Posts from the ‘Distractions’ Category

Jan 26

Nature’s Candy

I love this article, “The Myth of Fruit” from Wednesday’s Guardian. This quote sums up what I’ve thought for some time. And I can get all cranky on the subject and presumably not rile up freaks on the internet, assuming the public is less passionate about fruit than food allergies, their appearances on Jeopardy! and wine bars in Williamsburg (scroll to comments for warm fuzzy fun).

“If you believe the nutrition industry, every week produces some new superfood, often a fruit: blueberries, pomegranates, acai berries. The fact is that fruit consists of water, sugars (normally about 10%), some vitamin C, and some potassium (thought to be good for controlling blood pressure). And that’s kind of it.”

I’ve always hated fruit (though I love vegetables) and feel like it’s a chore to eat. The mandarin oranges (I can’t call them clementines—is this an East Coast thing?) Granny Smiths and bananas I’ve been lugging to work the past few months have been killing me.

Fruit juice feels like a total waste of calories and smoothies seem like a joke. Melon is flat-out disgusting and the only food in the entire universe that I won’t eat (well, there’s malta, but that’s a beverage). Minus melon, I don’t mind tropical fruit every now and then, but that’s all. And maybe my problem is that I was raised on bland grocery store produce, though I doubt it. People are always raving about Honeycrisp apples, but to me an apple is an apple and they’re boring.

If I want sweets, I would rather eat real desserts (poached pears and baked apples will not cut it). Nature just doesn’t make candy; that’s as sad as calling graham crackers cookies.

Bad fruit image from Lunacy Beads

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Jan 16

The Land of Lean Beef

The term beefcake (as opposed to cheesecake, I suppose) always seemed funny, unsexy and early ‘80s like Chippendale’s dancers and referring to asses as buns.

Beefscapes, on the other hand, are the most awesome food art since that guy started painting on tortillas (and they certainly beat Sandra Lee’s tablescapes). Canyons and valleys of meat? Maybe the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board's new ad campaign is working on me because I’m not a huge beef eater, yet I still find these carnivorous dioramas creepily mesmerizing.

Just get a load of that eye-popping Crumb-Crusted Top Sirloin and Roasted Garlic Potatoes with Bourbon Sauce.

via The Grinder

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Dec 29

What Would Honey Maid Do?

I’m guessing that on average I might bake a cheesecake every year and a half. And the reason I know this is because when I went to put my new ¾-still-full box of graham crackers into the cupboard after Thanksgiving, I was faced with two other ¾-still-full boxes of graham crackers. One had an expiration date of December 26, 2004, the other had no expiration date to speak of.

I’m phobic of ancient food, mold and the bugs that always seem to work their way into our dried goods (no matter how tightly I contain our jasmine rice, little moths still sprout inside the air-tight tub, which implies there are eggs in the original bag) so the oldies will have to go. But I hate wasting food, even if it only cost $1.59. No, I'm never swayed by brand names.

My first plan of attack was making s’mores using dark orange-flavored chocolate. Using the gas burners wasn’t so successful because it just charred without melting enough. I resorted to microwaving. You do have to be careful because marshmallows balloon up in that mutant Peeps way.

Now I still have half a box left and I’m at a loss. What can you do with graham crackers other than passing them off on little kids by telling them they’re cookies. Graham crackers are so not cookies.

Whenever stumped by a food product, I go straight to the source. What would Honey Maid do? Ah yes, Nabisco would have me crafting graham fruitcake and a holiday house. Which reminds me, my friend Jane just made a charming gingerbread crackhouse. I'm sure something similar could be done with graham crackers.

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Dec 18

Most Wanted

Mostwanted

That story of modern day slavery on Long Island was kind of a downer (as are most tales of indentured labor). But now that the perpetrators have been found guilty, I can focus on the strangest aspect of the case: the Indonesian women’s apparent affinity for doughnuts.

