What Dreams May Come

Last weekend I had my neighbours over for breakfast and dinner. They've been flattering me since I sent over a plate of my chocolate chip cookies, made them some authentic fougasse, and asked them to sample my Thai-Mexican fried chicken.

To be complimented on my cooking by anyone is always a great treat for me, but to be complimented by French people makes me shy. I think it's because I am greatly inspired by American cuisine and naturally assume that French people won't appreciate it. I fry a lot. I use lots of flavour combinations not found in French cuisine. When I'm asked I refer to my cooking style as hodgepodge, a word that has no real translation in French but prompts me to attempt a poetic and delicious sounding explanation.

I didn't think anything about it when my neighbour started to ask me questions about what kind of a restaurant I'd want to open in Paris. What I would serve, when, how, and where. Then he told me he wanted to introduce me to his cousin who is looking to invest in a restaurant; how he's been talking about my cooking and thinks I'd be a brilliant choice to be its chef.

To be truthful I wish I'd answered his questions differently, but I didn't know it was a test of sorts. More than once I've leaned towards the idea that I should make my living involved with food - and in Brooklyn I did for four months. I ran a small take out place out of my loft. I had paid my rent for the year, had a little pocket money, and didn't really care about making a profit. I stuffed menus under the doors of my neighbours, many of whom had suggested I start a take out place after dinners at my place, and had so many orders the first week I had to put a badly hand painted "first come, first served" sign on my front door.

For one month my little takeout place (called Chez Ama) served something different every night until my customers started writing their requests on the menus. They wanted more fried chicken, chicken & sausage gumbo, lamb curry, and what they called my "fancy Chinese food" (which was just authentic Chinese food).

So before I meet with the cousin I need to get my thoughts in order.

If I could open my restaurant anywhere in Paris, anywhere at all, I'd want to have a lunch stall at the Marché des Enfants Rouges.

Located in the 3e arrondissement, between rue de Bretagne and rue Charlot, it's quite a happening spot. There's a few types of cuisine to choose from - couscous, Italian, Japanese, African - and lots of outdoor seating that means it's packed on nice days. The market closes before dinner, so lunch would be the only meal to serve, and because it's always packed the clientelle are more accepting of delays and hiccups.

It has its downsides as a location. The competition is delicious. My favourite Japanese restaurant would be one of them. I couldn't see the other restaurants being happy about a fusion cuisine restaurant when they're marketing themselves as authentic straightforward examples of the cuisines they offer. Plus the places in the market are expensive. The Japanese place offers a sort of bento lunch around 12,00 euros. It's not a lot of food for the money, but delicious and fresh and I don't mind shelling out for it now and then.

I could think of other locations where the lunch traffic would probably keep a restaurant in business even if the dinner crowd was much quieter, but dinner is more fun to cook.

And what would I cook? I think that depends on what I can find. I'd want to source locally. I wouldn't cook in season because the variety is limiting, but as locally as possible when possible. I'd offer two or three choices for entrees, plats, and desserts - with a few favourites always on the menu.

But the cooking would be home style. Nothing fancy or poofy or posh or chic just to jack the prices up. Just delicious food at reasonable prices using the full repetoire of my cooking abilities.

I'd serve American, French, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Indian, Lebanese, Filipino, Chinese, Moroccan, Italian, Japanese mixing up taste, ingredients, and cooking techniques. Food I'd serve at home to friends and with the same kind of feeling. Lots of mismatched dishes rescued from flea markets and sidewalk sales and thrift shops in a cosy room with large tables and comfortable chairs. I'd come out of the kitchen now and then, and wouldn't have to make excuses when the cooking drags me away like I do at home.

So if my blog strays from book talk to cook talk, it's because I'll be giving a lot of thought to the recipes I'd want to use. Maybe my dream will become reality. Maybe not. That's the beauty of food really. Even if taste testing everything means my bathroom scale might be groaning a bit more in the future.

Read more >>

Japanese Kare (Curry)

I'm a huge fan of Japanese kare. It is a staple of Japanese fast food and can be made at home quickly thanks to the pre-packaged bricks you can find in most Asian supermarkets. Just fry up some onions then brown some beef, potato cubes, and carrots, cook some rice and you've got a meal in under 45 minutes. But the pre-packaged curry is full of MSG and things with chemical sounding names. I wanted to see if I could make it from scratch.

I found plenty of recipes online for making kare roux from scratch. The overwhelming consensus in the twenty or so recipes I peeked at was to melt butter into flour, add spices, and heat to thicken up - much like making gravy.

The recipe I used called for:

3 T butter
1/4 cup flour
2 T garam masala
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 T of ketchup (or tomato paste)
1 T of tonkatsu sauce (or Worcestershire sauce)
Lots of fresh ground black pepper

But even glancing at the recipe I saw it had flaws, the first being, how much salt? The pre-packaged curry mixes are notoriously salty, using MSG to achieve the right salty taste. Japanese kare is greatly inspired by Indian curry and those call for plenty of salt too.

Now I used tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce, but as I tasted the curry there was another flavour missing. It didn't have that slight sweetness. Now ketchup would have sugar, as well as tonkatsu sauce, and maybe that explains why the sweetness was off?

It was also missing a sort of creaminess. I thought that the original recipe calling for butter instead of oil would give the kare its usual creamy taste, but it didn't.

I went back and peeked at the recipes again to fill in the gaps of the recipe.

A common ingredient in the other recipes was just straightforward curry powder. Garam masala is used to finish spicing curries in Indian cuisine and is combination of ground cloves, cinnamon, black & white cumin seeds, black & white pepper, and black, brown, & green cardamon pods.  Curry powder contains spices not included in garam masala such as ground coriander, turmeric, mustard seed, and ground ginger.

Truthfully to my palate the recipe I used as is was inedible. So inedible that I almost considered chucking it all together and making something else for dinner instead of the kimchi tonkatsu curry don (bread pork filets smothered with spicy curry and served with rice and kimchi that is served in fast food joints and street food stalls in both Korea and Japan) I was looking forward to. In the end I decided to try and save it. Here's what I consider an improved upon recipe, that is even more flavourful than the packaged stuff, and better for you too.

3 T butter
1/4 c. flour
1 tsp curry powder

1. Dissolve the flour and curry powder in the butter over very low heat.  Once you have a "paste", add:

1/2 c finely minced onions
3 cloves finely minced garlic
1 inch of finely ground ginger
1 T sugar

2. Fry over low heat until fragrant and add:

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or more or less depending on your tastes, but it should be spicy)

3. Slowly add 1 1/2 - 2 c. chicken stock, making sure to slowly dissolve the paste into the liquid. Stir constantly over med-low heat, until the curry thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Stir in garam masala, 2 T of whole milk, and remove from heat.

4. Set aside uncovered, stir occasionally until curry cools completely.

5. Prepare whatever you will serve the curry with.

* If you want to make tonkatsu kare,  salt the pork filets and let sit in the fridge for an hour before dipping them in egg wash and coating them with a nice coating of panko (Japanese style breadcrumbs), and fry in sunflower oil until golden brown and cooked through. Let pork filet rest about 10 minutes.

Serve in a large bowl with a rounded scoop of rice (I pack rice into rice bowls and then overturn them into the serving bowl), cut breaded pork filets into strips, scoop the kare into the bowl around the rice, and garnish with pork strips (and kimchi).

** If you want Japanese beef kare, peel and halve an onion and cut into thin half moon slices. Saute the onions in 1 T of sunflower oil, add beef and brown, followed by potatoes and carrots. Add the kare to the meat and vegetables, and let simmer over low heat until potatoes and carrots are tender through. Serve with steamed rice and pickled radish.

