A Very Important Question

Top seasonal beers this season?

I was fairly impressed with Laurelwood's Vinter Varmer, which sadly will mean nothing to those of you outside of Oregon. It was pretty malt-heavy, but, like their Free Range Red, balanced it with hops without overdoing it. I'd call it more of a Nut Brown than anything else. No bad thing in my book.

My little heart warms at the Alaskan Winter Ale, what with the spruce flavor and all. I have yet to find a better spruce-y beer (Siletz didn't stack up by a long measure, and I've heard there's one out of some Vermont brewery, but I have yet to try it.)

Wreck the Halls is always a fave, but something about the mouthfeel bothered me this year.

Pelican's Bad Santa, which I tried at the Portland Winter Ale Fest (located conveniently right outside my office), was awesome. Darkish, citrusy, yum.

Y'all?

Low-Impact Tastiness

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and you're full of turkey and other goodness, still your body wants to eat. Air-filled food and drink is the only option.

If like most of us, you've spent the last decade eating popcorn only in the form of movie or microwave, you're missing out. Popcorn is cheap, considering how long it lasts in its unpopped state; and tasty, considering what you can do with it.

Consider, then, duck fat popcorn and cheap sparkling wine.

Melt a healthy tablespoon of duck fat (home-rendered or purchased) over medium-low heat in a medium saucepan with a lid. Add enough popcorn kernels to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover and shake over heat, venting regularly to release steam. When popping slows or the lid pops off, remove from heat. Sprinkle with salt and your choice of seasoning, replace lid and shake, flipping upside down and back. Pour into a bowl (if you can wait), and pop some cheap bubbly.

Some notes:

*Rendered duck fat can be bought from speciality food retailers. You can make your own by trimming the excess skin/fat from a duck before roasting. Render the fat in a small pan over low heat on the stove. Filter through cheesecloth and store in the fridge. Use to roast potatoes, saute vegetables, and by all means, pop some pocorn.

*Some good, cheap bubblies:

• Domaine St. Vincent: a fantastic $10 sparkler from New Mexico. The second label of the venerable pinot/chardonnay Gruet.
• Grand Imperial: French, but not made in Champagne. Ridiculously inexpensive if you can find it, and plenty tasty. The ultimate sparkler for mimosas.
• Marquis de Perlade: A sparkler from Alsace. Slightly sweeter than the two mentioned above, but still dry and with lovely, creamy, cremant-style bubbles. Usually available at Whole Foods.
• Cristalino Brut: Available just about everywhere. Spanish sparkler so good it was served at my wedding. Don't you dare pay more for $9 for the stuff.

Green Orbs of Joy

I love brussels sprouts, and have a deep-seated distrust of those who don't. I can imagine it's because they have only tasted (or smelled) them boiled into a mushy, sulfurous pile. These baby cabbages are quite versatile - you can braise, roast, or saute them; they take kindly to flavorful fats, and they keep fairly well in the fridge. The following was my contribution to the Thanksgiving feast:

Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Pecans

1 lb.+ Brussels sprouts
6 slices pancetta (bacon is okay)
1 cup whole pecans
Oil (I use olive)
Vinegar (I use sherry vinegar)
Spices (definitely salt and pepper, but others as well - read on!)

Preheat oven to 350.

Trim the brussels sprouts by slicing the tough bottoms off of each, then cut lengthwise through the middle, and shred by slicing thinly crosswise. You might have to agitate them a little between your fingers to separate your shreds. You should end up with a pile of sprout shreds.

Chop your chosen pork product into small pieces. Fry in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp. Don't fry too quickly - you want to render out as much of the fat as possible. When done, remove solids from the pan, reserving the fat in the pan.

While bacon is rendering, slice pecans in half lengthwise. Toss is a bowl with a bit of oil and some spices - garlic powder, smoked paprika, and cayene for example - then spread evenly on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 until frangrant, about 10 minutes. (Watch carefully, so they don't burn!)

Back to your skillet. You should have a few teaspoons of pork fat rendered in the pan. If it looks dry, supplement with another fat (I use good lard but duck fat or olive oil would also work). Still over medium heat, toss in your shredded sprouts. Sprinkle liberally with salt, and toss as they wilt. Increase your heat slightly and continue to stir, scraping any porky fond from the bottom of the pan. Continue for about 10 minutes, or until the sprouts are tender. Grind some pepper over the top, and sprinkle generously with your vinegar of choice. Stir, then taste and adjust seasoning.

When properly cooked and seasoned, incorporate bacon and pecan pieces, and taste again. Fiddle with seasoning and taste. Repeat until satsified (or full).

Serve with roasted anything to amazed guests, or eat by the bowl.

Contest!

We've all been there. We've all arrived home, realizing that it was probably a bad idea to have driven after x amount of drinks that ended in 'tini' but didn't start with 'mar'.

And now all we want is melted cheese.

