Nocturnal Inspirations

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
-Henry David Thoreau

"Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
-George Bernard Shaw

When people say they can't cook, I think what they really mean is that they don't cook. Cooking is not easy. It is a juggling act involving high heat and sharp knives. But some things are easier than others. It is pretty easy to cook pasta for example. Boil the water, dump in the pasta. A homemade sauce is not that much harder. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. It also helps to know what good food tastes like, so you know what to aim for.

In Germany I had a lovely roommate, a French Algerian girl who claimed she couldn't cook. I cooked for us both quite frequently and she, as most people tend to be, was very appreciative of the good home cooking that saved her from eating canned soup all the time. So one day she wanted to cook for me in return and made what she said was an old staple, a broccoli-cheese casserole. It was astoundingly bad. Some how she had managed to cook the broccoli so that it was scorched and raw at the same time and the cheese that was supposed to cover the top had melted to the bottom of the pan and burned. I tried to be polite but you just couldn't eat it. Luckily it ended in laughter and I believe we ended up getting a pizza.

I have heard it said that if you can read you can cook, and I think this has some validity. A clear recipe should be easy enough for a moderately intelligent person to follow. It helps to have practiced some of the basic skills and have an idea if you are headed in the right direction or not. It helps to have a sense of whether or not things are coming together or falling apart. But a good recipe carefully followed usually turns out in the end. There are very few dishes that I feel comfortable enough with to just go and cook. And these are ones that I have cooked so many times that I don't have to think about it. So it was a very rare occasion the other night when I got truly experimental with a dish I'd never made, or even eaten before.

The concept came to me in a dream. I don't know what sparked this dream but one night I found myself in the Night Kitchen working on a feat of fusion cooking to my knowledge never before attempted. The concept was this: Sushi tuna tacos with wasabe guacamole in won ton wrapper shells. I awoke elated. I'd never invented a recipe before and here it had come to me while asleep! How easy is that?

Through some initial research I found out that wasabe guacamole was a meme that though independently arrived at, was already out there on the internet, nothing official like Bon Appetite, but a few daring home chefs had written about a crazy idea they had. However, mine had a name: Guacasabe!

A few months later I found my self in a creative mood at the grocery store and strolling down the Asian food section, conveniently placed next to the Mexican stuff in order to jog my memory. I decided the day had come.

My most immediate concern was the taco shell. I figured won ton wrappers would give me the fried crispy goodness I was looking for, but I bought some spring roll skin and some sushinori in case things got really out of hand. I rounded up a whole mess of other ingredients, grabbing things impulsively off the shelves, lost in a sort of raging brain storm, and headed home to experiment.

The question most pressing on me was how to make the squarish won ton wrapper to serve as a taco shell. I cut up a bunch of card board beer boxes and made them into wedge shaped taco holders. I found that when the wrappers came out of the hot oil they were quite pliable for a second or two before hardening. This was perfect.

I filled them with chunks of raw tuna, cilantro and the guacasabe. The wasabe, or Japanese horseraddish, that I ended up with was powdered and was to be mixed with water. I added about one teaspoon of the powder to a mashed avocado, then added another. To make it saltier I added soy sauce, maybe three or four teaspoons to the mash. I put it all together and bit into the first taco.

It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good. The texture was great, warm and crunchy mixed with cold and slimy and a little leafy. But the flavor just wasn't there. The avocado went well with the wasabe and soy sauce, but it acted as a definite mellowing agent. This needed a punch. I also wanted a little more stuff inside.

I chopped up a cucumber and added that. This did a lot for sustenance, but zero for flavor. I ate a couple with Sriracha hot sauce, but it just wasn't the right touch. I did a lot of experimenting and in the process gave my self a bit of a stomach ache. This dish was definitely meant to be an appetizer and a petite one at that. I just needed more flavors, so next time I have planned a mango fruit salsa laced with ginger and possibly some habaneros.

All in all it was a pretty good first experience in recipe development. I will post the final recipe when I get it right. But bringing something from dream to reality certainly felt good and provided an evening of crafty entertainment.