Roasted asparagus salad

This is a somewhat bastardized version of an asparagus salad that I’ve made at several different restaurants over the years. Like an annoying STD, you pick up a little something new and different from every chef you’ve worked for. That’s rude. It’s not like every chef I’ve worked for could be described as an annoying rash or similar ilk, but there are certainly a few finalists for such a simile.
In any case, get yourself a bunch of asparagus, a couple shallots, some rice vinegar, some olive oil, some almonds, and some salt pepper, and sugar.

Peel, and very thinly slice your shallots into rings, and place in a small, or something of comparable size. In a small saucepan heat a decent amount of rice vinegar to a boil, adding salt and sugar as necessary to taste good. A couple allspice berries and/or some whole black peppercorns also add a nice touch, but maybe you don’t carry the tiny boules of flavor excitement in your apartment pantry, in which case, go cry to momma.

When the vinegar is boiling and tasty, pour it over the shallots, and immediately cover. Let stand until the liquid cools, or until the shallots sink to the bottom of the liquid; a sign that they’ve successfully pickled.

Now, preheat your oven to about 400 degrees. No one will come kill you if it’s at 405. I promise. If it’s about 450, then you’ve got bigger problems than just setting an oven correctly. You clearly can't follow directions, which means you’re either going to be a groundbreaker in whatever it is you do, or you’re just an ass. Guess what my money’s on?

Now, lining up a couple of asparagus at a time, cut on the bias in about 2-inch segments. Bias. Big word there, in the cooking dictionary. What’s it mean? It’s not like when someone asks about whose side you’re on in the Miley Cyrus/Radiohead dispute, and you say “well, I’m a little bias.” You’re not that kind of bias. Here, bias means an angle, like Stegner’s “Angle of Respose.” Why didn’t he use the word bias? Because it’s pretentious and smarmy. Smarmy? Go look it up. And when you’re finished, just cut the damn asparagus on a bias. Actually, at this point, you might as well go for the straight-down cut. I don’t really trust you anymore.
While you desperately google my name to search for an address for sending hate mail, until you realize that I shall just laugh at your bias-cutting inabilities, as I am right now, toss the cut asparagus with some olive oil, and lay out on a baking sheet. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

On a separate baking sheet, spread out some almonds. Hopefully you bought the sliced almonds. If you bought whole almonds, if the idea of chunks of almonds, or sliced almonds, bring to mind some kind of cruel nut-torture, then you’ll need to commit some evil yourself and smash up the whole ones a bit.

Place both sheets in the oven, and give them a few minutes. You’ll need to spin them around a bit. Comprende? Like you wished your girlfriend back in college could do? Until all you ended up with was an embarrassing story, and more embarrassing bruises?

Sooner or later, your hot nuts will be all toasty and aromatic, and your asparagus should be somewhat similar. It’s totally ok if one needs more time than the other, or if you life you asparagus a little more crunchy. Pull out of the oven, and toss the asparagus, the nuts, and some of the pickled shallots together. You can add some of the pickle juice if you need a little flavor boost, but given the asparagus that’s in the markets right now, you won’t need much. Yay! Smelly urine for everyone!

Now you’re thinking, great, but what do I put it with? It goes awesome under some salmon or roasted fish. It goes great on top of toasted or fried sourdough bread planks, with some gruyere broiled on top. It goes great with some grilled ribeye, with an expensive, nappy balsamic vinegar drizzled over the top.

The unspoken pandemic

To what do I owe this over-rated, running-a-bit-behind return to the minor fame of my self-imposed web-writings? I suppose it would be with the spurring on by some foodstuff, or amazing experience. But today my friends, I choose to write to you about circus peanuts.

Those delightful little candy-like things that actually bring a bad name to candy. And if CVS ever falls victim to the current trend of economic downfall, I shall know that it is some small part because they’ve got WAY too much money tied up in circus peanut production.

Some of the lucky few have actually been privy to the oral beginnings of this post, and have wasted precious anytime minutes listening to me wax poetic on the degredation that has quietly subverted our food culture over the past 50 years.

Where did they come from? More specifically, why don’t they taste like peanuts? Why don’t they come from the circus? Why must they have that banana horrificness to them? All valid points, eh? The only point of contention I could find that in any way supported their existence is the purported idea that they helped spawn Lucky Charms cereal, but this is according to the internet, and if you’re reading this, we all know how truthful that is. They remind me of the poison goo my landlord in London sprayed on exposed pipes to deter cockroaches. And that stuff tasted a whole lot better than circus peanuts. I want to believe that they fall into the circle of life somehow. Maybe the roaches eat the circus peanuts, then they get killed when they eat the look-alike poison goo, and then the goo feeds off the roaches, and then that feed, in turn, makes magical things happen; if you smoke it. And somewhere in there Simba’s father dies, but hopefully not’s no spoiler alert for you.

