Finding Heat

Orange is a color that I like to sneak peeks at. It is powerful, all-consuming and like gazing at the sun, it is best not to look too long or hard without interruption. For a young child so newly cooked- this portion of the rainbow is unbearably caustic, the stuff of nightmares and capable of reducing a tender one to tears. Yet I at the ripe steady age of twelve, caught amid fire engine red and lemon drop yellow, halfway between weirdness and wonder managed to sputter and streak about town small flame on my tangerine colored bike. This electricity was born to seep into my skin, innervate my system and jumpstart my heart and tongue for life, speed and brilliance.

Still I largely steered away from this side of the light spectrum in favor for those colors wedded to water and earth, for the calm contemplation of cerulean, the live briskness of viridian green and the slow majesty of umber. They were the balance to the sizzle and singe of fire and I sought refuge in them until I became crucible enough to hold even a sliver or a ray.

But now uncomfortably boxed in the brutal corners of winter where everything is pinched inward, glacial and monochromatic, something expansive and flowery is needed- say something unapologetically orange. And it dawned on me that while color is an influence that I respond to in every aspect of my experience; it tends to be an ancillary part of my cooking and eating process. I appreciate the beauty of my ingredients which color certainly is a part of, but I have yet to firmly announce it as primary importance.

“I will eat orange foods!”

This week I noticed how much I wanted to peel back slices of sun and become intoxicated by its warmth. I caught myself staring at snatches of this fiery color in the broken shards scattered throughout my room. In a strange way color became a flavor, its own character that I suddenly felt deficient in and needed to fill. So this week my contribution to those who suffer from seasonal affect disorder or just need a little solar levity with a jocular one-two punch of Vitamin A and C is...

Sun in a Bowl: Serves more than one and less than ten

The beauty and fun in this recipe is that it is infinitely variable and supremely fast and easy. The basic foundation is the tomato, chicken stock, peanut butter and cayenne- but the other ingredients give great flavor and color. The amounts are entirely dependent upon how much sun (intensity, color and heat) you like and/or need.

Ingredients:
1 Red Bell Pepper cored, seeded and sliced
1 Orange Bell Pepper cored, seeded and sliced
1 Yellow Bell Pepper cored, seeded and sliced
1 Sweet Onion roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves
Olive oil
1 28 oz. can of plum tomatoes or 6 fresh plum tomatoes halved
2 cups chicken stock
½ cup coconut milk
A few gobs of crunchy peanut butter (to taste)
1/8 tsp. of cayenne pepper or parts of a jalapeno pepper (to taste)
Possible choices: Slivers of basil leaf, Sprigs of cilantro, and/or Mint (for example, I used about 5 mint leaves). But don’t add too much or you’ll take away from the pure orange experience.

Directions: Combine all peppers, onions and garlic (tomatoes too if using fresh ones) in an oven proof pan with a splash of olive oil to coat. Roast until vegetables soften and begin to take on good color. Throw this and all other ingredients into a blender and puree until smooth. Be careful not to fill the blender too high- I try to stay below 2/3rds full. Adjust ingredients to taste. Serve soup with more chopped herbs as garnish.

Amassing Mass, Sumo Stew

If I were transported to another time and place, no doubt I’d be poised above some treacherously fanged animal with glinting spear in hand, courage in my belly and the iron-rich taste of meat on my mind. This week I have been on a hunt- the hot pursuit of fat, the energy filled calorie, and the ripe marrow of flesh. I have been hard at work with Jack, my steely eyed Slavic trainer (physical therapist) who silently pushes me to the next arduous level of rehabilitation. My essence has dwindled down like the rapidly burning wax of a candle and this depletion has necessitated the need to refuel ad infinitum. My down time is now filled with vivid images of crimson red steaks, piles of glossy doughnuts plucked from a roiling vat of fat and buckets of strawberry milkshake. Triumphant horns from the theme song of Rocky and the fleshy slaps of Rocky Balboa punching inert sides of beef provide a lively backdrop of testosterone and adrenaline to fuel my work and recovery.

In between fortifying my food with flax seed oil, drinking cups of cocoa capped with cream and consuming an obscene number of omelets, I cannot help to marvel at the power and girth of my expanding appetite. I am stalking prey.

Following the path of hunger requires the same skills as a hunter: lithe agile instincts, rapt attention, patience and stillness and a fluid mind able to read the tracks. While one part of me expends energy out, beats my chest and lets out guttural groans of exertion, another part bends inward listening to the quiet of my microcosmic world. My fluctuating appetite coincides with the needs of my corporeal mass and this mass wants to stretch, expand and soar.

Another part of this truth is that my body has been in hibernation, a slow peaceful sleep and is just a touch recalcitrant and stiff. I feel as though I must woo the mitochondria of my cells and massage the fibers of my muscles to encourage them to be fruitful and multiply. I need some help to keep me nourished and motivated. What I need is a food that imbues me with primeval power and symbolic meaning. I need Chanko-nabe or Sumo Stew.

