Fat Girl Gone Thin

There is a coffee company near my house, Batdorf & Bronson. The place is as iconic as the city itself in many ways – like the fish throwers at Pike Place Market – anybody who’s worth their snuff in these parts has been to this place.

Outside their orginal cafe, affixed to the windows, is an image of a dancing goat. Easily two feet tall, the picture is a throw back to the company’s roasting division which goes by the name (you guessed it) Dancing Goats.

Why goats? And more importantly, why are they dancing? Good question. Millions of people drink cup after cup of coffee each day and I would venture to guess that all but a handful are unaware of the origin of coffee – a.k.a. the legend of the dancing goats.

Coffee has been around for nearly 900 years now. It was first brewed in open pits with crushed beans and boiling water in the area that is now Ethiopia. In the high mountain regions, a goat herder by the name of Kaldi discovered that his wandering animals had returned from the fields with an extra spring in their step. When Kaldi searched the area he found his herd feasting on red berries from a patch of bushes and gathered some for himself to try. Later, he dried and ground the berries and made a tea of sorts. The result was the first cup of coffee … and presumably, the first recorded caffeine high.

Now you know about the goats, but are wondering why are they wearing grass skirts -right?

The answer to that has to do with pizza. Confused yet? Hehe, I’m getting there.

Something about the idea of Hawaiian pizza being Hawaiian simply because it has pineapple on it has always struck me as funny. Same with those yummy little chocolate covered macadamia nut things. If you go to Hawaii, people always ask you to bring those back, like you can’t go to Walgreens and buy a box yourself there. Something about the macadamia nut and the pineapple seems exotic to people.

So when the urge for a strong cup of coffee and a cookie hit me in the late hours last night, I decided to pull out some coconut, macadamia nuts, dried mango, almaretto and make biscotti instead. Then I decided to call it Hawaiian biscotti because it seemed like the appropriate cliche at the moment.

This is why I should not be left alone in the kitchen. With a coconut. And Jimmy Buffett CDs.

Anywho, I threw the basic of the thing together -the flour, butter, egg stuffs – then went to town with every Hawaiian-inspired ingredient I could think of along with some white chocolate chips … because those just sounded good.

The result was a lightly sweet, entirely delicious biscottini* (that means oops, I made the biscotti too short so I changed the name to something small and cute sounding).

I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did along with a fresh cup of java. The recipe is over in the sidebar.

A few months ago a friend of mine decided that she wanted to make it rich by creating some fabulous contraption that she could sell on late-night infomercials. Like the microwave bacon cooker.

Hasn’t everyone wanted to invent some never-before-thought-of contraption at some point in their life … something that everyone clearly needed but had never realized was missing. Like one of those cup holders that sits on your dash and swivels when you drive so that you never lose a drop of coffee. Yes, capitalism at its best.

Which brings me to cheese foam. Yes, I typed correctly. Cheese + foam.  As in, “apply a liberal dollop of cheese foam to your asparagus.” This is apparently the newest trend in restaurants and cookbooks. It is also, apparently, the sign that people are running out of new ideas for what to make with food.

But the airy, cloud-like cheese idea got me thinking. Everyone has some recipe that is inherently odd. Something that is fantastically delicious to them – presumably because it has a myriad of ingredients that they love and smooshed together in varying combinations, became some sort of personal homage to deliciousness.

This is how I feel about green tacos.

I should point out that when I say “taco” I don’t mean the kind with ground beef. I mean the kind I started making during my brief vegetarian phase in college. The kind with faux-meat. Also known as veggie grounds. Its made with soy and is actually full of yummyness in its mildly nutty flavor… so it only seemed natural that my favorite vegetable, the brussel sprout, would be a valiant addition.

Topped with an onslaught of alvocado, cheese, sour cream and salsa from the garden, I find the meal finger-lickin’ good.

This is the kind of food that tastes good because it’s exactly what you were craving and full of the things you love… the thing that doesn’t really translate as scrumptious to anyone else but you. The kind of dish you eat alone in your kitchen, when no one else is looking.

The joy that comes with the freedom to create something like green tacos, just because it sounds good, is mostly what makes them delicious. But cheese foam – that’s just wrong.

