The Hungry Philosopher

O Cheese – Food Poem by Donald Hall

September 28, 2015September 24, 2015Leave a comment

In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.

O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die.
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.

Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy;
Pont l’Évêque intellectual, and quite well informed; Emmentaler
decent and loyal, a little deaf in the right ear;
and Brie the revealing experience, instantaneous and profound.

O cheeses that dance in the moonlight, cheeses
that mingle with sausages, cheeses of Stonehenge.
O cheeses that are shy, that linger in the doorway,
eyes looking down, cheeses spectacular as fireworks.

Reblochon openly sexual; Caerphilly like pine trees, small
at the timberline; Port du Salut in love; Caprice des Dieux
eloquent, tactful, like a thousand-year-old hostess;
and Dolcelatte, always generous to a fault.

O village of cheeses, I make you this poem of cheeses,
O family of cheeses, living together in pantries,
O cheeses that keep to your own nature, like a lucky couple,
this solitude, this energy, these bodies slowly dying.

“O Cheese” by Donald Hall from Old and New Poems. © Ticknor & Fields, 1990.

From the Writer’s Almanac, September 20th, 2015

http://writersalmanac.org/page/5/

Sue’s Many-Textured Taste (Food Stories)

September 25, 2015September 23, 2015Leave a comment

My good friend and art educator extraordinaire, Sue Uhlig, was well prepared and armed with notes when we spoke last week of her food memories. The few times I had the chance to cook for her, I avoided onions and peppers in deference to her aversion. Listening to her food stories certainly deepened my appreciation for the way she eats and enjoys the world of tastes and textures beyond a simple negation of onions and peppers. For her, hearty, dense, textured and layered flavors seem to be themes reaching back to her love of rye bread as a child to her now love of Moroccan Ratatouille.

Sue describes a “lazy day pancake” an expression of her Mom’s Austrian roots as one of her most cherished comfort foods. She shared this online recipe and her own recipe:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/07/kaiserschmarrn-sunday-brunch-scrambled-crepe-recipe.html

“How I make it is to first melt butter in a pan on medium heat. (Maybe 2 tablespoons.) Then mix about a cup of milk and 4 or so eggs together. Add a cup or so of flour, a pinch of salt, and about a 1/4 cup or so of sugar. Taste batter to see if it’s sweet enough, add more if needed. Then pour into pan on stove. Stir periodically for a few minutes. Turn down heat to low and cover for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Batter should be set when finished.”

It sounds like a sweet, soft, stove top egg bread. I’ll have to try it. Continuing on the theme of comfort foods, she spoke of her Dad’s Sunday dinners: Pizza bread (long baguette with tomato sauce and melted cheese) while watching Ripley’s Believe it or not at 6:00 pm and Rotisserie Chicken with Skillet fried potatoes. Her favorite cake when she was 13 was an Italian layered custard cake with strawberries. One of my current favorites! She remembers being surprised that her guests did not appreciate it as much as she did. These comforting soft, crispy and layered tastes have now evolved with her travels. However, what seems to stay consistent with her, are simple yet hearty flavors and textures. Her now favorite Moroccan Ratatouille shows both a departure from her childhood dislike of vegetables and a return to slow roasted hearty flavors. The dish based on the book: The Flavors of Morocco by Ghillie Basan, exemplifies her preference for layered, sweet, savory, roasted flavors. True to an artist, she savors each ingredient and delights in the visual process involving the tagine and the sense of a theatrical reveal (like the magic of Ripley’s believe it or not). The textures melt down into a gooey, sweet, savory, hearty, aromatic dish, a testament to how travel has broadened her ability to find comfort in new far away flavors.

http://www.amazon.com/Flavours-Morocco-Delicious-Recipes-Africa/dp/1849750866/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Dear hungryphil Sue,

Thank you for sharing your stories and reminding us that we can find tastes of home in surprisingly unfamiliar places, that food has the ability, like art, to transport us outside ourselves only to make us realize that we never moved. Magic.

All images courtesy of Sue Uhlig.

https://sova.psu.edu/profile/susanuhlig

Dear Fellow Food Philosophers,

I am collecting food philosophies through three guiding and loose questions:

Consumption: What are your memories of food?

Production: What are your guiding principles for making food?

Demonstration: What would show your philosophy of food?

Please contact me, if you (or anyone you know…..anyone who is involved in making food…not just chefs) would like to share your philosophy with me. Happy to meet with you in person or over Skype. Thank you!