It doesn't matter what it's on. Toast? Bun? Smushed between some 'dillas? Spoon? If only. One thing remains certain, though: wondrous greasy, melty orange will medicate us.

Given the stark contents of the fridge, how do we improvise?


Share your worst/best/worst drunk gooey inventions.

Mine? Render bacon fat. Fry a cheese & natch peanut butta sandwich all up in that mess. Remove. Add bacon. Devour while watching some VH1 reality show rerun. Pass out.

odd.

Has anyone out there ever encountered a book with pages that are mismatched (page 174 comes before page 186, which in turn comes before page 154) with no seeming rhyme or reason? I'm trying to read Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing, but it's awfully hard when the pages are out of order.

Straight from the Vermont Maple Pipeline

I was in Vermont two weeks ago for work. I have a love hate relationship with Vermont - I wasn't particularly happy to move there two weeks before I started high school. But when I go back I'm struck by how much I enjoy my time there. While I'm not usually one to go in for regional stereotypes it does feel different there - more laid back, more friendly. More Birkenstocks.

Anyway, before I moved to Vermont I didn't like real maple syrup. I'd grown up on the Aunt Jemima crap and liked my pancakes with no more than 3% real maple, please. I figured out soon enough that I'd be ostracized from just about every social circle if I refused the real stuff so I learned to like it.

And now I can't get enough of it. I stay at a lot of Hampton Inns when I'm traveling (for work - when I'm traveling for myself it's usually a tent or a Motel 6, which seem, surprisingly, to have much the same in the way of clean amenities) and they have this thing called "Breakfast Syrup" which is an absolute abomination that contains all corn syrup and absolutely no maple at all. I threw my pancakes away after the first bite. It was the worst thing I'd ever eaten. I thought wistfully of pancakes at the Denny's in my hometown - even the Denny's uses real maple syrup. I never thought it would come to this: I'm a syrup snob.

My point is, one of my favorite syrup recipes. Easy, simple, great in the fall.

1 delicata squash
butter and maple syrup to taste

Cut open the squash, take out the seeds. Place face down in a baking dish filled with about two inches of water. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes. Remove from oven, dump water out of pan, place squash back in pan face up. Fill squash with butter and syrup, place back in the oven. Cook for another ten minutes at the same temperature.

Voila. Fast, easy, really frigging good.


(And if you're ever in Vermont - check out maple seltzer. So. good.)

bookish cook revival

new contributors will be recruited. the blog shall walk again. we may even be so fancy as to include pictures on occasion. the layout may change. oh yes. great things are happening.

dead dogs and baseball get me every time

I've only ever cried while reading two books: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (did he write anything else of note? anyone?) and The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Duncan is a fellow Pacific Northwesterner (I'm Alaskan-born, but the Pac NW has more than adopted me by now) who penned something of an epic around 12, 15 years ago. It's a little schlocky in places (definitely a family values sort of read) and sometimes a bit heavy on the mysticism for my secular tastes. Nonetheless, he hits my love of baseball -- a hidden love, not unlike my clandestine Iditarod fandom -- dead-on, in great detail, and with loving justice.

I only bring it up because A) I reread it on the plane to Vermont last week and B) the world series is coming up, natch. Thing is, books don't make me cry. There are some heartbreakers on my shelf: Kundera, McEwan, Spiegelman -- wrenching stuff. The horrors of humanity or particularly (what? savage? indecent? can I judge? particularly something) individuals don't give me pause. It's snake-bit characters and hard luck what brings me down. I can't figure out why, either, since I don't particularly identify with any of the characters. The setting is very familiar, but I'm not blubbering about the Washington landscape here. It's puzzling. Meantime, I could use some more tissues.

On business, I know there's been little to no posting, but I've been away. The attendent being-back rush isn't going to treat me well either, but I'll make it up somehow.

winter squash rocks me like a hurricane

At the suggestion of my fine roommate, I baked an acorn squash (350ish for about 40 minutes in a pan with a bit of water, well-buttered and S and P to the T.) The flavor was fantastic -- earthy, rich, and not too sweet -- but it wasn't too evenly cooked, and stringiness ensued. My method was to cut the thing in half, scoop out the innards, butter and go. Not bad for an easy meal (and it was a full meal.) I'm determined to make the best use of squash this season, though, and cooking it thoroughly seems a bit crucial. Joy of Cooking recommends steaming -- I respectfully disagree. Wouldn't graininess and loss of flavor come out of that? Baking in smaller sections is my new plan. Or a longer, slightly cooler bake time.

(Fun fact: Squash is actually considered a berry.)

Next squash endeavor: twice-baked squash mashed with potato, cheese (cheddar?), chives and paprika or curry.

The requisite thesis post

Since I'll be mired in it, I likely won't want to wax theoretical too much in the upcoming months. But I've yet to start classes (let's hear it for the quarter system...urgh) -- I haven't even bought books yet. So I'll give you a "just returned from a trip and haven't quite caught up with myself" filler post about it.