Bon appetit or, rather,

잘 먹겠습니다 ! (jal meokkesseumnida)

どうぞめしあがれ ! (douzo meshiagare)

Read more >>

Carnitas and Roasted Pepper Mini Quesadillas with Fresh Salsa

{ In progress...}

Invited to the neighbours for appero, or French cocktail hour, I thought for a week about what to bring. I recently perfected my recipe for carnitas - deep fried chunks of pork that are then braised in the oven for hours until you can shred the tender bits of meet apart with a fork that you then broil so the fatty bits get crunchy under the broiler - and I knew I wanted to test it on some new palates.

But carnitas is usually served in tacos, so my first thought was to make mini-tacos. I made the carnitas and salsa fresco last night because both taste better the 2nd day, and woke up this morning to make my mini tortillas, which turned out so cute I don't want to fold them in half.

Here they are fresh from the pan.

And here there are with my cheap IKEA silverware to show you how small they are.

Also, where is this world of single socks and vanished teaspoons? I have 24 forks, butter knives, and soup spoons but 5 teaspoons. Am I the only one this happens to?

 So now I've decided to make open quesadillas. I'll spoon a bit of carnitas topped with the roasted peppers, a bit of grated smoked gouda, and then top with chilled salsa right before serving.

 I rolled out my tortilla dough and used a jar cover to make the shape of my mini tortillas, so I have lots of scraps left over. I'm going to roll this dough as well, bake them, and serve as chips with the rest of the salsa fresco and the guacamole.

Flour Tortillas

The pork I bought to make the carnitas happened to come with a nice strip of pork fat wrapped around it that I rendered last night to have it nice and solid by this morning.  Rendering fat is as easy as heating it up and letting it boil down.  From about 25 grams of pork fat I rendered 5 tablespoons of lard, which I then used to make the tortillas because lard gives the tortillas the best taste.

4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 Tablespoons lard (canola oil or room temperature butter also work)
1 1/2 cups warm water

Whisk together the salt, baking powder, and flour.

Work the lard (or other fat) with your hands until it has a cornmeal consistency, and slowly add the warm water while working the flour with your hands, gathering it together and then "folding it over" until it becomes a nice soft ball of dough.

Let the dough rest 15 minutes and cut into 8 equal pieces.  Let dough rest another 15 minutes. Use a rolling pin to roll it out to desired thickness and shape.  Cook on dry griddle pan or cast iron frying pan until the dough puffs up and there are distinct little marks where the fat in the dough has been cooked by the heat. Turn over and repeat.

Store in a tortilla server if you have one or between slightly damp paper towels then wrap in foil.

Now if you want to make the mini tortillas follow all the steps but roll out your dough to maximize how many small circles you can get out of the dough (and if you're making chips later, save the scraps). Before re-rolling out any dough, give the dough 15 minutes to rest. Then cook your tortillas, etc. as normal.

I rolled these mini tortillas a bit thicker than I might if making regular sized tortillas because I wanted them to be able to hold the weight of the toppings and undercooked them just a tad because in the final step they'll be put on a cookie sheet to melt the cheese and the bottom of the tortilla will cook a little then as well.

Carnitas

This is a very complicated recipe and though I think I've perfected it, maybe not entirely yet. For example the recipe I've been working from definitely could be spruced up a bit. I'd like to make further adjustments, so perhaps you might want to incorporate some of these as well.

* I'd marinate the pork chunks in the spice rub for at least 8 hrs in the fridge on the chance it might give the meat a more seasoned taste.
* I'd discard more of the oil from the deep frying process, perhaps using it to fry something else for the same meal?
* I'd try braising the pork with something other than orange juice - Coke is often used in Mexico as well as Sprite, Fanta, and pineapple juice. I think the Fanta and Coke would probably have the best taste.
* I've pulled this out of the oven at the 2 hr and the original recipe's 4 hr mark. I would say 3 hrs is probably just about the right amount of time. You get a better texture than 4 hrs of braising and better taste than just 2 hrs of braising.

Like I said, I've perfected a version, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement, so if you know of a more trusted recipe I'd use that and please, send me more recipes. Carnitas is one of my favourite things to eat.

Spice Rub:

1 kg (2.2 lbs) of boneless pork shoulder
2 T freshly ground cumin
2 T garlic powder
1 T salt
1 T cayenne pepper

1. Cut pork into cubes, rub with spices, and let sit in fridge for 8 hours - overnight (original recipe calls for 30 minutes, I don't think this is enough time).

2. After pork has marinated, pour 1/4 cup of oil (I use olive) into a Dutch oven (I use my old trusty Le Creuset) and heat oil until nearly smoking.

3. Adding pork in batches, fry the pork in oil until browned (fat will look crispy) and cooked through.  Remove cooked pork from oil and set aside while cooking the remaining pork.

4. Once all the pork has been fried, remove several spoonfuls of oil, and deglaze the Dutch oven with 1 cup orange juice (make sure to dissolve the brown bits).

5. Add the pork back to the orange juice mixture, add enough water to cover just about cover the meat, and let cook in oven 3 hrs at 200 degrees (C).

6. Remove the pork from the juice, shred with two forks, and toss with remaining juice from Dutch oven.  Broil shredded pork under the broiler until slightly crispy along the edges.

Serve with rice, tortillas, and other Mexican side dishes.

Read more >>

Ann Romney Wants Your Love

I don't normally get political, but I wanted to point out something interesting about the crowd during Ann Romney's speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now keep in mind, there has been a lot of fuss made recently about how the Republican Party does not actually like women (if you don't think it's obvious the Republican Party hates women just Google their views on abortion or birth control) and that (according to Ann Coulter) the best thing for America would be if women didn't have the right to vote (because women tend to vote for Democrats).  There's also been some worry that women don't like Ann Romney. Apparently they're worried about whether men like her too.

Take a look at this shot of the crowd as Ann Romney takes to the podium to make her speech. Only two signs for Mitt. The rest of the signs say either "We Love Ann" or "Women Love Ann".

Here's a close up of one particularly interesting group of sign holders:

 

A woman holding a "Women Love Ann" poster is surrounded by four men holding "We Love Ann" posters.

Nothing odd about that right?

Until the camera pans the cheap seats.

 

Three more posters that say "Women Love Ann", none of which are being held up by women. Maybe the Republican Party thinks women aren't strong enough to hold up their own signs.

 

Sorry, make that four.

Oh and let's not forget this guy.

Oh and these other seven guys love Ann too.

You know who's not holding up a sign saying "we love Ann? Her own kids.Way to miss an opportunity there Romney Campaign Person who came up with this idea.

Ann Romney goes on to talk about her love for Mitt declaring "It's true that Mitt's been sex- is successful" (14:19 mark). Was she paying homage to Bushie Junior with a comedic stutterstammer or was it a Freudian slip to let America know Mitt would be open to gettin' a lil lovin' himself? Is this just another way in which Ann and Romney hope to swing the vote of the women who hate her and the men who hate him too?

Now here's the saddest part of all. Even the Republican Party doesn't love Ann.  Ann got a total of 22 minutes and 15 seconds at the podium (including introduction according to this video posted by gopconvention2012). The crowd at the convention cheered for Ann for 30 seconds before she spoke her first word on stage, but in total from her introduction until her speech actually began she received 1 minute and 10 seconds of "welcome". At the end of her speech despite Mitt coming along to take his girl safely back home from the stage while the Four Tops crooned "My Girl" (I guess Tom Morello stuck to his guns about not letting the Republican Party use Rage Against the Machine songs), they cheered a good 4 - 7 seconds less than when Ann first came out.

