Persimmons: Fu. Yu.

If you think these fuyu persimmons seem to be looking wide-eyed off into space, you’re wrong. They’re looking into the future– namely, theirs.

Shortly after this photo was taken, they were mercilessly vivisected and consumed by me, the author of this post.

I shall be doing the same to their brethren soon on that greatest of all American days of sharing and feasting– Thanksgiving. I like to think of this as a small step in personal growth. For me, not for the persimmons.

I have historically shied away from persimmons, since my first experience with one wasn’t the least bit pleasant.

Fresh from college graduation in Southern California, I realized I still had what I referred to as unresolved “living-in-Berkeley issues.” So I packed up my Volvo and headed north to live in a large Victorian house with one of my best friends from school, his sister, and four Berkeley graduate students.

I think it’s safe to say it was a total disaster. None of my roommates were especially welcoming, which may or may not have been due  to the fact that my friend’s girlfriend, who was not particularly attractive to begin with, was extremely insecure about her hold on him. This may or may not have been due to the fact that he was a former theater major whom she asked out as he was on his to the Gay Pride parade in San Francisco. I’m just saying.

And when I say “not particularly welcoming,” I mean cold, passive-aggressive, and downright rude.

One of the small consolations of living with next-to-no-money in a household filled with people who did not like me was the fact that this house was situated two blocks from the old Berkeley Bowl– a food emporium housed in a former bowling alley where one could choose from a mind-boggling selection of produce and come home with a bag full of beautiful fruits and vegetables for, well, next-to-no-money. As a result, there was always a big bowl filled with fruit residing on the kitchen table in our happy little home.

One morning, as I was sitting at that table, nursing my coffee and poring over the newspaper, two of my housemates wandered into the kitchen, poured their own coffee, and sat down with me. They gave me a perfunctory “Good morning,” and continued the string of conversation that they had been carrying on for days.

“What colour was yours this morning?” asked Helen, the nearsighted English girl.

“Black. Really, really black,” replied Marci, who always had a bit of a pinched look on her face and was from nowhere especially interesting.

“You’re lucky. I haven’t even gotten to black yet,” said Helen, who sounded more than a little envious of Marci’s fecal matter.

The two girls were on a cleansing diet– all they seemed able to talk about was their bowel movements. I asked if they wouldn’t mind changing the topic , since I was just about to make breakfast. Marci shot me a look.

“Those persimmons look beautiful,” she said looking at the fruit bowl. “Are they from The Bowl or from the neighbor’s tree? Have you tried one yet?”

I told her I wasn’t sure where they were from. Surprised and encouraged by the fact that she was even talking to me, I went as far as telling her that I had never, in fact, seen a persimmon before moving to Berkeley, let alone try one.

“Oh, you have got to try one. Here, take this one. They’re amazing. You can eat it just like an apple.”

So I took an enormous bite. Having no prior persimmon knowledge, I did not understand the difference between the fuyu persimmon, which may be eaten “just like an apple” and the hachiya, which must first be ripened to near mush before being consumed, otherwise, their extremely high tannin levels will suck all the moisture from one’s mouth, making for great discomfort to the eater and great pleasure from those looking on. Three guesses as to which kind were in that bowl.

As I ran to the kitchen sink to spit out the persimmon and found that no amount of water seemed to replace the lost moisture in my mouth, Marci and Helen howled.

“Oh my god, he fell for it. I can’t believe he’s that stupid!” is what came out of Marci’s still moistened, but thin lips.

Had I known anything about persimmons, this scene could have been easily avoided. Had I understood their medicinal properties, I could have actually participated in the girls’ cleansing conversation, sharing with them the knowledge that, in traditional Chinese medicine, for example, raw persimmons are used to treat constipation and hemorrhoids and that, however contradictory it may sound, the cooked version of the fruit is helpful in the treatment of diarrhea. Perhaps, if I had known and shared this informations with them, we might have been great friends and they would have felt comfortable enough to invite me to cleanse with them.

Of course, that didn’t happen. After a rather dramatic episode in which the girls suddenly became mortally offended by the Mammy-motif heirloom cookie jar I kept on the kitchen counter, I was asked to leave the house. And leave I did. Gladly. My “living-in-Berkeley issues” had finally been resolved.

For years, I had always associated persimmons with the unpleasant chill of my Berkeley housemates. I have since gotten over that. More or less. Today, I prefer to associate them with the much more pleasant chill of Autumn. I still don’t have a lot of experience with fully ripened Hachiya persimmons, but I really love the other kind–the ones you really can eat like an apple.

And with that, I would like to end with a little, thankful message to Marci, wherever she is:

Fu yu.

Persimmon Salad with Honey-Orange Vinaigrette

Serves 4

Where I work, we do a fresh fuyu persimmon salad and give it the Greek name Lotosalata, which is unsurprising, since we tend to give everything a Greek name with the possible exception of the Ladies’ room. The term lotos is a possible reference to the Lotophagi, or Lotus Eaters,who can be found in Book Nine of the Odyssey tempting members of Odysseus’ crew with food that causes those to eat it to forget where they have been and where they are going.

I cannot promise that my version of lotosalata will make anyone forget anything. But it’s damned good.  I can, however, promise you it will be the least fattening thing on your Thanksgiving table, with the possible exception of the napkins and flatware.

Do give it a go.

Ingredients:

2 fuyu persimmons, sliced about 1/8″ think lengthwise. Don’t bother to peel.

1 medium-sized fennel bulb, well-cleaned and thinly sliced (or shaved) lengthwise

1/2 half shallot, treated exactly like the fennel (minus washing)

The juice of one orange

1 teaspoon of zest from that same orange (Please zest prior to juicing, thank you).

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (This is not a classic oil-to-acid ratio of a vinaigrette. Less oil works better for this particular salad.)

3 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons champagne vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Pomegranate seeds for garnish

Preparation:

1. Whisk together orange juice,  2 tablespoons of the honey, and a pinch of salt. Place persimmon slices in a wide, shallow dish and toss with orange-honey mixture. Let persimmons marinate for at least 15 minutes. Toss them occasionally.

2. To make the vinaigrette, I typically use a small mason jar, since the days of my brother showing me how the souls of the dead are sorted out in the afterlife with the aid of a free-with-purchase Good Seasons cruet are long behind me. Place zest, olive oil, vinegar, and salt (add black pepper, if you wish) into jar, close lid tightly, and shake vigorously, which is always somehow extremely satisfying. Shake again as needed, whether it is for your benefit or that of the vinaigrette.

3. In a mixing bowl, place fennel and shallot. Pour over vinaigrette, toss, and let sit for at least 15 minutes. Think “slaw” and you might get a clearer picture of where I am going with this salad.

4. When you are ready to serve the salad, pour off and reserve the excess vinaigrette from the fennel and shallots. Place them on the serving dish of your choice as a sort of bed for the awaiting persimmons. Remove persimmons from the orange juice and honey, shaking off any excess moisture as you go, and arrange them atop the fennel/shallots. Drizzle persimmons with some of the reserved vinaigrette and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

5. Serve.

6. Refrain from talking about anything fecal while at the dinner table.

7. Enjoy.

Tarte Tatin: A Promise Kept

The other day, I received an email from my friend Ron, who had recently returned from a long weekend in Paris, which is something people who live in New York can do without killing themselves, time-wise:

“I had such a good time in Paris, and am so inspired to cook! I was thinking about you when I was there, and I almost bought a tarte tatin pan, but they were so expensive, and I realized I probably didn’t need to get it there.

So, I thought i’d ask for your opinion on a good pan. Do you have a recommendation?  I’d also LOVE to get your recipe as well. You were always going to teach me how to make one and we never got around to it. So, perhaps, i could at least get your recipe.”

I thought for a moment. There he was in Paris, inspired to cook, looking at expensive tarte Tatin pans. He must have been to E. Dehillerin’s– a mind-blowing, intoxicating cookware store that only those with a severe allergy to copper or eating could leave without the purchase of something shiny or, at the very least, without inspiration.

I am delighted and somehow unsurprised that Ron managed to leave the store without the pan. Delighted because I would be jealous of any friend outside of easy borrowing distance who owned one, unsurprised because he’s one of the best bargain hunters ever. He also has one of the tiniest apartments in the universe, which I think has been officially documented. He would hang that document on his wall, but he would most likely think it would take up too much wall space.