Both doughnut-related incidents are mentioned in consecutive paragraphs of today’s New York Times article:

“In the trial, a landscaper testified that one of the women had once approached him, indicated that she was hungry and uttered a single word: doughnut. He said he gave her some doughnuts and she ran back in the house.”

And it was a Dunkin’ Donuts employee who ultimately called the police:

“Finally, one of the women, Samirah, sought help by wandering into a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in Syosset one Sunday morning, slapping herself and uttering a word that sounded like ‘master.’”

They do have doughnuts in Indonesia, in case you were wondering. I was. Um, and they cover them in melted cheese and Oreos and give them names like the Alcapone.

J.Co Donuts photo from a touch of serenity

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Nov 26

Wurst Ad Ever

It’s times like this where YouTube fails me. And I'm not savvy enough to make videos from DVRd television, so a still will have to suffice. A few weeks ago I started noticing a commercial for what appears to be a new international culinary program at the Art Institutes. Never mind that AI lacks the cache of CIA, the problem is that they use German cuisine to win over the viewer. Apparently, the students’ cooking is so authentic that they start to sprechen Deutsch. The secrets to bratwurst and kuchen revealed? Sign me up.

What I’m trying to figure out is if the Art Institutes are hopelessly out of touch with gastronomic trends or if they’re cutting edge. Based on the following tidbits from the past month, I declare the Art Institutes eerily prescient.

November 5th: Gridskipper maps out Berlin’s haute culinary haunts.

November 14th: the New York Post posited that a schnitzel revival is underway.

November 18th: The New York Times devoted nearly 3,000 words to neue Deutsche küche, a.k.a. new German cuisine.

November 21st: Eater predicts the lamb schnitzel at newcomer The Smith will be removed from the menu due to being “absurd.” A backlash already?

Someone has to put an end to the whole Spanish avant-garde thing, right?

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Oct 19

Deceptively Delicious

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Anything super sounds good, right? But as I’ve understood supertasters, it’s really kind of the opposite. More taste buds means more taste perception, which means heightened sensitivity to strong flavors. Because of this supertasters tend to be picky as children (which would correspond with the genetically picky kids over environment theory) and don’t like bitter things or fatty flavors.

True, bitter is my least favorite flavor profile but I drink my coffee black, like dark chocolate and the brassica family and fatty meat rarely repels me. I didn’t always like what was on my plate as a child, but that wasn’t so much a case of being picky–I just wasn’t so crazy about the food I was served (sorry, mom). I don’t think loathing only two foods in the world—melon and malta—constitutes picky. Pickiness is infuriating. If anything I’m a subtaster, dull-budded, always wanting more.

That’s why I was curious about the supertaster test being offered through BlogSoop. Their theory is that food bloggers would tend to be supertasters and that’s why they’re into food. I didn’t suspect that was the case with me because I don’t fit the finicky, highly attuned profile; I just like to eat and type words that disappear into bloggy ether.

But if I’m to believe the results—you chew a piece of treated paper to see if you taste nothing, mild bitterness or extreme bitterness, and I had foul bile-ish bitterness in my mouth for an hour—I’m super, after all.

Maybe it’s a covert experiment about the power of suggestion. Like if people think supertasting is a good thing than they’ll want to taste the bitterness? If you peruse the internet, it seems like anyone who has taken various tests (including this whack BBC one) has turned out to be a supertaster.

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Oct 17

As American As Mock Apple Pie

Allamericanmom I don’t think that I’ve spoken much about my job since starting it back in February. It’s definitely not a case of “if you have nothing nice to say…” but more of a “don’t I already bore the blogosphere enough as it is?” situation.

A good deal of my time is spent monitoring subjects like e-commerce, travel and IT as they relate to internet marketing. Consequently, I have RSS feeds up the yin yang (I really don’t know what that phrase means but I’ve always wanted to use it). For no particular reason keep my personal feeds on Bloglines and my work ones on Google and del.icio.us. The two paths should never cross. But every now and then while sorting through dull but relevant and dull yet useless stuff, I stumble upon something of moderate non-professional interest like “American Food Top Choice for People When Dining Out.”

