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.