By comparison Michelle Obama got 54 seconds of cheers before she spoke her first word on stage, but in total from her introduction until her speech began (or actually when she had to force the crowd to stop cheering to let her speak as many chanted "four more years"), Michelle received 2 minutes and thirty-two seconds of modestly accepted cheers.  Towards the very end of Michelle's speech (the 28:11 mark of this video) the crowd started cheering and I don't know how long it went on for because the video cuts up mid-cheers.

Oh and in the "showing love through signage competition, there is little doubt about who won, signs up.

I get why women hate the Republican Party and Ann Romney.  She is out of touch with the average American woman.  She despite being a mother who puts family first has no problem with Mitt putting other women with children of their own in the unemployment line to pad Bain's bottom line.  She doesn't care what else Mitt or any of his cronies have done to make their stock options worth millions of dollars while feeling no sympathy that the average American family does not have such a profitable safety net.  Ann Romney thinks the epitome of what a woman should aspire to is to be a mother and obey her husband completely even if he believes that women shouldn't vote and that married women can't be raped by their husbands because they don't have a right to say "no".

And if it confuses you that Ann Romney talks about loving America in one breath and then says she hates poor people in the next, you're not the only one. Apparently Condelezza Rice finds these contradictory statements as confusing as the rest of us.

The bottom line is Ann Romney hates women, the Republican Party doesn't mind because they hate them even more than she does, but they're not so stupid as to deny that without the female vote Romney will not be the next President of the United States.

I encourage women to find out for themselves how little the Republican Party cares about women from their crusade to legislate our right to decide what to do with our own bodies to cutting funding that will directly impact the number of women who will be able to go on to college. No surprise there's even a website called Republicans Hate Women and while you shouldn't get all your news from one source, it's a good place to start.

Read more >>

Read JRR Tolkien's Roverandom

@alex********* Realise I have never #read any Tolkien. Should I? 

 Yes I said.

The Hobbit has the best first line ever.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Then I remembered the first Tolkien book I ever read, Roverandom, when after years of struggling against the geek tide I decided to read some Tolkien. It was in a pile of random books for 4 euros at one of the used English bookshops near Odeon. I bought it because the shop didn't have anything else by Tolkien and it was cheap.

Fourish years later, I'm better versed in the world of JRR Tolkien. I've read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and bits from The Simarillion. I know enough that I can see where Tolkien and fellow member of The Inklings, C.S. Lewis lifted (with permission) ideas from one another for Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia (though I prefer Tolkien's Ents to Lewis' sometimes treacherous trees). Still, I love Roverandom more than any other work of Tolkien's.

From the book's jacket:

While on holiday in 1925 young Michael Tolkien lost his beloved toy dog on the beach.

To console him, his father, J.R.R. Tolkien, invented a story about a real dog who is turned into a toy by a wizard and sent by a 'sand-sorcerer' to the moon and under the sea.

More than 70 years later, the adventures of the dog Rover, also known as 'Roverandom'...relate the story to sources ranging from the Norse sagas to E. Nesbit, and link it also to Tolkien's other fiction, including The Hobbit, the 'Father Christmas' letters, and The Simarillion.

The origin of the story gets more page space in the Introduction.

In the summer of 1925, JRR Tolkien, his wife Edith, and their sons John (nearly eight), Michael (nearly five), and Christopher (not yet one year old) went on holiday to Filey, a town on the Yorkshire coast which is still popular with tourists.  It was an unexpected holiday, in celebration of Tolkien's appointment as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, which he was to take up on 1 October that year; and it was perhaps intended as a period of rest for him before he not only assumed that post, but for two terms would continue to teach at the University of Leeds, as his old and new appointments overlapped.  For three or four weeks at Filey - as explained below, the dates are uncertain - the Tolkiens rented an Edwardian cottage which may have belonged to the local postmaster, built high on a cliff overlooking the beach and sea.  From this vantage point the view to the eat was unobstructed, and young John Tolkien was thrilled when for two or three beautiful evenings the full moon rose out of the sea and shone a silver path across the water.

At this time Michael Tolkien was extremely fond of a miniature toy dog, made of lead and painted black and white.  He ate with it and slept with it, and carried it around with him; he was reluctant to let it go even to have his hand washed.  But during the holiday at Filey he went for a walk with his father and elder brother, and in the excitement of skimming stones into the sea put his toy down, onto the beach of white shingle.  Against this background the tiny black and white dog became virtually invisible , and was lost.  Michael was heartbroken when his toy could not be found, although the two older boys and their father searched for it that day and the next.

The Introduction goes on the extent to which the story of Roverandom had on Tolkien's output after 1925 - parts of what would eventually be Roverandom appear in a story-letter Tolkien wrote to his children in December of 1927 under the guise of 'Father Christmas', a series of letters which he had begun writing in 1920 and would write until 1943.

The earliest extant text of Roverandom is one of four versions among the Tolkien papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.  One fifth of it has been lost, equivalent to the present chapter 1 and the first half of chapter 2.  The remainder is 22 pages possible torn from school exercise books with numerous emendations followed by three typewritten versions, likewise undated, in the course of which Tolkien progressively enlarged the story and made many improvements of expression and details but no major change of plot.  The first typescript, on thirty-nine heavily corrected pages, was closely based on the manuscript and has been of great help in deciphering the less legible parts of the earliest version. 

In 1936 Tolkien's manuscript for The Hobbit was accepted by the publishers George Allen & Unwin, and though it was not yet a success the publisher asked him to submit other children's stories.  He obliged by sending to Allen & Unwin his picture book Mr Bliss, his mock-medieval story Farmer Giles of Ham, and Roverandom.

Stanley Unwin gave Roverandom to his young son Rayner to appraise.  Rayner reported in January 1937 that he found the story "well written and amusing"; but despite his positive review it was no accepted for publication.  Roverandom was apparently one of the 'short fairy stories in various styles' that Tolkien had (it was thought) practically ready for publication in October 1937, was Stanley Unwin noted in a memo; but by the The Hobbit was so successful that Allen & Unwin wanted a sequel, with more about hobbits, above all else, and Roverandom seems never again to have been considered either by author or publisher.  Tolkien's attention was now directed towards 'the new Hobbit', the work that would become his masterpiece: The Lord of the Rings.

From Roverandom and the other stories that were popular with Tolkien's children came Tom Bombadil, who was based on a Dutch doll that belonged to Michael Tolkien. And Tolkien's style.  Here one can see Tolkien having a bit of fun.  His delight as he indulged in wordplay.  Near-homonyms like Persia and Pershore.  Onomatopoeia and alliteration galore - 'yaps and yelps, and yammers and yowls, growling and grizzling, whickering and whining, snickering and snarling, mumping and moaning'. Descriptive lists of humourous length - paraphernalia, insignia, symbols, memorandum, books of recipes, arcana, apparatus, and bags and bottles of miscellaneous spells.  Unexpected turns of phrase - "The Man-in-the-Moon vanished immediately into thin air; and anyone who has never been there will tell you how extremely thin the moon-air is".  Roverandom contains a number of 'childish colloquisms' - whizz, splosh, tummy, and umcomfy which are of particular interest for their like is rarely met with in Tolkien's published writings, having been omitted ab initio in his manuscripts or deleted in revision as tummy was altered in The Hobbit to stomach.  

It is here one can see where Tolkien drew his inspiration from - Norse sagas, the Red and White Dragons of British legend, Arthur and Merlin, mythical sea-dwellers abound, the Midgard serpent, the Psammead books of E. Nesbit, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and Sylvie and Bruno, even Gilbert and Sullivann.