Remember that blue tacky crap that you were supposed to use to hang up your posters in college, so the wall of your dorm room didn’t look like a cheese with disproportionate gas fermentation? Yeah, I tried to smoke that. I got a contact high. By that I mean, I contacted the floor at high speed after trying to pull air through a non-porous clay, and became light-headed. I woke up yearning for Advil and a traditional Portsmouth Abbey bacon sandwich. White bread, bacon, more bacon, and if you were feeling daper, a second piece of white bread. Pat Walters was the king of bacon sandwich. I wonder if he’s still alive…..

*Save lives. Don’t make out with pigs.

That new baby smell.

They smell so good, they should make an air freshener. Now with more baby.

When I was back in the catering world, we measured weights of things in the number of dead babies. A heavy cooler was about 5 babies. The average holding oven (empty, of course)? Maybe 3 babies. The total weight of an outgoing party would be comprised of a couple hundred baby’s worth of cargo. You think that’s wrong? Well, what’s so good about using stones for a unit of weight? Everyone has a basic idea of the size and weight of a baby. But say stone, and it’s so subjective. Here in Ethiopia, the scales measure weight in stones, with kilos if you really really want it, but who doesn’t want to relate their weight to a specific number of amorphic, lifeless objects? At least kilos are just a single-entendre unit of measure. All I’m saying is that until we can properly assimilate everyone’s thinking into the proper size of a “stone,” then we should find a more standardized unit of measure. So dead babies it is. I’m sure it would be the cause of great fun when you get to the check-in counter at the airport, and upon being told your bag is overweight, you say “heck, that can’t be more than 3 dead babies in there.” You’ve just earned yourself a upgraded seat with that kind of suave conversation, my friend.

I should mention that the baby weights were used only amongst the loaders and the cooks at the company, as we were usually barred from any direct contact with the customers. As the underlings of the company, we usually fought over table scraps and were desperately licking the caps of empty liquor bottles, if only to cover the stink that was the clearing station. Much like the term “86” in restaurants, no one knows where the dead baby came from, but it grew to be the Catch-22 of us lowly behind-the-scenes people. Using such gauche terminology, why would we ever be allowed to interact with the “normies,” like the servers and floor captains did?

The first party I catered was in 1993, where, after much pleading, I was allowed to don the white tux shirt and bow tie for a simple cocktail party in Norwich. Reveling in the blatant disregard for the state’s child labor laws, I was given the strict task of replenishing the raw vegetables at the crudite stations, a job I was made for, given my in-depth experience with all things stick vegetable (one good thing that I took away from grade school. I was totally sustainable as well, as the weird kid who sat next to me at lunch would eat the wax bags they served the carrots sticks in, so there was no waste. An eco-friendly closed system in action. And this was the 80’s. Hold on, I need to put that on my resume.)

Why sitting in a northern Ethiopia village has sparked memories of my origins in foodservice is beyond me, but I am thankful to be writing again. It’s probably result of having my life flash before my eyes after spending several hours in a shock-less 4X4 with a scout who was all too eager to show me his Cold War-era grenades that are supposed to make me feel better about trekking in the Simien mountains. If I get out of this with my body intact, I’ll write more.

Oh right, you blend.

I love eating Ethiopian food in Ethiopia. It’s at once a hypochondriac’s wet dream and worst nightmare. Before every meal, you typically get a ritualistic hand washing, and then proceed to dig into a giant communal platter with everyone else at the table, sans utensils. If you want to be a conversation starter at your next Ethiopian meal, definitely try to develop an open lip sore or two before you go.

And be sure to only put food into your mouth with your right hand. The left hand is used only for cleaning. This social requirement provides endless entertainment for us lefties, as we get to gimp it up every time we eat. I hear my lacrosse coach’s voice in my head, telling me to practice with my off hand, but to this day I only really took his advice during my special alone time.

Um….back to food. Much like eating with chopsticks, when eating with your hands, the ends justify the means. You become much more aware of what you eat, there is much more focus and attention paid to the food itself, which adds to the overall quality of the meal itself. It also helps you to block out any truly awful eating companions you may be forced to eat with. And given the style of Ethiopian cooking, most of the food arrives to the table in a partially digested state, so it’s less work for you.

I kid. The food is incredible, flavorful, and makes full use of an environment, while having an extensive growing season and a very temperate climate, is not conducive to producing a wide array of foodstuffs. It is mostly thicker stew-like dishes served on the typical spongy bread, but like well-prepared northern Indian food, simple appearances can hold many complex flavors. The gorad gorad is not for the limp-lipped individuals, being raw cubes of beef, tossed with local butter and spices. It’s a bit like nibbling on a woman’s ear, maybe a bit carnivorously, if said ear had been soaking in butter and spices. It’s hot, is what I’m getting at.