Shocking, Americans prefer American food. Um, what is that anyway? I’m not the only one asking. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chili, buffalo wings…Chatham cod, Berkshire pork, Walla Walla onions, Maytag blue cheese?

I don’t analyze, I just research, but I’m sure that plenty of conclusions could be drawn from this data. For instance, those wretched Gen Xers only prefer American food over Mexican by one percentage point (25% vs. 24%). I can’t help but think it has something to do with a slacker/stoner affinity for nachos and burritos. Taco Bell seems quintessentially Gen X to me (and I can’t wait to see how “tacostadas” play out in Mexico) .

I have no explanation why Italian is tops with Echo Boomers (I can’t decide if that’s grosser than Millennials) but I’d love to blame Olive Garden.

Most of my favorites are Other, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

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Oct 11

Sunday Night Special: Steamed Taro with Chopped Salted Chiles

My Hunan salted chiles from a few weeks ago were good and fermented (I’m not sure why fermented food seems desirable but liquids not so much. This very second, I’m 1/3 of a way through my first ever bottle of kombucha and I’m not sure if it’s likeable or putrid. I’m having a very tough time not letting the floaties get to me. A friend was raving about it, but then I reminded myself that in college she used to drink apple cider vinegar like it was soda) so I needed a recipe. I still don’t feel like it’s root vegetable weather but steamed taro didn’t sound like a bad idea.

But I didn’t end up buying taro, even though it’s not too hard to find disguised as malanga in Caribbean-oriented grocery stores. I saw it at Western Beef Sunday, where I picked up this adorable Croatian packet of seasoning that uses a semi-chopstick-like font.

Recently I picked up a frozen bag of something called ratalu at Patel Brothers. As I’ve stated before, I love all things Swad brand (their microwavable vegetable dishes in a box are only 99-cents–aren't Trader Joe's like $2.99?), so these magenta cubes drew me in. I figured they were taro and I could save all the cleaning and chopping (taro contains irritants—if you recall the Top Chef season two finale, Ilan got taken to task for not cooking his taro leaves long enough).

But according to web searches it seems that ratalu is a purple yam. I’m not convinced that it’s the same as Filipino ube yet. That was a strange find because just yesterday I decided that I would use my newish ice cream maker to create ube ice cream for a halo-halo experiment and had been wondering how hard it might be to find frozen (fresh is out of the question). Who knew I had in the house already?

I love it when someone else has already typed a recipe out for me. Steamed Taro with Chopped Salted Chile Peppers was posted on Serious Eats back in February when Fuchsia Dunlop's Hunan cookbook came out.

The one thing I’m not clear on is how the taro chunks are supposed to hold up or if they’re even supposed to. I’ve had taro in Chinese casseroles and it stays in squares. This mystery root turned to mush and I ended up just mashing it into a violet paste that tasted much better than it looked. You have to admit that it’s still prettier than poi.

It sounds silly, but the ratalu, whatever it was, tastes lavender. The flesh was barely sweet, more potato than yam and almost perfumey without being sickening like rose water (a personal aversion). The saltiness and mild heat of the chiles and black beans played off this hard to describe mauve flavor and created a dish that would almost go better with grilled meat than white rice. But I’m not one for double starches.

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Oct 4

I’d Rather Eat Molten Lava

Dark_molten_chocolate_cakes No, I never talk Top Chef. I hardly talk TV at all, lest you think I watch hours and hours a night (I turn it on at 7pm and it doesn’t usually get turned off until 1am, I’m not really ashamed). But it’s the finale and all I cared was that the too-young-to-be-so-‘90s, poor man’s Jennifer Aniston didn’t walk away a winner.

But first, I couldn’t get past everyone calling foie gras “foie.” Gross, how hard is it to say the extra syllable?