With intending to I read Tolkien's works as I would recommend them - Roverandom, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. I know most would think The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings should be reversed, but because I had already seen the movies, I wanted to keep Bilbao's story a bit of a mystery. It might seem silly, but that's how I went about it even though I bought a copy of The Hobbit second and got a copy of Lord of the Rings fourth (I found a pdf of The Simarillion online third, but didn't poke through it too much as I was told to not read it before reading the The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings).

But my answer to the question of why one should absolutely read Tolkien is still Roverandom.  To start with Roverandom is to see Tolkien's own quest, so wonderfully and well-managed. It is undeniable that Tolkien started as a natural and gifted story teller, but it gives the first record of how Tolkien kept at it and persisted and became a legend of a writer.

Even having seen all of the films, I can honestly say that I loved reading Lord of the Rings. I found a few faults with it, mind you, but I loved opening the book and returning to Middle Earth. It gave me faith as a writer to be quite honest. It gave me hope that one day I might write a book that someone couldn't wait to get back to because let's face it, that's just about the best compliment you can give a book isn't it?

Roverandom also has some of Tolkien's most whimsical illustrations, here's the one from the cover.

This post made me want to read all of Tolkien's works again. I don't think this will be the last time I feel this way. 

Other posts about Tolkien on this blog:

- The Hobbit  

- Fairie Stories 

Read more >>

Real Fougasse

Being from the south of France one of my greatest disappointments about Paris is the lack of proper fougasse. There's only one boulangerie whose fougasse is slightly better than decent to me, aptly named La Fougasse on the rue de Bretagne in the Marais. All the others I've sampled in hope of finding a fougasse that would be a quick fix have been entirely in vain because yes, I am a snob when it comes to bread. And yes, I mean really, really snobby.

The truth is that lots of French boulangeries in Paris take the shortcut of serving up fougasse made with regular old baguette dough that is baked with a variety of ingredients and basted with poor quality olive oil. The key to fougasse, in the true Provencal tradition is that olive oil goes into the dough itself along with whatever garnishes you're using to make your fougasse. I looked at a great number of recipes online and let me just say, if you're adding sugar to your fougasse recipe or proofing your yeast with this same sugar and warm water, you are not making fougasse - you're making the Italian version of this bread called focaccia and while they share some similarities, the texture and taste is not the same.

What you rarely see outside of Provence is a type of sweet fougasse, which is one of the thirteen traditional desserts of an authentic Provencal Christmas known as le gros souper. These thirteen desserts are meant to represent Jesus and the twelve apostles and the desserts can vary, but I would find it a bit odd if sweet fougasse made with orange water weren't included along with the others. In my family it was an obligatoire part of les treize and it was absolutely pas d'accord to cut the fougasse with a knife (to protect oneself from financial ruin in the New Year is the superstition).

So tonight we're having dinner with our French neighbours, but I was told to cook nothing (which of course isn't polite to do) and I don't want to make anything that won't complement their meal, so I decided to make fougasse because well, honestly, there are few people who could out-fougasse me thanks to the patience of my grandmother who thought I should learn to make one of my favourite foods properly. I've been making savory fougasse for my family since I was six years old.

This is not a recipe to undertake if you don't have a mininum of 5 hours to kill. Yes, five hours. Much of that time will be spent waiting for your dough because the actually cooking only takes about 8 - 10 minutes. Make your dough as close to serving time as possible. Since we're expected at 7 o'clock I'll be pulling these out of the oven at about 6:45.

Now in terms of garnish - you can garnish savory fougasse with a lot of different vegetables, meats, cheeses, and spices but for today I've decided to make a more "modern" garnished fougasse along with the most traditional variety which is made with herbes de provence.

Since the garnished fougasse is a bit trickier, I'll focus on the process of making this style and add some notes for the traditional variety I mentioned earlier.

I've chosen to use spicy chorizo sausage, grilled red peppers, fresh sage, and mozzarella for my glitzy fougasse, all of which will need to be prepared to some extent.

The way I will list this recipe will be in terms of the time markers by hour.

Equipment:

Pastry knife or very sharp kitchen knife 
Rubber spatula 
Mixing bowls
Parchment paper
Clean dish towels
Baking sheet
Rolling pin

Mixer with bread hook can be used in place of the hand kneading technique I'll be using because I prefer the texture of the dough it gives and though exhausting, it's quite fun. 

Hour 0: 

Start the dough by mixing 165 g of bread flour with 165 ml of tepid water and 2 grams of yeast.
It will make a sort of liquid paste, which is exactly what you want. Let sit covered with a clean dish towel at room temperature for 2 hours.

Now I want to take this opportunity, from what I've seen on the Internet to explain a few things about flour and conversions.

In France there are many, many types of flour used in baking and an equally number of confusing numbers and words, etc. For this recipe you need T55 type flour, or bread flour, known in France as farine boulanger.

For conversion, which I hate to do because baking is meant to be precise and using the metric system is much better for baking, but for those of you without metric measuring cups or a scale, to calculate 165 g of bread flour = about 6 oz which = just shy of 1 3/4 c. This applies to water since the 165 ml = 165 g = just shy of 6 fluid ounces = just shy of 1 3/4 c of water.

2 grams of dry active yeast = .235 tablespoons or just shy of 3/4 tsp.

Here is a very helpful link for conversions that will be a big help for those of you switching between metric and imperial for cooking. 

Now that the dough has been started you have two hours to prepare the garnishes.

15 mins:

I've covered the dough mixture to let it sit for 2 hrs and set my alarm just in case. The peppers have been grilling at 250 degrees, halved, deseeded, but stem bit left on, and basted with olive oil for about 10 minutes. Once they start to burn up, I'll take them out, allow them to cool, and then chop them to the desired size.

I've picked about 10 leaves of sage from the balcony garden and with take out the stem of the leaf and chop them coarsely. I use about 3/4 of the chopped sage in the dough and reserve the rest to sprinkle on top after the fougasse has baked.

I'm using an actual chorizo sausage, which I like because the pieces can be as thin or thick as I like. The thickness of the chorizo is very important to the overall texture of the fougasse. I remove any casing and slice it relatively thin. Set aside.

I chop the mozzarella because I prefer the way the cheese melts during baking. I use about 50 g (1/2 c) for the baking process and then grate a little bit more to add during the last stages of baking.

Once the peppers are cooled and chopped, combine the peppers, sage, chorizo, and mozzarella with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside.

* Since I'm making a double batch of dough (this recipe is for one fougasse but I doubled it), I will eventually divide the dough into two portions (one portion for the chorizo mixture, the other for the traditional version).  I combine in a separate bowl 4 g (1 1/2 tsp) of herbes de provence and 3 cloves of minced garlic with 25 ml (just over 5 tsp) of olive oil and set aside to infuse.

1 hour, 10 minutes

Am now playing the waiting game.

2 hours

Take the starting dough mixture and add: 185 ml (slightly more than 3/4 c) of water, 335 grams of bread flour (just over  2 1/2 c), 1.5 g of dry active yeast (slightly more than 1/2 tsp), 10 g (1.76 tsp) fleur de sel (sea salt or kosher salt also work). When adding the yeast add to one side of the bowl and salt to the other.

*Now here is the important part.

If using a mixer with a bread hook, mix the ingredients at lowest speed for about a minute, then at highest speed for about 6 minutes. The dough should be smooth, soft, yet not too wet.

If hand kneading, the above video can explain much better than I can. Watch him carefully, how he makes sure to pull the dough over and how he turns the dough on the surface (think of your dough as a square, so four turns per rotation). This will put the right amount of air into the dough and make for an exceptional dough. It is also a great workout for your arms!