Zen and the Art of Mushroom Washing

September 23, 2015September 23, 20154 Comments

image from: http://humanelivingnet.net/2013/09/30/creating-healthy-dishes-with-crimini-mushrooms/

Mindless repetition is tedious, while mindful repetition is meditative. This is the lesson I learned as I washed large bins of cremini mushrooms. Individually. For three hours. Before you judge, the preferred method of wiping mushrooms would’ve taken even longer. So in all her wisdom and experience, Chef Liz of Second Helpings suggested I wash the rescued grocery mushrooms. Smart chef.

Spending a considerable amount of time devoted to a single task as any craftsman, line cook, factory worker knows, makes one REALLY absorb the material. I can close my eyes and smell the earthy ground, feel the difference between firm and fresh mushrooms versus slimy, spongy mushrooms, I can follow the curves, the fragile stems. Given these were rescue mushrooms, my mode of inspection was heightened in order to discard anything fuzzy and green.

Yes, there were moments when I felt the weight of the repetitive task and hoped my time with the mushrooms would end. I also knew that soon these mushrooms would be sliced, roasted and then added to dishes that would feed so many. I suppose it is this stretch of the imagination and shared work that brings all of us volunteers into the kitchen everyday.

Admittedly, there was something else besides such abstract musings of a beneficent outcome. I had an odd sense of being present with this mushroom held under a stream of water. Everything else receded. It was strange that I could oscillate between complete mushroom awareness and complete mushroom annoyance. This explains so much about how I live life. I feel always immersed and burdened at the same time.

I wonder how you emotionally and intellectually process repetitive peeling, chopping, washing, stirring, shaping or wrapping. Thoughts?

Here is one thought I found in the essay, “The Nourishing Arts,” by Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard (from Food and Culture: A Reader edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik)

I discovered bit by bit not the pleasure of eating good meals (I am seldom drawn to solitary delights), but that of manipulating raw material, of organizing, combining, modifying, and inventing. I learned the tranquil joy of anticipated hospitality, when one prepares a meal to share with friends the same way in which one composes a party tune or draws: with moving hands, careful fingers, the whole body inhabited with the rhythm of working and the mind awakening, freed from its own poderousness, flitting from idea to memory, finally seizing on a certain chain of thought, and then modulating this tattered writing once again. Thus, surreptitiously and without suspecting it, I had been invested with the secret, tenacious pleasure of doing-cooking.

… The sophisticated ritualization of basic gestures has thus become more dear to me than the persistence of words and texts, because body techniques seem better protected from the superficiality of fashion, and also, a more profound and heavier material faithfulness is at play there, a way of being-in-the-world and making it one’s home.

That’s my story for today.

Wishing you all good food stories,

Hungryphil

For those of you, hungry philosophers, in the Indianapolis area please check out this amazing organization with a three-pronged mission to rescue food, cook for the community and train people to enter the food industry.

Home

Sunday Slow Eats (Inauthentic Recipes)

September 21, 2015September 22, 20156 Comments

Last weekend my newly braced child, not in pain, and asked for “deshi” or “home food.” I was only too happy to oblige and enjoy a day of savored chewing with her. It took two hours to slow roast the lamb shank in the oven. While that was cooking in a glaze of ginger, caramelized onions, spices, raisins and nuts, Jim and I cooked Dal (the thick kind my father likes), a spicy shrimp curry and a light vegetable curry.

In my chopped and blended family, Jim can now identify spices, stir until the oil separates from the roasted spices ( a strange and specific Asian cooking technique) and even anticipate when I’ll ask for another onion. Very impressive. He is officially trained in the deshi kitchen (he’s already quite a chef during Steak and Burgers, Southern, Italian and Mexican kitchen nights). Jim not only helps me cook but has also graduated from eating modified Bengali food to keeping up with my confessedly inauthentic taste. No coconut milk or cream was added, no heat removed, no vegetables or spices were denied yesterday.

It was reassuring to be able to share a meal that reminds me of my parents and larger family, with Jim. Cooking may have taken two hours but considering going to the stores and washing dishes afterwards, it was a whole day event. It was time well spent together. What a true luxury to have an open day to make something that invites thoughts of family whether present or not (you are missed and loved).

Here are loose directions for each of the dishes for Amani, my eldest at college (one of many missed yesterday) and you my patient readers:

Thick Split Chana Dal

Cook the lentils in water until tender. I had about 1/2 cup of dal with 2 cups of water. Some kernels will start breaking apart. This takes a while (about an hour on medium heat).
Add salt and tumeric.
Saute cumin seeds until fragrant (about 30 secs), sliced onions, slivers of garlic ( a little later otherwise the garlic will burn and become bitter), chili peppers, in ghee. Add the mixture to the dal, stir and let simmer until desired consistency. Add water if needed.

