Leave me out of the kraut!

*This was written a few days ago, but I was busy in the mountains of Austria, and as a semi-nod to the brilliance of the Nolte/Murphy combo, I had to leave the “48 hours” bit in.

** I like it when my absence is justified, though. It’s like mercy killing of time. Kind of. And better still when I’m doing things that I can tell my kids about one day, such as my time in Austria. Because we all know there are things that you can’t tell your kids about; dominatrix basements, that goat-on-chicken action you saw during your fifth grade field trip to the farm, or even real mercy killing. Kittens tied to bottle rockets? That’s just poor form.

Real post begins here: In the past 48 hours, I have gotten chased by cows and chickens (the sheep ran away, probably due to some inherent fear of what a lonely Scotsman is capable of,) pulled Portobello and Porcini mushrooms from their wooded homes, and eaten some serious amounts of meat. Never in my life have I eaten so much food that I took from the earth with my bare hands. A week in Austria brought me more of a physical connection to my food than I have ever experienced, other than that cherry-pilfering incident in Puglia, to which I still thank Charlotte and Jessie for their desire to “muddy up a bit.”

But back to Austria. We ate apricots, plums, apples and pears straight from the trees; blackberries required a bit of bloodshed, but so be it. “Of the earth” is certainly an unspoken battlecry in Austria, where people are fanatical about their local products, and even the smallest cheese producer or sausage-maker deserves a visit, because they are probably dedicated to not just their craft, but also to preserving local traditions.

The irony of all this is, Slow Food probably wouldn’t have the same success here that it has in England, Italy, or even the United States. Austria is as close to a natural, organic country as I have ever seen, which I can say after seeing the food culture of more than 20 countries in my lifetime. Milk producers have formed a consortium, producing “bio-organic” milk, as they call it, and fiberboard cows colored red and white (for the country’s flag) dot the small cities, as testament to the pride the local farmers have in their products.

As I sat down to dinner with a few Austrian and American friends, I marveled at what lay before us. Bread, cheese, yogurt, butter, honey, tomatoes, mushrooms, cured ham, cider, and schnapps, ALL from within 20 kilometers of where I sat. It was ridiculous. I’ve sat at my own table, eating venison or striper, caught by my step-dad, but that was just the meat. This was a revelation. Why can’t everything be like this?

The Trinidude

I first met Michael back in cooking school, nearly a decade ago now. Despite being born in England, he’s Trinidad through and through. Trinidad is one of those countries where it’s difficult to figure out the proper name for someone who comes from there. Italy? Italian. France? French. Connecticut? Connecticutter (a bit more interesting.) But Trinidad? Trinidadian? Trinadese? So we’ll call Michael a Trinidude. This Trinidude has the ultimate Caribbean laugh, that deep belly laugh that comes out as an accent to pretty much whatever he says. His O’s last longer than if they were covered with Honey Nut, packaged by General Mills, and stuck in the basement for a few years.

So, seeing him 9 years later, as the hot-shot pastry chef of Bibendum, a fine dining French restaurant in London’s posh South Kensington, it makes me realize: I’m glad I stayed friends with him. Because friends get free food, or more specifically, free desserts.

Now don’t get me wrong. Mikey’s a fantastic guy, and I would doubtlessly be friends with him even if he wasn’t a chef. But when I gave up the pastry track after 3 days, and he stuck with it, I knew that he’d end up with a ton more pastry skill than I ever would. So is it wrong to reap the benefits of someone’s skill, when you still see it with the awe and magic that comes with your own inexperience, and is something that it no doubt deserves anyways?

I stopped by to see him today at Bibendum, and typical of a chef on a Saturday afternoon, he was literally up to his elbows in prep for his chocolate walnut torte, which I was lucky enough to try as an ending to my own light lunch. 9 Duchy of Cornwall oysters were as meaty and briny as the waiter described, and I have to admit a touch of respect for a place that offers only a well made mignonette and sliced lemon with their oysters, instead of the gloppy and ubiquitous cocktail sauce that does little more than make the over-cooked shrimp at your holiday party barely edible. In lieu of champagne or a pale ale, the home-made ginger beer was a nice peppery compliment to the shellfish.

And then the torte. It was a dense chocolate, with some sparse chopped walnuts floating throughout. A soft banana ice cream sat on a small bed of what I can only guess was raw chocolate nibs, and was creamy, but with enough body to please a man who has subsisted on only gelato for the past 8 months.

Overall , it was a very enjoyable experience. The layout of Bibendum’s oyster bar allows covered, open-air seating, and is great for people watching. It does a good job at representing a lighter, more casual companion to the fine dining restaurant upstairs, and Mikey and his works lend itself to helping create such an overall positive experience.

