Locally Grown Girl

why the momofuku milk bar book is the best book ever

On page 85, I stumbled across this line while reading the Pistachio Cake recipe (for the record: pistachio cake, lemon curd, pistachion butter cream). 
"Once all of the egg whites have been incorporated, you will have a snotty green soup in your mixing bowl. Right on."
I already loved the book and thanks to "Right on" I now love it 100x more.  

For complicated reasons that will remain entirely unexamined here, it reminded me of a lunch a handful of years ago, when my brother and I were both writing up a handful of short reviews for an alt-weekly's Best Restaurants issue. We were at an excellent barbecue joint, and we started a contest in ridiculous superlatives about how great his sandwich was. He won, or I think it was his line although we both tend to lose track of these things and it's entirely possible that its questionable brilliance half belongs to each of us: "I loved the sandwich so much, I fucked it on the table in front of my sister."  

No, the line was not actually used in print. The alt weekly wasn't that alt. 

feeling hungry?

A follow up to the oddly-named Girl Hunter:
I just got a press release for a book that once again, I'm excited about, and once again, the title made me roll my eyes. In this case, it's part of a series, or at least a follow up to a book, sensibly called How to Eat Supper. The new book is How to Eat Weekends.

A weekend is a sometimes food. 

today in terrible titles

I just got an advance book in the mail. I've met the author, she's smart and a writer that I've enjoyed on occasion, and in general I'm glad to have the book. It's about her learning how to hunt, which, again in general, is something that interests me (both my parents were hunters; the kind who ate what they killed and who hunted wild game, rather than kill farm-raised birds on the sort of game farm that feels to me like cheating). 

Anyway. The cover has a photo of the author (the accompanying press release makes a point of her height and hair color, in the opening sentence!). And the name of the book is Girl Hunter. Is the name supposed to be funny? When you think "big game hunter" or "bear hunter" or "duck hunter", I am going to assume you do not think of a bear or duck who is a hunter. You think of someone, quite likely a man, who hunts bears or ducks. I see Girl Hunter and I thought "some man who hunts girls" rather than "a girl who is a hunter."

Curious what the publishing company was thinking. 



 

Birthday Surprise

Saturday was my birthday (thanks everyone, it was lovely) and one of my presents brought a grand ol' ego booster my way.

The first bit of real food editorial I ever had published was a story in the Seattle Weekly, about doughnuts. (Seven years ago this week. Happy tra-la to me!) If you don't want to bother clicking the link, know that it was timed to coincide with the arrival of Washington's first Krispy Kreme. I had mixed feelings about it ("fresh, hot adequacy") but in general I am pro-doughnut (and apparently pro-anthropomorphization of food) and possibly a little insane, or at least that's what comes through in the article.

Cap'n gave me a stack of books, including the newest from a favorite food writer, John T. Edge. He's written a series of wee books about specific American food--fried chicken, burgers and fries (all hail the pimento cheeseburger), apple pie, and now, donuts.

And you know who's quoted on the cover page? And who he kicks the book off with references to? Me! The whole donut book starts with my opening sentence, and a few additional quotes about Krispy Kreme.

Because I already admired his writing so much--and it turns out he's a friend of Edible Seattle's designer (who lives in Memphis and runs Edible Memphis)--it feels like some kind of preposterously high honor to be mentioned in his book. And it feels weird and swoony to know that a local friend of his faxed the story to him when it first came out. For all I know, he spends the whole rest of the book disagreeing with everything he quoted from me (I haven't read it yet) and honestly, it doesn't matter, because the important thing is that he loves doughnuts, too. I am, as Amy B would say, chuffed about it.

My favorite doughnut shop continues to be Family Doughnut. The maple bars, apple fritters and plain old-fashioned are the top three, although the chocolate-topped long john subs in for the maple bar about 50% of the time.

As a not-yet-verified-but-still-interesting Doughnut Fact, my friend Ellen told me last year that her mom invented the buttermilk bar, which is a huge slab of tangy, old-fashioned crunchy cake doughnut. Ellen and her family immigrated from Cambodia...somewhere around 28 or 30 years ago, I guess?..and Ellen's mom ultimately owned many doughnut shops around Seattle (I forget the total count). Ellen's folks were able to retire back to Cambodia (many of their friends have been able to return as well, so hurrah), and someday I hope to meet her (ideally when Ellen and her family are visiting, I have been promised an Ellen-hosted street food tour) and get the scoop. The buttermilk bar at Family Doughnut is one of Cap'n's favorite things to eat, so inventing it seems deserving of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Doughnut Oscars.

