greymatters

Before I left for south america, zmook kindly excerpted some fine travel writing from Idle Words which closely mirrored my itinerary. Idle Words is a fantastic writer who inspires me to keep my own journals snappy. But in the end, maciej is better at this than I am. Here's a few choice quotes from the originals.

My favorite is the long rumination on argentinian food, with its breathless praise of the steaks and the utter bafflement about everything else. Especially dulce de leche:

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives".

Also check out the follies of learning tango, with which I can definitely identify from my time in the studio back home:

A Partial List of Tango Mistakes I Have Made

• Torso too far forward
• Torso too far back
• Torso technically straight but still just wrong somehow

I had this line running through my head the entire time I was at Torres Del Paine:

A better name for this place would be Holy Sweet Mother of Jesus National Park, since this is what you will say the first time you set eyes on it.

But this was my favorite line from the same article:

Border formalities would be fun if not for the icy rain. On the Argentine side there are three conscripts, a drug beagle, and an old radio. The conscripts struggle with a hopeless Internet connection before giving up and waving everyone through. They have rigged a giant road sign on their side of the border reading LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS, in the same way a saner country might warn BRIDGES FREEZE BEFORE ROAD. I'm told that every land crossing to Argentina is rigged with these signs, preventing countless drivers from careening off the road due to geopolitical anxiety over the status of the Falkland Islands. The effect is somewhat like bringing a new friend home for Thanksgiving only to have your conservative uncle start ranting at him about politics.

And let's not forget El Chalten:

Concerned about the wobbliness of the local border, the province of Santa Cruz decided to take matters into its own hands and in 1985 mandated the creation of a town to help assert Argentine sovereignty (a phrase that correlates suspiciously with making people live in icy wastelands). The government duly trucked in all the essentials needed to build a small Argentine mountain town - bricks, sheet metal, steak, hundreds of stray dogs - and the town of El Chaltén was born.

Thanks, zmook!

'Taste of Cambridge' is no 'Taste of the South End', but it's still pretty good. Hungry Mother served up the best offering with heavenly pulled pork sandwiches. Rialto's duck panini was inspired, and Formaggio paired some amazing jellies with their signature comte cheese. The dude from East Coast Grill warned me for my own safety to go easy on the hot sauce, so of course I layered it on thick for a nice burn. Given limited stomach capacity, I avoided downscale options like Uno's and Jose's.

This is how you know you're in cambridge: (1) the badges were suspended from a lanyard crafted from hemp. (2) all of the trash stations were staffed by aggressive monitors who made sure all items were placed in the correct paper recycling, plastic recycling, metal recycling, composting, or other trash bins. I started to fear a visit to the trash after a while.

Someone finally called my bluff. Every time we go out for dim sum, I dare everyone to order "phoenix claw". (Just a nice marketing spin on "chicken feet"). Turns out that mdt is a fan, so I had someone to share with. Unsurprisingly, a mass of bone and connective tissue isn't that great no matter how much sauce you load it with. I'm just happy that we explored outside of the usual safe white-people realm of pork buns and gyoza. Thanks for organizing, and happy birthday yurt!

( other festivities... )

I don't believe in much, but I do believe in cheese. As such, a trip to the Formaggio's cheese cave is not far from a personal hajj. I took a charcuterie class there on Sunday and learned how to make duck confit, pork cheek pancetta, and sausage. This focus on accessible projects was great, since I once took a class with noted domain expert Brian Polcyn and left amazed but utterly intimidated. This time I am determined to give home charcuterie a try. And getting to see the cheese cave was a special treat.

( Other higlights from an utterly eclectic weekend: )

I had originally proposed using the anyvite comment section as a clearinghouse for recipes and reviews, but it looks like this crowd is about 75% LJ-enabled, so we'll just exchange recipes here. Fill the comments section with your instructions and have at it, folks.

Curried Black Eyed Pea Soup was our veg option. We doubled all of the recommended spice measures on the advice of the epicurious commenters. We substituted chicken stock with vegetable stock. Our external bacon pack used some nice applewood smoked variety which we cooked a bit longer than usual to give it a crumbly texture. Take to heart the warning about blending hot liquids, or else this will happen to you.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that our venison stew recipe comes from celebrity chef Emeril Legasse. The thought of any dish which includes "Essense of Emeril" gives me the heebie jeebies. But this was the most appealing recipe I could find for venison stew. Most other recipes are for the minnesota hunter demographic and looked kind of... plain. We omitted the carrots and bay leaves. Our wine was shiraz and the brown stock was a mixture of turkey and chicken.

jtidwell cooked us her Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. She notes that one should cook the sausage before putting it in the pot. It sounds like creating this thing is a greater logistical effort than some foreign land invasions.

countlibras points us to her food blog entry on the popular Black Sesame Soup. If you're the first sell out, you must be doing something right.