Mixed Vegetables

This a super easy way to make a light vegetable curry.

Cut vegetables ( I had eggplant, pumpkin, potatoes and a particular type of green large and long squash found in Indian markets, I have no idea what the English name might be) into equal sizes, about a 3/4 inch dice.
Cook with a little water until tender.
Add salt, tumeric to the cooked and soft vegetables.
Repeat step three of the dal recipe. Here you can add 1/2 teaspoon of ginger or a spoon of any indian jarred pickle you might have.

Spicy Shrimp Curry

Make a spice paste with 1 teaspoon tumeric, 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1 teaspoon garlic paste, 1/2 garlic, 1/2 cup onion paste (just blend up an onion) 1/2 coriander powder, 1/2 cumin powder and salt.
saute spice mixture in oil
add 1/2 can (or fresh) of diced tomatoes, saute spice mixture in oil until oil separates. You may have to add oil, until it does so.
Add a bag of cleaned shrimp.
Simmer until shrimp is cooked, add cilantro before serving.

Roasted Lamb Shank

Rub lamb shank with salt, ginger and garlic paste and let rest. If you have any packaged spices or garam masala you like, you can rub that on as well. I’m guessing any spice rub would work.
Brown shank on all sides. Set aside.
In same pan, saute sliced onions, add 1/2 teaspoon each of ginger and garlic paste, slivered almonds, raisins until roasted and brown. Place the shank (s) in the sauce. Add water to just cover the bottom.
Cover and bake in a low heat oven (325) for about 1 hour-2 hours until meat almost falls off the bone.

We enjoyed these dishes with Pulao (Rice pilaf) and store bought naan. Left-overs are even better! I had a fantastic and fulfilling lunch of vegetables and rice today. Oreo, the dog, who turned 3 yesterday, is chewing on a lamb bone as I write. He is so happy.

That’s my food story for now.

Wishing all of you random days of shared cooking, eating and remembering,

Hungryphil

Jasmine’s Curious Eating (Food Stories)

September 20, 2015September 20, 2015Leave a comment

“Food made me feel different, not special,” explains Jasmine about her limited school cafeteria choices as a vegetarian child. Feeling different can foster curiosity, empathy and thoughtful awareness for some, while seeding resentment and intolerance in others. For Jasmine, this early awareness perhaps primed her to be the educator for special needs and artist that she is now. She is fiercely curious as she is principled, saying, “I’ll eat anything as long as its not meat.”

(For more about Jasmine’s work now look to the links below.)

Like many of us, Jasmine recalls as a child looking forward to family celebrations. For her these celebrations included dishes from her father’s immigrant background. Croatian food with Turkish, Greek, Italian flavors, Jasmine explains is a lot like American food with multiple ethnic influences. Maybe the hand rolled Croatian pasta she remembers gave her an early awareness of internationalism, diversity and difference.

Jasmine’s global perspective is coupled with an Indiana appreciation for gardening and local farm produce. She owes her vegetarianism and love of cooking to her mom, who offered explanations like “tell people you don’t eat anything with eyes except potatoes” or “if you don’t eat something green, something green will eat you.” She recalls cooking with her mom and conducting blind taste tests of peppers to see if they can guess the color of the peppers. How fun! This combination of humor, awareness and curiosity serves her well in cooking for her own picky toddlers who at the moment love avocados and firm tofu (not touching of course).

For her High School graduation, Jasmine’s mom gave her a cookbook comprised of all her favorite dishes. Even armed with the cookbook, she confesses that she ate only cereal her first semester at college. Cooking is practical and requires practice for Jasmine, who now gardens, cooks, cans, freezes and believes that “taking the time and energy to know the process to make it, makes it better to eat.”

Enjoying cooking as a process of aware conversion, she often shares her experiments on social media and with friends. Here is her peach butter from her homegrown peaches.

and a lemon meringue pie made from a giant lemon from a friend’s garden.

Hungry philosopher Jasmine, Thank you for being both different AND special in your philosophy of good eating. Your approach to food as a source of curiosity, learning, self-sufficiency and fun, remind all of us that sometimes in the search for efficiency and ease we may miss a delicious discovery.

Wishing you many delicious discoveries ahead,

Hungryphil

http://jasminebegeske.com/

http://discover.education.purdue.edu/people/people.asp?id=1100

All images courtesy of Jasmine Begeske

Dear Fellow Food Philosophers,

I am collecting food philosophies through three guiding and loose questions:

Consumption: What are your memories of food?