It is precisely due to this lack of space that I would suggest to Ron that he not invest in a one-use pan. Some folks swear by non-stick sauté pans, others by cast iron skillets for making this upside down apple tart. I happen to lean towards cast iron, because I’m just plain folksy. Either will do, so take your pick.

A Promise is a Promise

I had forgotten my promise of teaching him how to make Tarte Tatin, since it was about two lifetimes ago. I do, however, like to think of myself as a man of my word. So, Ron, though it’s about six or seven years after the fact, and you now live on the other side of the continent, I will do my best to answer your questions. By opening this up from a simple email into a blog post, I encourage others with more Tarte Tatin expertise to weigh in, if you like.

I initially hesitated when offering up my recipe, because I thought it produced inconsistent results. It seemed a bit odd that something static– printed and frozen on glossy paper– could be inconsistent. It was I who was inconsistent. And the ingredients. Would I be vigilant this time and make a perfect caramel, with apples well-cooked and brown, but holding together? That is sometimes me. Or would I wind up with what my goddaughter Zelly referred to as “apple mush tart” when I decided to make one for her while trying to keep her 4 year-old little sister away from the knives and hot caramel? That is, unfortunately me, too. I’m glad it was the tart that wound up overcooked and not the child.

And what about the ingredients? I’ve made this dish at least two dozen times during my adulthood, but never with any sort of regularity. Somewhere along the way, I got it into my head that Granny Smith apples were the best, owing to their tartness and name-sharing with Dame Maggie. I had forgotten the better results I’d had with Golden Delicious and  jumped back to the Smiths, which also happens to be the name of one of my favorite bands from my high school days. Unfortunately, while yielding great flavor, the Smiths yield an attractive-but-depressing much, not unlike the band. I vote Jonagold which has inherited the firm flesh of its Golden Delicious mother, but taken on a little of it’s father’s (Jonathan) tartness.

I hope Ron has fun experimenting with this dessert. Especially in New York where the Autumn apples are better than anywhere I’ve had.

If he messes one up, it will still more than likely taste good, since how badly can you screw up apples, butter, and sugar? Well, I might suggest he watch a little Julia Child making one of the biggest goofs of her television career.

Suddenly, mine doesn’t look so bad.

Tarte Tatin

Serves 8 to 10, depending upon how you slice it.

When I first had this dessert presented to me, I can’t remember where I was. Was it at some high school French Club get together? A special occasion restaurant venture with my family? The quaint little Loire Valley farm house where I learned a lot of dirty words from the sons of the proprietress who were trying to describe what they wanted to do with one of my female friends? I don’t remember, since I’ve had it in all of those situations. I just remember the shock I felt at my love for the dish, since I had always been indifferent apple pie. And I remembered the name thanks to the way I remember most everything– through word association. “A good Tarte Tatin,” I thought, “should be tart and tan.”

The back story on this dessert is nearly as quaint as the tart itself. If it is to be believed, in 1888, Mlle. Stéphanie Tatin, owner of L’Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron with her sister either a) was not a very bright woman and accidentally baked her famous apple tart upside down in one of her frequent moments of confusion; b) became distracted during the making of said tart, let the cooking go a little too far, but managed to save the day by throwing a crust over the apples and baking them upside down; or c) was threatened with a smoldering cigarette to the face by a jealous Brett Somers, who suspected Mlle. Tatin of having an unsavory dalliance with her then-husband, Jack Klugman, and therefore unable to reach the caramelizing apples in time to make a proper, right-side-up tart until La Somers was finished with her smoke.

I prefer to believe version “c”, because it is the most exciting story.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

A pinch of salt

1/2 cup chilled, unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1/4 cup ice water

For the filling:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

6 apples, peeled, quartered, and cored. Jonagolds will do nicely. So will Golden Delicious. Go ahead and experiment with different varieties.

A pinch of salt

A dash of vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. To make the pastry, combine flour, sugar, and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse briefly to mix. Add the chopped, chilled butter to the flour mixture and pulse until the the butter has been coated and broken into a million, pea-sized pellets. Sprinkle dough with enough cold water to make the dough barely come together. Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured work surface and roll out into an 11″ round about 1/4 of an inch thick. Transfer dough to a baking sheet, cover with wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate.

2. Preheat your oven to 400 F. In an 10″ cast iron skillet or non-stick frying pan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in sugar and pinch of salt until nearly dissolved (about 2 minutes or so). If it’s lumpy, don’t worry. Add the apple quarters, rounded side down into the bubbling proto-caramel using enough apples to fit snuggly. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the caramel is dark brown and the apples are just tender (about 15 minutes).

3. Place pan in the oven to cook the apples a bit more (5 minutes). Remove pan from oven and raise the heat to 450 F. Perfume apples with a bit of vanilla extract, then gently place the pastry circle over the top of the apples, tucking the excess pastry inside the rim of the pan. Return pan to the oven and bake until the pastry is all brown and flaky-like (about 20 minutes).

4. Remove from the oven. Run a knife around the inside edge of the pan, invert a serving plate over the pan and then flip over and pray that the tarte unmolds easily. Lift off the pan. And please, Ron, do wear oven mitts and sensible shoes. I’d hate to hear that someone spent the evening in a Manhattan emergency room being treated for caramel burns.

5. Serve warm with sweetened whipped cream or with vanilla ice cream.

Just in Time for Halloween: The Jackie O. Lantern

A few days ago, I got an email from my editor over at KQED’s Bay Area Bites asking me if I would incorporate “in my own very special way” a Halloween theme into this week’s post. Rather than over think it, I decided to do the first thing that popped into my head:

A Jackie O. Lantern.

As far as I’m concerned, creating this lantern satisfies three important Halloween criteria: 1.) It allows me to dress inanimate fruit in drag, 2.) It caters to the modern obsession with celebrity (the fact that said celebrity is dead and was a Roman Catholic is pure holiday gravy), and 3.) It gives an appropriate nod to the centuries-old tradition of warding off evil spirits. Of course, the only spirit a Jackie O. Lantern might ward off is that of Maria Callas. Or Christina Onassis.

I Googled images of Jackie O. Lanterns and was shocked– there weren’t any. Yes, there were a few that called themselves Jackie O. Lanterns, but they were either just female jack-o-lanterns or, more dishearteningly,  Jackie-o-lanterns wearing pink pillbox hats.

And that’s wrong, I tell you, just wrong. That pillbox hat– that’s not Jackie O., that’s Jackie Kennedy at the moment of her first husband’s death. I wanted to convey a more cynical Jackie (or practical, depending upon your point of view)– I wanted the Jackie who cashed in her status as American royalty to marry an aging stallion/obscenely wealthy Greek shipping magnate in order to protect what was left of her family and garner unheard of shopping privileges.

So I borrowed a wig, big sunglasses, and a scarf from my friend Natalie, who likes to play dress up more than any other adult I know, and tarted up a little sugar pumpkin.

To make your very own Jackie O. Lantern, you will need:

Big sunglasses. It’s all about the sunglasses.

A long brown wig

A sugar pumpkin. (Note: take the sunglasses with you while pumpkin shopping. If the glasses fit around the pumpkin’s girth, you’ve got your pumpkin.

Some sort of carving instrument, like a small, sharp knife.

A spoon

A votive candle

A vintage scarf. (Purely optional, but it does complete the look. Pucci’s nice.)

Preparation:

1. Cut out a lid on the top of the pumpkin at a 45 degree angle so that the lid will remain in place when pumpkin is hollowed. This opening should be just large enough to allow access to your clenched fist. The smaller the hands, the better.

2. Scoop out seeds and stringy bits of pulp from the inside of your pumpkin with a spoon, preferably made of sterling silver. It’s even better if you are using a dessert spoon that has been stolen from the Plaza Hotel in New York. Since I have no such spoon, I had to settle for one I stole from the Algonquin Hotel instead. I am not advocating stealing– I was just pretending I was Robert Benchley and was therefore necessarily pickled. Reserve the pumpkin seeds for later roasting, since the seeds of the sugar pumpkin are the best for toasting, which is something I learned from Elise Bauer’s always helpful Simply Recipes.