Something of a Love Letter

Lots of cookbooks are resources, lots are eye candy, some are just compelling enough to be purchased but never used. Three of my favorites are at least as much food writing as they are recipes--there's not a single photo in any of them but the writing's great and all the recipes (excepting a corn chowder) have been well written and delicious. The books are by John and Matt Thorne: Serious Pig, Pot on the Fire and Simple Cooking.

One of the main points is something I've been mulling over for a couple of years, which is the idea of developing a roster of ingredients and techniques for your regular cooking that keep you interested and at ease in the kitchen. No one really likes to eat the same six dishes-plus-leftover-night roster so many of grew up with; at the same time, being constantly in search of new recipes means you spend too much money on both cookbooks and obscure ingredients--not to mention that the real result is eating out often, because who actually has the interest in cooking an entirely unfamiliar dish at the end of a day?

The Thornes urge you to get away from the platonic ideal of a vegetable (being willing to snip off the ends of an elderly vegetable or cut around a bruise on an apple) and eat economic basics like oatmeal, lentils, rice and beans while at the same time going to rather extensive effort where they find effort is truly due, like making your own sausages and sending away to some obscure company for starter to make your own buttermilk. At root, I think much of the idea is based on bringing cooking back around to what it was 150 years ago, when almost everyone kept a pig and some chickens, had an apple tree and a small garden, and knew that good ingredients didn't have to always be perfectly fresh and lightly cooked to have some delicious results. (and no, they don't keep a pig and chickens; they do their modern best to buy from a nearby farmer who does those things for them, falling back on mail order when they feel it necessary).

Other than the funny and intelligent writing, it's the "when it feels necessary" part of these I like the most. There are frequent commands to go explore and develop your own opinion. (So many food writers have a Thou Shalt attitude implicit in their work.) The recipes are interesting, too--and there are lots of them--because they work fine (and you sometimes get a fat pile of options, like nine recipes for cheesecake and six for cocoa and/or hot chocoate) but also because it's easy to see where you might change them a bit based on what you like and have on hand (Vietnamese sweet chili sauce and goat cheese, in my own case at the moment). There are also some nice cookbook reviews and a website with a newsletter and another book available (Home Body; I can't wait to read it).

Insane Treasure

A friend just loaned me a cookbook he obtained via his grandmother; it's from a wives' group (which seems so antiquated) from an Alaska missle base and was published in 1961. Behold:

The pages are full of little cartoon bears, hunters and women pretending to be lazy, and many of the recipes have oddly deprecating-wacky comments after them, such as, "Strudel isn't really that difficult. If you've made 15 and still aren't having any luck, try taking up bowling." This follows a complex two-page all-from-scratch strudel recipe. I have a hard time imagining a world where you'd try it 15 times with no success. I have friends who have tried a recipe once and decided they'll never be a good cook. Gen X : A generation of quitters.

Buried on the second-to-last page, I found what I think is the winning recipe: hot caramel dumplings. It's quite similar to this one, except it uses butter instead of margarine and--I'm curious about this difference--it steams the dumplings (in the sauce) on the stovetop, instead of baking them (in the sauce) in the oven. Unless I totally botch it up and end up with gluey blobs coated with grainy sugar, it seems like one of those so-sweet-it-hurts sorts of foods I love. (I am honest enough here to not call it a "dessert"--if it's good, I will eat them for breakfast.)

Cookies

I purchased the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion about a month ago; even though I already own several cookie-only cookbooks, this one has all kinds of treats I've never even thought of before, let alone seen in print (utterly brilliant: pumpkin-molasses whoopee pies). It's also an excellent source of baking science, including a clear explanation of why some recipes benefit from shortening (which has to do with butter having a higher water content and thus creating more spread). Plenty of fun, plenty of fact--it's what I like in a cookbook.

And then there's this problem, which is much more about me than it is about them: In their "essentials" section, there are multiple versions of the basic, popular American cookie varieties. Each version has a single adjective, like "chewy chocolate chip cookies" or "soft oatmeal cookies", and in some cases this is enough to establish which version will be preferred in this household. But what happens--as did today--when I want an oatmeal cookie that is both soft AND chewy? I end up making an educated guess based on the content of the recipe's introduction and the ingredient list. As I have never made any oatmeal cookies that required corn syrup (the "chewy" version), but the "soft" ones sounded like undercooked oat-lumps in the introduction, I based my choice on the intro. They certainly are chewy--almost more like a warm-from-the-oven lace cookie; I now get what the roll of corn syrup is. The results are quite good (I made 1/3 of the batch with chocolate chips, 1/3 with chocolate and coconut, and 1/3 with chopped, dried apricots).