This year we grew again to 20 swappers and 17 soups. A few veterans invited their best chef friends along, expanding the reach of the Swap and welcoming some new swappers. With so many soups this year, all swappers had to maintain razor-edge concentration to track their favorites and optimize selection strategies on the fly. Some were temporarily unlucky as their favorite soups were scooped up right before their turn, but I hope everyone went home happy with their choices. The tally:

• first chosen - dawntreader42's french onion. If you suffer through cutting that many onions, you should be rewarded.
• first sell-out - countlibras' black sesame proved popular as everyone was drawn to the idea of a "dessert soup". She claimed that it's the only chinese dish she knows how to make. I don't believe it.
• Learning from your mistakes - cinnabarine recovered from last year's "frankensoup" marketing disaster with a centerpiece, chef's hat, and crustacean decorations on her shrimp miso soup. But it was her less-tarted-up fruit soup which went faster.
• Keeping it in the family - We had a few old family recipes, a few fake family recipes, and a deer shot by a family member. prosicated re-created the chicken soup her grandmother never made and won "best label" in the process. I can't wait to try jtidwell's chicken and sausage gumbo from her native new orleans.
• gourds - We had two pumpkin soups this year. But only ert and aerynne's came with choreography and a backstory describing how to field dress charlie brown's Great Pumpkin.
• legumes - Always popular, represented this year with black eyed pea, bbbsg's split pea (my first taste - we heated this one for dinner after the swap and it was great), chillguru lemony lebanese lentil, and pekmez's red nepalese lentil.
• photo deputy - inahandbasket took some fine pictures while I was busy hosting. thanks!
• quantity - after years of badgering couples to cook two batches, we had a few 12-quart turnouts this time. At 17 soups, my own dozen samples were not enough to try every one I wanted. Do I have to make 3 batches next year?
• observer - C represented homegrown.org, an organization dedicated to events exactly such as the Swap. She'll be running her own soon and wanted to see how it's done.

See also 2008, 2007, countlibras, flickr.

In happier news, Thanksgiving went really well. Iron Pastry Chef toutbeurre and I have celebrated the last several thanksgivings together, and this time I took charge of cooking almost everything. It's a bit intimidating to cook a festival meal for two professional chefs, but I think everything came out well. I brined my organic/free-range turkey in sage and peppercorns, stuffed it with a fine dressing, whipped up my famous kumquat/ginger sauce, and served a cranberry wine. Toutbeurre provided mashed potatoes with just he right combination of lumpy and creamy, plus a heavenly pumpkin cheesecake. In the past we've cooked very non-traditional with tapas thanksgiving and other gimmicks, but sometimes you have to go with the classics.

grku decided that he was going to go serious for his significant-round-numbered-birthday celebration, so he picked O Ya. It's an elegant japanese restaurant serving intricately constructed pieces. Calling it "sushi" put me into the wrong space to appreciate it. The restaurant's offerings start with top-quality ingredients and then add extra garnishes like foamed squid ink, white truffle pesto, or anise bysop. The best sushi I've ever enjoyed was at the tokyo fish market, served simply and without adornment. Spicy banana pepper mousse creates fascinating flavor combinations, but sometimes it feels unnecessarily busy.

O Ya is worth the experience if not just for the foie gras nigiri (!), but I wouldn't seek it out on a regular basis. (Couldn't afford to, either. Our bill totaled enough to buy a pair of kayaks.)

Q: I'd love to get into the trendy CSA (community-supported agriculture) movement, but hate kale. What can I do about it?

A: Join a Meat CSA! I recently signed up with Chestnut Farms because their dropoffs are convenient to my location. Stillman's may work better for you.