Make sure you dust your surface before hand kneading, but not excessively. The end product should be smooth looking, but full of air.

Since I've doubled this I'm going to halve the dough and then add the two different garnishes to each half and then let each dough rest in a mixing bowl for another hour.

* Now if you used chunky ingredients you might be worried that not everything has gotten into the dough. Fret not. Fret not if the olive oil has not completely absorbed into the dough either. You'll have another chance later on to incorporate everything, just let it sit because the yeast added in this step needs some time to do its thing. This isn't essential to the recipe, but it will reduce the stress of the waiting time - eat something. Relax. Your fougasse is going to be lovely. Sure you completely forgot to make sure you had the perfect bread basket for the presentation of your finished fougasse. Damn being a culinary perfectionist.

 At this point I'm tempted to take a shower, but since there is one more step involving flour, I have to resist even though I'm covered in flour.

* One thing to note. After the 1 hour wait time you'll be working towards "proofing" the dough once it's been rolled out. Proofing is basically the final step before baking for bread, where the yeast and flour begin to ferment. Much of the rising is going to happen at this point. In most bread recipes you proof the yeast with warm water and sugar before adding it to the flour, but this method does not make the best fougasse. Granted this is time consuming, but it really does give the best results. Trust me you want all that air (fou - gas(se) because it makes the softest and most delicious bread.

There are a lot of proofing techniques for various breads, but for fougasse my grandmother always put the breads on cooking sheets in the oven with a pot of boiled water. So make sure you're ready for this step before the hour is up - make sure you've got your baking sheets together (I'm using two) and that your pot of water will be boiling by the time you need to put everything in the oven to proof.


3 hours

Divide dough into 300 g pieces and shape into a ball. Place on a cutting board or parchment paper with enough room between them, and let rest covered with plastic film (I used parchment paper as I was out of plastic wrap) for 15 minutes.

Use the 15 mins to cover your baking sheets with fresh parchment

* With the double recipe I ended up with 8 balls of the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety dough and 4 of the herbes de provence and garlic, which means I didn't divide the dough exactly in half earlier, but it was partly because I wanted to have a little more dough for the variety with more ingredients in it.

3 hours, 15 mins

Take one of the balls and stretch it into a rectangular shape, pressing out some of the gas. Keep stretching until you have a nice rectangular shape. Use a rolling pin but make sure to not to roll out the dough thinner than 6.5 mm (1/4 inch). Using the pastry knife make the traditional cuts. These cuts are meant to make the fougasse look like a leaf from the tree of life.


Have a look on Google Images, there are lots of beautiful examples and possibilites to make your fougasse as beautiful to look at as it will be delicious to eat.

* For the pepper, chorizo, mozzarella variety you can't use the rolling pin and you can't make the cuts.

Move them to the parchment/baking sheets leaving plenty of room because they will rise and expand.

4 hours, 15 minutes

Remove all the baking sheets and the pot of water from the oven and preheat your oven to 250 degrees (C).

I started with the pepper, chorizo, and mozzarella fougasse first because they would take longer to bake. About 10 minutes in they were browning up nicely, but I wanted to baste them to get a really nice crunch, so I mixed some olive oil with salt and pepper, and baked them right under the broiler until they were nicely browned up after 5 more minutes.

For the simpler fougasse I baked them for about 8 minutes, basted them with the olive oil infused with garlic and herbes de provence (plus salt and pepper to taste) and baked them another 3 minutes.

I was running late for dinner so I didn't take time to snap any photographs, but I kept one of the simpler fougasse and then forgot to take pictures of it before I snacked on it when I got home, so sorry about the pictures. I'll update this post the next time I make it.

Here are a few pictures of the one fougasse I kept to snack on.

Read more >>

The Art of the Short Story Part II Plot

I covered the first part of The Art of the Short Story, mostly insights from the 52 authors featured in this brilliant book yesterday and didn't get around to talking about the last section of the book, Part III "Writing".

The Elements of Short Fiction

Plot

Characterization

Point of View

Setting

Theme

Style

An interesting note from looking at the Table of Contents for this section is that Plot is covered over a total of 6 pages, Characterization over 3 pages, and Point of View over 2 pages while Setting, Theme, and Style are given a mere page each.

The section on Plot opens up with Aristotle's "Poetics", which also gives first importance to Plot.

"A beginning is that which does not come necessarily after something else, but after which it is natural for another thing to exist or come to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which naturally comes after something else, either as its necessary sequel or as its usual (and hence probable) sequel, but itself has nothing after it. A middle is that which both comes after something else and has another thing following it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, will neither begin at some chance point nor end at some chance point, but will observe the principles here stated."

The book states that it is rare for a first attempt at a short story to observe such "obvious" balances of proportion. "A typical first attempt at a short story may include an elaborate beginning of four or five pages, a page or two of summarized dramatic events, and a slam-bang ending of a single paragraph that includes a hail of gunfire and screeching brakes".

The plot of the story, the book says "is first a movement in time; second a movement in casuality; and, third, a movement in dramatic tension".

The section goes on to list stories contained within the book that present unified plots, that is, plots where events happen in real-time. Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" takes place in one continuous hour. Jack London's "To Build a Fire" closely follows the last hours of a Yukon traveler's life.  Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" is the real-time confession of a deranged killer.  Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" takes place between supper-time and bedtime. Another thing to note is that stories with a unified plot also tend to take place in a carefully limited locale.

Plots with longer periods of time are called episodic plots, which oblige the writer to make transitions between scenes. As a writer when I read whether it's a short story or a novel I tend to find that a good number of writers have difficulties making transitions. 

One writer who springs to mind is George RR Martin, author of A Song of Fire and Ice (aka Game of Thrones, which is the first book in this series). I'm convinced that his "Point of View" style is simply because he cannot make transitions - not from one character to another nor from one locale to another. I can understand how this would be a problem given that no one character is the main anything - who the protagonist or antagonist is depends almost entirely on locale. This interests me because as the series begins to draw to a close it's obvious that the various characters will have to come closer and closer together and that there will be less and less locales. I'm interested to see how Martin handles the transitions or if he will switch from an episodic plot to a more unified one as many epic stories tend to do towards the end.

Take for example the author that Martin has seemed to borrow from primarily, JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". There are a number of changes in locale and the transitions seem logical and streamlined. I think Martin will make a similar attempt to unify in the vein of LOTR meaning that eventually Martin's characters will move towards the Iron Throne in the same way the characters of LOTR move towards Mordor, as the Iron Throne is what unifies the majority of the characters in terms of their motives.

A primary feature of an episodic plot is the ability to move backwards and forwards through time. Additional information is provided by flashbacks while the author is free to leap forward over periods of time that hold little dramatic interest.

The book cites Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilych" as a story that finds its punch using flashbacks. It begins at the title character's wake and continues backwards through the character's childhood, education, marriage, rise to prominence, and finally his fatal illness. The unusual time scheme underscores his assertion that his protagonist's life "had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible".

I can cite a number of stories and novels that fall flat when using flashbacks and if the advise of agents or writers or the desires of publishers are to be taken into consideration, writers are encouraged to not use flashbacks especially in the beginning of the story. 

I cannot necessarily agree with this idea, but one example I can cite is JK Rowling's first book in the Harry Potter series. I don't like the Prologue much but at the same time, the information contained therein about the circumstances that bring Harry to the Dursleys door are extremely important to the story. The next time we see Harry he's a boy of 10, but because of the previous exposition of the essential information  - the who, what, when, where - the reader knows what they need to know to keep on reading.