3. Situate sunglasses onto the face of the pumpkin to determine the best placement for the eye holes. Cut out small holes with the tip of a sharp knife, then enlarge the holes with the same, stolen silver spoon you used to scrape out the pumpkin’s insides. (Note: Holes should not be larger than the sunglasses.)

4. Put your now-naked Jackie O. Lantern upon some sort of pedestal (I used one originally intended for cakes) which, now that I think of it, seems entirely appropriate. Dress up your pumpkin doll with wig, sunglasses, and a purely optional scarf-around-the-neck. Presto! You’ve got an international woman of glamour sitting on a cake stand in your kitchen.

Lighting Jackie’s Fire

To add an inner glow to your Jackie O. Lantern, remove the wig and lid from the pumpkin, place a votive candle inside her, and light. Replace lid and wig. Adjust hairstyle, if the need or desire arises.

For a delicious bit of added fun, summon the spirit of Aristotle Onassis with the help of your Ouija board. Once you have his full attention, blast  a Maria Callas aria from your surround sound speakers, then sit back and feel the tension. Voi lo Sapete from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana would do very nicely. I recommend hiding all valuable, breakable objects.

I do not recommend leaving your Jackie O. Lantern burning with fire from the inside unattended, unless you wish to melt your wig or set your house ablaze, but lighting it does make her eyes shine bright and wide, which makes sense, if you think about it:

That woman saw things that no woman should ever have to see.

Between the Sheets– Maggie Smith Drove Me to Drink.

When I was 12, my father took me to see a little film called Evil Under the Sun– the last in a trio of tony Agatha Christie whodunit films that somewhat shaped the person I am today. The first, Murder on the Orient Express, cemented my passion for train travel and smart suits; the second, Death on the Nile, ignited a fondness for women in floppy sun hats and beautiful, wee handguns. It was Evil Under the Sun, however, that really stayed with me. Some would understandably think the reason was Diana Rigg having a field day being a classic, haughty, soon-to-be-murdered bitch, or getting to see Roddy McDowall in a never-ending series of sailor suits, but they would be wrong. Not too far off, but wrong, all the same.

It was Maggie Smith. Maggie Smith and her cocktail parties. I don’t think my father had any idea what he was getting me into when he took me to see that picture.

It was a simple scene, really– almost a throw-away, apart from firming up the tension between Diana Rigg’s Arlena Marshall and just about everyone else residing at an exclusive, Mediterranean island resort. While passing around a tray of hors d’oeuvres to her guests, Smith asks the world-famous detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) if he would care for a cocktail. “Care for a cocktail, Monsieur Poirot? A White Lady, Sidecar, Mainbrace, or Between the Sheets?” Poirot rejects them all and asks instead for either crème de cassis or sirop de banane. With a bit of a sigh, she acquiesces, only to move on to offering Diana Rigg a sausage– the one thing of which one would think she had had enough, given her proclivities.

And that was it. I followed the murder well enough, and the inevitable, intricate unveiling of who-done-what. But I kept thinking about those cocktails. As I sat in that theater, I decided that I was going to be the sort of chap who drank Sidecars and Between the Sheets while Cole Porter tunes were played somewhere out of sight on a piano. I filed them away in my memory and bided my time.

When the appropriately legal time finally came nine years later, I unleashed my inner Maggie Smith, marched into a very (to me) upper, upper lounge in Los Angeles and ordered a Between the Sheets from the bartender.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “You’re going to have to tell me what’s in it.” When I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I next asked for a Sidecar. “Can you tell me what’s in a Sidecar? Maybe if you knew what you were asking for, I could help you.” Devastated, I settled for a martini to drown my nine years-worth of disappointment. How on earth could a bartender at the Atlas Bar & Grille– a place decorated in the luxe fashion of a 1930’s Supper Club, a venue that showed old films from that era on a giant screen, no less– not know how to make a Between the Sheets? Given its Hollywood location, I should have realized that everything, maybe even my beloved fantasy cocktail, was an illusion.

Perhaps he was right– I should have done a little research. I bought a book of classic cocktail recipes, just to  make sure the screenwriters hadn’t made up the names.

They did not.

Very much relieved and filled with renewed hope, I made my way back to the bar the following week– this time armed with the recipe. I called out the ingredients in a voice that was only vaguely Maggie Smith-like, and finally got what I’d been waiting for. I got my Between the Sheets.

Between the Sheets

Like most cocktails,  the origin of the Between the Sheets is murky. Some people believe it was created at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris (the place, incidentally, where George Gershwin partly composed An American in Paris) in the 1930’s. Others hold fast to the notion that it was the brainchild of a bartender at the Berkeley Hotel in London in 1921. It doesn’t matter much to me. I’m just grateful that someone created it.

The Between the Sheets is a very close cousin to the Sidecar– a drink most bartenders now know, thanks to the surge of interest in classic cocktails. Made of white rum, brandy, and Cointreau, it even comes with a sugared rim. It is a tart, refreshing member of the sour family of alcoholic beverages.

The following recipe is not the classic one. While white rum is well and good in its place, I think it has a bit of trouble competing with the brandy and other flavorings. I have substituted my favorite dark rum instead, which makes its own, indelible impression without overpowering the other players.

Not unlike Dame Maggie Smith herself, if you ask me. I know you didn’t ask me, but if you did, that is what I would tell you.

Ingredients

1 ounce dark rum. My personal preference is Zaya (thank you, Shannon).

1 ounce brandy

1/2 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1/2 ounce simple syrup

Ice

A twist of lemon or orange peel for garnish, which is purely optional. Or sausage, if you are feeling saucy enough and think you can pull it off.

Preparation:

In a cocktail shaker, insert ice. Pour all liquid ingredient over ice. Close lid of shaker. Shake vigorously and pour into an awaiting martini glass. Garnish, if that pleases you.

Avoiding A Cake Wreck: Butterscotch-Protein Frosting

What do you do when your oldest friend in the world hits a milestone birthday? For that matter, what do you do when anyone you really care about has a birthday?

You bake them a cake, that’s what.

Presents are wonderful, of course: diamonds, ponies, Eastern European babies, and whatnot. Whatever your choice, the recipient of these gifts will be pleased that you took the time out of your busy schedule to honor them.

But a cake? I think cakes are much, much nicer, thank you. Not a store-bought cake, though they can be very good, but one you make yourself. Baking a cake requires planning, it requires effort, it requires the surrender of personal time and energy. And, best of all, it demands focus– at least, it does for me.  You just can’t multitask when there’s a cake in the oven depending on you. Of course, I’m sitting here at my desk writing about making birthday cakes while the cake is baking away, but I’ve got my timer on. Since I’m doing nothing but think about this cake as I type, I think it is entirely allowable.

When Squid’s husband told me he was having a small get together for her birthday, my first thought was about the cake. “Do you already have something in mind for the cake?” I asked. When he said no, not yet, I asked if I could make it. So here I am, fretting away about a bunch of flour, sugar, and butter.

I had such grand plans for the thing. Two tiers, 35 years of inside jokes together manifested in marzipan, butterscotch, and chocolate. I had everything planned to the last detail. Or so I thought.

Things don’t always go as planned when a person like me, who isn’t in the practice of baking giant cakes, decides to do so on a whim. When there is math involved, my ideas tend to take a major hit or two. Butterscotch frosting? Oh, just double the given recipe. That should be enough. And it was, except for the fact that I needed about a half cup more powdered sugar than I had on hand. Ransacking one’s pantry while the stand mixer is whirring away is not always the best idea. Fortunately, there was vanilla protein powder on hand, so the frosting is now enriched with iron, phosphorous, and good old fashioned soy protein to support the bone and cardiovascular health of those who will ingest it. God bless the ability to improvise.

Baking a big cake? Super, but I can now tell you that merely doubling the recipe for 9″ round layer cake doesn’t cut  it for a 14″ square one. Unless you just want one, perfect little layer, without filling. So I will run back to the store early tomorrow morning for more flour, butter, eggs, and vanilla. It serves me right.

