Boom

the real story

The cookbook I've been writing will include an elderly vintage map, which needs neighborhood copy to go along with it.
Here is what I started with.
Madison Park: Old, white, Republican: Seattle's  most constipated neighborhood.
Belltown: From its heyday in the grunge years to well into tomorrow, the only reason to come here is to score. The drugs, not the babes.
Queen Anne: This neighborhood makes me itchy. It needs some cul-de-sacs to go with all the NIMBYs.
ID: Home to the city's most depressing hobo population.
West Seattle: Uglist commercial district of any neigbhorhood, but deserves a Ms. Congenialty prize.
Fremont: Used to just be hippies, now it's hippies & sandwiches.
Ballard: I have lost friends to this neighborhood. They never leave.
University District: Every restaurant here has a serious roach problem. What, you didn't know?
Downtown: I have resented this area ever since I got a jaywalking ticket.
Capitol Hill: It used to be $5 bowls of noodles. Now it's $12 bowls of noodles.
Pioneer Square: What can you say about a 125-year-old neighborhood that died?
Columbia City: HEY! HEY! I'm TAWKING to you! Shit, it's the po-po!
Rainier Valley: Duck, and cover.

Judge This Book By Its Cover

I think it's lovely, and I can't wait for the book, which will be out in September.

L'Affair du Pomme de Terre

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.

Return to Suet

Since first reading Master and Commander, I have had an obsession with suet puddings. To the best of my knowledge, I have never eaten one, but plan to remedy that at some point in April. After purchasing Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, I have plenty of recipes to choose from; there's also a handful in my two oldest cookbooks (the 1903 Whitehouse Cookbook and the 1930-ish Presbyterian church cookbook which belonged to my dad's grandmother). All of them are basically the same: chop a pile of suet fine, add it to some flour and sugar (and possibly an egg or two), stir in some chopped fruit or roll it up with a layer of jam, and wrap the whole thing in cloth and boil it for a few hours. Some versions add molasses and standard spice cake spices (nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger), and I think I will start with that version--it seems less threatening, somehow.

The boiling thing is interesting: because the dough is wrapped in a fairly thick layer of cheesecloth (or a pudding bag, or basin), I think the result is like those steamed Chinese buns that look so pasty white and have such a yummy, sweet bread flavor. According to Mr. O'Brian's essay on the subject, if the cloth is loosely wrapped the suet will form a rather damp gelatinous mass, and if it's wrapped tightly, it'll be more like the steamed buns. (My mom remembers suet pudding as something that sounds an awful lot like a suet cake one purchases for birds; I have a vague idea that someone played a trick on her about this, or perhaps it was that her family preferred the gelatinous version.) You can view a handful of different puddings at the Loscouse book's website, including my favorite one (as far as the name goes): Drowned Baby (also known as Boiled Baby, which seems more accurate, as the "baby" is cooked in hot water, rather than submerged in any-temperature water until it stops breathing).

Over the winter, I was mulling over suet pudding and had a lot of difficulty finding suet that wasn't a cake of bird suet. I thought I could use lard or leaf lard as a substitute, and while I suspect it'd be pretty fine (same meaty cholesterol-packed goodness), I've finally found actual suet for human consumption (the brand, Atora, is called "the strongest brand in the suet market"). I'm going to check around at a couple of local Brit food shops, and chat with my favorite butcher (Don and Joe's Meats at Pike Place Market) to see if "the strongest brand in the suet market" is in fact "the only brand in the suet market". Some websites claims that butchers will simply give customers suet; others say that it's "impossible" to find--but all those websites are targeted at people making suet cakes for birds, not puddings for humans. (This could be making it sound like birds are less deserving of tasty food than humans; please know, oh ye random web searchers googling "suet pudding" and finding this, that I am nearly as obsessed with birds as I am with pudding, and would never wish poor-quality food on them.)

A side note regarding my subconscious: I had two remembered dreams last night. The first involved going into a restaurant, ordering two doughnuts, and being given a cheeseburger that had a jelly doughnut as a top bun. I was not happy and fussed at the fast-food clerks to no avail. My second dream involved telling some people about the first experience, as if it really happened and was not merely dreamt about, and getting irritated when they didn't get why I was mad. Thoughts about this:

My subconscious experiences are not all that different from my conscious experiences.

People, please: A jelly doughnut/cheeseburger. I challenge you to invent a grosser food combo.

Apparently I am a fuss-budgety food critic even in my dreams.

A side note regarding spell check: Lobscouse suggestions were "Lobsters" and "Discourse". Googling was "go ogling", which it is, and which I had never realized. Is it common knowledge?

Cuteness

It's the cutest hat ever. Good thing there's at least one baby I know on the way, because I'm not sure I know any kids I could force to wear one. A cupcake on one's head doesn't have much in the way of dignity.

Although if someone wanted to photoshop one onto the pope's head, I might be convinced otherwise.

And now that you're thinking of cupcakes, have you emailed your edible book entry to ediblebookfest@yahoo.com yet? Entries are coming in for this year's festival, but I don't think I've seen yours yet, you lazy person. (Speaking of lazy, get Brothermine's ideas: Who Moved My Cheese [an empty plate] and The Dipping Point. My idea for that was chips and salsa; he had something else in mind that I know I'd get wrong and then he'd have to correct me in the comments, so I'll just say "Rob, list your version in the comments".)