In comparison, my previous default cookie book is the baking compendium from Cook's Illustrated. Their recipes have an introduction that's longer than a few sentences, so it's easier to establish what to expect from a given recipe. They're quite clear about what they set out to do, whether it's a brownie that's midpoint between chewy and fudgy or a chocolate chip cookie that has the same fat goodness of the ones sold at chain bakeries. If they include something unexpected, like corn syrup, there's a paragraph explaining its purpose.

So: I've learned that I'm Ms. Picky, and Cook's Illustrated has only encouraged that about me over the 15 years or so that I've read the magazine that the books are compiled from. I've also learned that when baking a "basic" cookie, I'll stick with CI, and pull out the King Arthur book for the fun, elaborate goodies and special twists (like the salty oatmeal cookies) that CI doesn't usually cover.

In other cookie news, I want to report the general deliciousness of a cookie I haven't made in many years, which appears in the Fannie Farmer cookbook under the name "Linzer Schnitten". It's a rich dough, seasoned mostly with cloves and lemon zest, filled with jam (I use raspberry) and brushed with a sweet egg glaze; it's not like other linzer cookies that are a cookie version of the classic torte (ground almonds, no spice, lattice-topped), but more of a spicy jam thumbprint cookie. I found an identical recipe online at hindustanlink, of all unexpected places to track down an Americanized version of a very Euro cookie.

If you make them, know that if you follow the "make the groove" directions for the jam tunnel it will cause the jam to pour all over your oven. One way or another, make sure that the jam is fully contained within four edges. The cookies are fine if you cut them out and make a little spoon (or thumb) divot for the jam, or you can just fiddle around with the short edges of the strips (per the recipe directions) and create a jam-containing dough lip (which may be the most unappealing image I've ever created).

For People Who Eat Food

I got through four magazine boxes of cookbook recording today (77 books) and found three bucks in one (yes, I have multiples) of my copies of Joys of Jello. Why did I do that? Do three one-dollar bills normally make good bookmarks? (No). Have I ever made the recipe on the page they were marking (a cabbage-filled salad, held together with black cherry jello)? (No.) I am used to finding bills in the washer/dryer and various coats and once in my underwear drawer (a joke?), but never in a cookbook.

I may have written about this at some previous point, but feel compelled to send this off into the electronic world in support of all the freelance writers I know who've taken preposterous gigs to pay the bills. I own a small cookbook--the kind sold in supermarket checkstands for a few bucks, generally found between the Wrigley's and the tabloids--called Velveeta Recipes: For People Who Eat Food. Other than the brilliant subtitle, this appears to be a totally straight Velveeta specialty cookbook, published by the same company that does all those little books for General Foods and Hershey's and filled with totally straight Velveeta recipes. Stylists, editors, photographers and brand managers are all given credit, but there's no officially noted author. Read these fine chapter introductions:

Dips That Get Devoured: "Baseball. The great American pastime. Each year we spend hours as spectators watching...absolutely nothing happens. As Americans we deserve a national pastime with more personal involvement. Like eating. It's something that we have been doing since we were born, so we're already good at it. Like the icon of the baseball, eating would also have an icon of it's own: a large bowl of Velveeta dip. Dips That Get Devoured represent all the different dips that one can use to participate in this wonderfully rich activity."

Super Duper Soups and Sandwiches: "Since achieving the title "Super Duper", our soups and sandwiches have not been acting quite the same way as they once did. Unfortunately, the title of "Super Duper" has gone to their heads. They have alienated all other soups and sandwiches, refusing to associate themselves with lesser forms of nourishment. We do, however, feel slightly responsible since we were the ones who made these recipes so good."

and perhaps the best--Quick Fixin' Dinners: "These recipes are designed for quick and easy preparation. And to reflect that, we decided to name these recipes "Quick Fixin' Dinners". Notice how we dropped the "G" on the word "Fixing" to show how quickly these recipes can be made. By dropping the "G", we have created a visual cue, so the reader will be convinced that these really are quick recipes and that they should try these for that reason alone."

Since the title is referred to in this Kraft cookbook at the Reader's Digest store, I suspect that it's not a clever fake, and that someone probably got fired over the copy, or a freelancer was threatened with "never working in this town again". Never working in Velveeta Town doesn't sound that bad to me. If somehow, someone knows the person who wrote this, please send them my way.