If the Prologue to the Harry Potter books is exposition in the theme of the traditional fairy tale "Once upon a time", there is another variation, one which seems more in favour these days called the in medias res (in the middle of things). These stories and novels open after the conventions of the old epic poems in the midst of some event or other and it is not until later that the characters and their relationship to the one another or to the story itself are made clear.

Stories that begin in medias res skip the first part of plot (exposition) to the complication or conflict. The rising action of the story (or what Aristotle would have called the essential middle) may or may not be the bulk of the story, but it is always building towards the next part of the plot the climax.

The climax is the greatest point of tension in the story, which brings about the falling action of the story, in which the built up tension is finally released.

The final part of a plot is the dénouement or resolution. The word dénouement refers to the untying of a knot which returns the characters to another stable situation.  Just as fairy tales traditionally end with something akin to "and they lived happily ever after", many stories conclude with what the future holds for its characters.

The dénouement may be either closed or open. A closed dénouement ties everything up in a bow and explains all unanswered questions the reader might have, as in the "Elementary, my dear Watson" explanation found in any of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales.  On the other hand an open dénouement leaves us with a few tantalizing loose ends.

I can think of any number of stories or novels that end by tying up everything nicely, but fewer who manage to pull off the trick of leaving the readers questions unanswered in a way that is successful that isn't in the genre of sci-fi and or about dystopian futures, which I think are more inclined because of the impending future that cannot be answered to be able to pull this off.

Many of Borges' stories come to no neat conclusion, such as "The Immortal". Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", contained within this book comes to a conclusion without providing answers to the reader as well. If you can think of others that do this successfully, please leave suggestions as I'm very curious about this mostly because at the end of six seasons of LOST I wanted to hunt the writers down and torture them for answers.

What this book doesn't really say is what makes a good plot? Should I worry that as a writer I myself can't define or distinguish a good plot from a bad plot even though I'm able to nitpick other elements of stories to excess?

A search on Google for "What makes a good plot" turns up a number of answers and I've clicked through a good number of them now without finding any answer better than the definition of plot itself:

plot: is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, how the reader views the story, or simply by coincidence

* I'd also like to mention that the "elements" of plot in this post taken from The Art of the Short Story were taken from Gustav Freytag, which you an read about on Wikipedia here. Also Aristotle's Poetics is a must read for well, everyone.

Read more >>

The Art of the Short Story

The Art of the Short Story is a unique book. It is a book that wasn't hunted for but given to Monsieur by a lady we both knew before we knew each other who has a story of her own.  Whenever we speak of her Monsieur always says the same thing - how she, Antonia, spent her life taking care of old people but when she became old herself she had no one to take care of her.

When I met her she was living in a tiny chambre de bonne in the 16th arrondissement with very little money. She was a decent poet, full of life and passion that she was able to put into verse, with a habit of chasing after men who were generally a third of her age.  She had one of those sort of faces that despite its weathering and lines was obviously once extraordinarily beautiful and her hair was like a soft flame that spilled down her back in that shade I call Klimt red.

No one we know has had news of her in some years, but I always think of her when I see the spine of this book or on the few occasions when I've opened it.  Last night I decided that rather than fall asleep to movies I was going to try and change my habits and read before I went to sleep. Monsieur saw it and mentioned her again as he always does just as my eyes had skimmed the name of Eudora Welty, who wrote My Antonia!

At 996 pages it's quite a big book. It features 52 authors, their best short fiction, and their insights on writing. Last night before sleeping I read pieces by Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart; Hands from Sherwood Anderson's acclaimed masterpiece Winesburg Ohio; a very short story from Margaret Atwood called Happy Endings; skimmed a very long short story by James Baldwin; skipped past the Borges story because I've read it before as well as the short story by Albert Camus for the same reasons; and was enthralled by Raymond Carver's Cathedral.

I turned off and tried to fall asleep after reading Carver's story about a blind man who comes to visit, but I couldn't, so I turned the light back on and read one of Chekov's short stories Lady With a Dog which I finished and fell asleep thinking about.

What makes the book interesting and helpful to writers is not just the works, but after each short story is an "Insight". Some are longer than others, but even in one paragraph Chekov offers this helpful advise:

"In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential.  God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind.  Make it clear from his actions."

I decided to go through the insights to find other things that might be helpful showing no particular prejudice against those authors whom are not to my tastes to find the ten most helpful insights, though they are listed in no particular order. (Quote above, attribution below.)

"It's possible, in a poem or a short story to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power...In Isaac Babel's wonderful short story "Guy de Maupassant", the narrator has this to say about the writing of fiction: "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just in the right place". This too ought to go on a three-by-five."

Raymond Carver mentions the "three-by-five" because in a part I omitted he mentions Nabokov who famously wrote all of his work on index cards so that he could shuffle things around more easily. It seems Mr. Carver was a fan.

Interviewer: "Your writing always, from the first, had its source in other books?"

Borges: "Yes, that's true. Well, because I think of reading a book as no less an experience than traveling or falling in love...Many people are apt to think of real life on the one side, that means toothache, headache, traveling and so on, and then you have on the other side, you have imaginary life and fancy that means the arts.  But I don't think that that distinction holds water.  I think that everything is a part of life."

Jorge Luis Borges interviewed by Richard Burgin

"Any first-rate novel or story must have in it the strength of a dozen fairly good stories that have been sacrificed to it. A good workman can't be a cheap workman; he can't be stingy about wasting material, and he cannot compromise. Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standarized values.  The courage to go on without compromise does not come to a writer all at once - nor, for that matter, does ability."

Willa Cather

"I am forced to admit I have not the writing habit. But it is hard to make people with the questioning habit believe this.  How, where, when, why, what do you write? are some of the questions that I remember.  How do I write? On a lapboard with a block of paper, a stub pen, and a bottle of ink bought at the corner grocery, which keeps the best in town.

Where do I write? In a Morris chair beside the window, where I can see a few trees and a patch of sky, more or less blue.

When do I write? I am greatly tempted here to use slang and reply "any old time", but that would lend a tone of levity to this bit of confidence, whose seriousness I want to keep intact if possible. So I shall say I write in the morning, when not too strongly drawn to struggle with the intricacies of a pattern, and in the afternoon, if the temptation to try a new furniture polish on an old table leg is not too powerful to be denied; sometimes at night, though as I grow older I am more and more inclined to believe that night was made for sleep.

Why do I write? is a question which I have often asked myself and never very satisfactorily answered. Story-writing - at least with me - is the spontaneous expression of impressions gathered goodness knows where.  To seek the source, the impulse of a story is like tearing a flower to pieces for wantonness.

What do I write? Well, not everything that comes into my head, but much of what I have written lies between the covers of my books.

There are stories that seem to write themselves, and others which positively refuse to be written - which no amount of coaxing can bring to anything."

Kate Chopin

"He must learn them again.  He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.  Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will as though he stood among and watched the end of man."

William Faulkner (from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature)

"The sentences in a book must quiver like the leaves in a forest, all dissimilar in their similarity."

Gustave Flaubert (from a letter to Louise Colet, April 1854, during the writing of Madame Bovary)

"Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper

Many people have asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story out not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia - and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to live as domestic a life as far as possible, to have but two hours intellectual life a day and never to touch a pen, brush, or pencil ever again as long as I lived. This was 1897.

I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over...

But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.

It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next."

Ernest Hemingway (from A Moveable Feast)

"Another problem in my writing life, I think, is frustration."

Ha Jin

"The realist, if he is an artist, will endeavor not to show us a commonplace photograph of life, but to give us a presentment of it which shall be more complete, more striking, more cogent than reality itself. To tell everything is out of the question; it would require at least a volume for each day to enumerate the endless, insignificant incidents which crowd out existence. A choice must be made - and this is the first blow to the theory of the whole truth.