To Mong, or not to Mong

Monging is perhaps my 3rd favorite career choice. Now, I know, purists will say, "But Andrew, there's too much diversity these days in the monging industry. Fish, cheese, fish-flavored cheese, sausage, ferrets." Bah! I say...after haberdashery and good old-fashioned under-water basket-weaving, monging is king! That would make it, say, a duke really. Or prince. But I don't want to get sued by a spaghetti sauce. They break-a my legs.
But the F.K. (Formaggio Kitchen, a true cheese shop in every sens of the word) would probably win the superlative of "Most likely to have an independent security force in 10 years" award, if they don't already. They could be training them in the cheese caves as we speak. Being exposed to overly ripe Epoisse, forced to breathe in an open Marcetto, and then required to spend a fortnight with only a Casu Marzu to give them the nutrients required to stave off death. Yes, my friends, you shall be doing research to see what all these cheeses are, but so be it. You see, you learn when you read my quirky mind-gunk. I'm like milk for your brain...I make you strong! I don't know if this milk=strength thing is true though, as I was forced to consume canned O.J. whilst my pre-school mates downed those awesomely-constructed 1/2 pints of milk. Chocolate even! And you know the sound of something slightly wet sliding out of a can...that sucking, slick sound, that audal Kryptonite to an already weakened Lac-tard such as myself? But I made it, weak bones and all!
Whoever invented that stuff is evil, by the way. And was apparently born without taste buds themselves. Who thinks they can really pass off frozen, canned, orange juice concentrate and not expect repercussions somewhere down the line? I hope his dog was torn apart by a pack of stray cats, or something just weird enough like that. And while we're on the subject, fruit punch flouride? Cherry-flavored ANYTHING? Where the hell did they get the cherries to use as a basis for that flavor? The fields just outside of Chernobyl?
But back to the cheese. Indeed, I fear the future, when country lines break down (as we have already begun to see with the introduction of the Euro, erasing even a small part of a country's identity with the dissolution of its unique currency), and large food conglomerates have private security forces, and wars will rage over whether American cheese should be neon orange, or that pale pasty white that I can only relate to my own skin, sans freckles. This will be known as the War of Kraft vs. Land O' Lakes, and Laughing Cow will surely be called in as the Blackwater-esque special forces. Creepy. But true!

Thought of the moment

When underlining reading materials for an exam becomes less about highlighting the important parts, and more about making sure your pen lines stay perfectly between the lines, then it's time to take a break.

There's hope for us yet.

I emerged from my apartment, and found myself behind one of the endless numbers of haute couture women that are so numerous in the warmer months here that I swear they breed in the stagnant waters of the Po River. The social elite, which is saying a lot for a city with the the highest standard of living in the country. Although, I will note, with the insatiable obsession for all things outwardly beautiful (wear nothing but Chanel, live in a hovel, that sort of thing), who knows...maybe she was homeless.
The point is, I saw this dressed-to-the-nines lady finish her cigarette, drop it on the ground, step on it, and with great difficulty and obvious hampering to her perfect appearance, stoop down to grab it and throw it away. In a trash can. Now, in a place where cigarette butts fly through the air like confetti at a Louisiana David Duke parade, it's a nice thing to see.
It's like there's a cigarette butt smoldering in my heart right now.

Je suis un poutard

Mustard rules. Double entendre. I can use that because I was just in France. I like it chunky, like my peanut butter (not of this faux plaster-of-paris crap that I see in some places.) Ha, and there you go. Faux and paris, wow, this is rife with all things Frenchie.
Why is French's afraid to show off what's inside? I guess, as a bit of an exhibitionist myself, je ne comprend pas. Those tiny globules of goodness, all mixed up with vinegar, salt....it's perfect. And the Fallon Moutarderie in Dijon showed us this, resplendent in their recorded sounds of mustard being ground (does it REALLY get any better than that folks?), and played over speakers while we stared at a centuries-old wheel of stone. Personally, she could've told me anything, that it was used as currency, that the people of Dijon pray to the wheel, it being their watcher, and a hell of a lot more fun than that Children of the Corn deity.
(I love, by the way, that in France, you can add -erie onto the end of anything and make it a store for such. It's like the -eria here in Italy, but better....because it's French.
But what else goes perfectly on it's own, a tasty two-some of ingredients? Nothing, my friends, nothing. You there, with that cocktail sauce, tartare sauce, or ketchup? You must rely on your cocktails of shrimp, your burgers of (ham?) to satisfy the saucy smear. But give me bread and mustard...hell give me a finger and mustard (preferably mine, but Alyssa Milano's, my Milano cookie, would work as well,) and all is right with the world.
Oh, and mustard cures gangrene. Don't go ask some "professional," damnit, trust me. Or, do the whole maggot thing, and then smear some mustard on them. It be tasty.
Needless to say, the mustard lady had me wrapped around her little finger, and her little finger was not so little.
This post n'est pas bien. I'm not really feeling it. What I am feeling is a screaming sinus/allergy/sore throat trio that puts the Roman Triumverate to shame. So, I was going to come to some grand sweeping conclusion about being a grand poutard, which is essentially a big mustard whore. There, I said it, you can go on with your lives, the joke's over.

