Ecru Brute?

Too many cooks spoil the soup is good no nonsense wisdom even if said to be uttered from a pair of fictitious old wife’s lips. The admonishment also happens to be handy justification and sometimes unrelenting mantra for those of us who like to keep a tight reign in the kitchen and uncouth hands out of our Dutch ovens. But what is a woman to do when those very hands become necessary accoutrements in the task of daily living?

Some time back, I was a person incapable of allowing another into the inner sanctum, the cauldron where all the magic happened. Sure, friends were allowed into the kitchen to hang out but there was the unspoken line in the sand where few dared to cross for fear of a quick menacing scowl or a fork jab to the hand. As much as I loved to wine and dine my loved ones, the cooking of a meal was a private act of one. In my mind, concocting a recipe was something sacred. After all it is the summoning forward of something from whence there was naught. It might have been my proclivity towards drama or my rigorous training in the creative process, but meal after meal was a chance to conjure and dream, mold ingredients, bake or steam. I wanted exclusive rights to add and delete at whim unhampered by rules and regulations. Lucky for me, I have had many years to indulge my wish unchallenged. I could not know then that my days flying solo were coming to an end.

It started slowly but insidiously. My limbs became heavy, foreign objects-- clumsy. Trips to the market became increasingly challenging. I began scanning the linoleum for barely there drips from produce, fearful that the spill might deliver me face down to the ground. There was the time that I bent down to reach a 28oz can and got stuck head low, unable to straighten back up. I had to abort the mission, ditch the tomatoes and climb my way up to vertical as if the shelves were a ladder and hope that no one witnessed my dance of folly. And like well-proofed dough, the mishaps bubbled over into my kitchen too. I sent a perfectly golden buttery galette sliding to its early demise onto the floor in an attempt to pull, lift and land a baking sheet from oven rack to counter. My hands grew dull unable to deftly handle an onion, a knife, my beloved Microplane- the ingredients and tools I once knew so intimately. With barely enough strength to wave the white flag of defeat, my spirit surrendered for a time and many a dinner was made of rotisserie chicken and take out salad.

We zoom to present time where I now cook with an attendant in my kitchen stadium. The velvet curtains are drawn back and any notion of cooking solo extinguished for the moment. This arrangement of two has imposed more limitation than my ideal and necessitates a still-in-the-works strategy to keep the meals rolling and humor intact. The addition of an attendant is mandatory to my life and has been a steep learning curve in culinary grace. The idea is that this person serves as my hands, fingers, legs and arms. Theory and reality are two different things. At first glance this might not sound that complicated, but in fact communicating a multi layered task in its fullness is downright complex. What immediately becomes clear is that words mean so many things to different people. The initial many months with a caregiver will include a series of dialogues back and forth with the intent of building a mutual framework of understanding. It is a slow process of inhabiting each others’ taste and style, sharing our unique perspective on life and in this case, cooking.

There was F_ the Tongan woman who liked to eat mounds of boiled meat and eggs for breakfast and Kathy the theology student who never prepared much more than bottled sauce with her spaghetti, W_ had never seen an avocado and J’s universal solution to any food disaster was to apply a mist of soy sauce to moisten and flavor the item in question. These women and others have had their own unique response to a seemingly straight forward instruction such as “sauté a diced onion in olive oil.” I have been surprised time and again to the wide range of possibilities presented before me in my skillet. I have learned that too many assumptions can make for a bad meal and the ability to elaborate without becoming too picky or pedantic, a fine art and one worth developing. I would be the first to say that my kitchen adventures have been bumpy. I have been irritated and terse, silently sulky and mournful. Giving up control has been hard, but specifically, having someone in my kitchen- at times, downright torturous. But as any artist knows, there can be an edgy adjustment period to a new tool or medium. In my case, I am still learning about cooking through the hands and senses of another- all the while keeping my own flavor in the mix. The other day this conversation could be heard from my kitchen:

Me: “So what color is the chana masala (Indian chickpeas in a spiced tomato based sauce) now?”
J: “I’d say it is red and ecru.”

I stopped dead in my tracks upon hearing what seemed to be such an odd description. And then the oddity magnified and transmogrified into something magnificent and brilliant. I laughed. I laughed in celebration of J’s individuality and at the joy and sweetness of cooking together. I dedicate this following soup to all of my caregivers past and present.

Green Soup serves 5-6: This is a wonderful emerald green soup with a kick (mine was cooked way too long). It has been adapted from Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking.