I got through four magazine boxes of cookbook recording today (77 books) and found three bucks in one (yes, I have multiples) of my copies of Joys of Jello. Why did I do that? Do three one-dollar bills normally make good bookmarks? (No). Have I ever made the recipe on the page they were marking (a cabbage-filled salad, held together with black cherry jello)? (No.) I am used to finding bills in the washer/dryer and various coats and once in my underwear drawer (a joke?), but never in a cookbook.

I may have written about this at some previous point, but feel compelled to send this off into the electronic world in support of all the freelance writers I know who've taken preposterous gigs to pay the bills. I own a small cookbook--the kind sold in supermarket checkstands for a few bucks, generally found between the Wrigley's and the tabloids--called Velveeta Recipes: For People Who Eat Food. Other than the brilliant subtitle, this appears to be a totally straight Velveeta specialty cookbook, published by the same company that does all those little books for General Foods and Hershey's and filled with totally straight Velveeta recipes. Stylists, editors, photographers and brand managers are all given credit, but there's no officially noted author. Read these fine chapter introductions:

Dips That Get Devoured: "Baseball. The great American pastime. Each year we spend hours as spectators watching...absolutely nothing happens. As Americans we deserve a national pastime with more personal involvement. Like eating. It's something that we have been doing since we were born, so we're already good at it. Like the icon of the baseball, eating would also have an icon of it's own: a large bowl of Velveeta dip. Dips That Get Devoured represent all the different dips that one can use to participate in this wonderfully rich activity."

Super Duper Soups and Sandwiches: "Since achieving the title "Super Duper", our soups and sandwiches have not been acting quite the same way as they once did. Unfortunately, the title of "Super Duper" has gone to their heads. They have alienated all other soups and sandwiches, refusing to associate themselves with lesser forms of nourishment. We do, however, feel slightly responsible since we were the ones who made these recipes so good."

and perhaps the best--Quick Fixin' Dinners: "These recipes are designed for quick and easy preparation. And to reflect that, we decided to name these recipes "Quick Fixin' Dinners". Notice how we dropped the "G" on the word "Fixing" to show how quickly these recipes can be made. By dropping the "G", we have created a visual cue, so the reader will be convinced that these really are quick recipes and that they should try these for that reason alone."

Since the title is referred to in this Kraft cookbook at the Reader's Digest store, I suspect that it's not a clever fake, and that someone probably got fired over the copy, or a freelancer was threatened with "never working in this town again". Never working in Velveeta Town doesn't sound that bad to me. If somehow, someone knows the person who wrote this, please send them my way.

Found Chez Boom: L'affaire du pomme de terre 6 October

Even though it was soggy out, Sweetie and I went to the Broadway Farmers Market for what may be our last trip of the season (it ends right about the time we return from Ecuador). I chatted with my current favorite seller, the Potato Man, and purchased three varieties--some purple ones (slightly wet and very clean, they look like the sort of purple normally seen on the side of a van, surrounding a dolphin), the cutest tiny russets I've ever seen, and some round and sassy Yellow Finns. We talked some about Ecuador and their potato varieties, and he was happily insistent that I must provide a complete report of my Latin American Potato Experiences when we return, even if I have to drive up to the Ballard Farmers Market to find him.

We also got samples of delicious beef stew from the Brothers In The Kitchen cooking demo. The smell was rich enough to cause swooning on such a cool fall day, the portion generous, the brothers professional and chatty, and the stew was great. Little bits of orange rind in beef stew? New to me--and tasty. I'm not sure if they were selling many books (the market wasn't all that busy), but their carafe for donations was stuffed.

I was also happy to find baskets of smooth kiwis, which taste nothing like the fuzzy kind and are about the size of a green grape. A friend of mine has a couple vines (you need male and female plants) and I've snacked on them for years, but they're so soft and perishable I don't think they're very common at all in stores. Nice to see them at a market. (And if anyone has ever cooked with them at all, do tell.)

Yesterday, we went back down to South Lake Union to eat at a place we found a week ago--Feierabund, a German pub. The beer was great, the piles of food were a bargain, the atmosphere is the dark and wooden sort of place that makes me want to drink beer, and, alas, the waiter was a barely-legal dude who spaced (his word) on a few too many things to make me happy. I realized that what I want at a bar like that is a very stereotypical large professional pub man with a handlebar mustache, a generous gut, a zillion years experience in the world of beer and a real love of his job. I do not see many pub men like that, but if you know of one, send me his way. We will be going back, both to taste a whole lot of beer varieties and to try more food. Sweetie especially loved the sweet/sour red cabbage, and I liked the horseradish mashed potatoes.