Production: What are your guiding principles for making food?

Demonstration: What would show your philosophy of food?

Please contact me, if you (or anyone you know…..anyone who is involved in making food…not just chefs) would like to share your philosophy with me. Happy to meet with you in person or over Skype. Thank you!

Noma No more?

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015Leave a comment

Image from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/dining/noma-rene-redzepi-urban-farm.html?_r=1

Earlier this week a New York Times article announced the closing of Noma, consistently ranked among the top 50 restaurants in the world. Chef Rene Redzepi as the article title suggests plans to reopen in a different Copenhagen location in 2017. In the meantime, he and his team will be busy converting an urban ruin into an urban farm able to support the new restaurant fully committed to seasonal dining. American chef Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns sets similar ambitions, investing deeply in ingredients by employing on site farmers and farming. The “menus” at both begin with and stay true to the produce. For example, instead of traditional menus designed around dishes and techniques, the meal at Blue Hill is guided by “grazing, pecking and rooting” from greenhouse, field, pasture, forest, farm and cellar products.

This philosophy that dining begins with the ground depends on a creative and intimate understanding of place, seasons, processes of growing, cooking and eating of each diverse ingredient. These chefs, push the idea of “farm to table,” slow and local dining to the experimental extreme by including the farm, in form and content, as the restaurant experience. The challenge to convert a historically domestic practice of garden eating to a professional standard of consistency requires tremendous forethought and faith in the ability to quite literally grow quality products. I can’t tell if these are exercises in hubris or humility. Perhaps, both?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/dining/noma-rene-redzepi-urban-farm.html?_r=0

http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/09/history-of-noma.html

http://noma.dk/

https://www.bluehillfarm.com/dine/stone-barns

The Girl Who Cried Yelp

September 15, 2015September 15, 2015Leave a comment

Is it possible to rely too much on review sites, like Yelp? On a recent trip to San Francisco I started to question my so far unconditional love of the app and discovered limiting conditions. How do you use the app?

I use the restaurant review app Yelp for the following reasons:

Discover Local and Hidden Good Eats: When I’m traveling and looking for a good place to eat beyond the standardized options of familiar chain restaurants. It is usually an excise in culinary tourism hoping to discover something delicious and try something local. Yelp is very good for direction and advice. For example, traveling back from Atlanta to Indiana, we found the highly rated, Wildfire BBQ and Grill in Franklin, KY. Would never have found it without Yelp. It was quaint, local, delicious, hidden and a wonderful find. They had a house hot sauce that made me cry. The chicken had this almost “peking duck” like caramelized skin while the corn bread was strangely flat and tasty. Small local establishments can sometimes seem unwelcoming and averse to strangers. Yelp reviews offer reassurance through pictures, reviews and recommendations. This is the best use of the application for me. http://wildfirebbq.net/

Visualize Options: I rely on Yelp when we are debating familiar options. The list view allows us to go down the list and by the process of elimination find dinner that all (most) of us agree upon. In this case the app is used for efficiency rather than discovery. Depending on how indecisive the group is, the app, can be either helpful or distracting. It won’t answer what you “feel” like having but it can help the group find the solution that best “fits” their collective craving.

Menu recommendations: The third reason to refer to Yelp is when already in the restaurant looking for recommended dishes. It answers the question, “what is good here?” with pictures and reviews. For me, this use of the app is somewhat problematic. It risks handing over my own preferences to others. Sure, a certain dish can be the signature of the restaurant, like Salt and Pepper Dungeness Crab at the R and G Lounge in San Francisco’s China Town (Recommended also by Anthony Bourdain) which we had to get and was as promised a delicious experience. The Peking Duck was also as reviewed and recommended, wonderful. The recommended pineapple fried rice was also delicious. All the recommended dishes were worthy. But, I feel I relegated too much of that meal to the preferences of others. The rice was good but nothing close to the novelty of the crab, all the dishes were tasty but dry together as a meal. Most importantly, I felt I stopped thinking and experiencing the place and it’s taste for myself. Still a great experience I would’ve missed without the Yelp reassurances. In contrast, at the Hog Island Oyster Co. in the Ferry Building, we ordered the fried anchovies based on Yelp recommendations, along with dishes (raw oysters) of our own preference. Fried anchovies are my new unlikely favorite! My new rule should be to order one recommended item and another item of my own discovery. Or, maybe once inside the restaurant, turn off the app.