But I don’t mind one bit. I happen to enjoy making mistakes. Especially tasty ones. So what if I have to bake another layer for the cake tomorrow? There is much to be said for the satisfaction I feel when a tender, vanilla-perfumed cake is first pulled from the oven. When cooling on its baking rack, I see it as a yellowish canvas– not quite blank, but mildly blistered and neutral, upon which I can go to town, as it were, in terms of creativity.

Protein-infused Butterscotch frosting studded with bits of brutalized toffee slathered in the middle of two layers of cake baked a day apart. I wonder if anyone will know which layer is newer? Hopefully, everyone will be to drunk on beer and side cars to notice. A thin layer of the icing outside covered in a perfectly smooth coating of chocolate. At least I hope it will be perfectly smooth. Do wish me luck.

The decoration of the thing will be the trickiest part of all. My piping skills aren’t what they used to be. My plan was to have a giant squid looking as if it were startled into squirting out the Birthday message in its ink. Trickier than I imagined, believe me.

Instead, I ended up with a squid that looks rather only mildly bothered. Perhaps I shall have more luck with the starfish.

What started out as an exercise in what I hoped to be flawless, quirky perfection has turned into an exercise in pinpointing my own, personal foibles  and fortes (read: therapy). I had hoped to execute something beyond my own particular baking and sculpting abilities and have, so far, not done a terrible bad job at it, though it won’t be the image of the perfect (for Squid) birthday cake I had in mind.

And I think that’s just fine. In fact, I think she’ll think that’s just fine, too. Who turns down birthday cake? A birthday cake isn’t always about perfection. Like I said earlier, it’s about time and the offering of mental space and physical effort. And it’s about love, if you hadn’t gathered that already.

As I stood over the stand mixer, kicking myself for having to resort to adding protein powder in order to save the frosting, I had a Like Water for Chocolate moment. Was I about to add my own frustration into that frosting? Were my fellow party-goers going to take on my angst as well as a boost of muscle-building protein? I stepped back and thought about what I wanted that cake to say to Squid besides “Happy Birthday.”

I took a moment to re-arrange my thoughts and then started speaking into the bowl of the stand mixer, saying things like:

Thank you for being my friend for thirty-five years. I’m glad you had good enough sense to marry my college roommate. Thanks for the wonderful, surprising godchildren. Thank you for correcting me when I call things “retarded” by telling me how “gay” that sounds. I’m sorry I punched you in the face in the 5th grade. Thank you for out-reading, out-writing, and out-drawing me. Thank you for letting me be a part of your family.

Just, well, thanks.

And I hope you love the cake, however it turns out.

Butterscotch Protein Frosting:

Frosts on 9″ x 9″ round layer cake. Double the amount for a 14″ square cake. You do the math, since I can’t.

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter

2 cups light brown sugar

8 tablespoons whole milk

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup soy protein powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

a heavy pinch of salt

Preparation:

1. In a heavy-bottomed, medium-sized pan, melt the butter over low heat. Add brown sugar to the butter and bring to a bubbling boil, stirring constantly. Add milk and return to a boil, all the while stirring. About 2 to 3 minutes, or until the sugar has melted and the consistency is smooth.

2. Remove from heat and pour molten mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer with whisk attachment. Add vanilla and let cool to luke warm.

3. On the lowest speed, gradually add powdered sugar until all of your stash has been exhausted.

4. Panic.

5. Rifle through pantry. Locate protein powder.

6. Hastily measure out powder and add to frosting.

7. Taste.

8. Smirk.

9. Frost.

It’s Delightful, It’s Delicious, It’s de Luxembourg.

While chatting with a friend the other day over lunch, the conversation turned to travel– where we’ve been, where we’d like to go, etc.

“Have you ever been abroad?” I asked my friend in a tone not unlike a half-soused society matron at a garden party. He nodded. I was expecting him to mention one of the usual places one goes to expand one’s global horizons, like France, or Italy, or Japan.

“Well, I lived in Luxembourg for three years.”

This wasn’t the answer I had expected, which both threw me and delighted me at the same time.

“Luxembourg? Seriously?” I had to admit that, over the past forty years, I had never given that country the time of day, except perhaps in thinking that it’s name gave the Benelux countries a decidedly luxurious ring.

And all of a sudden, I needed to know more about the last remaining Grand Duchy in existence. “Do they have their own language or do they speak French or German? Are they called Luxembourgeois? Do they look like regular Europeans with ten fingers and ten toes and whatnot?” And, lastly, since this was lunch and I was very hungry, “What do people in Luxembourg eat?

My questions were patiently answered. They do speak French and German, but they have their own, distinct language– Luxembourgish. By the sound of things, however, the Luxembourgeoisie weren’t above borrowing the occasional cup of nouns from their neighbors.

The people, who look rather normal by European standards so I am told, are called Luxembourgers, and they eat very well, thank you very much.

“Is there a national dish?” I asked, which is a foolish question, given the fact that even the French or the Greeks or the Japanese would have trouble coming up with their own.

“Well, there’s Bounen,” he said. The sound that came out of his mouth was neither “boon-in” nor “bone-in”, but somewhere in between. “Basically, it’s beans and ham.” When I asked him how to spell it, he told me he was uncertain, since no Luxembourger he knew could spell  it either.

And so, there we were, waiting at the bar for a table on a busy Saturday afternoon, talking about Luxembourg. A glass of wine at my elbow, and interesting fellow to talk to, and a Cole Porter tune running through my head.

“Well, I guess I know what I’m writing about this week,” I said.

So here I am, writing about Bounen.

The dish itself is not called Bounen, but Bouneschlupp– Bounen is simply the Luxembourgish (Luxembourgers, please correct me if I am wrong on this and I will gladly update) word for beans. In this case, green beans. Bouneschlupp– green bean soup. With potatoes, bacon, and onions. To put it into terms that I could easily understand, from a cooking standpoint, at least, it’s a chowder– green bean chowder.

It might not be as elegant or interesting as other Luxembourger fare like Quetscheflued (plum tart) or Haam am Hée (Ham in hay– I really wanted to try this one, but hay is hard to come by on short notice). It’s hearty and, in the wrong hands, downright homely, but it is immensely satisfying.

To mangle that Cole Porter tune that was invading my head over lunch, it’s delightful, it’s delicious, and it’s, well, de-Luxembourg.

Bouneshlupp

Serves 4 to 6 Luxembourgers

There does not seem to be one go-to recipe for this chowdery soup, which isn’t surprising, given the fact that there isn’t one go-to spelling for the dish itself. Does one spell it Bouneschlupp, or Bou’neschlupp? It doesn’t matter too much, given the fact that there are two generations of Luxembourgers who have can’t manage to spell their own language, thanks to a government decision to teach only German and French in school and leave the native language for home use. Thanks to a healthy increase in good sense and national pride, that seems to have changed.

This is essentially a culling of various recipes. Some looked very bland– calling for little more than the beans, bacon, potatoes, and water; others entirely too complicated, with far too many ingredients for a soup as simple and humble as this is and, as far as I can tell, should be. Some folks thicken theirs with flour, some with fresh cream, others with sour cream.

After making the Bouneschlupp, I offered to drop some off to my friend who lead me to the discovery of Luxembourger cuisine in the first place. He reminded me that he has never actually tasted it. I must have missed that part. So there went my expert Bouneschlupp opinion.

It doesn’t matter, really. Make up your own Bouneschlupp. Given the fact that there are fewer Luxembourgers than there are San Franciscans and nearly 6.8 billion people in the world, you’ve got a .oo73% chance of knowing someone who is going to tell you you’ve made it wrong.

Ingredients:

4 cups fresh green beans, cut into bite-sized pieces, with the ends trimmed (about a pound)

2 cups waxy potatoes, cleaned and medium diced (about two, medium-sized ones)

4 pieces of thickly sliced bacon, diced

6 cups of cold water

1 medium-sized  carrot, finely diced

1 large shallot, finely diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Salt and pepper

2 to 3 tablespoons sour cream

Chives, minced

Sausage (optional). Non-spicy, humble, German-style sausage.

Preparation:

1. In a heavy-bottomed Dutch or Luxembourgish oven, cook bacon bits over medium heat until browned and crispy. If using sausage, throw that in, too, and brown. Drain meat, reserving the fat. Set bacon and sausage aside.

