Just a Handful

I have been thinking a lot about Asian food lately, maybe because I work on 32nd street in an area known as kim-chi alley. Kim-chi is a fermented cabbage dish that the Koreans seem to be obsessed with, something I find akin to eating garbage. That is not to say I don't like it. I've eaten some very tasty garbage before (my best friend and former roommate and I used to have differing opinions on the state of things in our kitchen and on more than one occasion I had to rescue tasty morsels that he had deemed unworthy), but lets just say that I rarely go out of my way for it.

For some reason, when I think of Asian food the word that comes to my mind is precision. Everything about good Asian food seems intentional, like it has been designed by a team of Banzai tree cultivators and engineers from Toshiba.

So Saturday, after giving Ms. Rodriguez her weekly pronunciation lesson, I set out on a mission. I wanted to find a recipe I could cook in a kind of Zen state of artistic simplicity. I wanted a minimalist masterpiece that I'd be comfortable charging 18 dollars for in a chic New York lounge with ambient trance and a neon bar rail. I went to the bookstore and the library to peruse cookbooks, but nothing really had exactly what I was looking for. So I decided to take a risk and wing it.

There are people who never cook from books. They claim that all they need to know is in their heads. They are big on improvising and throwing things together. I am not one of those people. I envy their confidence in their skills, but it is rare indeed that I will cook anything without a recipe of some sort, which I generally attempt to follow exactly.

But yesterday I had a vision. I would go to Chinatown and scour the markets for just the right ingredients. I would then select only the amount I would need for this evening's experiment from the most appealing of sources. I had a vision of me tucking carefully wrapped roots and tiny bottles into various pockets on my person, then coming home, apparently empty handed, and conjuring up a magical meal out of thin air.

My trip to market did not play out exactly as planned, but I came really close and learned enough so that if I were to repeat the plan I would probably be able to actually pull it off. My downfall was that I didn't hold out for the dried mushrooms sold in bulk and ended up buying a package that was more than I needed. Aside from the mushroom I came home with a bunch of green onions, three tender choi sum plants, a small package of udon noodles, a handful of bean sprouts and a handful of shrimp. Around the shrimp basket were crawling crabs and flopping fish, the day's catch. I also picked up a bottle of white wine from New York's Hudson Valley.

Upon arrival at home I set a small pot of water on to boil and threw in some vegetable scraps I had in the fridge, the upper green parts of some leeks, some celery leaves with stalks, a bay-leaf, some slices of ginger and a couple of carrot stumps. These I boiled for about 40 mins. Then I threw in a handful of the mushrooms that I had chopped and took the pot off the flame.

In the meantime I boiled the udon noodles for ten mins., peeled and deveined the shrimp and chopped the onions, choi sum, and some garlic and opened the wine.

Next I poured the vegetable and the broth into a bowl with a handkerchief spread out over it, then squeezed the juices out through the cloth, leaving me with a fine dark, earthy smelling mushroom broth.

I sauteed the onions, garlic and greens in a pan with peanut oil, added soy sauce and the shrimp and beansprouts, and tossed it all around till the shrimp were a lovely pink. Then came the noodles and a shower of the fungus infusion and it was ready to serve.

I was quite pleased with the results. The mushroom broth bath added a profound earthiness as if the choi sum had been planted in the dish. The bean sprouts maintained a watery crispness and the shrimp, well, you can't go wrong with shrimp. My zen concoction was successful, harmonious as a yin-yang and lip smackingly delicious. Om.

Bread and Butter

There is nothing on earth that makes a place feel more like a home than the cozy aroma of freshly baked bread. There is something sublimely wholesome about it, like getting breathed on by the Virgin Mary. It is possibly the best example to use when explaining the concept of the German word Gemütlichkeit. An extract from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia describes this concept thusly:

Gemütlichkeit is a German abstract noun whose closest English equivalent is cozinessss. However, rather than basically just describing a place as not too large, well-heated and nicely furnished (cozy room, cozy flat), Gemütlichkeit connotes, much more than coziness, the notion of belonging, social acceptance, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic and the spending of quality time in a place as described above. A similar word exists in Dutch as well, gezelligheid. There is also a Danish equivalent (hygge), which basically means the same.

Bread baking is a powerful reminder of how cooking your own food can vastly improve your life. Even a fresh loaf from a European bakery cannot compete with the satisfaction one derives from kneading the living dough, hefting a steaming bread pan out of one's own oven, cutting off a thick slice and slathering it with butter. Its moist chewyness is like walking barefoot on freshly laid sod after a rainstorm. The warmth it exudes is like that of a brown dog who's been dozing in the sun all afternoon. It's a pleasure that can't be bought.