Guy de Maupassant (Preface to Pierre et Jean)

I've only included 10 out of the 52 authors presented in this book - a few of whom I've left out because I've written about their advise before on this blog such as Jack London, John Steinbeck, Rudyard Kipling, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One of the best sections of the book, full of essays and other information about the elements of writing short fiction, I've neglected entirely, but it's impossible to retype this advise and not feel inspired by it and now I am anxious to make potato salad and homemade BBQ sauce that can sit in the fridge and gather their flavours while I try to write a few sentences.

One thing I do want to say is that I've not quoted Sherwood Anderson on this blog post, but I plan on writing about him later. His short story "Hands", from his collection Winesburg Ohio struck me in a way that even now, with the afternoon almost behind me, still feels physical. I'd been encouraged many times to read Winesburg but never paid it much attention. I plan on reading it from cover to cover as soon as possible. It was disturbingly beautiful.

I hope that these little snippets offer up some inspiration and if you have any to share, please feel free to comment.

Read more >>

Spanish (Andalusian) Gazpacho Recipe

Another recipe request for gazpacho picked out of three style choices: Italian, Provencal, or Spanish.

The Spanish always use green peppers for their gazpacho, which is what differs from the other two styles. I make my grandmother's Provencal style gazpacho by roasting all the vegetables first. It has a great flavour when the veggies are roasted.

The recipe below is for a blender, but I don't use one. I use a clay mortar and a wooden pestle used in Spanish/Mexican/Thai cooking to make this and all my styles of gazpacho. It's a lot more work, but it gives the best texture and taste.

Now a few other tips. When making Spanish style gazpacho I highly recommend using Spanish olive oil. In fact I prefer almost all olive oils from other regions around the Med to Italian except when I'm cooking Italian dishes that are served with olive oil (meaning the oil isn't used in the cooking process but to impact the taste). Also this recipe can use red wine or sherry vinegar, but if you can get it I'd always go with sherry vinegar for this particular recipe.

There is a lot of argument over whether it's more traditional to toast the bread or to soak it in water. I'm more of the soak it in water than toasting it for this particular recipe, but plenty of people would argue with me about that. Also, I add spice, which is definitely not traditional, but when I've had gazpacho in Spain they always served some peppers on the side as garnish, but I think it improves the taste to add it directly. Don't let the spice overpower though.

Spanish Gazpacho
Ingredients:
3 lb. ripe plum/roma tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded, coarsely chopped
2 slices of white bread, crust removed
2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, coarsely chopped
1 small red onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 green bell peppers
1 green chili (Thai, jalapeno, anything with a bit of kick will do) seeded and minced fine
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine or sherry vinegar

Salt  and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Garnish:
1 tsp each of cucumber and green pepper, finely chopped

Preparation:

1. Soak the bread in a small amount (few tablespoons) of water. Gently remove and “squeeze” dry.

2. The easiest way to peel tomatoes is to make a small "X" with a knife at the stem top and bottom.  Boil water in a medium saucepan. As soon as water boils, turn off heat and place the tomatoes into the hot water for 1 minute. Carefully remove hot tomatoes. The skin will rub off easily.

3. Place the tomatoes, bread, cucumbers, onions, garlic and peppers in a blender. Blend until the mixture is smooth. All the ingredients may not fit at one time, so you may have to fill the blender several times.

4. Once gazpacho is completely blended, pour it into a large non-metallic bowl.

5. Stir in the oil and vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (the longer the better, but stir thoroughly every hour).

Garnish with the chopped vegetables. If more spice is desire add fresh chilies to taste or a pinch of coarse cayenne pepper.

Read more >>

Asian & Mexican Inspired Fried Chicken

This dish came to be simply because I love fried chicken and Thai sweet chili sauce. The pictures (I need to learn how to take better pictures of food, am going to have to ask my photog friends) do not do this dish justice, I swear.

In recent years there has been an exploding popularity of "Korean" fried chicken especially in New York and LA. These dishes are based on two dishes from Korean cuisine dakgangjeong and yangnyeom tongdak. The secret to Korean fried chicken whether it's the two more "traditional" (I'd technically consider both sort of street food) recipes or the styles being served stateside is that the chicken is fried twice - once to cook the chicken and the other to crisp up the skin underneath and the breading.

In most Asian cuisine there is some recipe that calls for deep-frying. The Chinese have several dishes for example - sweet and sour pork - that call for deep-frying. The Japanese have kara-age, which is marinated before breading. Both of the Korean recipes and the Japanese recipes for kara-age will all call for potato starch whereas most Chinese recipes will call for wheat flour and corn starch to be used.

Mexican fried chicken is another recipe style, but when made properly is one of the most delicious things you can eat. What I like about Mexican style is that the chicken is marinated, dusted with corn flour, deep-fried, and then roasted. It's a very unique taste.

This recipe is a combination of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, American, and Mexican fried chicken techniques. Or at least I think it is.

Ingredients:

8 chicken thighs, de-boned with skin still on rinsed with cold water and patted dry, then cut into slightly bigger than bite sized chunks

1/2 c. flour
1 c. Japanese style breadcrumbs called panko 
5 stalks of lemongrass, outer leaves removed and sliced lengthwise
2 T soy sauce
2 T fish sauce
3 cloves of garlic minced fine
1 egg

1. Mix half the lemongrass with the fish sauce and soy sauce and the chicken. Let sit in fridge 1 -2 hours.
2. Combine the panko and the flour in a large bowl, add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Add the egg to the marinated chicken chunks and mix well.
4. Toss the chicken mixture with the breadcrumbs & flour.
5. While the chicken sits (you might want to check it from time to time to make sure the breading sticks properly), heat a few tablespoons of oil and gently fry the garlic and the rest of the lemongrass, remove to paper towels, and let drain.
6. Fry the chicken on low heat, making sure that they brown slightly but evenly.
7. Drain the fried chicken on paper towels until all chicken is fried once.
8. Crank up the heat (just high enough so it doesn't spatter), and fry again until the pieces are golden brown and crispy.

Serve with Thai sweet chili sauce (I used bottled this time, but I use the recipe here when I'm feeling ambitious to make a big batch and store it) or I make a sort of nuoc nem sauce with chili peppers, lemongrass, coriander, and lime juice.

It's very good. I offered a taste to my neighbour who came by to thank me for the cookies I made for him and his family and he couldn't stop eating even though he had to go home and eat dinner himself.

Read more >>

Meatloaf

1. Prepare the breadcrumbs by cutting old bread into croutons and baking into the oven until crispy.  Allow to cool completely in a dry place (if the bread still feels most, pop it back into the oven to bake until dry) and pound into very fine breadcrumbs with either a food processor, a mortal & pestle, or in a bag with a rolling pin. You will need about 300 - 325 grams (8 - 10 ounces) depending on the fat content of your ground beef (other meats)

2. Combine bread crumbs with the following:

5 g  - 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
5g - 1/2 tsp cayenne or other chili powder
5 g - 1/2 tsp thyme (roll it between the fingers to "activate" the flowers)
1/2 onion minced fine
3 cloves of garlic smashed, green bits taken out, and minced fine
1/2 red and 1/2 green pepper diced
15 g - 1 1/2 tsps of sea salt

 3. Add the 575 g - 18 ounces of ground beef, and mix in the breadcrumb, spices, and vegetables as much as possible so that the beef is completely broken up and covered in the breadcrumb/spice/veg mixture.

4. Add the egg and a dash of Worcestershire sauce and mix completely.  The mix should naturally come together. If the meat doesn't come together, add more breadcrumbs. Don't worry about it being "dry" because the fat from the beef will come out in the cooking and you have the added moisture from the vegetables.