Ingredients:
4 oz potatoes, peeled and roughly diced
3 oz onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 pints chicken stock
¾ cube fresh ginger, peeled
½ tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
½ a bunch of chopped cilantro
2 cups chopped spinach
½ deseeded chopped jalapeno
10 oz frozen peas
¾ tsp salt
1 tblsp lemon juice
½ tsp ground roasted cumin
5 fl oz double cream

Instructions: Combine potatoes, onions, ginger, jalapeno, ground coriander and cumin in a pot to boil. Cover, turn heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Fish out ginger and throw away. Add the cilantro, spinach, peas, salt, lemon juice and roasted cumin. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 minutes (this is where time got away from me and my soup turned a drab green). Empty the soup into a blender in 2-3 batches and blend until smooth. Be careful. Pour the soup back into the pot, stir in the cream and bring to a simmer to heat through.

Banana: Friend or Foe?

Bananas taunt me. I am sure of it. I have memories, countless memories of this fetid fruit in bunches, in all stages of rot malingering in dusty wooden bowls. Perhaps the worst is stumbling upon a rogue fruit blackened and insolent, lying in precious wait within a darkened backpack, glove compartment or under a pile of mail. You see I was banana bludgeoned at a young age by my mother. Our small kitchen table was almost always eclipsed by two enormous bunches of 29 cents/lb specimens. I’m not sure which was worse, watching my mother skin and plop the mottled pulp into a plastic bag from their bleathery rinds or opening up the freezer door to find bags stretched to their limit with dead lumps of grey toned matter. No difference, at an early age this tropical excess translated into one dreadful concoction which changed my culinary sensibilities forever- Banana Bologna.

Now you need to understand, this is my name for it. In ordinary terms it is simply known as banana bread. In my intro post I hinted at collision #1 which occurred during my childhood. Banana Bologna is most definitely the lovechild of this lively intersection and the collision that I refer to is growing up Asian American in a predominantly white suburb. At this moment I need to describe how I believe this bread was breathed into its extraordinary existence.

Ma mere is a force of nature. A compact petite woman, I have watched her take out container after bowl full of food from the fridge, spread it all before her on the table as if it were a giant placemat and roto-root right through it as if it were nothing. Everything about her is larger than life. Completely emotive and free in expression she can fly from focused diligence with laser like intensity to ebullient peals of laughter in a nano-second. A woman of extremes, restraint is a strait jacket that she won’t be caught wearing anytime soon. So take a passionate woman who isn’t interested in subtlety or precision and unleash her upon an unsuspecting quick bread recipe and you get the beginnings of Banana Bologna. If three ripe bananas are good, then ten are stupendous. And as any basic baker can predict, there is no hope for the powers of a leavening agent against a squadron of banana; the resultant, a dense grey rubbery mat devoid of crumb, lift or lilt.

Banana Bologna should have been the least of my problems, but it was the problem. It was the dead give-away, the pink elephant in the room, the neon strobe light that proclaimed and confirmed my outsider status in a society that I wished to discreetly disappear into. While this cursed creation stood in stark contrast to the polite bread of my friends’ mothers, my own mother was probably congratulating herself for inventing something that reminded her of ttuk, a traditional Korean rice flour cake of her homeland. Banana Bologna was her response to my Campfire Girl obligation to share a snack at monthly meetings and I was the sacrificial lamb nudged forward into presenting this offering to my weirded out fire mates. My young ego couldn’t take the assault of too much attention and in less than a year, I quit.

Thankfully the story does not end here. Through the passage of at least two decades my own perspective has transformed with a smattering of wisdom, a pinch of humor and chutzpah I didn’t know I possessed. While the cloying banapple-y smell still curls my nerve endings, the banana re-education has occurred and I have learned to enjoy this comical fruit in measured doses. I am all up for banana splits with Chunky Monkey ice cream. I will globetrot for plantain chips and swoon on occasion for banana cream pie. I even went so far as to marry a banana enthusiast. But my appreciation and now affection for banana goes deeper. It reminds me of my beautiful, fiery, resourceful, soulfully creative mother. Many of the traits that stirred into the mix then are the ones that I have called upon to craft, compose, beautify and resurrect my own life. This one is for you Mom.