Buta Chanko-nabe Miso Aji adapted from Nov 2002 issue of Saveur
Serves 4 or 1 Sumo wrestler

Chanko-nabe is a filling and nutritious throw-it-down in a pot meal famous for fattening up wrestlers. While the ingredients themselves are not particularly caloric, it is how they eat that packs on the weight. These athletes exercise strenuously without breakfast and then eat a large lunch followed by a long nap and then a large dinner. Avoid this routine if massive weight gain is not desired.

Ingredients:
4 dried shrimp
3” piece of kombu
Grated knob of ginger
4 dried shitake mushroom
1lb. thinly sliced pork belly
3 Tbs. Sake
2 Tbs. Mirin
6 Tbs. Brown Rice Miso
10 C cold water
1 carrot peeled and sliced into diagonal chips
1 small daikon radish, peeled, halved lengthwise and cut into ½” slices
1 medium onion, halved and cut into slices
4 green onions cut into 2” pieces
10 oz. firm tofu cut into 2” chunks
¼ head of napa cabbage cut into 2” pieces
4 cups steamed Japanese short grain rice or 1 lb cooked udon noodles
2 eggs lightly beaten

Directions: Bring water to a boil in a medium sized pot and add shrimp, kombu, mushrooms and ginger. Reduce heat to a simmer and add sake, mirin and pork belly. Cook until pork is tender, 15-25 minutes and reserve meat. Add carrots, daikon and onion and cook until tender. At this point pull out the mushrooms, de-stem them and slice the caps. Add the sliced Shitakes back in. Next add the green onion, tofu and cabbage and cook until tender. Pull out about 1 cup of broth to make a slurry with the miso. Pour the mixture back into the soup. Lightly pour in the egg and stir. Ladle the hot pot into medium sized bowls full of rice or udon. Eat strenuously then nap.

Oat Cuisine

Avena Sativa is no ordinary gal. In fact some say this valuable grass with the luxuriantly swaying edible seed heads sprawled forth from a wilder bunch, vagabond weeds running rampant across the broad plains of Asia and Europe. This survivalist’s success is due some part to its ability to withstand sub par soil and climate conditions. Avena is able to thrive where others wither and fall and sympathetically, this characteristic is transferred to those who ingest this powerhouse plant. Oats are soothing nourishing fare. Its many forms are high in fiber which helps stabilize blood sugar and strengthen the heart. Medicinally, the long slender stems were discovered to calm nerves and strengthen the endocrine system. Oat straw is an herbal anti-depressant, an anti-inflammatory and high in calcium too. Befittingly the genus name Avena means ‘nourishing’ in Latin and people the world over observe hale vigorous behavior in those who eat and sow oats.

Yet substantially impressive as this food is, it fails to rile much enthusiasm from me. Oatmeal is a practical food choice that is gentle on the budget while providing a bounty of health benefits. But it can be challenging to focus on the pluses of oat grain when the grey lumpy mist of porridge past is weighing down on one’s memory. Gruel can be cruel. And while I have managed to dress up the tasteless hot cereal of yesterday with an arsenal of sugar and spice and everything nice, when all is said and done the cooked grain is still a mottled muddle of blandness. Somewhere in the center of the chew, in the sweet nuttiness of the fiber is a potential waiting to be captured and explored in another form, like in cookies.

Until now I never thought much about cookie hierarchy. I think of myself as an equal opportunity food lover, embracing all and rejecting none with exception of the sugary Otis Spunkmeyer discs sold at the 7-11 or the “homemade” cookies individually saran wrapped by the check out counter of a gas station. Along with these two types which are really subtle variations of the same thing, oatmeal cookies are at the bottom rung of my ladder. I cannot help feeling that oatmeal cookies are for sissies, for those that lurk behind the shadows of their mother’s knees. The choice of digestive biscuits, seem to be for those not quite weaned from the security of Pablum. They are the “next step up” and worse, they are often studded with the anti-chip, the shrunken sullen raisin.

Praise be to Ceres, the goddess of grains for putting me within reaching range of an oatmeal cookie capable of contradicting my previously unwarranted judgments. It is as if Aveda Sativa shape shifted to take on the form and person of Grandma A, a fine indefatigable woman with high shelf bosom, black sturdy shoes and a penchant for shouting, “Yoo-hoo!” at the top of her lungs. And did I mention this deliverer made a mean oatmeal cookie? While I never had the chance to directly meet her in person, I sense the outline of her being through her brawny-yet-delicate trademark cookies. These iconoclastic beauties put the haute in oat. Each grain is coated in an armor of brittle yet is laced with a heady fragrance of vanilla. The gossamer sweet crisp is populated with a scattering of bronzed roasted oats, cascading seeds in the wind. If Nature is a cathedral, these would be her communion wafers- a life giving celebration of earth’s best. So you can stick to mushy meal to guide you through your day, but I have a better suggestion and that is to tuck a few of Grandma A’s cookies down your hatch. It is an infinitely more delightful way to get the goodness of this great grain and break the fast too.