5. Pack meat into a loaf pan and bake until toothpick in the center comes out clean on 180 C for around 45 minutes.

6. Drain off the fat and use for sauce by mixing the cooled fat + 20 g flour + 10 g butter + 20 ml of water.  You can add brandy or another liqueur to deglaze the fat, and mix with mushrooms sauteed in butter until slightly crispy and bits of crispy fried bacon (Calvados, Poire Williams, or white wine do nicely for this.)

 You can also alternatively slightly fry the bacon and wrap the entire meatloaf in bacon.

Read more >>

Sharing Literature with Children & Maurice Sendak

I snagged this book a few years ago at a library sale mostly for all the books mentioned throughout its near 500 pages. It's impressive.  The Acknowledgements list takes up the first four pages and after every section there are another couple of pages of books to read with children.

Francelia Butler's "Sharing Literature with Children" was designed for use in college classes and as a source book for libraries and elementary schools and though it tends to slant slightly further to being a textbook, it is still a great resource. It's full of essays about the theories behind children's literature and its symbolic themes.

It's appropriate and a nice coincidence given the sad news of author Maurice Sendak's passing today that I opened up the book to his name in this book originally published in 1977.  Butler's class asked Sendak "How do you know what it is like to be a child?"  His answer? "I have been a child."

The fiveparts cover "Toys and Games", "Fools", "Masks and Shadows", "Sex Roles", and "Circles" with numerous examples taken from sources like folk rhymes, folk play (Punch and Judy is referenced),fantasy, fiction, poetry, myths, fables, folktales,literary folktales, limericks, dramas, essays, biblical writings, and folk songs.

Some of the references are particularly great. For example here is a rhyme about Marilyn Monroe:

Marilyn Monroe
Broke her toe
Riding on a buffalo
On the way to Mexico

Some of the other pop culture heavy rhymes reference Macy's, Charlie Chaplin, and even Hitler (Part I, Page 10)

An essay included in the first part of the book on "toys becoming real" includes the first chapter of Sendak's "The Sign On Rosie's Door".  I've always loved the first lines of this book.

There was a sign on Rosie's door.

It read, "If you want to know a secret knock three times."

I won't ruin what the secret is since it's revealed quite early on (next couple of lines), but the scene that follows the big reveal is one I can remember from my own childhood; of the magic that is possible in a clutched hairbrush and the extra-strong hold of Aqua Net hairspray. Even now, decades later I can still call to mind the memory of my agonised facial expressions in the mirror as I sang "Crazy For You" and squeezed myself into stonewash jeans one size too small before going out into the brightness of an imagined spotlight and pressing the play button on my Barbie cassette player only after the roar of the crowd died down.

In the preface Butler mentions that another intention of this book was to help adults reading it to recapture their hidden child. I know it did for me and like I said it's full of references to other works and excerpts. It's by far one of the best books I've bought for reference in recent years and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is writing for children themselves.


However, keep in mind it was printed in the 70's. Some of the things said are archaic at times. After reading Bettelheim and Campbell I've been left with this ideas that the themes of children's literature never really change, but seeing that I find some of the ideas archaic, perhaps it should be more reassuring to me because what I'm writing now doesn't follow Campbell's "Hero's Journey" as closely as I had once thought it might.

In the interview an with Issac Bashevis Singer found within the section of "Fools", Singer states that he needs three conditions to write: 1) I must have a plot.  2) I must have a desire or a passion to write a story.  3) I must have the conviction or the illusion that I am the only one who is able to write this particular story.

Personally I cannot agree with Singer's Third Condition. Maybe it is a lack of confidence on my part. I would replace his with "I have a reason." I knew I wanted to write books since I was four years old. I didn't know I wanted to write the sort of books I loved as a child until I was twenty-eight. The reason why I'm writing for children is because as a child books meant everything to me. They were friends. Compatriots. There would have been no dreaming, no passion, no sense of adventure in me without the books that are crammed on to the shelves of my autobibliography.

Books like this one remind me of some of those books whose titles I have forgotten and leads me towards the books I never met in my travels. The sort of books I am passionate to write.

Sendak said, "You cannot write for children.  They're much too complicated."

He never said you couldn't write for the child inside yourself, which is above all things, wild or otherwise, what I think made Sendak very special.  He wrote for the child that he still was and that he would always be.

I hope some day I accomplish the same.  Until then I'll go on imagining I'm "Alinda" (another reference to Sendak's The Sign on Rosie's Door) until the dream comes true.


"The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.”
 

Read more >>

The Best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie Recipe EVER!

If you've ever had a too dry and tasteless peanut butter cookie this recipe will convince you that not all peanut butter cookies need taste like the Sahara. After years of making adjustments, I finally have what I consider a perfect peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie recipe that is moist, slightly chewy, and looks delicious as well.

Since chocolate chips (called pepites in French) are rarely found even in the French version (which are about 4 euros for 150g so also quite expensive), I buy chocolate bars and make my own chocolate chunks. If you have to make your own, I suggest buying thin chocolate bars that are already formed to break into little pieces such as these from Lindt:

I break the bar into the pre-designated squares and then snap them in half (I'd like to snap them into thirds but my fingers aren't strong enough). I can buy these bars in a three pack which is the perfect amount for this recipe (300 grams total). Just be sure to refrigerate them or else they'll melt. I also refrigerate the chunks afterwards.

Here are a few tips when dealing with this recipe:

• I can only get Korean brown sugar, which is quite dark (it's normally used for making Hot Cakes called hoddeuk/호떡 you can find a very good recipe for those here) and has a lot more molasses in it than light brown sugar. Part of what makes this cookie so moist is using the darker brown sugar, so try to use it if you can for similar results to mine.
• Do not overbake. You should take the cookies out of the oven when about a thumb-sized portion of the center is still undercooked. Overbaking will make the cookies more desert-like than dessert-like.
• Allow the cookies to cook on the cookie sheet until completely cooled before removing to a cooling rack or plate. It'll firm up that uncooked portion of the center and make the cookie sturdier for devouring.
• Use regular old flour. Nothing fancy. Make sure to sift it.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies (PBCCC)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

a dash of salt 

1/2 c. + 1 tsp. white sugar

1/2 c. - 1 tsp packed dark brown sugar (you can use light, but results might be different)

1 c. butter softened at room temperature

1/2 c. peanut butter (creamy works best I used Skippy)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 large egg

300 g chocolate chunks or 1 3/4 c. chocolate chips

If making chocolate chunks do so now and refrigerate while making the rest of the recipe.

1. Sift together dry ingredients.

2. Combine white sugar, brown sugar, butter, peanut butter, and vanilla and cream together until the colour is uniform.

3. Add egg and mix in gently.

4. Slowly add in dry ingredients and mix.

5. Stir in chocolate chunks/chips.

Set batter in fridge for at least 1/2 hr, an hour is better, and overnight is best.

I used a French sorbet scoop to measure out the cookie dough, but keep in mind they will spread a bit so give them plenty of room on the cookie sheet. I use an insulated cookie sheet and make 6 cookies at a time.

Put cookies into an oven that's been heated to 350° F / 180° C and bake for four minutes, turn the cookie sheet, and bake for another 2 -4 minutes depending on how big your cookies are. Remember the tip from above, and remove the cookie when the center is still uncooked. Do not let the cookies get too brown. They should be pale. I placed my oven rack in the dead center or the oven, but still found I needed to turn them because some cookies were browning though this is why one must know their oven well when baking.

Let cool completely before removing to rack/plate.

You won't be able to stop eating them. They're that good!

Read more >>