To wrap up a very food-centered weekend, I spent some quality time with a birthday gift from Sweetie's parents, a cookbook called The Little Big Book of Comfort Food. The recipe selection is impressive--they did a great job combining standards like meatloaf and mashed potatoes with fattening pub food (cheesy potato skins), nursery food (vanilla pudding), old-fashioned veggies (green bean casserole, corn pudding) and crazily rich desserts (whiskey cake). A small portion are traditional regional or ethnic (mainly New York Jewish), and a few are interesting new-to-me versions of basics, like the French toast casserole. I'm also entirely in love with the design--heavy matte paper with crazed images of dancing vegetables, small children slaving away in the kitchen, and ducklings dressed up and out on a picnic. There's even a little ribbon bookmark. While some of the recipes (glazed carrots) are too bland and sugary to compare to my modern version (balsamic glazed carrots), most of the recipes look both tasty and reliable.

Two Kinds of Food

First Kind of Food:
I've made enough batches to report that making filled cupcakes is, in fact, a piece of cake. And universally thrilling for the people who eat them, which is fun: A cupcake always brings a smile, but a cupcake filled with thick chocolate pudding brings squeals of delight. The technique I've been using is in no way difficult, but on the fiddly side of the dessert spectrum. Because of the extra bits of work, I started cheating with cake mixes (and even instant pudding) with no change in the degree of squealy delight from the eaters. Part of that, I think, is that I add real flavorings to the cake mixes--extra cocoa, instant coffee and vanilla to chocolate cake; lots of extra vanilla to yellow cake; fresh lemon zest and juice to lemon cake. Adding a tablespoon of cocoa to the chocolate pudding makes a great difference, too. (I always use Pernigotti cocoa, by the way.)

So the technique: Let the cupcakes cool to room temperature. Using a small, non-serrated and very sharp paring knife, cut a circle of cake out of each cupcake. Don't cut all the way through to the bottom of the cake, and leave enough cake around the perimeter so it won't tear. Once you've cut all the way around the top, you should be able to gently lift off the section you've just cut. Take the "plug" you've just removed and slice off the center part of the cake, leaving a thin disk of cake. Fill the cupcake's hole with chilled instant pudding or pastry cream, lemon curd or fruit puree, leaving a space at the top that is approximately as thick as the disk of cake you have waiting. Place the disk back on top of the filling. Once they're all done, chill them for a bit before frosting--the filling will set to hold the disk in place (and once you've frosted the cupcakes, the seam isn't visible).

You'll have little knobs of cake left over from all this--the plugs that you removed from the cake and sliced off from the lid. I'm sure you could do something fancy with them, involving custard and cream and fruit, but I have just been pitching them into a tub and dabbing them with bits of buttercream when Sweetie or I want a snack--it keeps us out of the cupcakes, and really, it's the very best bite of cake.

Second Kind of Food:
I just finished a remarkable book called The Language of Baklava, by Diana Abu-Jaber. It's a memoir-with-recipes format, which, when it's done well, is just about my favorite book--and in this case, it's really, really done well. Partly, I think, that's because I know depressingly little about Jordan (where her dad's from) and she manages to politely gloss over my own ignorance and educate me without being bewildering or condescending. As I kept reading and learning and enjoying, I was struck by realizing that the two restaurants I like in my neighborhood that are "Middle Eastern" do not define an actual country (Ali Baba and Mediterranean Kitchen Express)--which, when you think about it, is like having a "European" restaurant instead of a French or Italian one. Yet at last in Seattle, it's unthinkingly accepted.

Perhaps this odd definition is because the borders of the countries are so recent and were all defined by westerners; perhaps it's simply marketing, because people in Seattle know that "Middle Eastern" food means falafel and baklava and hummous and pita and spinach and lentils and lamb, while very few (relatively speaking) would know what exactly Jordanian food or Iranian food or Lebanese food would be. The book talks some about this, indirectly, and has sweet, often hilarious stories about her uncles, that mash up culture and immigration and family issues into one big, delicious stew with rice and tomatoes and eggplant. I can't wait to try some of the recipes--there's a simple marinade for grilled chicken that looks far better that grilled chicken has a right to.

I feel compelled to add that when I was searching for a link to paste in for Med. Kitchen Express, I stumbled across some fairly ignorant user reviews on a few sites; I chose what I thought least bad. Sweetie and I typically share a single $8 entree, which comes with a cinnamony lentil soup or a garlicky salad, a pile of the best rice in town, a mound of hummous and a loaf of pita. It's a bargain--and everything is about half the price for the same portion as across town at the official Mediterranean Kitchen, which is only slightly prettier inside.