Nana’s Banana Bread:

This recipe makes the best banana bread I have ever eaten. It is super moist, super banana-y and has a sprite spongy interior and a slightly crunchy exterior. It was introduced to me by an angel of a woman who incidentally never baked anything other than this bread. Also, I have taken great liberties with this recipe. I tend not to measure out the banana pulp, but 4 good sized bananas give good flavor. Be forewarned, it is kind of soupy and can take awhile to bake especially with more pulp.

Ingredients:
5 tblsp butter
½ c granulated sugar
½ c brown sugar
1 egg at room temperature
2 egg whites whipped soft peaks
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ c banana puree
1 ¾ c flour
1 tsp baking soda
¼ baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ c heavy cream
½ c toasted walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat brown and white sugar into softened butter until fluffy. Incorporate egg, vanilla and banana until just mixed. Fold in egg whites. In a separate bowl sift all dry ingredients. Gently fold in ½ dry into wet. Then repeat with remaining dry. Lastly stir in cream and walnuts. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake about an hour or until toothpick comes out clean.

Backblogged

What should have happened but didn’t, was the letting go of the Fluff. In my mind I was having one last hurrah, a sweet parting of ways before I was going to embark on a “no sugar” retreat. I considered writing about this decision but it seemed too early to tell and besides, my left hand was tightly clenched around two chocolate bars and the right one was manhandling a chocolate scone. For starters I gave up chocolate for Lent. This might have been part of the problem. I was feeling prematurely triumphant as well as a little arrogant about the whole affair. Initially I thought that giving up chocolate would be equivalent to chopping off my left arm, I need it and besides-- it would be painful. The time passed easily enough, so easily that I confidently announced that I should make the next commitment, to give up sugar with no clear end in sight. Well, this week was the result of celebrating my reunion with the cacao bean and preparing for the upcoming departure of the cane. It has been a time of sugary excess on top of a pile of chocolate with strangely enough, turkey sausage on the side. I will admit that my breakfast for the last 3 days has showcased a chocolate scone studded with peanut butter chips and butter and fluff alternating as sidekicks. It has also been a week of cheesecake and fudge chocolate raspberry bars. I am so clearly backblogged! My biorhythms are out of step with my blogorhythm and the writing, food making and picture taking for FOODChair are completely out of sync with each other; so that while I am eating sugar filled goodies I am attempting to write about the detox benefits of seaweed. Next week I hope to make and photograph banana bread, while tonight I hope to get a decent picture of the hijiki. “Say Cheese!"

Spring Cleaning and Fluff

It has happened every year since I graduated from college, another rite of passage into adulthood: annual Spring Cleaning. In those inchoate years, this ritual did not amount to much more than a regular cleaning. I was too newly released from the shackles of academia to spend time fussing over, polishing or organizing my belongings. Owning precious little did not hurt my foot loose and fancy free cause either. I was busy living and quite content wearing slightly dirty clothing in a dusty old apartment. In the spring of 92’ I befriended a woman who later became both mentor and soul friend. S_ had a sweet little house in Oakland and an enchanted garden out back in which we spent many magical hours. In a short time it became clear that the care of her possessions was a reflection of her gratitude for them. There was an elegant simplicity and a beauty to her home that I worked hard to imitate and still strive to emulate. Spring is now a time to peer into the closet and the cupboard, open the refrigerator and spill the spoils.

What do I have? How did I get it? Do I want it? and Is it still viable?

Having gone through two big moves in the past three years, one would think that I am up to snuff with my stuff. A quick survey has me surmising that:

a) I have a fear that grocery stores will run out of frozen edamame beans. I have 3 very old bags, 1 unopened and 2 in different stages of use and abuse.

b) My body may break out in boils or carbuncles. I have enough herbal poultices and brews at the helm to cure a small army.

c) Stevie Nicks may want to borrow some of my clothing and I want to be ready. Thanks to a year working at Darbury Stenderu, fiber artist extraordinaire my closet groans with sumptuous velvet.

d) I have a Dr. Jekyll & Hyde diet. Ounce per ounce, I match hijiki to jelly beans, Pure Synergy to Marshmallow Fluff. Something has got to give, it is either me or the fluff...

So as a parting nod to the pretty white number in satin chiffon, we will dance one final twirl around the floor as the lights dim…

Grilled fluffernutter sandwich:

2 slices of 9 grain bread (who am I kidding?)
Healthy slather of Hannaford’s crunchy peanut butter (incidentally the best PB I have ever had, it is quite salty and chock full of peanut nuggets)
A liberal coat of the Fluff
Butter

Grill to golden perfection, appreciate the oozing goodness and devoutly devour.