Then, I nearly lost my shit when Hung (my favorite because he’s so unabashedly un-nice, yet proficient) went molten cake for his wild card. I hated how last episode it was all about who cooks with soul and how Hung isn’t in his food (like an Asian must fish sauce, tamarind and coconut it all up to get respect—which is exactly what he did to win). But after I saw those chocolate cakes coming out of the ring molds, I understood the true meaning of soullessness. So, so wrong, and so straightforward. I’m surprised he didn’t continue on the proving myself to be warm and cuddly through my heritage route by spiking the dessert with five-spice powder, ginger, pandan or something seemingly exotic.

No matter, it’s quite a feat for a chef to pull off a victory in spite of such a lame dessert. But seriously, chocolate molten cake?

Photo from Kraft, which tells you all you need to know about chocolate molten cakes.

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Sep 23

New Joy

I’ve been known to torment friends with film. In college I was convinced that The Disorderly Orderly was pure genius (not to be confused with Disorderlies). Then I went through a Mrs. Doubtfire phase. Norbit even sucked me in earlier this year.

While watching perplexingly uneventful Old Joy on the (not so) big screen at Brooklyn Heights Cinema last November, I felt it wasn’t the right setting. Something was missing. The movie pushed James’s tolerance level more than any movie since Grizzly Man (which I didn’t find hard to watch). Er, because nothing happens, or rather nothing’s said, plenty happens in long real time shots, one might say. And many said just that; the film made countless 2006 top ten lists.

But it struck me recently that the ideal circumstances to view Old Joy would be with an Oregonian, someone you’ve been friends with for ages, and quite ideally while stoned. It would be the only way the movie would work. No one else could appreciate the overwhelming Northwestness of the dialogue and setting. Green and wet, moss on trees, oppressively gray sunless skies…slugs. Yes, slugs sum up all that is Oregon. I couldn’t believe my fortune when I was treated to a slug on a rock scene. The only thing missing was slow shots of mushrooms bulging from the earth.

I only have one friend in NYC that fit the criteria. Another would’ve sufficed, having spent some formative years in Portland, but she couldn’t attend. Jessica so rightly brought along a vegetarian burrito, as big as a baby’s torso, 85% beans and rice. I won’t touch those starchy hippy beasts, but it was completely appropriate.

I have no idea what their provenance is, and I’m fully aware that burritos as we know them aren’t terribly Mexican, but the burritos I love–compact, dense and meaty–come from neither Tex-Mex nor Mission-style storefronts in Portland. These reasonably sized cylinders contain no filler, no cheese, are a little greasy and stuffed with typical taco innards like carnitas or pastor. Basically refried beans and meat in a flour tortilla. I’ve not seen these in NYC.

Brooklyn burritos aren’t for me, so I easily identified ultimate snacks of my own. I went to pick up hummus to nam prik-ify, and was faced with a new Sabra variety: jalapeño. So pretty and green that I couldn’t leave it on the shelf. It’s sharper, tangier and herbier than the red chile mélange in former favorite Supremely Spicy. It looks like it would be milder, though it actually sticks with you.

I also picked up a half pound of Bleu d'Auvergne cheese, which I’m not sure qualifies as a soft blue (in my sense of the term). Despite its pliable nature, it’s really a creamy blue cheese, not a blue/triple cream hybrid. At room temperature, the piquant cheese is spreadable not crumbly and almost fooled me into believing it was the style I was looking for. It certainly out-classed the Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon I was drinking with it.

“Sorrow is ~~faded~~ worn out joy,” we learned. And most importantly, that watching Old Joy is much better with snacks, depressants and an accomplice. It’s worth waiting over a month for the Netflix shipment in order to glean quiet life lessons 2,900 miles from home

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Posts from the ‘Distractions’ Category

Nature’s Candy

The Land of Lean Beef

What Would Honey Maid Do?

Most Wanted

Wurst Ad Ever

Deceptively Delicious

As American As Mock Apple Pie

Sunday Night Special: Steamed Taro with Chopped Salted Chiles

I’d Rather Eat Molten Lava

New Joy

Featured

Occasional Instagramming

Yes, it’s come to this

My Other Blogs

What?

The Past Will Haunt You

Pigeonholing 101