2. Return meat fat to the pot, add carrots and shallot (which, incidentally, I just learned is correctly pronounced sha-LOT, and not the other way around [thank you Renée]), and cook gently until translucent– about 3 minutes. You’re not looking to give them color, you’re just mellowing them. Add garlic at the end, stir a moment or two, then add beans.

3. Cover vegetables with cold water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, covered with a snug lid. Many recipes will call for heavily salted water at this point. I prefer doing my serious seasoning at the end. The meat fat will be salty, remember. Add about half the bacon now, for flavoring purposes, reserving the other half for future, crunchy garnishing purposes. Cook for about 30 minutes.

4. Add potatoes to the pot and stir them in. Simmer for another 40 minutes, covered, or until potatoes are very tender. Salt and pepper to your heart’s desire.

5. Turn off heat. If using sausage, bury it within the Bouneschlupp, to warm. Before serving add sour cream, stirring it in gently in order to not totally destroy the now-delicate potatoes. Though some people prefer to thicken their soup with flour, I find that the starch from the potatoes, plus a little help from sour cream, gives the soup all the body it needs.

6. Remove sausage from pot and slice. Ladle soup into bowls, top with sliced sausage, and sprinkle with chives. Serve with crusty bread and presto! You’ll feel like you’re back in Luxembourg City with the old gang, talking of the good old days of Grand Duchess Charlotte and not caring that there isn’t a single university in the land wherein one might earn a degree in Luxembourgish linguistics.

Gudden appetit! Or however one chooses to spell it.

Of Ice and Men

Can you tell what is in the foreground of this blurry little image, shining like a diamond? It’s not a real diamond, you know. It is a piece of ice. Not just some run-of-the-mill, made by a cold, inhuman machine kind of ice. It isn’t even technically an iced cube and don’t you dare to call it one. It is, to my eyes at least, the Hope Diamond of frozen liquids. Why? Because it has given me 20 glimmering karats of hope at the end of a rather traumatic afternoon, that’s why.

It is a Gläce ice sphere (US $8.00). Hand carved and smoothed by a genuine, thinking, living, feeling person. And it doesn’t hurt that it happens to be the sexiest ice cube sphere I have ever laid my now-swollen eyes upon. Or arched a carefully-shaped eyebrow over. Just ask any Playboy Bunny. She can tell you a thing or two about sexy ice. Or the need for a stiff drink.

It is also emblematic of why I am finding it so difficult to pay my rent this month. I see sparkly things and simply must have them.

I’m sure my landlord can understand. It’s been a hard month for a lot of people, but especially for me– turning 40 absolutely does things to a person. The body begins to sag in unfortunate places and sprout hair in others. Action must be taken: an injection here, a little waxing there, and everything old is new again.

Or should be.

Never trust an aesthetician who accepts coupons. Or is unable to speak fluent English. Or suffers from pre-operable glaucoma. And never, ever, ever pay up front. Or in cash. It is a mistake I won’t make twice, believe me. What should have been a short, happy trip to the Fountain of Youth (one that might finally help me snag the rich, attractive, available doctor or lawyer that I am positively destined to snag) took a sharp detour into hell. At one point in my day, I thought I might have need of both a doctor and a lawyer. Of course, in my current state, I can no longer afford either of them.

And this is why I am sitting here in the middle of the afternoon, drowning my sorrows in a top shelf cocktail with only a bartender and an $8 piece of ice to console me:

“Should I not be able to feel my mouth like this?” I asked the woman who had recently finished jabbing my lips with a hypodermic needle and had since moved on to the slightly less sensitive area of my soon-to-be-smooth brow. At least that’s what I meant to say. To my great shock, I simply could not move my lips! The words I spoke came out sounding like gibberish. Not unlike my aesthetician, who muttered a string of mostly unintelligible words that sounded like something in the way of a vague apology when she looked closely at her handiwork after re-examining the vials of Botox and collagen she had apparently confused with each other.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “It don’t last long. A couple of weeks.” Apart from her demand to be paid up front, it was the one thing she said that I clearly understood.

That un-American creature botoxed my lips! I slapped my forehead in disbelief only to find the travel time from hand to head had been significantly shortened. Collagen! She then proceeded to click open the garage door of her “office” and motioned for me to leave. I should have know better than to trust any place of beauty business that smells of motor oil. And is completely devoid of mirrors.

I felt a bit nervous being out on the street in such a condition. Was my face hopelessly ruined? Was I now (temporarily, thank God!) some sort of freak? Would I frighten small children? The last part I was more or less fine with, since children typically frighten me, and the evening of such a score was the only solace I could take from my current state of being.

I did what any sensible person would do in this situation: I put on my most dramatic pair of Jackie O sunglasses ($250 from Nina Ricci we share the same birthday, you know. Jackie and I. I don’t know about Nina.) and went for a cautious stroll. I gathered up enough courage to examined my new self in the nearest reflection which, as fortune would have it, was a streak-free plate glass window fronting the Christofle store on Grant Avenue. Christofle! A sign from heaven!

The damage was not as severe as I would have imagined. My forehead had turned into something akin to a fivehead, to be sure, but the sunglasses helped to disguise it. Besides, I thought, I’m a man. The brow-increase might just make me look as though I had extra brain capacity, with room to grow. And the lips? They drooped and were– for the time being– essentially useless, but the overall look was rather French and therefore exotic. I could absolutely make this new look work for me.

I was, however, exhausted and just a tad on edge from my aesthetic experience. With the exception of those directly connected to my lips, every nerve in my body was afire. I needed a drink. A strong one. But how on earth could I get that calming dose of alcohol into my system if I couldn’t even manage to lift my upper lip?

Fortunately, Christofle thinks of everything! Though my speech was a terrible, slurry mess (remember, I did look French, so I managed to pull that off beautifully), I managed to convey my needs to the shop girl by performing what I imagined to be the universal charade clues for the words “drink” and “suck.” She smiled and raised her eyebrows in a way I can no longer manage, disappeared for a moment, and returned with just the thing I needed– not one, but two sterling silver champagne straws from their Fidélio collection ($165 per pair). Two! I took this as a sign from God that, not only was I going to get my much-deserved drink, but that I was about to find that rich man to suck it all down with, to boot!

I didn’t even wait for the girl to wrap my purchase. I headed for the nearest, nicest bar– a restaurant bar; one with leather seats and flattering lighting, naturally– and ordered what any young, handsome, cosmopolitan French-looking man would at two in the afternoon: that’s right, a Cosmo! Not just any Cosmo, mind you, but a Grey Goose Orange Cosmo, because I’m not stupid. Knowing instinctively that Grey Goose is a French vodka, I would have pronounced it oh-rahnzh, had my mouth been cooperative. Instead, I ingeniously wrote my order onto a cocktail napkin with my Mont Blanc Bohème Arabesque Pen (don’t even ask how much that was), making certain that the “n” in Orange look as much like a French “n” as I could without being too obvious.

“I can tell you are a man of,” the bartender paused a moment here, “refined tastes. Perhaps you would like me to chill that down with the most beautiful, hand crafted ice that money can buy?”

The most beautiful ice money can buy? How could I refuse? Especially since, if I played my cards right, I would end up having another, richer man buying me round after round of luxury cocktails. I needed to be pampered. I needed to be taken care of. I needed that ice! However, given my current inability to register any sort of emotion other than pouting disappointment on my face, I must have looked somewhat nonplussed, so the bartender added:

“According to their product page, ‘The presence of minerals, additives and other pollutants found in artesian sources may contaminate the taste on premium liquors and drinks. That is why Gläce is made with purified water to ensure its tasteless quality.’”

I was livid at the thought that, for all these years, my premium liquors were beingcontaminated by additives and pollutants! Just the thought that I was innocentlyputting such horrible things into my body made my forehead bulge with rage. Though at the moment not fully able, I was both ready and willing to pay for premium ice. At that point I was willing to pay anything for tasteless quality.

He then asked for my patience as he removed a piece of that gorgeous 2.5′ diameterice of crystalized, purified water from its elegant packaging and lowered it into my martini glass, stating that the ice “sphere” must be “aged” for a period of three to four minutes to “acclimate to room temperature and cause a frost to form on the surface.”