The perks of my school

Ah, they look like wee ants against the awesome power of the Gelato Uni. sign, don't they?
And yes, this place is real, and is as much of an actual University as Dr. Pepper actually holds a Phd. Just kidding. This is the place to learn all things gelato. The way that American ice cream has a higher fat content (10-20%, vs. 3-12% in gelato), that a proper gelato increases in volume by 20% when properly spun, and that sugar directly affects the size of the ice crystals, which in turn cannot be perceived by the human tongue when less than 25-30 microns.
I know what you're thinking. You're like "Wow, Andrew, that's amazing. But I've always wanted to know if the freezing temperature of a substance increases in direct proportion to its molecular weight."
Well, my friend, it does. And on that note, if you're calling me Andrew, you're not my friend. Go away.
Seeing the glorious, gleaming equipment inside the Gelato University made me realize just how old-school our sorbet and ice cream production was back at the Lumi. Towards the end, Johnny T and I would stand there at our 2 1/2 gallon pots, and whisk away, bringing the arse-ton of cream and vanilla up over a low heat in order to properly temp in the egg yolks for vanilla ice cream. It was truly a bonding experience, and no one really cared if you got the sweet sweet vanilla cream all over you from vigorous over-whisking. Mas nous ne sommes pas les poofs...I can guarantee that.
But seriously, there's a whole University DEVOTED to gelato! They're freakin' serious about it too. We went over the chemical compositions of the bases, the viable substitutes for sugars, proteins, and whatnot. It lets you see what's behind the curtain for a bit, which is almost bittersweet. I love the frozen stuff...it takes me to a better place (a place that's slightly cooler than the 104 degrees that I am currently forced to exist in.) But you learn too much about it, and it loses some of its innocence. And ice cream, gelato, sherbet, the sorbet I was weaned on during my many years as a lactard...well they're the physical manifestation of innocence. A luxury, and a creation of desire rather than necessity, well part of me just want to be able to experience that for as long as I can....
At the same time....I'm a numbers dork, and I love seeing how things work. At now I can see why Grom on the upper west side of Manhattan can get away with their insane prices....its worth it, when you know what goes into making true, proper gelato (especially given Grom's environmental approach.) And, it doesn't hurt that the didactic aspects of our studies here involve making, and consuming, large quantities of gelato. Pas mal.
At the end of the day though, I'm still a total sucker for B&J's Heath Bar Crunch.
Off to Burgundy in the a.m., and I shall try to write more while I'm there.

A very Italian moment

Somehow I've made it 140 views of my blog, which means one of several things: either you guys have WAY too much time at your desks, and yearn for the sporadic psycho-babble that can only come from a displaced redhead, or you're writing geeks who love to pick on people who dangle their participles more often than the weird guy across the street dangles his old bread out the window. Or it could be that you read this in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I'll say what I'm doing here. I do know that if I could do it all over, I'd probably choose a Italian city that was closer to the water, and not so damn expensive.
Ah, after a moment of deep inner-thought, perhaps the absence of an accurate description of my life's current purpose is due to the fact that I've been a little slow in embracing my new position as student. It's a hard thing to admit, hell, to actually do, to give up making money, and instead watch it slowly drip away, hoping that in some crazy way, the intellectual trade-off works out in your favor.
Especially given my "past life," which basically involved putting order to chaos, with a steady output of food when I did it correctly. There's a reason that a lot of chef's coats could pass for straight jackets. We seem to be comforted by something that wraps round us, instantly labeling us a wee bit crazy, but still sane enough to walk amongst the normies.
But just like the pinnacle moment of my personal worst day ever, when I saw (heard would be more accurate) my girlfriend's expensive clothes get sucked out the window of my Geo Prizm as I hauled ass up I-93, I look back at all those crazy, crappy, suck-it-up moments of that past life, and can't help but smile.
And I was reminded of this last night. Sitting in the shadow of the Duomo in Parma, the streetlights out, lightning streaking across the sky, and rats scurrying away from the windows full of Italians fanatical about their upcoming Eurocup win, I had my moment. My very Italian moment. Catherine and I popped a bottle of '04 Valpolicella, which only tasted better out of rain-stained plastic cups, and talked food. The first time I saw her, I could tell that she had spent some time in a real kitchen; she had those crazy eyes. So we giggled maniacally over her obsession with segmenting oranges, and my obsession with being the one who crossed off the completed items on my prep list back at Lumiere. A great moment to be around someone like that. A very good person, she be.
So that's it. A moment, loving where I was, at a specific place in time. The only thing Italian about it was the place, really, but what more do you need? It taught me that, at least for the moment, I'm happy with where I am.

The role of "chef"

"What should the role of the chef be in modern-day society?"
It was Ferran Adria's turn to ask questions of us. After divulging what he has for breakfast, what "being famous" means to him, and dismissing the idea of making wine with a "pft" and wave of the hand, we got down to business.
To answer the question, I would say: to give more than you take. The irony is, Chef Adria questioned what he himself is doing, because with the chef having the ability to create food to feed the masses, is it really a noble cause to be at the helm of a place where dinner costs 300 Euros per person?
I'm not trying to slander the existence of El Bulli, or its famed chef, in any way, but there have been increasing wonder as to whether Adria has crossed the line from chef to artist, and in doing so, has blurred the lines on both sides.
What he has done, is show that as long as you maintain the true taste of something (which is something I personally believe in, and show with my cooking), then everything else is essentially secondary. You can alter appearance, texture, temperature, all the other factors, as long as taste remains static and intact. And for that, I respect him.
But what is he giving to the food society of the world? If it is a new way to look at food, to create it, than he is indeed an artist. But if he does what he does to feed people, just to feed them, than he is a chef.
On a side note, Ferran Adria cooks family meal. EVERY DAY. For all 80 staff, he cooks. At that point, he is indeed a chef. But I doubt that his family meals are full of foams and gels. So I guess, in the end, he dances across the line, from artist, to chef and back again, every day.
These are just some little nibbles, like the tasty bits in the bottom of McDonald's french fries (back when they still fried in that sweet, sweet tallow), for you to feast on, or spit out, if that's the way you roll.