And needless to say, this isn’t the place to try and market my newest utensil: a spoon that has a scale embedded in the handle, so fat people can be more aware of the sheer weight of food that they throw down. We need less of them, these fat people. They are the bane of every airline, and they have caused a sharp increase in health care costs and the number of Old Country Buffets. Is that a shocked gasp I hear coming from you? What, too soon to talk about fat people? Not PC? Whatever, you love it, my writing. Bow before my words. Unless you’re fat, in which case just rock back and forth a bit.

Where am I going with this? It’s not like I was just inspired to go off about fat people because one walked by. It’s because I’m in a country that will most likely experience another grueling famine in the coming years, a country where one fat person could physically supply enough meat, or possibly enough shelter (I’d have to check the square footage of said fat person) for an entire family here. And because, as a redhead, I stand out, oh, just a tad, in this sub-Saharan country, but at least the beggars aren’t licking their lips when I walk by. Maybe I’m just afraid of what kind of response another famine here would evoke. I don’t think I could stand another Live Aid. “Don’t they know it’s Christmas time again?” Of course they don’t, stupid….they run on a 13-month calendar here….their Christmas is during our January. Obviously being a rock star does not mean you know how to count. “1,2,3,14?” Bono needs to take a lesson from Schoolhouse Rock. Three’s the magic number. Anything above that, and they begin to have trouble.

In the beginning....

I heard Julia Childs long before I ever saw her. At age 5, after a particularly grueling battle between my Star Wars figures and my best friend’s G.I. Joes (I don’t need to tell you who won that battle), I stumbled into the kitchen, high on a cocktail of Juicy Juice and freeze pops, thinking that one a pigeon from out in the yard had somehow learned to speak English, and was now giving cooking lessons to my mother.

Now, my parents are more or less pacifists, owing mostly to the fact that they were never around, and had to punish my misdeeds by proxy. So now that I think about it, they weren’t pacifists at all…instead they had installed our nanny as a puppet dictator, so they could freely wash the juvenile blood from their hands. And they would do this with all the tiny, “fun-size” bath amenities that they collected with startling regularity on their constant tours around the world. We never spent an errant dime on soap, which was probably what allowed the financial freedom for my parents to roam, happily ignoring their children, and more often than not, leaving them in the care of housekeepers that ranged from excommunicated Peruvian nuns to biker couples with plastic pink flamingoes in their living room.

Side note: the two times that I had my mouth actually washed out with soap, a regulation-sized bar of Ivory would magically appear. My mother said it was the best tasting brand, “from experience,” but I think it just adds to their sadistic parental tendencies. We’d shower with hotel bars of soap the size of your thumb, but somehow they had stocked up on just enough of the big bars to break out for these “special occasions.”

Side note part deux: Both reasons for my oral cleansing, care of the Ivory Soap Company, were for using foul language; the first time at my sister after she ruined a seemingly indestructable pillow fort in the living room; the second, when I saw my mother try to substitute concentrated lemon juice for fresh while making a hollandaise. In still feel justified in both instances.

Needless to say, amidst the barren wasteland that was much of my childhood diet, dotted periodically, if at all, with frozen fish sticks and mac & cheese, I never saw my mom raise a hand in hunger. She didn’t cook. Well, maybe she did, but it was done under cover of darkness, so my sister and I wouldn’t be privy to her mortal skills.

So with 10% real juice coursing through my veins, I walk into the kitchen and see my mom struggling with the carcass of a small animal. Praying it was my sister, I ran to help, and was only slightly discouraged to find out that it was a baby lamb. With disappointment fading only slightly, I started to lock in on what the talking bird was saying. On the tv, an NFL linebacker in drag was systematically taking apart a whole lamb, and the I could see the bloodlust of hacking up good food start to appear in my mother’s eyes.

Is there anything so great as being given a cleaver larger than your head, and, at the age of five, with tendons flapping like broken rubber bands and bone fragments flying everywhere, hack away at a back end of lamb? By the time I reached college, I was able to take the head clean off a pig in under ten seconds flat. Ok, that may be a bit disturbing, but I’ve always respected every animal I’ve broken down, and besides, coming from a very military-heavy family, it was appreciated, nay, encouraged. Alright, that may be a little dark, you’re right.

In any case, my first exposure to Julia Childs was also my first exposure to bladed instruments. When I was finally able to harness the power of fire, I would be all set. Of course, I would have to wait several decades, but I could be patient. After all, I didn’t want to blow my culinary load at the age of 5. Hell, I didn’t even know enough about “loads” to make such a metaphor at age 5.