The bartender, sensitive to my needs as all good ones are, saw the alarm registering upon my face. How he managed to do so under the circumstances is a testament to his subtle powers of observation. He then said, “Of course, if you don’t want to wait that long (and who in his right mind would, after a day like I’dhad?), I could just pour your drink over it right now.”

I sat for a brief moment looking at that beautiful orb of frozen water shining up at me like like a diamond. It was then that I christened my particular sphere the “Hope Diamond,” which was, apart from the Koh-i-Noor, the biggest, most beautiful diamond I could think of. So what if the Hope diamond is blue. So is water, which is what the damned ice cube sphere is made of. So what if the Hope diamond is famously cursed. Look at Liz Taylor! She once owned the thing and shewon two Oscars! And had 127 husbands! Apart from all that has happened to me today, I am feeling lucky. I am positively filled with hope. Especially since a rather handsome gentleman in an expensive-looking suit has just seated himself at the bar, just across from me.

I gave the the bartender the international hand sign for “Just pour me the fucking drink.”

As he poured, he said, “Just see what happens now…. watch the ice ‘crackle’ and ’spider’ but not fall apart!” I wish to God he had warned me. My beautiful diamond crackled and spidered! I loathe flaws of any kind. Especially crackles, which are precisely what got me into this particular situation in the first place. My lovely Hope diamond was now hopelessly ruined, worthless.

Or was it? Earlier that afternoon, I had thought my beautiful-but-(slightly)-aging face was ruined, but I survived! I was strong. I realized that if I could make an outsized brow and paralytic lips work in my favor, than I could make this expensive, “spidered” chunk of ice work to my advantage. Like me, it hadn’t broken apart– it was still doing what it was meant to do and I was doing the same!

I pulled a Christofle champagne straw from my Jack Spade Crown Twill Haversack messenger bag ($365). As I placed one end of the straw into the martini glass, I playfully nudged the ice about. I then lowered myself seductively towards the cocktail and carefully slipped the other end of the straw between my lips. It was then that I noticed the handsome man in the suit watching me. He smiled. If I didn’t know any better, I might even say he looked shocked.

My plan was working!

“Sterling silver champagne straws are sexy,” I thought to myself. “Luxury ice is sexy. I am sexy. Now get to work!.” I sucked at the straw a little harder, hoping to fill myself with a bit of extra liquid courage before making my next move.

I motioned the bartender towards me and, with a flick of my head in the direction of the suited man, I indicated that I would like to buy him a drink. Then by giving my head a sharp dip towards my glass, I signaled that I should very much like his drink to be cooled by a hunk of $8 ice. I complimented myself on having the forethought to remove the straw from my mouth before making that last gesture.

And then, slowly and seductively, I reached back into my bag, gently placed the second straw on the bar, and playfully patted the bar stool next to me. Who in their right mind could refuse an offer like that? I would have smiled at him if that were at all possible but, knowing full well how absolutely French I looked, I was full of hope that the next round of drinks was going to be on him. If I played my cards right, he might just pick up the whole tab.

Or even pay off my landlord.

If he sits next to me, I won’t speak a word, but only because I can’t. Instead, I will subtly mime to the bartender that I would like him to repeat his story about the Gläce spheres. If I could speak with any sort of clarity at all, I would certainly do so myself, alluding to my own, special tasteless qualities. The ones that allow me to enhance the specialness of other, richer men without diluting or polluting their strength or unique character. I’m good like that, you know.

Fortunately, I’m very good with my hands. More than once they have been called “expressive” and “artistic”. I’ll just maneuver that big hunk of ice around my glass and mesmerize him with my technique. I don’t need words to prove to anyone I’m tasteless. He’ll get the picture.

And the bar tab.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Of course, none of this is true. Except for the ice. The ice is real. I just couldn’t think who would be stupid enough to buy an $8 piece of frozen water, hand-crafted or no. So I decided to become someone stupid enough to do so. I thought about all those creepy men and women who come to roost on the barstools at my place of work night after night– the plumped-up women, the obnoxious men– all money talk and air kisses. They would be stupid (and rich) enough to buy and $8 ice cube sphere. So I decided to pretend I was one of them.

Then I immediately took a shower to scrub the “eew” off.

I think I might need a vacation.

Skordalia: I Make You Some

Skordalia. Skor-dahl-YA. Please say it with me, because it is a word one should know, use, and use often. It is from the Greek skordalia, in case you were wondering.

Made from potatoes, olive oil, garlic, and more garlic, skordalia is a purée that may be served as a dip for bread or, even better, as an accompaniment to fried fish or roasted beets. To me, it pretty much sums up the Greeks’ love of soft food, which may or may not have derived from earlier times of poverty, when, as a subject nation to the Ottomans, good dental care was difficult to come by.

That is just a theory, however, and completely my own.

Okay, I Make You Some!

A couple of years ago, while sailing through the Cyclades, seven friends, our game-for-anything Kiwi sea captain, and I dropped anchor in a little port town on the island of Iraklia. After a full, hard day of sailing and gin-and-tonic drinking, we found ourselves extremely hungry, but without many dining options, thanks to our arriving very late in the season. By late September, a lot of Greek islanders tend to pack up their things and head for Athens to ride out the boredom of Winter.

Near the top of a little hill above the harbor, we found a pleasant, brightly lit taverna, half-filled with what was left of the tourist trade and what was left of the locals. Perfect, we thought, and enough room to pull together a table for nine. As we looked over the menu posted in front of the entrance, my friend Gary noticed something in the distance.

He pointed to a bit of curling smoke that was coming from behind the scrubby, parched bushes several yards up the hill. I was intrigued, too. In my hunger-fueled imagination, those curls of smoke reached out to us with long, wispy cartoon fingers and pulled three of us by the nostrils further up the way.

What we found was another taverna– dimly lit and much less crowded, unless one counts the two dozen or so cats roaming about, aggressively begging for food. We were greeted both by the smell of a whole lamb roasting– unmanned– over an open fire, and the shrill yell of a very tan, very blonde Greek woman. Her ire was cast in the direction of a very tan, very not-blond Greek boy. She pointed to the lamb as she yelled. He withered, made his way over to the rotisserie, and started to slowly turn the crank; sulking and looking at the lamb as though he felt it had fully deserved its death, but angered by the fact that he was the one chosen to carry out the disposal of its remains.

“Oh, God. We have to eat here,” was what one of us said. It doesn’t matter which of us said it, because that was precisely what we were all thinking.

Slow-roasted lamb and drama. It had all the delicious possibility of a dinner theatre specializing in Greek tragedy. We headed back to the other taverna to share our discovery. The rest of our crew, however, were already seated and drinking, therefore unmoveable. They saw no reason on earth that they should pull themselves away from their beers and their sunset view, even if the sun might have been setting over the other side of the island. Their loss, I thought, as Gary, Bill, and I walked back to the cat-infested place.

Apart from having to throw the occasional cat off the table, our dinner was marvelous. We dined off of the slow, grudgingly-roasted fruits of Greek child labor served over roasted potatoes with lemon and lamb drippings, local octopus, and little fried fish called athirina, which nearly infested the harbor’s water.

It was the fried fish that caught my attention. Where I work, we do the same thing with smelt– dredging them in chickpea flour and frying them until crisp. Tossed with fresh lemon juice, salt, and parsley, we place a big pile of them on a blue plate (shaped like a fish, appropriately enough) and serve them with a big dollop of skordalia to drag them through. When the blonde, big-lunged proprietress brought the fried fish to our table, they were accompanied solely by two wedges of lemon, leading to a profound sense of disappointment on my end. I had just assumed that they would come with that sharply garlicky dip.

“No skordalia?” I asked. I wanted to sound disappointed– as though I had traveled 7,000 miles to come to this particular island, to sit among these particular semi-feral cats, to eat of this particular woman’s famous garlic dip.

“No, no skordalia,” she said. “The people,” she gesticulated with a sweep of her bronzed arms as though to suggest the other diners, both real and imagined, “they do not like so much garlic.” I wondered if she was specifically referring to the older German couple we had earlier mistaken for an ancient sea captain and his long-suffering wife. Inwardly, I blamed them.