( details and thoughts )

Haven't felt much like posting since returning from Denver. Life has been exciting, but not much of a departure from the norms. Therefore, nothing worth commenting on. A brief overview of the quotidian reality:

• Completed my first LobsteRide of the season, a quick bicycle circumnavigation of Cape Anne combined with a lobster. yum!
• Purchased a grill. It's a nice Weber propane model, so it's easy and fast to use. I am now living the suburban dream.
• Two separate days of sailing over memorial day weekend. Monday was so windy that I was too scared to jibe. yeeha.
• Removed invasive plants from the minuteman bike path.
• Saw Cake play at the EarthFest. I love them for mocking their own fans. It's hard to believe in the festival's environmental credentials when you see the amount of trash left around the Hatch Shell.
• Signed up with facebook (semi-anonymously) to track a dear friend. I'm bugged by many aspects of the service and don't plan on using it much.
• Repaired the boat so it (hopefully) won't leak, planted some (doomed) groundcover in the garden.

I had really hoped for more violence. As Master of Soupemonies, I did my best to goad Cambridge's swappers into exaggeration, deceit, logrolling, pushing, and shoving. But all in attendance were far too classy to lower themselves to my level. In the end, this year's Swap was a model of breezy charm with a mere undercurrent of highly strategic optimizing. We grew from last year to 16 swappers, 13 soups, and no injuries.

The tally:

• First selected: toutbeurre's something-or-other. I don't even remember what she made and it doesn't matter. She's a professional chef. When in doubt, grab her soup before it's gone.
• First sell-out: stripeyg's wonton soup kit. A multi-step affair with noodles, homemade wontons, and frozen broth cubes. I calculated nobody would pick something so labor-intensive and was shocked when it didn't even survive the first round. Thank Gods that I had two rotation slots or I would have missed it.
• Welcome compromise: meat on the side. youraverageninj served a red pepper bisque with removable shrimp. My ultra-pandering Beer Cheese Soup arrived with a separate Bacon Pack. Wontons were available in pork and veg varieties. This enabled everyone to find their own dietary way without feeling marginalized or oppressed.
• Subtle marketing ploy: During her Telling, greatdane managed to casually let slip that she attended cooking school in France. We all then realized that you don't try to outsell a management consultant, especially when she's armed with creamy pesto.
• Gross marketing error: It sounded tasty until it was described as "frankensoup"
• Kitchen equipment infomercial: fanw convinced us simultaneously of the virtues of her butternut squash and the glories of the immersion blender.
• No pain, no gain: countlibras cried through five pounds of onions to bring us a french onion soup. Other chefs suffered for their art as well. Your collective sacrifice is appreciated by all.
• Videographer: aerynne found the movie mode on my camera, capturing several Tellings for posterity. Her zucchini apple soup, on the other hand, will certainly be gone very soon.

Thanks to all for a successful Swap. cinnebarine is lightning-quick with a jpeg download and beat me to posting by several hours. Be sure to check soupswap.com for updates on the nation's other dozens of Swaps from last night. Enjoy your soups now, and remember to start thinking of next year's soups when your breath first clouds autumn's air.

Here's another high-concept end-of-year missive from edge:

Cooked food has so many important biological effects that its adoption should be clearly marked in the fossil record by signals of a reduced digestive system and increased energy use.

What separates us from the animals? Cooking! It's not language, tool use, problem solving, or fancy digital watches. It's fire, and the 3qt allclad copper-core saucepan on top of it.

Celebrate your humanity and cook something healthy tonight. We didn't fight our way down from the trees just to microwave frozen burritos. And remember, International Soup Swap Day is January 23.

If Himeji was bad for stock photography, Miyajima is worse. Today I visited the most famous object in all of Japan, the great floating o-torii. It turns out that all those photogenic postcard images you see were taken at high tide. At low tide, it's possible to walk out into the bay and get very close to the gate itself. Not terribly attractive, but at least it's different and authentic to view it this way. With the tide returning, some of the school groups wandering the muddy bay become trapped on rocks, knowing that their sneakers are not exactly waterproof and that a good shouting-at would be inevitable upon return to the herd. I want to mount a rescue operation, slinging them over my shoulder and carrying them to safety with my sealed hiking boots. But this would probably cause more problems than it solves.



Miyajima's largest feature is Misen-san. It's only ~500m tall, but with a trailhead at sea level it demands that every bit of altitude be earned. Unless you take the cable car up, which is cheating but does reduce sweating in the unseasonably warm air. It's a hazy day, so the views are more full of mystery than clarity. I'll take it. Even with the vertical assist, there is still a lot of hiking to be done at the top. It doesn't take too long to clear the cable car station and leave almost everyone behind. We are therefore treated to empty temples, open rocky peaks, and more-or-less solitude in the sea breezes. (Also, at least we walk down the mountain.)