My ex-girlfriend (the German) was a serious advocate of Gemütlichkeit. I credit her with playing a pivital role in my culinary education. As Germans can be she was sometimes quite blunt in her opinions on food and drink. I remember a birthday party we had for me in our backyard. A number of my friends were there including a cheeky South African who I was quite fond of. He liked to tease people and when the lovely young lady brought out the immaculate strawberry cake she had spent hours baking for me he said in condescending tone, "Aw, that's sweet, and so terribly domestic don't you think?" She looked him straight in the eye and said "If I wanted to eat shit I could buy it in a store, but I don't so I cook things myself."

This was actually the first loaf of bread I've ever cooked, excluding a brioche, which to me is more like cake anyway. It is a honey whole wheat loaf. The recipe came from a book I picked up in Denver called More-with-Less Cookbook: suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources. The book cites creative enjoyment and quality of product as the main reasons people give for baking bread. To that it adds nutritional and economic advantages. To that I add Gemütlichkeit.

Culinary Cures

One common question that I often face on weekends after particularly exuberant evenings is "what can I do to feel better?" When I finally work up the courage to roll off the couch, mouth dry, eyes glassy, wincing at my throbbing head, the contents of the refrigerator are of almost certainly no use to me. There will be no cooking done on these haggard mornings. This is an occasion where it is much better to put someone else in charge, to let them take care of you. But where to go? Often the answer is a diner. There is nothing like a typical, greasy American breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns to calm the stormy waters. In Berlin, Sunday mornings were devoted to brunch. A meal of cold cuts, boiled eggs, buttered rolls and sweet cornichons, maybe with a little fruit, is considered the best thing for ailing minds and bodies.

Once in a state of desperation I took the advise of my favorite writer, Jim Harrison, who had this to say in his fantastic essay Meals of Peace and Restoration: "Picture yourself waking on Sunday morning with a terminal hangover and perhaps a nosebleed, though the latter has fallen from favor. You have a late-afternoon assignation with a fashion model you don't want to disappoint with shakes and vomiting rather than love. Just eat a couple bowls of menudo sprinkled with chopped cilantro and scallions, wild sonoran chiltepins, and a squeeze of lemon. The results are guaranteed by the tripe cartel, which has not yet been a victim of arbitrage."

I have nothing but respect for the greatness of the writer of those words, but I am forced to contend his assertion of the miraculous powers of this vile stew. After choking down an enormous bowl of tripe in spicy broth with raw onions, my stomach felt less than reassured. Cow's stomach has the texture of a kitchen sponge and the consistency of boiled squid. I could picture it there in my own intestines competing to see who could digest whom. I kept it down, and grossed out my friends, but I would not recommend it to someone with a hangover except as a cruel joke. Perhaps that was Mr. Harrison's intention; if so, he got me.


All this leads up to where I had lunch at mid-day Saturday. Two blocks away from me is a Mexican taqueria. Run by Nina, from a small village near Puebla, this restaurant doesn't see many gringos. I am very suspicious of any Mexican food served North of Denver, but this place seemed to have all the right signs. Spanish menus, mariachi juke box, Jaritos in the fridge. Everyone was quite friendly and relieved that I could speak Spanish. They had authentic tacos for $2 each with your choice of chorizo, carnitas, lengua, cabeza, etc., served with a kind of avocado salsa and a fiery pepper sauce. It is unfortunate that the American conception of a taco has been reduced to ground beef, lettuce and cheese folded in a giant tortilla chip. There are so many other creative options that can be eaten taco style. I find that a taco is one of the more psychologically acceptable ways to eat Oaxacan fried grasshoppers. My father once got mad at me for eating a brain taco, he said I was asking for mad-cow disease.

Two of Nina's simple but filling tacos were enough to part the clouds. A michelada to wash them down and I was in sunny Acapulco. A michelada is an ingenious hangover cure that combines some hair of the dog with the essential salts and vitamins and a spicy punch to clear the sinuses. A recipe for a michelada follows:

4 drops of Tabasco Sauce
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
Dashes of Salt and Ground Pepper
Juice of 1 Lime wedge
1 Bottle of Beer, preferably a Negro Modelo

Mix above ingredients in a glass and pour beer to top. Serve with wedge of lime in a salted glass.

Serves 1.