“Well, I do. I love skordalia,” I said.

“You do?” Her eyes widened a bit, she hunched over a bit in my direction, and with a big smile on her face said, “Okay, I make you some!” She punched an index finger upwards as she said it, which added a nice visual exclamation mark to the end of that particular sentence.

From our table, she dashed of into the kitchen, yelling something again to her child as she went. A couple minutes later, we could hear the whirring of a blender. We occupied ourselves in the mean time by elbowing cats from the table and off our laps. Shortly thereafter, the woman reappeared at our table with a bowl of fresh skordalia. “Kalisas orexi!” she said rather formally, wishing us good eating. And on that note, she turned on her heel and headed back inside with a noticeably lighter step and an audibly more gentle calling out to her child/slave. Or so it seemed to me.

We were left with enough skordalia to drag a whole harbor’s worth of fried fish through. I was worried that, if we didn’t finish the whole thing, we might offend our hostess. No matter, really. I was delighted, she was delighted and, most of all, I think, those cats were  delighted when we coated what was left of that pile of fish in gobs of skordalia and threw bits into the shrubbery for them to fight over when no one was looking. Everybody was happy.

And now, I make you some.

Skordalia with Roasted Beets

Serves 2 to  4 people, 20 to 40 cats.

Since I was too lazy to trawl San Francisco Bay for small, edible fish, I did the next best thing, which was trawl the Tuesday farmer’s market for small, edible beets, which are conveniently in season and– even more conveniently– traditionally served with skordalia.

For the skordalia:

About 1 pound of Russet potatoes, well scrubbed

1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt, plus a scant handful for the potato water

8 to 10 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup blanched almonds, whole or slivers

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil. Use Greek to keep in theme. Other nations’ oils will do just fine, too, but the Greeks, you know, invented olive oil, just like they invented everything.

1/2 cup water (I use the water from the potato boiling pot.)

The juice of one lemon

4 to 5 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Freshly ground pepper, to taste

For the beets:

1 pound of beets, scrubbed clean and the ends trimmed. I have used chioggia and golden beets in this particular case, because they are delightful, namely for their reluctance to stain my hands red.

About 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil.

A good pinch of kosher salt

A slightly less-good pinch of cinnamon

Preparation:

1. On a foil-lined baking sheet, toss beets in oil, salt, and cinnamon, making sure they are all well-coated. Place beets on the middle rack of an oven that has been pre-heated to 350 F. Roast until tender, which will depend upon the size of your beets. These took about 35 minutes.

2. While beets are roasting, place potatoes is a large pot of generously salted water and bring to a boil. Cook until tender (when a knife blade slips easily into the center of one).

3. While the beets are roasting and the potatoes boiling, combine garlic and olive oil in a food processor, slowly adding 1/2 cup of olive oil as you go. Since one is not making an emulsion, one need not worry about pouring to quickly or too slowly. Just blend until a smooth consistency is achieved. Set aside.

4. Reserving 1/2 cup of the potato water, drain the potatoes, let cool for a few moments, then rubs them free of their jackets in a clean towel. Roughly chop the potatoes and press them through a potato ricer or mash them manually. Do not, however, try to blend them in your food processor or they will get all gummy on your ass. Rice them into a large, clean bowl.

5. Add the garlic/almond mixture to the potatoes while the potatoes are still warm and combine; adding the lemon juice, potato water, salt, and vinegar as you go. Add pepper and more salt, if necessary, to taste.

Congratulations– you now have your very own skordalia.

7. Remove beets from the oven when tender. Let stand a few minutes to cool slightly, then peel and cut to whatever size you desire them to be. Return the beets to the olive oil/salt/cinnamon-dirtied sheet pan and coat them once again in that particular goop. Add a touch more salt and cinnamon, if desired.

8. To serve, spoon a heaping tablespoon or so of skordalia onto a small plate or other serving dish, using to back of the spoon to then “frost” the plate with a layer of the stuff. Place beets (best if slightly warm, but just swell in a cooler state) over the top. Garnish if you wish, yell at a small  child if one is in the vicinity, and serve.

Kalter Hund: Spanking Fresh

Sometimes, things have a way of just happening to you. When I woke up one morning several weeks ago, I found myself looking forward to a lazy Sunday afternoon, followed by an evening of cocktails, theater, and dinner with a few friends.  If I had any plans apart from those, they were small ones– like wandering down the street to get coffee or sending off a few emails. Not once did I think to myself, “I think I’ll go get horse whipped by a severe-looking woman in a vinyl bustier and a Betty Page haircut.”

But that is precisely what happened.

Slap Happy

After a glass of prosecco and a few snacks at Bar Bambino, my friends and I trundled off to Hypnodrome  to see Pearls Over Shanghai– the lurid, acid-trippy faux-operetta originally conceived by the drug-addled minds of The Cockettes in the early 1970’s. I was prepared to be pleasantly horrified by bad acting, singing, and stage production. I was wrong on all counts. The show was hilarious.

We said as much at the intermission, when we stood about sipping white wine, as theater-goers do. It was then that one of the characters from the play stood center stage, slapped a riding crop against her thigh, and announced that she was looking for someone to whip. My friend Gary, who has never in his life suffered from an inability to make himself heard, pointed at me and told the dominatrix that it was my 40th birthday. People began to chant something– I can no longer remember what– and the next thing I knew, I was on stage, told to remove my wallet from my back pocket, and compelled to get down on all fours.

I had expected some tame, playful ass-slapping, since this was theater and theater is based on illusion. Or so I thought. I have since altered my theory about the dramatic arts. The woman whipped me hard, and then whipped me some more. When she stopped, I stood up– sore and humiliated. “Get back down, mister, we’re not done.”

Back on my knees, the dominatrix asked the audience to count along with her to the number ten. She had previously given me thirty whacks. Since I was turning forty, she said she needed to give me ten more. As the count grew higher, so did the intensity of the whipping. There I was, on hands and knees and in a surprising amount of pain for the benefit of the audience. I have the feeling that the tune “Happy Birthday was sung to me, but I was too much in shock to remember. When I was released from my torture, the audience clapped loudly, videos and photos were uploaded onto Facebook and Youtube, and I smiled as my bottom throbbed. I spent the rest of the show shifting in my seat in fascinated discomfort.

It seems I will do anything for applause.

Cold Comfort

After a session of severe whipping by a dominatrix, only dinner at a severe, East German restaurant would do, so we wandered into Walzwerk without reservations. I secretly hoped we might be chastised or otherwise humiliated by the Walzwerk staff for our lack of forethought and organization, but nothing of the sort happened. We were, however, welcomed and treated very well. As we stuffed ourselves with beet soup and wursts and beer, I considered the creamed herring on the table and wondered if it would somehow make a cooler, more comforting salve for my particular physical complaint than the mustard that stood next to it. I decided not to experiment with either at the table.

After our plates were cleared, our server asked if there was room for a bit of dessert. As most of us groaned, one of our party did the simultaneous finger pointing while silently, but dramatically mouthing the words “It’s his birthdaaaayyyyyy” that I see people do nearly every night in my particular line of work.

“Great!” our server said, “I’ll send you out a little something.”

That something was a slice of layer cake made of chocolate and butter cookies. “It’s called Cold Dog”, she said, “Kalter Hund.” Where the name came from I don’t know, but it was memorable. It was delicious, rich, and something I’d never before encountered, not unlike a riding crop (minus the rich and delicious). However, when “Happy Birthday” was sung to me for the second time that evening, I was filled with happiness instead of pain, and the  cheeks that had turned red only a few hours before were finally upstaged by the redness of the other, more visible pair now flush with beer, and music, and the sweet afterglow of a birthday spent with old friends.

And, before you ask… No, I will not send you the Youtube link to the spanking video.

Kalter Hund mit Schlag

Makes one loaf.

This is a very simple dessert to prepare, and one that requires no baking, which makes it even better in my book.

If you’re looking  for the history of this dessert, I haven’t the faintest idea as to its origin. I recommend asking a German.

The addition of whipped is my own, though I somehow doubt I am the first to add it. It just makes sense, especially in my case. I look upon it as a sort of salve, given my experience. And it’s a great way to use up the extra coconut cream, not to mention a wonderful way to conjure up a bit of violent imagery.