Validation of Choice: On walk-able city streets sometimes we let our nose lead the way. Last week in San Francisco, we found a small, unassuming, south Asian restaurant with fantastic food. We had a Chicken Keema with mushrooms dish (the special of the day), along with naan and rice. We noticed the small restaurant because we both liked the graphics, the aromas wafting as we passed and the serving dishes the couple seated outside were diving into. I can’t wait to try to make a version of that delicious spiced ground chicken with peas and mushrooms. It was too yummy to wait and take a picture at the restaurant. After we finished eating, my beloved Jim, aka “Milk” of my chopped and blended family, went on Yelp to find our find validated by others with high recommendations. http://www.curryleafsf.us/

We also found Out the Door at the Ferry Building, on Yelp, after we already ate and enjoyed it’s chicken curry and chicken bun.

Lesson Learned:

Use, Yelp, liberally during the search for unfamiliar yumminess and sparingly once seated.

What makes Iconic Food Packaging?

September 11, 2015September 8, 2015Leave a comment

Image from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/who-made-that-soy-sauce-dispenser.html?_r=0

Among iconic food packaging, NPR’s Salt includes the Coca-Cola bottle (1915), Morton Salt (1914) , Pringles (1968), Jiffy Pop (1959), Kikoman (1961) and Jif Lemon juice (1954). What makes food packaging iconic? Instant recognition like the coca-cola bottle? Function, like the Kikoman bottle? Introduces a new product, like Pringles? or Symbolic, like the lemon juice bottle? What other products might we include in this list and why? Here is one more example (for better and worse that makes processed food attractive).

Lunchables

Lunchables translated the Swanson frozen television food tray into a school lunchroom experience. We see this idea of packaged lunches used in the Starbucks Bistro Boxes today for now adult kids of the 1990s who grew up with lunchables.

Image from http://www.cooksinfo.com/tv-dinners

Image from http://childrenofthenineties.blogspot.com/2009/04/lunchables.html

Image from: http://www.starbucks.com/menu/food/bistro-boxes/omega-3-bistro-box

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/16/392514497/looks-matter-a-century-of-iconic-food-packaging

New Braces: Compromised Chewing not Taste

September 9, 2015September 7, 20152 Comments

Puberty and braces unfortunately happen together here in the U.S. Last week we had one child completing her time with braces while another began the process. New braces brought new challenges to my already complex chopped and blended dinner table. Soups and smoothies worked until she got tired of a liquid diet. Then came the minimal chewing but more substantial meals. I made her soupy khichuri (a Bengali mix of rice and lentils, lightly spiced), one of her favorite, braces or no braces. She also enjoyed the savory corn pancakes (a batter made with the addition of creamed corn). The chicken enchiladas still required too much chewing for her comfort. I lost a point there. Its always somehow surprising when small unrecognized parts of ourselves, once hurt or broken, change the way we do things. Teeth are wonderful machines that allow us to enjoy so many delicious simple things, like apples and crusty bread. Certainly not to be taken for granted by foodies, eaters and gourmands.

I’ll report back with brace friendly bowl food like khichuri, congee, risotto, grits, polenta and various sauces for the months of tightening to follow.

Bananas Two Ways: Detox and Decadence

September 7, 2015September 7, 2015Leave a comment

This Labor Day Weekend I am guilty of contradictory eating. Or maybe, exactly as eating should be. You decide. I tried two different recipes. First, a Banoffi pie made of caramelized condensed milk that made a toffee base for sliced bananas in a graham cracker crust topped with whipped cream. Decadent and yummy. And the second, as if to make up for the sinful gluttony of the pie, a green detox smoothie (spinach, pears, bananas, parsley, mint, lemon, almond milk and a whole bunch of spices including tumeric and chili powder blended together). Not very yummy. Thankfully I did not have the smoothie and pie at the same time. That would be……….. not good.

Bananas, used in very different ways and tastes, were the common ingredient in both. Few ingredients can work in such diverse modes of savory-sweet, decadent- simple, like eggs, lemons and today I’ve learned, bananas. I wish I were so multi talented and flexible. Hope you all had a delicious weekend of diverse tastes like me.

The recipe for the Banofee pie was inspired by http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/banoffee-pie-2383

The recipe for the green detox smoothie comes from RawSpiceBar.com https://rawspicebar.com/blog/the-power-spices-in-augusts-spice-box/

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Thick Split Chana Dal

Mixed Vegetables

Spicy Shrimp Curry

Roasted Lamb Shank

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Lunchables

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