Food might be the primary glue that holds this blog together. It's a source of inspiration for me. It makes my world go 'round.