A Groovy Kind of Groove

I started a new project last night--embroidering a quilt top started by my maternal grandmother's mom; she traced spiderwebs on quilt squares that alternate with squares that are embroidered with flowers. It's easier than I expected in that embroidery is remarkably easy; it's harder in that I need new glasses and using blue thread to embroider on blue fabric is a project with "new bifocals" written all over it, even if my prescription was totally up to date. Please think of that every time you're tempted to buy anything from Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters or Cost Plus (everything at those shops seems either painted with small stripes or embroidered) and hand over a donation of glasses or cash to Unite for Site.

With those random bits out of the way, what I really want to write about is the three books I've just read by John Thorne: Serious Pig, Pot on the Fire and Simple Cooking. He writes about 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?

Thorne urges 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 he finds 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 his 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, he doesn't keep a pig and chickens; he does his modern best to buy from a nearby farmer who does those things for him, falling back on mail order when he feels it necessary).

Other than his funny and intelligent writing, it's the "when he feels it necessary" part of these I like the most. He leaves plenty of room--actually, he urges you--to develop your own opinions. (So many food writers have that Thou Shalt attitude implicit in their work.) His recipes are interesting, too--and there's lots of them--because they work fine (and he sometimes gives a fat pile of options, like his 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). He also has some nice cookbook reviews and a website with a newsletter and another book available (Home Body; I can't wait to read it). Mr.Thorne is my new hero; three cheers for Mr. Thorne.

Rewards

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.

13 Column Inches

I tried to return the current weather system, but couldn't find the receipt and thus was only able to exchange this one for an identical version. Environmentally sound weather does not make for happiness, at least in here in Salmon Nation.

I just finished Serious Pig and have found different reasons for wanting to recommend it to everyone I like; it's easier to just write about it here and know that I've done my part, even though none of you lazy bastards will go get a copy and read it. His clarity when writing about food history is grand; his connection of food with place is thoughtful and appealing; he is the kind of funny that results in graceless honking and hooting noises; his recipes are interesting and often quite different than any others I've seen for the same dish. It's my new favorite book about food, trumping even Madame Fisher's The Art of Eating. He writes about mold and pig slaughtering and early American slave culture and Shakers and blueberries and gumbo and I loved every bit of it, especially the part about Mr. Dennis. Thank you, John and Matt Thorne, for writing so much so perfectly.

On a somewhat related note, I am continuing Project Homeowner's Insurance with a pain-in-the-ass inventory of all my cookbooks. Because I have so many--and many are old/out of print/hard to replace, their coverage will require a special rider. Jewelry is easy--pay for an appraisal and pay for the coverage and you're done. I have somewhere around one thousand cookbooks and pamphlets (see? I don't even know how many there are), all of which need title, date of publication and, if there is one, an ISBN recorded and filed with the insurance company as part of establishing appropriate value. I like sorting and I like books, but this won't be fun. I'm glad I'm the opposite of a packrat for everything else I own. Donating/throwing away is far easier than actually caring about stuff.

Lastly::Event Alert! BiblioBiscuit's Second Annual Edible Book Festival is scheduled for Saturday, April 1st, 2006, at 826 Seattle. Official time and event schedule will follow, once Biblio and I figure it out. But last year's was excellent fun (Scrabble played with cookies), and quite tasty (hello, Amy Broomhall! Hello, 100 Bears of (delicious) Solitude! Hello, dry ice chilled Budweiser!) and y'all should get it on your calendars to A-Make Something and B-Come Check It Out.

Critters

The first critter of the day is everyone's favorite: Gimpy the Downer Cow. Coming soon to a hamburger near you.

The second critter of the day is Rosie, the Laotian Rock Rat. It's like some kind of big-headed prehistoric weasel. Hopefully not coming soon to a hamburger near you.

The third (and scariest) critter of the day is Timmy, the Humiliated Baby Chicken. Who's chipping in to buy one of these suits for the soon-to-be newest member of the Dalton clan? I'm sure I can get some of the Knit Chicks to help out on additional suits for all family members.

Why Lil' Billy is the mascot I do not know, but please do throw an unopened can at your postal delivery person tomorrow. Seriously: Throw it. Hard. And say, "and that's for Lil' Billy" as it whacks them in the head. If you throw like a girl, just leave it by your mailbox. We all have at least one unopened can of something-or-other, don't we?

The Death Pie (formerly known as Copyright Violation Pie) has left the building. Never have I made a dessert that caused such damage to so many people. The happy/frightened/chittery/comatose reactions have gotten me obsessed with further heavy prep/no-bake dessert--it's sort of like the raw-food diet, only really bad for you! (although that makes it sound like I think the raw-food thing is actually healthy, which I don't) At any rate, I now require this book. I am also going to do a specific search through Mr. Hughes' Family Recipe Box (Ant Poison: Very Poisonous) to see what Fleda has to offer in the way of iceboxy treats. I think of them as the kind of thing that grammy clipped a recipe for from the Borden can umpteen years ago, wrote down on an index card, and now everything thinks of it as "her" pie, when really it's everyone's grammy's pie.