On Being Called To Prayer While Cooking Dinner for Forty

When the heavens and the earth

are snapped away like a painted shade,

and every creature called to account,

please forgive me my head

full of chickpeas, garlic and parsley.

I am in love with the lemon

on the counter, and the warmth

of my brother’s shoulder distracted me

when we stood to pray.

The imam takes us over

for the first prostration,

but I keep one ear cocked

for the cry of the kitchen timer,

thrilled to realize today’s cornbread

might become tomorrow’s stuffing.

This thrift may buy me ten warm minutes

in bed tomorrow, before the singer

climbs the minaret in the dark

to wake me again to the work

of thought, word, deed.

I have so little time to finish;

only I know how to turn the dish, so the first taste

makes my brother’s eyes open wide--

forgive me, this pleasure

seems more urgent than the prayer--

too late to take refuge in You

from the inextricable mischief

of every thing You made,

eggs, milk, cinnamon, kisses, sleep.

-- Patrick Donnelly

It is officially Spring

The guests have come and gone and my refrigerator, the silent witness to a ravenous pillage. What remains are a motley group, the hard core survivors: ½ a tub of Sabra hummus, some hardened jasmine rice, milk, grated carrots, raspberry sauce and scraping-the-bottom-of-the-carton vanilla ice cream. It pleases me to create, reuse and recycle when need be and food is no exception. On many occasions, the remnants make up a strange concoction which I loosely categorize as my layered meals that I dutifully eat. They can be pretty in that rough and tumble patchwork, take-me-as-I-am kind of way. There is no cool elegance in these meals. Today’s creation was different all together. I awoke this morning drifting upward towards consciousness after a fantastic night of movement and thrill. It was so involved that I dropped many details as I awoke. The sole memory of my nightly escapades was me scantily clad in an avocado green bikini flecked with gold. I sported a wicked tan complete with a very bodacious Brazilian bottom. Amused and inspired my thoughts turned to the raspberry sauce in the fridge. It was created for another time and place- Peach Melba the week earlier. The frozen raspberries were pureed with sugar, water and vanilla and then passed through a sieve to de-seed. The sauce was a potent floral elixir puddling sweetly over vanilla ice cream with mounds of syrupy peach halves. Peach Melba was indeed a happy convergence of ingredients, in particular the sauce and the cream a perfect marriage. In a move to simultaneously usher in warmer weather and thumb my nose at the cold I decided to create a beautiful blushing raspberry rose milkshake which would consist of the sauce, milk, vanilla ice cream and a healthy glug of rosewater. While I had visions of sweet 16 pink, I came up with girl gone bad fuchsia. A little too much sauce and not enough cream! I guess that is what happens when you throw in night time romp with spring time frolic. Nevertheless, the sauce was cleverly reinvented into a sophisticated drink snack that in a future iteration will partner perfectly with a crisp-chewy pignoli cookie. Now I’ll drink to that.

Look who's coming to dinner...

This past week ushered in my dear friend Avi and his partner Clarence. Since nothing spells love like good food, the weeks prior were an anticipatory flurry of menu planning and food dreams which peaked and then came to a cruel halt in the horrific realization that arteries and things that clog are a bigger deal than previously ignored. My enthusiasm flagged faster than a flattened soufflé in a cool kitchen. Somehow in the pursuit of good food I never considered the calorie, the fat gram or anything low-carb. I always asserted that anything low fat, fat free or no sugar is something to avoid or at least politely decline. I mean I can think of many good reasons to include both fat and sugar and only a few to omit them. However friend that I am, I dutifully altered my recipes with the clipped no nonsense precision of a dietician. Green curry chicken with coconut was pleasant, bright and mild; a slimmed down version of melting fiery lusciousness. In rebellion to the new constraints placed upon my menu and inspired by the thought of dinner guests, the myriad ways to feast and the typical Bon Appetit question asked in their celebrity profile:

"Who would you invite to dinner if you could dine with anyone?"