The island's specialty foods are oysters and eel. As a raw bar enthusiast, I order the SAFETY OYSTERS and am dazzled when they are served with their own miniature o-torii. This is simultaneously kitschy and wonderful. Tasty, too. Though I later order a grilled oyster as a snack from a street vendor and like it even more.



I am also running ahead of the temple diversity game, making Itsukushima new and exciting by appreciating its floating architecture. This school of temple design builds just inches above the high tide line, making it look like the temple floats on water. (And, presumably, underwater during the regular typhoons. Submarine temple!) It's orange, and it's surrounded by mountains and water. You can't go wrong with that.




One thing I love about Japan is the relative frequency of honest traditional garb sightings. I had expected at first that kimonos and the like would only be worn by theme restaurant workers and historical re-enactors. Not true! It's been possible every day to see women out on their regular business dressed in colorful, intricate kimonos. These sightings skew older, but there are some young folks wearing traditional clothes too. I love seeing groups of older ladies all dressed up for a day of shopping and tea with their friends, on the town in their silk robes.



This is another one of those places where the deer roam free. And monkeys. I don't see any of the famous monkeys, but do run across several brightly colored signs warning about eye contact, having any food at all on one's person, or doing anything to encourage them to take up web browsing on their cell phones.



Discovery: 7-11 sells sake. It's drinkable, but not great. Still, at a mere 180 yen it's a great way to slow down in the afternoon after a long day of touristing.

For the next two days, I'll be off-grid on the arts island of Naoshima. No updates from this end for a while, though I'll be happy to read your well-wishes when I return to Tokyo.

The first flicks of rain strike the trees above as I look at the trail ahead. It's a hundred meters of steep, soft mud. I know that it will turn into a slippery mess soon and wonder if this was such a good idea after all...



Backing up. Kyoto is a pretty good place to be if it's raining. There are numerous covered arcades for dry walking about and a good bus system to deliver you to any of a number of museums and other indoor cultural assets. The problem is, I didn't want to see any of those. I wanted to hike daimon-ji-yama and was seduced into it when the rain let up after breakfast.

Sensing a window of opportunity, I visited the Nanzen-ji temple complex. It's off the menu for most organized tours, and is therefore relaxed. For some reason, a thoroughly western-style aqueduct runs through the middle. Continuing uphill, I visit a forgotten shrine near a waterfall and make an unintended sacrifice to buddha as I open my chocolate bar and scatter little bricks everywhere. This is a jumping-off point described in the guide book as "follow some trails and eventually you'll reach the peak of the mountain." Thanks.




Wandering randomly northward, the forest floor is alive in little red dots. They're crabs, apparently doing just fine in the wet riverbanks. More attempts to find a trail later, I find an incongruous christian graveyard. There is no access road, so the bereaved families must be showing their devotion by lugging heavy stone markers this far up the mountain. The paths become narrower and less well defined as the rain begins. Oh crap.

Fortunately, it's a warning shower and I make it to the peak mostly dry. The summit offers a panoramic view of Kyoto, and I am pleased to see that I can identify most of the major features. It's like I know this place or something. My first other hiker is eating his breakfast here, and we trade ohayo gozaimasus.

Back downhill, I encounter a big burn site for Kyoto's own fire festival. For this one, they light characters on several of the mountains surrounding town. This is the biggest one, so the festival is named for this mountain: i>Daimon-ji-Yama</i>. You can see the character pretty well from orbit even when it's not lit. Of course, lit it's even better:



After descending, I arrive back at the silver pavilion from yesterday. Just as I leave trail, the sky breaks open and rain pounds everywhere. Annoying, but I'm happy about the perfect timing.



I forage lunch in Nishiki Market, which is Japan's answer to the Minnesota State Fair. If it can be deep-fried and/or eaten from a stick, you can get it there.

With the rain still going biblical on the city, I then visit a few modern art museums. The work is impressive, showing real skill without too much of the postmodern navel-gazing common to much western art. Some reflects classic japanese themes and methods, while other work is thoroughly modern and drawing from global influences.