Pus to the eigth degree

Octopus has had a rough life. It gets vilified in movies (Octopussy, The Goonies), it has to sit back and sulk in a cloud of its own ink while it's more mobile cousin, the squid, gets deep-fried and served with sauce of the fiercest tartar. And to make it worse, just when it makes it to the big leagues, in sushi restaurants, it ends up placing second to shoe leather in terms of tenderness and flavor.
And the name. What, was it first discovered by the math club from some Mediterranean high school? "Use the latin word for eight in a real-world situation." "Oh, and throw pus in there if you can." As a math club member myself, I can attest to the fact that math dorks can't float or swim so good, so we actually make great divers. I can see it now...
Diver 1: "What the Eff is that thing?"
Diver 2: "I don't know, but it's cute."
Diver 1: "Cute? Do you even know what cute means?"
Diver 2: "Um, apparently not. Help me, would you? It's eating my arm."
Diver 1: "Now that you mention it, it does remind me of my ex-wife. Same crazy eyes."
Diver 2: "Ow! What is that, a freaking beak? Holy crap, it is like your ex-wife...except it doesn't bite as hard."
Octopus: "Oooh, awkward."
(Note: I realize that very few high schoolers would be married, and certainly not math club kids, but it's a funny vignette, so shut up and go with it, ok?)
The one thing I will say about the octopus though...it puts up a fight. Birds can just fly around until they get shot. Even squirrels will just stare out you with their wee beady eyes and cheeks that remind you of the fat kid in the fourth grade until their head gets taken off by a hammer at 50 yards (story for another time.) But I think food is tastier when it comes after a fight to the death. Which is why, from this day forth, I shall only eat octopus that I personally kill with my bare hands. Because I want to revel in the silence of bringing my own kill into a sushi restaurant. that silence that falls over the dining room as they see the round bruises on your arm? They know that you're a suction junkie, they just don't want to say anything.
See, that's why I can't understand the whole beating-the-hell-out-the-octopus-by-beating-it-against-a-rock thing. You've already killed it, already pulled it out of its natural habitat. It's been speared and subsequently drowned. But go ahead, wail away on that thing! Yeah, cuz you're a MAN! You don't taken s--t from no sea creature! That thing was talking about your mama not five minutes ago.
Seriously, though. The tenderness thing? I've seen the cork trick, the braise-in-wine thing, the absence of salt during cooking, and the afore-mentioned beating. Just cook it slow. Put on some Barry White, light some candles, braise that thing slower than...well, that fat kid I talked about back in the fourth grade? Slower than he could run the bases in kick ball. I guarantee you'll have yourself some crazy-tender octopus. So help give the octopus a raison d'etre: cook it slow.

Nutella, don't sue me.

Nutella is to the Italians what Windex is to the people in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The solve-everything magical elixir of the gods. Got a leak in your roof? Nutella that sucker. Lollipop not up to par? Nutella that sucker. Note that I've also instantly turned Nutella into a verb.
In what I like to refer to as the "post-war years," those terrific years after parents get divorved, but before you've got the means to truly escape, and you're left to your own devices (in my case a blue Huffy bike and my friend Joseph's Nintendo), my sister and I would spend weekend with my father, taking the harrowing bus ride into downtown New London, where our short yellow bus was used for target practice by the local gangs. Yes, my friends, I have often spoke of the fact that we all are relegated to the short bus at some point in our lives. This was my time. And I short-bussed the hell out of those Fridays.
But I digress. My sister and I would awake on Saturday morning to our ritual of opening the doors of the 9-foot pantry, to gaze upon such appetizing items as a 5-pound can of Montreal steak seasoning, a mostly-full tub of Crisco, a loaf of bread old enough to prove that the color blue (and fuzzy blue at that) CAN in fact grow in places other than a blueberry bush, and....Nutella.
My sister would dart in and grab her usual breakfast: a packet of Swiss Miss, which she would eat dry, by licking her finger and sticking it in the powder. and she attacked that thing like it was going out of style, or maybe because she thought that I had been dropping the same acid as her, and therefore would have an similarly extreme craving.
So eventually, after experimenting with a spoonful of Crisco sprinkled liberally with Montreal steak seasoning (which is better than you would expect), I decided to give this Nutella a go. And lo and behold...it's not all chocolate. There's this bit of hazelnut. Fine. Not really my bag, but I've learned to respect and appreciate the existence of many things that I may not truly care for, and so Nutella kind of fell on the same level as, well, all the other foodstuffs in that cabinet. I found out later that this sinister look-alike to real chocolate was made hazelnuts were added to chocolate because cocoa was being rationed during World War 2. Great tidbit. I like my posts to have at least a tiny bit of actual information.
Many years past, but, following in the great writing style of the Bible, you don't have to worry about those.
I find myself in a Pasticceria in Parma, purchasing a cake. I've got enough Italian under my belt to clearly ask if the one I'm interested in is entirely chocolate, real chocolate, and the lady who works there is acting enough like a bobblehead doll for me to believe her. So I tuck that chocolate puppy under my arm, and head home. You already know where I'm going with this. First bite, I'm right back in my post-war years, hating Nutella, and convinced that my parent's divorce was all my fault. You suck, Nutella cake. You taste like pain.
And in case you haven't noticed Italy: THE WAR IS OVER. You can go back to full-on chocolate now. None of this hazelnut crap....please. You've already brainwashed innocent pastry-shop workers with rubber necks to think that "chocolate" is spelled "Nutella." Don't you have enough hazelnut things? Ferrero Rocher, Baci....we get it. Hazelnut and chocolate works, in small amounts. Reese's blessed us with the magical combination of chocolate and peanut butter, but you don't see us shoving it down people's throats and calling that chocolate, do you? DO YOU?
Thank you for your time.