So translation studies is literary criticism as it applies to translation, involving history, cultural studies, linguistics, and literature (natch.) It's a very interdisciplinary discipline, and I chalk that up to its relative novelty as a field. Even though translation studies as a field is a new kid on the critical block, there has already been a movement toward feminist translation studies, which is the focus of my thesis. What bothers me a bit is that some scholars and translators, while advocating some manner or another of liberal-to-radical feminism also advocate restructuring languages (mostly target languages, although the source as well for some) -- well, this doesn't bother me per se. What gets my goat is that I feel compelled toward a more conservative theory of translation, toward preserving the source text and staying as loyal to that as possible. Intellectually, I think that's baloney. My brain tells me (among other things) that this schism of language represents a gender divide that has not been addressed by the predominantly male literary world. My brain also tells me that I like postmodernism. My gut tends to disagree.

Lately I've been thinking that I'm not actually being reactionary so much as cautious. Perhaps making Simone de Beauvoir read like Mary Daly or Kate Millett isn't too far off-base. That's not my issue, nor is a re-vamp of, say, Guenther Grass.* I just wonder if it's too obscure to really address and change gender disparity. Then again, that's the sort of defeatist reasoning that engenders apathy in my generation -- what I like to call, "I want a good job with good pay, but I'm not a bra-burning feminut" syndrome. (The abbreviation for that one is a bit cumbersome.)

*I mean outside of political reasons. Personally I think the hullabaloo over Grass' past is unwarranted. Who would blame him for keeping it a secret? At least the public found out on his terms. Naturally, Nazism was abhorrent. I don't excuse Grass, but I don't vilify him either.

A two-fer

Generally, I hope to keep posts separate in theme, but since I'm on the road, it's going to be somewhat less well thought out. Jots, not thoughts as I'm craigslisting around the Pacific Northwest. To that end, I don't want to segregate posts into BOOK POSTS and FOOD POSTS, especially when they're relevant to each other (or I'm pressed for time...) Anywho. Onward.

I'm rereading Moby Dick for the third time. For me and my rotten spot for the Romantics, it's pretty much the perfect late summer read. The first time I read it, I was starting my senior year in high school and trying to impress my teacher, who was and still is unequivocally cool. Coming from Alaska, whales ought to have more of a significance for me; they don't, but the ocean sure as hell does. To say nothing of Melville's meditations on spirituality that punctuate the first half especially. I've never been much for believing, especially as a 17 year old, but some passages hit home on the deeper level of spirituality -- that which is beyond sects and goes straight to the core of those pesky, crucial questions about how we should live. Take, for example, this chunk of a speech from the sailor-turned-preacher, whose torment drives him to and from God:

"...Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!"
He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes..."

The scene ends with the preacher kneeling in the pulpit, head in his hands as the congregation quietly trickles away.

Strong stuff, but my favorite chapter is the one called "Chowder." Go figure. It's worth it to read the book to that point, if you're determined to make an effort. Hey, it's not a book for everyone, and by all accounts I should probably hate it. Which might be why I love it so much. Did I mention that I read this on the Alaskan coast, huddled in my jacket with my thermos of tea, watching the waves every time I needed a break? That I read it over the course of August and September, which is when the belugas run in Prince William sound? That I SAW a white whale while reading Moby Dick? Yup.

And now, as they say, for something completely different. Or at least, a different tack. Sushi! I went out for sushi with a wonderful friend in Portland the other night, and found that I really like yellowtail. More than tuna, which I find grainy unless it's seared, and even then I'm not such a fan of the texture. But this yellowtail (raw) was buttery and not too overwhelmingly fishy. Set off with cucumber or something crispy and moist, it would have been perfect; I found just the fish and rice combo a bit dry and heavy.
The tempura shrimp and broccoli roll was great. Crunchy shrimp in a gooey ball of rice and broc? I'll take two. Dozen.
It's all a wash anyway. Like all too many Alaskans, I say go salmon or go home.

fundamentals

Joining the two great loves of my life (you guessed 'em, food and books) is a tome of great prestige in my personal library. The Joy of Cooking will always occupy a hefty place on my shelf, and not necessarily the with my cookbooks. I'm systematically going through the sometimes witty, sometimes stodgy, but always helpful information from the "Foods We Heat" and "Know Your Ingredients" sections, as well as various other morsels from the in-betweeny recipe areas. Would that I weren't a poor college student! I'd totally buy a butter churn and, thanks to the knowledge these lovely women have imparted unto me, make my own super-UNsalted butter. It's inspiring, really. A recipe for almond milk? Yes please! Somewhat passive-aggressive asides regarding reactive cookware? Make mine a double!

Julia Child said that this would be her only cookbook, were she allowed only one. I'd have to agree. For all of the snark and general blandness of recipes, this old workhorse of a cookbook is all I need to start. Hence, the entry. More to come.