Savor the flavor, if not the actual food

A couple of Christmases ago, my friend, Kathy, gave me two tubes of toothpaste that weren’t of the usual minty or cinnamony variety—one was Ichibanzumi green tea and the other, Indo curry. The Indo curry wouldn’t make you want to squirt it over your rice, but it does suggest the savory nuances of Indian cuisine. The green tea is delicate and fresh tasting, just not in a minty way. In fact, it reminds me of those Bertie Bott’s grass-flavored jellybeans from the Harry Potter marketing empire. (By the way, I’m a total chicken when it comes to blindly eating those things—I study the accompanying photo carefully to be sure I don’t go chomping into any that taste like ear wax, vomit, compost or rotten egg. Now THERE’S a test kitchen I wouldn’t want to work in!)

Put out by a company called Breath Palette, these toothpastes (#5 green tea and #14 curry) are but two of a variety of revolving flavors available for those who enjoy trying something a little different. Current offerings include cola, rose, bitter chocolate, lavender and something called monkey banana. (So does it taste like monkey or like banana? Or both?! Were any monkeys harmed in the production of this toothpaste?)

Perhaps you could enhance the after-dinner gourmet experience by mixing chocolate and banana on your toothbrush. Or how about combining rose and lavender for a floral brushing experience? Or pumpkin pudding, cinnamon and fuji apple to relive the pleasures of Thanksgiving in the spring? Actually, that might prove helpful to dieters who crave the flavors but are afraid of the calories.

While they were fun to try, I think I’ll stick with Crest. Unless Breath Palette picks up on the Bertie Bott’s idea and starts making toothpastes that taste like bacon, sausage, marzipan and cotton candy . . . Mmmm . . .

P-U-licious!

I’ve often smelled the notoriously STANKY durian fruit on the stands outside the doors of markets on Stockton Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but I’ve never had the opportunity to try a bite. It IS uniquely off-putting stuff, that’s for sure. People liken it to everything from gym socks to rotting meat to skunk spray. Geez, who WOULDN’T want to belly up to a serving of that?! You can’t even carry a fresh durian onto a bus or into a taxi, the smell is so obnoxious and overpowering.

And it looks so harmless, doesn't it? . . .

But I’ll try most anything once, so I’ve been looking for a chance to sample this Southeast Asian “king of fruits.” My opportunity to get an idea of what it tastes like came this weekend in Thai Town when I ordered durian ice cream. It was at the same time both delicate and assertive. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything with that self-contradicting characteristic. It had a soft, fruity flavor with a sulphuric back taste you sometimes get with garlic or onion that has been cut and then left sitting on the counter for a while. It’s oddly both appealing and repellent, sort of like Mick Jagger.

Would I order it again? Sure, I might. Or I might try another flavor that doesn’t show up in my local ice creamery. It’s great having the opportunity to visit a sweet shop in an ethnic neighborhood and discover flavors that are as basic and beloved to its citizenry as vanilla and chocolate are in my own neighborhood. You never know when you’ll find something you love so much you’ll get it again and again—like that avocado shake I order every time I go to a particular Vietnamese restaurant back home in Memphis.

As I’ve said ad nauseum, I like to keep an open mind and an open mouth. If I don’t like what I’m trying, at least I’ve made an informed decision. And I can always keep a tin of Altoids with me, just in case!

For the Sake of Saké

Last night Andy and I attended a dinner that showcased an array of sakés produced by SakéOne, the United States’ only producer of that quintessential Japanese beverage. Cooked up by Chef Jet Tila, groovy Thai chef and personality extraordinaire, the meal featured five flavorful courses: red miso; oshi sushi; tofu and bonito salad; marinated cod over soba noodles; and teriyaki chicken from Jet’s stash of family recipes.

Each course was accompanied by a different saké, and everything was delectable. Each saké enhanced the fine food. Each dish enhanced the fine saké.
Marinated black cod with edamame, served over a bed of soba: Most of my past exposure to cod has been either baccalà or fillets battered and fried and served with chips. But a two-day bath in saké produces a buttery, delicate cod that will make you forget all about frying. The Momokawa Ruby we drank with it brought out the sweetness in the dish. And the dish returned the favor.

But the really cool thing about the experience is that while we sampled five sakés, it was akin to trying ten, for each saké had two flavors—one before we began eating each course, and another while we were eating. The flavors in each dish drew out flavors inherent in its appointed saké--like magic!