Yiorgos Hatziparaskos....say that 5 times, but not fast. Do it now!

The basic recipe for filo dough usually consists of only four ingredients: Flour, water, oil, and salt. You make a dough, you roll it out, and voila; filo dough. I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but on paper these simple ingredients are very unassuming. The recipe itself looks almost…easy.
And in a way, I guess it is easy. But if my studies at this university have shown me something, it’s that human skill that can make simple ingredients into something truly complex, something of quality. Anyone can mash grapes for wine, turn milk into cheese, or throw flour and water together for dough. It’s easy. But in the end, it’s really not about the ingredients, however simple or few they may be. And on a small side street in Rethymnon, on the northern coast of Crete, Yiorgos Hatziparaskos is consistently proving that, turning out handmade filo dough with the belief that quality is better than quantity, and that patience and skill are two more ingredients that help define such a quality product.
Now, I have a love/hate relationship with filo dough. While learn how to make it in cooking school, I enjoyed every painstaking minute of it. But I enjoyed it because the instructors kept telling us we’d most likely never make it again, that in a professional kitchen it took up too much valuable time and effort. Besides, there is some decent mass-produced dough on the market. So I know what kind of patience and skill is required to make filo dough by hand; I also know that I don’t have it. This is why I respect this man even more. As one of the last producers of hand-made filo dough in Greece, his stuff is not just good; it’s amazing.
On the tongue, the raw dough tastes papery, but without the crumbly texture typical of store-bought filo dough. Yet, on a basic level, there is nothing terribly mind-blowing or ethereal about it, just thin powdery dough sticking to the roof of your mouth. But in your hands, it’s so much more. It’s not like most dough, which can fall apart if you look at it wrong. Scrunch up a sheet of Yiorgos’s dough into a ball (indeed, he did just that,) and then shake it out again like a paper towel commercial, and it doesn’t break. It’s thin enough to see the wrinkles in your hand, but it wouldn’t tear nearly as easily as the mass-produced filo dough most people are used to. That’s what makes it so special. It isn’t some ground-breaking new recipe, and like most dough, it adds texture and body to a dish rather than flavor. But it’s clear that the man knows his dough. For Yiorgos, repetition has translated into consistency, and his filo dough is consistently quality in its composition. It’s something that anyone will realize the moment they feel and taste it.
Off to the side, Yiorgos’s wife silently cuts small pieces of baklava, crunchy pastries of her husband’s product layered with pistachios and dripping with honey; you can’t leave without trying something that showcases his hard work in its intended form. Her quiet sales pitch works, and the product speaks for itself. The flaky pastry crackles and breaks cleanly, without the usual cascading shards sputtering out of your mouth. This means it’s hasn’t lost its texture, but it’s still moist enough to stay together. It’s everything you could want from filo dough. As I eat, I’m already thinking about his dough wrapped around the wild asparagus and goat cheese found on Crete, or as a delicate topping for strawberries and black pepper. Food that makes you think is food that you can certainly enjoy.
And Yiorgos clearly enjoys his work. He plays the showman for groups who come to see him work, but you can see in the way that he handles the dough and from the aura he exudes while he putters around in a cloud of flour that it’s not a chore for him, but a pleasure. When someone is so excited about what they’re doing, it makes you all the more excited to be a part of it. And with Yiorgos’s excitement, flour, water, oil and salt became a simply complex wonder.

A moment for Burma

I remember once, when I was very young, driving along the streets of New London, on our way to some un-exciting place in Southeastern Connecticut. My sister, always the antagonizer, was surely trying to find a way to annoy me, so I set about using my brain, although everything usually ended up with us at each other's throats. But I clearly remember somehow convincing her to say the word "truck" over, and over. Through repetition, the word itself lost its meaning, rolling over her tongue, turning into a verbal mash, like gum that has been chewed too long, losing taste and texture. It strikes me as odd, now, that words that we use so casually can lose their meaning, devoid of substance as they become somehow detached from their physical and mental manifestations.
The reason I say this is that, seeing the recent events of Burma's catastrophe unfold, that any words I can write here would just be absent, to some degree, of their intent. "Unforgettable" first came to mind, but why the superlative? I will certainly never forget my time there, but what will writing it do for you? What will you do for Burma? Do you even know where Burma is? Did you know that Myanmar is the same thing? Seriously. Check a map, I'll wait....
Burma was one of the single-most beautiful places I have ever been blessed to see. To sit atop the temples of Bagan, watching a storm roll in across the banks of the Irrawaddy, it brought me to a place of peace that I have seldom felt in my 28 years. The environmental destruction of a cyclone felt by millions of Burmese is probably nothing more than a whisper of a breeze by the time it reaches you and I, snug and warm in sheltered places. Despite the devastation and oppression the Burmese people are facing at this very moment, it is more likely that Burma means as much to you as "truck" did to my sister, so many years ago. Don't let this happen. Speak up, write down, give out anything you can. For them, for us.