Grandma A’s Oatmeal Cookies: These cookies are deceptively simple. You may want to fuss with the recipe just as I wanted to do… But it is a sacred family recipe that is really best to leave alone.

Ingredients:
3 C rolled oats
1 C brown sugar
1 C all purpose flour
1 C melted butter
1/8 C boiling water
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
½ C chopped walnuts

Directions: Place the oats, brown sugar and flour in a bowl and gently mix together. Slowly pour the melted butter over this mixture and stir until combined. Pour the boiling water in a glass container and mix in the soda and stir until fizzing stops. Then add the baking powder, salt and vanilla and stir until dissolved. Add the water to the oat mixture and stir again. Add nuts, stir and refrigerate mixture until firm, at least a half hour. Meanwhile preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare cookie sheets with parchment paper and form loose balls about the size of a medium to large sized marble with the dough. These cookies spread a bit so do not pack them in too close. Bake for about 10 minutes until deep golden brown. Let cookies cool a bit before moving off the sheet so they do not tear. The cookies will become dangerously crisp as they cool.

Make Mine Pork

This New Year is making a quiet entrance with a low full moon that hangs in the night black sky. I am relieved to finally retreat into the emptiness of days, in the hollow cheek of the year and allow myself to sit free and clear after a bustling season of stimulation and plenty. While I intended to steer the course forward from day one with boundless enthusiasm and ironclad resolve to tackle the oncoming months, I nodded asleep before midnight- a sure tell sign of the slow easy pace to come.

Peacefully I awoke to a gentle memory, an ancient hunger for succulent sweet pork cutlet atop a bowl of perfectly steamed rice. This vision appeared from nowhere, from the zero of the year but has planted itself too plainly for me to ignore. In the not so distant past at least three lives ago, I privately acknowledged katsudon as my all time favorite home style meal. It is the kind of casual food that skillfully soothes subtle, shapeless and ravenous hungers into a manageable hue, which at that tender age was no small feat.

Katsudon arrives as steaming welcome in an earthen bowl. The pork cutlet breaded, deep fried and sliced is relaxed upon a bed of rice looking much like a small animal curled into itself. Just prior to dishing, over an ecstatic fire, the pig is soused in sweet-savory liquor bubbling with tender scallion greens and a delicate web of egg. It purrs in utter contentment and I hum alongside in happy union. The bowl is rustic balance in gentleness and strength.

Yet when I think of it further, this rice bowl became ritualized response to an unformed question angling somewhere below: a search, a wandering, and one possible end to a roving constant eye. After scooping the last glistening grains of pork infused rice and pushing the bowl back in a fluid crescendo towards completion, I found myself solid and awake in the darkened hush of a ryokan-style room in J-town. Hours of my life were spent roaming the cardboard box shops huddled together in silent complicity while the yet-named layers of my being clamored to be known through the mysterious kinks and draws of attention. Chubby mochi, the tinkling tear drops of chimes, musty plumes of incense, space aged rice cookers, kaleidoscopic obis, “Got Rice?” tee shirts and impeccably crafted tansu organized themselves into a crazy new language which eventually—magically, deciphered the whole of me. Fresh out of school, the pages of my life were wide open and in dark solitary spaces I was born.

While I’ve traveled so many miles from then to now, I sit once again with a smooth empty bowl cradled comfortably between my two hands. This container when empty asks to be filled. In the silent waiting and tasting, the remembrance of my many homes and the rush to discover new selves, I begin the year.


LIVE THE QUESTION KATSUDON serves 4: Adapted from About.com section on Japanese Food
Ingredients:
4 boneless pork chops
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ C flour
1 egg
½ C panko bread crumbs
Grapeseed oil

4 C steamed rice
1 onion sliced
2 bunches of scallions chopped into 2” pieces
2 cups chicken stock
5 Tbsp tamari
2 Tbsp mirin
4 eggs

Directions: For the tonkatsu, dredge the pork in the salt, pepper and flour mixture. Dip the cutlets in a beaten egg and press into the panko crumbs. Take a nice heavy pan and after heating to medium hot, place a generous amount of oil in it (usually this is deep fried). Pan fry the pork until golden on each side and cooked in the center. Slice the pork cutlet and set aside. Put the stock, tamari and mirin in a pan on medium heat. Add slivered onions and scallions, cooking until tender. Add the tonkatsu pieces and heat for a few minutes. Beat the eggs in a bowl and pour over the meat and onions. Turn the heat to low and cover for about a minute. Spoon hot steaming rice in a deep bowl and cover with tonkatsu pieces and sauce with the onions and egg.