Our sakés were served chilled and in wine glasses, from which we could inhale their varied and wonderful fragrances. No tiny cups in sight. It was a great introduction to what, for us, is only slightly familiar territory.

A lot of attitudes and ideas about saké spring not from actually tasting it but from hearing other people’s stories, whether they're original or secondhand. How do you categorize it? Is it a beer or a wine? It’s brewed, like beer, but its alcohol content is more on a par with that of wine. And how do you serve it? Hot or cold? (It turns out that while heating saké can help take the edge off a chilly day, it's essentially an old trick used to make a poor saké a little more palatable.)

In the end, it really doesn’t matter. Saké is its own animal with its own tales and traditions. Legend has it that the beverage was originally made by employing virgins to chew the grains of rice, the idea being that an enzyme in their saliva helped kick off the fermentation process. Whether or not there’s any truth to it, it’s a great story. And only extraordinary foods and beverages—and people!—tend to come with such folklore attached.

*Many thanks to Chef Evan Kleiman and Angeli Caffé for hosting a great evening.

Speaking of extraordinary people, I enjoyed this tasty, leisurely meal--and lots of great chat--with Barbara Hansen, of TableConversation.com and former Los Angeles Times food writer, and Chef Jet Tila. Jet credits Barbara with propelling him into the professional food world.

Happy Birthday, MFK!

I pulled out a book by MFK Fisher this morning and noticed that she was born on July 3, 1908. So this time 100 years ago, the most beloved of all food writers was just a teeny little blob of freshly-hatched humanity.

This puts me in two minds. The first is to remark on a remarkable life, although it’s been so much written about and discussed that I’m sure I have nothing profound to add to the discussion. Just to say that in many, many ways she affected those of us who love food and who love to write about it. If nothing else, she made the love of food ACCEPTABLE to write about. If she had never lived, would anyone have come along to so eloquently do that job for her?

The other is something I think about when I see old baby photos of noteworthy people—the potential in every newborn baby. Regardless of where that baby is born, when or into what culture, that is a person who is capable of infinite things. As I get annoyed by howling babies and hyper little ones, I try really hard to remind myself that they’re little bundles of potential, just trying to work out what it takes to get their feet onto the road that will lead them—we hope—to accomplish something worthwhile, or at least to be someone we love to see come and hate to see go.

I never had the honor to meet MFK, but I know she was one of those.

Things I don’t know what to do with . . .

Please just let me get this out of my system. Sometimes I accumulate bits that can’t be spun into blogs or articles, but I have to do SOMETHING with them. They just sit around, taunting me for my inability to use them:

* Recently I dreamed that I was told my baptism didn’t “take,” and I had to go and be re-baptized at the customer service counter at Trader Joe’s. (I woke up laughing.)

* Embarrassing food incident: I once made a Chinese dish on a first date that came out looking like the heads of unborn baby birds (wontons filled with a spinach mixture). The guy only called me once more: to say he didn’t want to see me again.

* A few years ago, my friend, Cindy, received a steak-of-the-month Christmas gift from her boss, and she was plenty excited by the prospect of receiving regular shipments of meat to her door. On the day the first shipment arrived, she rushed home from work and up the steps to where the package awaited her on the porch. A neighborhood tom cat had taken a righteous whiz on the box. The inside packaging was well sealed and the food uncontaminated, but still . . . Cindy’s response is unprintable.

* And then there was this strange lemon I got a couple of years ago. I'm relying on that picture-paints-a-thousand-words adage for this one:


Thanks for indulging me. In the future I’ll try to refrain from talking about urination in my (mainly) food blog. Peace out!

Passive Agriculture

Eat me!

Passive Agriculture . . . what a great expression and what a great idea. It's the notion that I can harvest what's growing in my yard that I didn't plant, that it actually has some use—say, for dinner!

Some people crave unbroken expanses of green in their yards, every blade of grass identical in color, shape and height, not a weed anywhere. Such yards typically are obtained through the meticulous efforts of a truckload of guys laden with chemicals and machinery. But I find that kind of yard really pretty boring. I prefer the wild 'n wooly look, with a variety of types of grass and plant life giving the place some diversity and interest. AND incidental food.