Sexy Food

I have truly come to respect the visual aid that a picture can bring to a piece of writing. I often reminisce to my other classmates about my days at college, when technology was in the stone age, comparatively speaking. We got our syllabus on the first day of class, papers were handed in, in physical form, and Powerpoint was in its infantile stage. The whole visual component of a presentation never really factored into the work of an english major, and I saw it as all for the better, as it forced you to really hone in on what the speaker was saying, without hazing out in a fog of fancy computer screens and last night’s joint.

As for this goat? Her name is Precious, and before you get all Gollum on her, know that this is not the work of five minutes learning how to Photoshop pull a photo, but instead something that provides the perfect segue into my sexy foods bit. Because she is. Sexy, I mean. Oh, and food.

My first real goat outing came during my days at Mantra, where the air hung thick with various spices, and Lali the Jolly Bengali would entertain us with eating whole garlic cloves while he stocked the tandoors like a madman. It was 2003, and India had made the World Cup Cricket Finals, against Australia, and this was an obvious cause for celebration. So many a goat made its way into various soups and curries that night, all to be consumed somewhere around 3 am, given the time change. And let me say for the record that goat at dawn is great goat.

Since then, my total goat consumption, on a yearly basis, has been meager at best. But in the past 5 months, I’ve feasted on braised goat shank in Verona, goat yogurt in the hills of Crete, and many a goat cheese (there was also the discreet taste of goat in some baklava the other night, but that doesn’t count.) And all of it…ALL OF IT, made me realize that the goat, resplendent in its off-key bell and frighteningly agile quadrupedity (I know that word doesn’t exist, but it starts with q, so I get more points for it), is indeed a sexy beast (perhaps slightly less than Ben Kingsley; no offense to Sir, of course.)

This takes me back to my short-lived days in cooking Aphrodisiac dinners for different groups. Sure, anyone can wander around , flopping an asparagus spear back and forth, literally thrusting its penile values in your face, or extol the sensual virtues of the salty oyster, its curled edge virtually begging you to succumb to wanderlust of….well, lust. But to me, it needn’t be so obvious, so forward. I was instantly and utterly smitten with a girl back in college because of the way she devoured a steak and cheese. But what is truly sexy, is when everything comes together in food, flavors, textures, and smells are coaxed, not forced, and they make you stop and say “wait, this came from that?” It’s the unexpected, be it person, place, or thing. And when done right, it can be glorious. Or precious.

Speaking Dis(Crete)ly

....And I shall use a flaming motorcycle to captivate audiences into reading. Remember this photo, as there'll be a quiz later.
"You write like you speak," Corby Kummer told me the other day. I thank him for the compliment, and I'll also take the chance for some shameless promotion. Of him. He's a rather captivating man, sporadic, yet focused. And he's from the good side of CT, so that's always a plus. Overall, I'm very glad to have met him.
Back from Crete, I've been trying to find a way to describe our visit to one of the last hand-made phyllo producers left in Greece, perhaps the world. (There has been much debate on whether to write it phyllo or filo, but I've made my choice. Hear me, Filo!?! I've made my choice!) When my formal piece is finished, I'll post it here, but until then, just know that it was one of those moments where you knew the simple was complex, and hard work was neither hard nor work.
Until then, if someone actually decides to read this, then hey, send me a reply, let me know just how crazy my writing is driving you.

Two in one day! Now with sprinkles!

Did Yoda really mean to mix up his words? Maybe he was just a little green dyslexic animal who regurgitated what he saw on his Dagobah soap operas. There. I’ve just dated myself. Personally, I think I put the sexy in dyslexic. Going to have a t-shirt made with that line, I am. Patent pending. I’ll sell it to Urban Outfitters. I’ll be rich! Have you ever watched one part of a VHS so many times that you wear out the tape? How long can you manage to suck on a hard candy before you just have to bite into it? I can always judge how well I’ve slept by how big the drool puddle is when I wake up.

There’s a wee digression for you. Shall we take a break? I can wait…..no I can’t. I found out during my week in Crete that perhaps, just maybe, redheads don’t have quite the patience I had hoped for. I mean, I didn’t wrench off a tree limb and start pounding someone into a bloody pulp, but I definitely needed a few “Serenity now” moments. Ah, the idea of beating someone senseless with an olive branch makes me laugh funny ha-ha. It’s almost depressing how excited I got at the sight of fava beans and spring peas growing in the wild. After all my years as a chef, the fact that I get so worked up by seeing these things exist naturally; It’s a sad reflection on the state of the world and how detached we are from our food. We spent a day with one chef, foraging in the hills for wild greens and herbs that we ate that night. Another day found us watching the chef of a seaside restaurant diving for sea urchins and octopus that we would eat, fresh, moments later. It makes me start to realize that I became a chef not just to learn how to cook, but to be closer to my food. We’re spoiled: we get to see fruits, vegetables, meat and fish in their entirety. Or at least in larger wax-treated boxes. I have spent hours trying to convert small groups into bone-in chicken-ites, but there will always be those who love that boneless, skinless chicken breast. You know, the one that you individually wrap in aluminum, and throw in your freezer, so you have a tasteless brick of frozen wannabe poultry to help fend off intruders? Or maybe you live in a safe neighborhood, and just use it when you power-walk in the morning? The possibilities are endless!