Ingredients:

1 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped

2 cups milk chocolate, chopped

3/4  cup cream of coconut (Goya brand works extremely well), using as much of the coconut fat as possible

1/2 cup heavy cream

A splash of rum or other chocolate-and-coconut-friendly liqueur.

Enough butter cookies/biscuits to line one’s loaf pan. I used Walkers short bread, because it is my favorite*.

For the Schlag:

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 tablespoons cream of coconut, using the liquid portion only

sugar to taste (there is sugar in the coconut cream, so tread carefully)

Preparation:

1. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper (this is key to the dessert’s removal later).

2. In a double boiler, add both chocolates and melt. Stir in coconut fat/cream and heavy cream. Whisk gently until well-blended. Add your splash of booze, if desired, and gently whisk again.

3. Spoon enough of the chocolate mixture into the bottom of the loaf pan. Gently lay the cookies in an even layer across the chocolate. Cover with chocolate, add another layer of cookies. Repeat the process until you have reached the near-top of the loaf pan. Fill in any gaps with the remaining chocolate.

4. Cover and set pan in refrigerator for at least six hours. Better if left overnight.

5. For the whipped cream, whip the cream until soft peaks form, then add coconut cream. Whip some more, since this will certainly thin out the soft peaks. Taste. Adjust  the sugar level to your liking. I don’t recommend a very sweet cream since the dessert is extremely so.

To serve, slice thin (you really won’t need any more than a thin slice, I swear) pieces and dollop with cream. I like to eat mine while seated on one of those donut-shaped inflatable cushions, just to remind myself of my very special birthday evening.

*Walkers biscuits are much thicker than those traditionally used. Most Kalter Hund cakes have several layers of thin biscuits. Mine generated only three, but I am very comfortable with that number since I am not German.

Chilaquiles: A Cure for the End-of-Times Hangover.

Are you as tired of hearing about the End-of-Times as I am? If one is to believe all the hullabaloo, we humans have slightly more than 3 years to live until catastrophe strikes.

The ancient Egyptians predicted a great disaster would come in the year 2012, crazy present-day Belgians, Canadians, and Americans are forming survival groups to prepare for total global meltdown in the same year. Even the folks at N.A.S.A. are all predicting a sharp increase in the number of sun flares and sunspots in 2012. Nostradamus, unsurprisingly, got in on the act, too. Of course, if one writes several hundred vague quatrains promising future doom and gloom, some of them are bound to hit on something gruesome.

Perhaps the biggest fuss of all is being made by the Chicken Littles (or Chickens Little, if Little is a family name) who point to the ancient Mayan calendar and claim that the sky is falling. Alarmists of several nations are pointing to the fact that the Mayan long count cycle will come to it’s 5,125-year end on or about the 21st of December, 2012.

I am no expert on the Mayan calendar but, having studied their art and pulled out most of my hair spending several months trying to remember Mayan names and the meaning of lord-knows-how-many Mayan glyphs in college, I came to learn that  there was no culture more accurate in their observation of the stars and the passage of time. Their calendar was long the most accurate that anyone had devised, pre-dating our Gregorian calendar by several centuries. It’s even believed they came up with the concept of the zero about 400 years before the mathematicians of India (though one must give the Sumerians their due for coming up with the zero first and blame others for promptly losing that knowledge.). In short, apart from the occasional thorn-spiked rope-through-the-tongue bloodletting business, the Mayans knew what the hell they were doing.

It’s just that they never said the end of this 5,125-ish-year cycle meant the end of the world. I think they just meant it will be the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. That’s it. One would think desperate Republicans would be latching on to this as they start gearing up for the 2012 presidential race. It wouldn’t be any more crazy then what the Doomsday survivalists are doing.

Where am I headed with this, you might ask? Well, all this End-of-Times crazy is driving me to drink, not that I need to be driven far. If I decide to buy into the brewing hysteria, I am liable to drown my sorrows in appropriately-themed Mexican cocktails.

If these kooks are correct and the end of the world is, in fact, nigh, I say drink up. Why worry about liver damage if the world is coming to an end? If they are wrong and the end isn’t so very nigh and I wake up to a clear sky and the sweet warbling of  Franklin Street  traffic on the 22nd of December, 2012, I am going to have one hell of a bad hangover. I’m going to need something to soak up three years-worth of margaritas.

I’m going to need chilaquiles– the sure-fire, Mexican breakfast of hung-over champions. And I’m going to need a lot of it.  I will be prepared. I will stock up like the survivalists on corn tortillas and red chili sauce. I will hoard cojita cheese.

If, for some reason, the Mayans were off by a day and the 22nd of December winds up being even more of a hell-on-earth than the Holiday season has already made that particular time of year, as long as I’ve had a heaping plate of chilaquiles, some fried eggs, and a few bites of beans, I’ll feel fine. Really, I will.

And then, if my pen has not yet vaporized or been covered in volcanic ash, I will write a rather contrite letter of apology to those not-so-crazy Doomsdayers.

Chilaquiles

According to Chow.com, the word “chilaquiles” refers to a “broken-up old sombrero.” This is, in my opinion, a direct and charming way of telling the reader that this dish is–though quite delicious in a functional, comforting sort of way–  not going to be very pretty. According to Urban Dictionary, “chilaquile” can be used as a substitute for nearly any noun, verb, or adjective. An extreme example, of course, would be “Those chilaquiles were so chilaquilin’ good that I nearly chilaquiled myself right there in the chilequile-ing restaurant.” In other words, a less direct and even less charming way of telling the reader that something is– though quite delicious in a functional, comforting sort of way–  not going to be very pretty.

This dish is very easy to make and very difficult to screw up. In other words, it’s the perfect thing to make when one is hung over. Combined with eggs (scramble or, better yet, fried), and a dollop of Mexican crema, this dish will soothe and soak up anything the past 5,125 years or so has thrown at you.

Serves 2 to 4, depending upon the size of the hangover.

Ingredients:

For the Chilaquiles:

12 corn tortillas. Stale ones are ideal, but if there is no such thing as a stale corn tortilla in your household or you would never admit to it, buy some fresh and leave them to sit out overnight.

Vegetable oil (preferably corn oil, which you can call maize oil, if that helps you in any way)

About 2 cups of some sort of Mexican cuisine-derived sauce. Elise Bauer over at Simply Recipes offers an excellent and, of course, simple salsa verde recipe for this particular dish; The Food Network, if you are into them at all, can provide you with a great red chili sauce. There is no one, correct sauce to use here. Experiment to find your favorite version*.

Toppings:

Popular toppings include:

Cojita cheese, or queso fresco

Crema Mexicana, or crème fraîche, if you want to re-visit the short-lived, ill-fated, French-backed Mexican Empire.

Finely diced red onion

A squeeze of lime

torn up bits of roasted chicken

Avocado

Cilantro

Tiny Mexican flags

Unpopular toppings include:

Spanish, Austrian, French, or U.S. flags of any size

Preparation:

1. Cover the bottom a good-sized (read: large, preferably cast iron) skillet with about 1/8 inch of oil. When the oil is hot and a test piece of tortilla sizzles, add its brother and sister pieces to the pan– making sure to coat all of them– and fry until golden brown. Remove tortillas from the pan and drain on paper towels. Salt them generously. Wipe pan to remove any stray, brown pieces of tortilla.

2. Add about 2 tablespoons of oil to the same pan and heat through. Pour in salsa and cook for a few minutes to thicken slightly, then add tortilla pieces. Make certain all the pieces are well-coated by turning them gently in the sauce. If you break a few, I dare say it shouldn’t matter much, given the dish’s likening to a broken-up old sombrero. Let the mixture cook until most of the sauce has been absorbed, which is not more than five minutes, but not less than two. Remove from heat.

4. Heap the now-ready chilaquiles onto a platter and garnish with any of the above garnishes you wish. Serve warm.

*In the true spirit of hangover food, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to purchase pre-made sauce. There are several good, reputable brands. Seriously. You can call me Sandra Lee if you want to, but unless you are the type (A) kind of personality who plans ahead for his/her hangovers, the fewer steps to breakfast, the better.