How To Make A Green Taco

Roughly chop a large handful of brussel sprouts and toss them in a skillet with a package of veggie grounds. Add between 1/2 to 3/4 of a package of taco seasoning and a cup of water. Cover and allow to simmer for five minutes. Remove lid, turn heat to high and allow excess liquid to boil off.

Spoon as much of the green goodness into your tortilla or taco shells as you like and top with all the regular burrito/taco goodies. Enjoy! (See, wasn’t that easy…)

I rarely find it as a harbinger of good things when I begin a story by saying, my fridge smells like a small furry creature curled up in the corner and died.

But this is only about half right. The dead things in my fridge are not, nor were they ever fuzzy, small yes, but not fuzzy. And they didn’t crawl into my fridge on their own accord. No, in fact, they arrived from the local asian grocery in a gallon-sized bag. Dried shrimp. Thousands and thousands of baby dried shrimp.

Happy Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the Tiger and I’ve decided to mark the occasion by blockading my fridge as a bio-hazard smell zone until I have time to cook something both fabulously Chinese and New Yearsy.

Until then, I am haunted by the millions of tiny beady eyes starring out at me, trapped behind a curtain of Ziploc plastic. This is why Americans don’t eat things with the heads still attached. We don’t want our food staring at us. Especially as we stick a fork full of it into our mouths. I just want to say “sorry” every time I open the door and there they all are… Watching me.

Also, the peanut butter I put on my toast this morning didn’t have the lid on tight and now tastes like a nutty ceviche. Which is never a good way to start the day. So, long story short, it’s time to use up my fishy little friends and welcome in the Tiger.

In addition to the dead baby fish in my fridge, I decided I should try my hand at making egg rolls. This is a food that can be found on the menu at not only Panda Express but also Jack In The Box, so I assume this will not frighten my culturally repressed friends. It is also a dish that is actually very easy to make but seems to inspire awe in the eyes of the average dinner guest.

A few greasy egg rolls, some shrimp artfully disguised amid some Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms. LOTS of rice, and it was a meal.

I had great plans of making turnip cakes as well, but if I had read the recipe all the way through, I would have realized that you need more than the two hours I had allotted my self to make up a batch of those. Something about grating, straining, seaming, simmering, and marinating… no, two hours was definitely not enough time to make those.

Back to egg rolls. I am saddened to say that I posses only a small hand grater that was acquired at a dollar store during college. Why I have not remedied this situation yet is beyond me. It seems weird to buy a new one when this one still works, and I have a Cuisinart for when I need to get down and dirty, so alas, the sad little grater remains in my collection.

Three carrots and half a cabbage of grating later, my arm was tired but my dried mushrooms were done soaking. Time to cook up some ground pork and get this party started. It’s important to remember here that when preparing exotic food stuffs for friends you must use extravagant hand motions and employ flipping action whenever possible, especially when using a wok. Also, I suggest using many more spatulas then necessary as well as many, many little bowl full of different ingredients – like on the Food Network. This ads to the Merlin like mysticism of the meal as a whole.

When the pork and veggie filling is all sauteed together, drop a spoonful in the corner of those store-made egg roll skins, fold it like an envelope and roll. Literally, it is that easy.

For the final touch, I added some fumi furikake to the rice. This essentially is Japanese for rice seasoning and is little more than sesame seeds and dried seaweed, but you will want to use the fancy name to further entice your friends. Also, use lots of the little bowls here too… for the various rice toppings. This will also make it look like you tried harder than you actually did.

For dessert, I wanted something Valentine’s Day-ish, so I went the red/purple forbidden rice route, cooked it in some coconut milk for added flavor, mixed in some stevia and cooled it in the fridge. Dropped in a shiny martini glass with a splash of cream, it was the perfect combination of creamy sweetness, if I do say so myself.

And this, my friends, is how you make a fancy-shmancy dinner in under two hours. Rachel 30-minute Ray would be proud.

There was a recipe that ran in the New York Times in the mid-1880s. It was for a recipe known simply as Chocolate Caramel.

“Take of grated chocolate, milk, molasses and sugar, each one cupful, and piece of butter the size of an egg …”

Hardly New York Times material these days, but at the time the recipe was a novelty. Like a 21st century duck confit, the use of chocolate in this dish was something that the ordinary housewife would have made a special trip to the store for – perhaps even ordered specially from the grocer.