But I’m getting off topic. As a chef, I get to see things as they should be, more or less. So when even I become so taken by wild almonds and beans growing in the hills of Crete, I get scared for the rest of the world. Crete has a deep-rooted connection to their land, but you can already see this beginning to wear away at the edges, namely the scattered cities along its coast. “From dust to dust” is more than a line in Sunday church….we are part of the earth, and when we begin to lose that connection, we begin to lose part of ourselves.

And just so I can make this a more traditional random sandwich (Mmmm….randwich) rather than an awesome open-face sandwich that you proceed to drop on the floor, fun-side down, I shall end with this: I wish my pen caps were flavored. And had some whitening power as well. It would make my chewing habits so much more rewarding. BicFresh pens? C’mon!

The anti-iTunes rant.

*This appeared first in an e-mail to my friend Roger, and I most graciously accept his permission to reproduce it here. But then again, it was my rant, so I mean to say that I most graciously accept his willingness to share the words he inspires me to write with the rest of the world.

Here it is: A well-scripted piece o' brain gunk that the general contractor of inter-personal relationships then mixes and uses as mortar for the brick wall that forms the foundation for our friendship. And...I'm drunk.
But seriously, I'm coming to realize that my own quams with the iTunes are, well, just a couple. First, it's still difficult to start a word with a lower-case letter, and then switch to a capital one, and then finish the word as normal. It's just not right man! It's like a sequel to Aliens Vs. Predator. The knowledge that you screwed up the first one SO ROYALLY makes you think that you can go out and make another that will not only be better, but will leave people wondering what they were smoking on the first one, or worse, make them go back and see the first one, and then come out crying that they now have another movie to add to the long list of "Name a movie where the sequel was better than the original," or some crappy ice-breaker small talk thing that they use at parties when people are tired of playing Spoons, or when keg stands lose their fun because some frat idiot thinks it's cool to try and get the wheelchair kid to do one, and he ends up getting his head caught in wheelchair kid's spokes on the way down, and he's wearing one of those stupid neck braces after, and can't turn his head, and so eating peas at dinner is just gonna piss him off more, and...well you get the picture.
Seconds. and I'm being serial. I like the physical having-ness of the CD. I understand you usually save a couple bucks from buying on that service that begins with a lower-case letter that now refuse to spell, but then my friend comes to me wanting some Chris Cornell, and I can't give it to them without the CD or authorizing them, and I'm down to my last authorization. So what to do. And to make matters worse, I'm stuck in Italy without my CD's, well I just have this growing list of artists I want. This kind of jammy, but trippy Soundtribe Sector 9, Leroy, there's some good stuff out there that I want. But if I hear that damn Rihanna song about music that stops, and she doesn't want it to stop, and so there's some complaints about who is actually stopping the music, and so they try to figure out who is trying to stop the music, and these people, they are hoping that whoever it is does not actually stop the music? I want that song to end. To just freaking disappear. I would ask that of Rihanna, but she's got this forehead you can probably land small planes on, so if her music career falters, they'll probably just fly her down to the Amazon, and sink her in the river so her head can be used as a small dam to help fight soil erosion. Because that's a big problem down there.

Working my moo-jo? Haha....oh man, that's dumb....

Finally, some food (poisoning) inspirations

So the girl sitting next to me pushed it away and said "Ugh, too much saffron!" But of course me, I just dug into the dish with my usual unabashed gastro-faith, pausing only momentarily to wonder if the barely room-temp seafood was still good. See, I'm not a huge fan of saffron, so I didn't worry about the rice, but I saw half a seared scallop, and some mussels, which did in fact have a bit o' the funk to them.
Who's got two thumbs and loves a good bout of shellfish poisoning? This guy....
(Damn you, one-dimensional communication medium of the internet, for not allowing a better portrayal of my ashen, bed-ridden face, but with two HUGE thumbs.)
I've gotten legitimate food poisoning maybe three times in my life before this current infestation (which, if my level of health is directly proportional to my level of sarcasm, has taken a turn for the better....scratch that, I'll probably be sarcastic on my death bed.) Two times were within two weeks of each other, and my experiences now allow me to give fair warning to those wishing to visit Ecuador: 1.) It's probably a good idea to avoid sushi in Quito (and certainly only the truly foolish would eat there more than once,) and 2.) If an Amazonian tribesman offers you a rough-hewn wooden cup filled with a brownish liquid that smells like it was extracted from the feet of the whole tribe, then you'd better have some great interpersonal skills, or prepare to buy stock in Pepto-Bismol.
Ok, the third wasn't really food poisoning, just this incident with honey mustard, sunstroke, I'm sure you get the picture....
Is anyone still reading this? I'm sorry, I'm trying to be positive, really.