As a Southern girl, I understand the soil and climate of an entirely different region of the country from where I live now. Living in the desert just doesn’t come naturally to me, and I struggle to get anything to grow in our sandy, nutrient-deprived, full-sun yard in Los Angeles. Even if I succeed in getting anything to grow, the squirrels and possums—and rats—come through when I'm not looking and help themselves to what’s out there. So taking advantage of what's hardy enough to survive in my little postage stamp of desolation—without attracting the attention of the local varmints—is a necessity.

Let’s face it—whether you buy plants or seeds and place them in your yard yourself or you pick a few dandelion leaves to incorporate into your salad, you’re getting plants that have had the same water and care, regardless of which side of the little artificial border from the local weed-n-seed those plants grow on.

A weed is merely a plant that isn’t where you wanted it to be. Nettles, dandelions and chickweed all grow in my yard and I’m happy for that, as they nicely augment the lettuce, chard, sorrel and herbs I’ve planted. Incidentally, you can batter and lightly fry the yellow dandelion blossoms and eat them as well as their leafy appendages.

Sometimes I rely on things that were planted for other reasons. I garnish salads and dishes with nasturtium blossoms. And while I never manage to get any grapes—the birds harvest them long before they’re ripe—I pick the leaves, blanch and brine them and use them for making dolmates.

With a little research to be sure I don’t poison myself, I find grazing in the backyard to be a good way to trim the food bill a bit and take advantage of what Mother Nature offers.

Solar-Powered Oven, Courtesy of Honda

Today’s temperatures are supposed to reach as high as 113°F in the San Fernando Valley, and I know it will be considerably hotter inside my Honda Civic. So I'm trying an experiment. I'm going to attempt to bake meringues in my car. I put a thermometer on the dashboard early this morning, and by 9:20, the ambient temperature inside the car was already 115°F. A few minutes later, when the temperature passed 139°, the thermometer checked out on me. Since it’s made for use inside the house, I guess it didn’t take kindly to being treated this way. So I replaced it with an oven thermometer which doesn’t show an accurate reading until the ambient heat reaches 200°.

Please don’t make fun of my sloppy piping. I was just trying to quickly pipe an array of sizes of meringue and get the pan into my Honda-brand oven before I came to my senses and decided not to go outside at all.

My recipe calls for the meringues to be baked at 200° for two hours. Egg whites—one of two major components of meringue—begin to coagulate at 145°, but since sugar—the second of those two major components—raises the temperature needed for this process by another 30 or so degrees, I’m not sure this experiment will work. Some cooks set the temperature in their ovens really low and leave the meringues in there all day long, so we’ll see how my auto-meringues fare by the end of the day.

10:50 a.m.
I set a sheet pan of piped meringues on the front seat of my car, preheated to around 150°, as best I can tell. This temperature is low for an oven, but at least the eggs are well out of the bacteria-encouraging danger zone.

Borrowing from the Beach Boys, I have a particular melody in my head and find myself singing, “Stang-stang-stang-Mustang meringue . . .” as I wash the mixer and assorted meringue-making tools. How about a Volkswagen vacherin? I can’t find anything that rhymes with or plays well alliteratively with Honda. So much for a punchy, car-inspired title for this piece, unless I go with something generic like “dashboard dessert.”

11:40 a.m.
The needle on the oven thermometer is about to reach the 200° mark. I’d say it’s around 180° inside the car. No wonder the flashlight in the glove box is melting.

1 p.m.
It’s a mere 112° on the front porch, while the oven thermometer on the dashboard says it’s a solid 200° inside the car. Those meringues must be coming along nicely now. I’m so glad my car has cloth upholstery. Otherwise I’d need 'bestos for my ass . . .

3 p.m.
The temperature inside the car is beginning to drop, although it’s still dangerously hot in there, well over 100°.

8 p.m.
We bring in the sheet of meringues, let them come to room temperature and then give them a try. They're perfect, not one speck of moisture left inside. Good for meringues—bad for living things.

The finished products: I didn’t want to cook the blueberries and generate any more heat in the house, so I just poured the fresh berries right into the vacherin shell and we enjoyed them like this.

No, this is not an efficient way to cook--just an interesting thing to do with an uncomfortable circumstance. An upholstered oven certainly doesn't provide the best concentration of heat. But I think my experiment was pretty darn cool!

Can I officially call myself a food geek now?