Fast forward a century or two and the presence of chocolate has become a mainstay in our daily diet (well, at least in mine). Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas. Take a trip to Costco this week and you can find an isle devoted entirely to chocolate – five pound heart-shaped boxes of the stuff to be exact.

Like a metaphor for love itself, chocolate is both bitter and sweet. And for me, when I want it sweet, I want it artificially-flavored mouth numbingly sweet and when I want it dark, I want it as bitter as an unripened lemon.

Tonight I will be attending a fundraising dinner for the Chamber of Commerce in my hometown. As with most small towns, Friday night gatherings are more like family reunions and the food plays second-fiddle to the people. Conversation will be hearty, pictures of children and grandchildren will surely emerge from many purses and most of all a sense of community will be fostered during an economic time when extra shoulders need to be leaned on.

Everyone was asked to bring a treat for the bake sale table in hopes that enough money will be raised to replace the city’s aging Christmas decorations – and with Cupid’s big day just hours away, it seemed only fitting to break out the chocolate and the red food dye.

Something about this holiday causes a gravitational shift in the universe that seems to draw Hershey’s Kisses to my mouth like a chain-smoking European, so it seemed only right to make sure whatever I made had a heavy dose of cocoa.

You can find the recipe for the brownie topped velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting to the right under the recipe section. I hope it makes your Valentine’s day as sugar-induced as mine.

I think one of the things that draws so many people to food – to good food – is how many facets of our life that is touches.

Meals are a sensory parade. Taste, smell, appearance. Few things engage us on as many levels as what we so haphazardly stuff in our mouths three times a day.

In truth, food is the stuff of legends. It has been the cause of wars, of love, of death … It has shaped history in innumerable ways. Think of the lasting cultural changes left in the ruin of the Potato Famine or the way Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, led to the transformation of working conditions for American immigrants. Food is such a part of our lives that we rarely step back long enough to recognize the ways in which it has transformed the world around us.

Yesterday at the grocery store I stumbled on an interesting package of rice. Forbidden Rice. A great marketing tool to be sure, but this package had more to it than shiny lettering  and glossy images. What caught me was the description.

 ”Legend tells us that this ancient grain was once eaten exclusively by the Emperors.” In fact, it is rumored that this black grain (actually dark purple) was so highly prized that for hundreds of years it was only grown on palace grounds and fed to the emperor and his concubines as an aphrodisiac.

This isn’t the kind of thing you find on the back of the Mac n’ Cheese box.

Back at home I scoured through the fridge in search of something to pair with purple rice and faced with the choice of a jar of green olives, some hummus or half a cabbage – the cabbage won out. A cut of wild Alaskan salmon from the freezer and the meal seemed complete.

Grabbing spices from the cabinet in preparation for some braised cabbage, I lamented the fact that I had run out of the beautiful red garlic from this summer’s farmers market. Instead I was left with the common-place silver variety that adorns the isles of every produce section from here to China. Why? Because it lasts the longest. Perhaps one of the most middle-of-the-road choices one can make when it comes to this world-renown food and yet it is the only one that millions of people have ever eaten.

But like my rice, there is more to the silver garlic story than it’s non-descript packaging reveals. When you love food and you love to try new things, it’s easy to wage war against the ordinary – but there is a reason that a nothing becomes everyone’s something. In the case of the silver garlic, for thousands of years this has been the variety chosen by mothers and grandmothers for inclusion in the family dinner.

Silver garlic was so esteemed for it’s longevity that ancient Egyptians placed bulbs of it in the tomb of  Tutankhamen so that the pharaoh would continue to have sustenance throughout his afterlife. When archaeologists found the cloves during excavation, it was still easy to distinguish the item – some 3,000 years later. This is the same food that Egyptian slaves were fed while they built the pyramids. Each time we cook with an ingredient like this we are unwittingly becoming a part of the past.

And that brings me to soy sauce. Such a demure little liquid and only a tablespoon in this dish, yet the essence of this and thousands of other dishes have been the point of argument between chefs, philosophers and even physicists for more than 2,500 years.