I love ya kid, but your drums suck.

Phil Collins. Don Henley. The guy from the Everyday Visuals. There are definitely drummers out there who can sing. And my uncle Johnny? Definitely not.

I remember these great stories of him opening for the Stones, of dragging his first kit home on the green line from Copley out to the end of the D line (that’s got to suck.) The Midnight Suns was his band….great name….I’m still hoping that some random Google search will bring up some clip of him in a bandana and crappy ripped jean jacket. But these stories wouldn’t be complete without a puff of smoke and this gargled hacking laugh in your face. Tremendous individual though. The man was Boston through-and-through. God forbid any other 2^nd tier blood reads this, but he was my favorite of that group. You always knew when Johnny was coming, because someone busted out the ashtray and the O’Doul’s. And if I got home late, I’d hear him plugging away at my snare, over and over again. Then he’d come downstairs with that kick-ass swagger of a man who had a bass drum instead of a heart, and it’d always be the same….”I love ya kid, but your drums suck.” Nothing like a consummate rocker to put me in my place.

He actually walked out of a Who concert back in ’00, shaking his head at the testosterone-crazed youth bouncing around to “My Generation,” shaking his head and muttering, “you kids just don’t get it.” And that damn drum stool! He had this crap woven-topped, weak-legged drum stool, this crappy little thing that obviously hadn’t gotten enough vitamins in its youth. Which was, coincidentally, sometime around the early 70’s, when my uncle first bought it. If you looked at the thing, it just fell over. Like those damn goats (seriously, check out YouTube for fainting goats or something like that…freakin’ hilarious.) So Johnny gives me this piece of crap one year for Christmas, and it’s all sentimental, all eye-water and lung-butter, which was cool. So then I give it back to him the next year, trying to be all sentimental back (or cheap, depending on how you looked at it.) He opens this, and totally deadpans “What the hell is this? What made you think I wanted this back?” This ritual went on for at least 3 more years. The poor guy even picked it during a Yankee swap. Oh well.

Funny thing is, I’d love to have that stool right now.

Johnny never actually claimed to sing, but his band was pretty tight, according to my mom, and my nana used to talk about how much bacon the Jewish guys in the band would plow through after practice at her house on Saturday mornings. I’m not making a direct connection between bacon and singing abilities, because if I were, than my history of bacon sandwiches at the Abbey would’ve made me Frank Sinatra. I guess what I’m trying to say is, his drumming was great. His sarcasm superb. His ability to make himself a better person was truly admirable. But if I had to tell him about his singing, it’s probably come out something like: “Johnny, I love ya, but your singing sucks.” And that’s the truth.

My uncle Johnny died this morning.

I miss you Johnny. Keep the beat, wherever you are.

November 15th - Atlantic musings

The first of what I will only assume will be many, many, many written texts. It had take six years to un-cramp my hand from all that furious note-taking in Roman History, and now I get to look forward to fingertip bruising from furious note-taking in this crazy new era of technology. At least I don’t have to worry about breaking my space bar from excitement, like some college room-mates I know.

So I get through baggage, my first lesson in the whole metric conversion….it goes well enough, the lady at the ticket counter didn’t even blink when I voiced my surprise at how little the dead babies in my suitcase actually weighed. Good bargain for the buyer, if you’re getting it by the pound. Then off through security, and Steve and I end up at the Sam Adams “Brew House,” which is really more of a “Brew Semi-Circle,” complete with head-inducing soundwaves for your Guiness, and Octoberfest on tap. So what if it’s not actually October? So what if your non-Sam Adams beers outnumber the Sam Adams beers by a 4 to 1 margin? So what if the guy’s wearing a Harpoon shirt while pouring you a Sam? I’ve got freakin’ soundwaves in my Guiness! You can actually taste the sound of the potato famine in every sip! And I don’t know about you, but I’m all about hearing my food from here on out. I don’t want to even see it, I want to feel like I’ve eaten purely from the sound of it. Does broccoli actually scream when it’s being ripped from its roots? God I hope so, because Andrew needs his audible greens.

But I digress. And why type when I could be scarfing down fresh-squeezed orange juice from the can? Why am I wondering how many f’s there are in scarfing when there’s regulation-sized Coke….uh, light? Am I seeing that right…To be had? Mmmmm….Parmalat…the wave of the future. Now all we need are shelf-stable, square cows, and we’re in business. Forget dead babies…shelf-stable cows are the perfect food. If they make them sound good, that is.

Apparently God was taking a smoking break when they created the monstrosity of a sandwich they just served me. And by served I mean boomeranged it from the safety of business class. Why is it that when you ask the stewardess/sky waitress/flight attendant/mile-high runway model/whatever’s P.C. these days for anything, they get this twinge of “does not compute” in their eyes. And I think they clone themselves in the overhead compartments. Apparently, as a row of four people in coach seem to add up to one whole person in business class, we get the equivalent of one-fourth of a sandwich each. That seems right. Once we’ve understood these crazy opposable thumbs and learn how to make fire, us coach serfs shall rise up, I tell ye. And then we’ll create a better sandwich. Yes, that sounds like a good order of progression. I won’t even go into what I think was in the sandwich, because the combination is probably a punishable offense somewhere. I’m just praying that this is the worst food I have the entire next year.