I began to daydream over what I would serve the King of Kings. Last Supper jokes aside I considered how Jesus could be the ultimate gourmet capable of reveling and relishing every last nook in His Father’s garden o’ bounty, a fresh wide open palate capable of knowing and enjoying heaven on earth . It seemed to reason that every ingredient would be fair game from fiddleheads to frog legs, spam to spumoni. Does Jesus play favorites? If He blesses the proud, the meek and the down trodden, socializes with prostitutes, thieves and tax collectors, includes all and excludes none, would he prefer beef to chicken? With sky’s- the- limit boundlessness I set to work on a menu to please and delight. It should travel the world of food but not include so much breath and depth as to exhaust. Definitely a meal that makes one feel glad to be alive, nourished and rejoice in life’s plenty.

Here is the layout for Jesus Party of Two:

Starter:
Eyes of My Lord aka. Deviled eggs
Salad of endive, hearts of palm, fennel shavings and olive w/ orange mustard vinaigrette

Main Course:
Macau Chicken w/ side of garlicky kale
pillows of fresh baked Naan
Jewel flecked Biryani strewn with pomegranate seeds.
Dessert:
Rose Water Meringues
Pistachio and goat cheese panna cotta

Macau Chicken adapted from a recipe found on egullet:
Marinade:
3 ½ chicken thighs
3/4 tsp cayenne
1 tsp minced garlic
Small bunch of minced scallion
1 tsp paprika
2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
2 tsp minced rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:

1 c chopped onion
Several cloves of minced garlic
1 diced red pepper
2 tblsp grapeseed oil
4 tblsp sweet paprika
½ c grated toasted coconut
½ c coconut milk
1/3 c natural peanut butter
1 ½ c chicken stock
2 bay leaves
7 new potatoes

Mix marinade ingredients, rub into chicken and marinate overnight. Sweat onions, garlic and peppers in oil until peppers are softened. Add paprika, coconut, peanut butter, bay leaf, coconut milk and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and simmer stirring occasionally for about ten minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Brown the chicken and cut potatoes well over a medium high skillet. Transfer chicken, potatoes and the sauce to a dutch oven and bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes or until done.

In the beginning

It came to me in a flash of brilliance one glorious afternoon after week after frustrating week of turning over a slew of bad food puns. The name is honest and direct. It doesn’t tease and tantalize, beckon or play, but it is fitting. It captures the flavor of my life these past few years: dramatic, blunt and full on. I too am enamored by all things food. My formative years began in the sleepy suburbs of New York which is the setting for collision #1 and is responsible for many a thing, but most of all my great hunger for food. I later moved on to the San Francisco Bay Area (after a 5 year stint in Ithaca) which became my playground for the next 14 years. For anyone who knows the area, it is hard to imagine living there without becoming a skilled cook or at least an extremely opinionated taster. With Chez Panisse, Acme Bread, Cow Girl Creamery, Peet’s Coffee and the most exquisite produce lurking around every corner, an eater is armed and dangerous, or at the very least disturbingly discerning. I was one of those food obsessed people planning and strategizing my life around point A, point B, and point C (breakfast-lunch-dinner). Shuffling and tweaking every layer of my existence to reflect and highlight the themes established in the food du jour. I wish that I could say that this indulgent behavior is an exaggeration but only minimally so.

“But what does this have to do with foodchair?”

Currently I view life perched from a Permobil Entra motorized wheelchair. This change from walk to roll has changed many things in my life and one of them is my home. I now reside in a small New England town in New Hampshire. While this move has brought safety and comfort to my physical body with a family and home that are dear to me- the food culture is different as are the raw materials. For example it is usual for me to have a choice between about 3 bunches of wilted cilantro at the local supermarket (I ½ shutter as I type and I kid not). In addition, I now do life with an attendant or two or three (though, not at one time). This means explaining and translating sense and sensibility to another and hoping that I can still create a meal fit for a queen. Now I trust you can see my dilemma. Any food blog that I create now is going to reflect these aforementioned facts and not necessarily be the gustatory guggle of goodies from food past.

In spite of all the changes in my life, food is still the bread of my existence, the keystone to my arch, the feather in my cap. While what I am turning out in my kitchen has changed I hope that the spirit of it has not. I am sure that my blog will be a reflection of this sometimes uneasy interplay between food and all-that-comes with physical disability. I find this fascinating, sometimes depressing and occasionally even inspiring. I do hope that what I write is not so painfully honest as to be unappetizing. For starters, if visions of a portly chair upholstered with porterhouse steaks (well marbled) comes to mind- this is not the effect I was going for. I am discovering this new place in my life with a few well worn recipes in tow. I wish it to be nourishing and filled with enough whimsy to sparkle from time to time.