Yakitori for dinner - more grilled skewers, and that's fine with me. How can squid possibly taste this good?

When I announced this trip, I titled the post "Godzilla, Bullet Trains, and Raw Fish: oh my!" Little did I know that I would manage all three in a single day.



1. The legendary Tokyo fish market was closed for the day, but a nearby sushi place served the best salmon sushi I have ever eaten. Most sushi if not actively repellent is pretty much the same to me, so this superb cut of fish was a revelation.
2. Trendy Ginza shopping district has a small statue of Godzilla hidden amongst the Prada and Coach stores. Its reason for existence was never explained, but I am thankful that it is there.
3. Shinkansen to kyoto. It feels like a normal train until you look down at the adjacent track and resolve it only as a blur.

That's it. I've seen all I intended to see and can now go home.



While wandering Tokyo, I also encountered a self-reflexology clinic in a park. It's a path of wicked-looking shapes molded in the ground. Complete the circle (if you can) and your liver should feel a lot better. Mine didn't, so maybe I was doing it wrong.



~~~~ Later, in Kyoto ~~~~

Most unagi served back home is caught, cleaned, barbequeued, flash-frozen, and sealed aboard factory ships in China. In the restaurant, the chef merely thaws the eel and may throw it in a toaster to warm. This saves labor and capital, but still produces pretty good nigiri. I found a restaurant in Kyoto which specializes in Unagi. Eels swim in barrels near the waterfall shrine (!) in the back. The grillmaster up front tends bricks in hot coals, baking the bbq fish on hot cinder blocks and scraping fragrant caramelized sauce away. The result is still the same foodstuff as regular unagi back home, but on such a different level of texture and taste that it's barely fair to compare the two.

A single day with the best two examples of a given fish I have ever tasted: I call that a success.

I came dangerously close to cooking a vegan meal last night, but rescued it with a sprinkling of fresh parmigiano-reggiano.



The dish itself was a portobello barley risotto. It was tasty, but I don't think that the grain ever really became rich and creamy like some of my Arborio-based risottos. Have you ever cooked a barley risotto? Should I be expecting creamy? Is there a way to achieve it? Did I sabotage myself by using vegetable broth instead of chicken stock?

In other news, the sailing season is now done. Sunday's wind blew strong from the northwest, so the charles river basin had a nice, consitent breeze from MIT. Usually, the southwesterly wind hits the Prudential and Hancock towers and sheds unpredictable vortices over the river. It's such an unexpected pleasure to be able to hold the same point of sail for 5 minutes.

I have been asked by potential Porter/Davis No Limits Cooking Group chefs what sort of meals I have served for cooking groups past. Unfortunately, most of my truly epic creations aren't documented publicly. Enjoy this sampler of recent adventures (and one disaster):

	Yes, you can do tapas for Thanksgiving
	Do It Yourself sushi
	Soup Swap isn't really a dinner party, but it's in the same ballpark.
	The deadliest chocolate truffles ever.
	Fiasco in a fondue pot.

Wanted: about 8 gourmet-inclined people to meet every 4-6 weeks. Each dinner will have a rotating dedicated host who is responsible for most of the cooking and cleaning. Guests may be given a nominal homework assignment such as a cheese plate or dessert.

No Limits: Nothing is off the table except outright cannibalism. Meats, dairy products, alcohol, gluten, and exotic/unusual ingredients are allowed and encouraged. If you are a vegetarian, vegan, or have food allergies, we recognize that you are wonderful people with meaningful and ethical dietary restrictions. But this is probably not the group for you. We'll try to keep things healthy, but appreciate that the occasional cream sauce never killed anyone.

Scope: Everyone should be able to walk/stumble home. Preferably, you live no more than 30 minutes from Porter AND Davis squares.

To Do: We'll meet casually for the first time at Sagra, 8pm, date TBA. If you're interested, sign up here and indicate when you can be there.

Get your aprons on!

Soup Swap has gotten out of hand. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Eight cities, 75 people (and counting), and hundreds of quarts of soup.



One afternoon of cooking and I now have enough different soups to last me the rest of this pathetic winter. Thanks to all for stocking my freezer.

Homemade sushi may lack the polish and geometric perfection of the professional product. But how many sushi bars do you know which will make you an unagi-bigeye-scallion-redpepper roll with wasabi mayo? Best name of the night: "Roe, Roe, Roe Your Boat", courtesy of A.