It was the Greek philosopher Democritus who first asked - what are flavors? It was also Democritus that decided that sweet, sour, salty and bitter were the only options out there. He believed that taste was based on the shape of the food molecule. Salty foods, when chewed, broke down into tiny isosceles triangles. Sweet foods became large and rounds atoms. Aristotle and even Plato agreed with Democritus and so for thousands of years, it was common knowledge that there were four, and only four, flavors.

In the early 1800s, a French chef (it’s always the French isn’t it?), Auguste Escoffier, the lead chef at the Paris Ritz, developed a veal demi-glaze that he said emboddied a taste all it’s own – not salty, sweet, sour or bitter. It was a fifth flavor. At the same time, a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, proclaimed that the tongue had receptors for another flavor – one that was umami, or “deliciousness.” The taste of dashi, a seaweed based soup, was deep and rich and could not be described by any of the other four flavors. Ikeda was mocked for his findings and his ideas were never accepted by mainstream chemistry.

Fast forward to the 1990s when researchers discover that the human tongue does in fact have five distinctly different flavor receptors – the fifith being a flavor reaction to the presence of glutamate, a substance that is present in almost all living things but which is transformed as it begins to die and the molecules begin to fall apart … think here of grilled meat or aging parmesian.

The fifth flavor has since been officially recognized and named umami (sometimes “savory” in the U.S.) in honor of Ikeda. One food that displays one of the strongest umami characteristics? You guessed it, soy sauce.

It was a simple Monday night dinner. No muss, no fuss. Salmon, rice and vegetables – but altogether amazing when you consider how it landed in one place, at one time, on the plate of a girl in a small town on the west coast of America.

Sometimes at the end of a horrible no-good very bad day it helps to come home, throw down your briefcase and start things over (preferably with a glass of wine).  Sometimes this means pretending the day never started, hiding your head under your covers and going straight to bed. But sometimes it means tying on the apron strings and whipping up a big ole’ plate of comfort food.

On days such as this, I like to cook breakfast for dinner. And then make extra for the next morning. It’s like a little gift from today-me to tomorrow-me…  A little pep talk in gastronomic terms that says things are on the up from here.

I’ve never been much of a cold cereal girl, except for a mixing bowl-sized serving of Honey Nut Cheerios every once in awhile, when my sweet tooth kicks in during the wee hours.

What really gets me going during the A.M. drudgery is a bowl of hot oatmeal, along with a multitude of tiny dishes filled with any and every topping option. Raisins, brown sugar, toasted coconut, almonds… and the list goes on and on.

What usually ends up in my stomach though is an apple and a double-tall cappuccino. And sometimes a few gummy bears from the candy dish at the front desk.

In the dead of winter, especially this time of year when the dark, wet days seem to linger into infinity, I start to crave some of spring’s early offerings – a bowl of fresh snap beans, cherries…. somehow the frozen reserve of garden-goodies in my fridge seems like more of an insult to my senses than a welcome reprieve from the stagnant February grocery store isles. As if the frost-bitten Ziploc bags are just a reminder that this is as close as you can get to the real deal for another four months. Or as close as you can get if you prefer to refrain from the scientific wonders of a winter-time red tomato.

But given my day, my stubborn reluctance fell short and I found myself diving head first into the freezer in search of my stow away of blueberries. It’s funny how we complain about the time it takes to harvest these creatures - standing out in the heat , picking one berry at a time until our hands are full and our stomachs are filled. This time of year, I would give anything to be faced with just such a problem. Instead it’s 5:30, dark outside and I’m digging past frozen turkey and ice cubes in search of the taste of lost summer.

Berries finally in hand, I fell back on a trusted childhood recipe – a take on the Malt-O-Meal magic muffin. The cereal’s been around since the turn of the century and the recipe has been on the side of box as far back as I can remember. It’s simple – Malt-O-Meal, flour, sugar, an egg, some baking powder and oil. The ingredients are so utterly adaptable that it’s nearly impossible to add something that will mess it up. Depending on how healthy (or guilty) you want to feel, the batter is an open battlefield for your tastebuds’ desires.

Last night I went the healthy route and added my blueberries and canned plums, used whole wheat flour, bran flakes, some fresh-ground flax seeds and eggs from my grandfather’s farm. The result was a delightful evening, curled up in a comfy chair - book in one hand, muffin in the other, with memories of summer evidenced on my blueberry stained tongue.