Cooking With Ideas

Popcorn and. . .

I love popcorn at the movies. It’s the whole reason for leaving the comfort of my own home (with the huge television and cable movies on demand) and sitting in a theater. For some people, it’s the darkness and the pseudo-communal groupiness that drives them to move theaters. For others, it is resisting the pull into the solipsistic, individualistic, whatever-istic characterizing the video generation(s). For my sister, I suspect, it is milk duds. None of that for me. For me, it’s the popcorn. The smell. The greasiness. The salt. I love popcorn at the movies despite its health hazards. It’s just not the same made in a hot air popper at home. But that is not why I am writing. I am writing because I have been thinking about film and food on and off. . . . . for days. In part, I have been thinking about food and film and memory – because a film-related tale came up a while back while mourning the death of a friend. It was one of those stories retold too often that comes to take on a semi-mythic tone, perhaps even substituting for memory instead of eliciting it. Anyway, the film was “Babette’s Feast”, a 1986 representation of Protestant austerity versus Catholic excess (based on an Isak Dineson short story from the late 1950s). In 2005, there was an opera of Babette's Feast performed.

The film has come to mean, for me, the risk of making a suggestion; making suggestions all too often leads to having to DO something with the idea. Ideas are easy. They always are – but doing something with them is something else indeed.

So, why do I associate this with Babette’s Feast? What was that memory that burbled up from the subterranean recently? The idea: “Let’s do Babette’s Feast.” I uttered this sentence some time in 1988 to a new acquaintance, Toni Flores. And then, some time later – late that same year or maybe early 1989 -- there it was – the longest meal ever eaten in Geneva. All women, some from Geneva and some traveling back for the fun. Each devoted to one course (though I vaguely remember picking up groceries for more than one; there was no Wegmans at that point in Geneva and I don’t quite remember where I ordered – and picked up – the quails). The meal eventually involved multiple trips to NYC, blini with caviar, oxtail soup instead of turtle soup (my contribution), quails in sarcophagi (yes, in tiny little pastry “coffins”), an extra course of beef (in case we did not have enough to eat), tortes of various sorts for dessert, wines for each course, and something I had never heard of at that point, marc as one of the post-dining liquid offerings. I remember, too, a black truffle brought along from one of those NYC trips. Excess not austerity. The billing system was remarkably incomprehensible when we tried to figure out how to even out the costs. Moments between courses – and serving course after course after course. There must have been more. I simply don’t remember.

What I do remember is arriving at Toni’s home circa 2:30 a.m. in a Toyota that I had inherited from my mother when she died. Standing on the stoop in front of the house was Toni’s daughter, high school age I think at the time, with her arms folded across her chest. “I can’t believe you two,” she said. “This is way too late to be getting home and how much exactly have you had to drink?”

And, now I remember telling that story now and again. Like a ritual, it re-members those we have lost and we who remain.

Chocolate De-Romanticized

Sometimes I wish I knew absolutely nothing. Reading is bad, I think, on those days. Why? Because I discover, usually, that things I love come along with lots of moral and political baggage that means I should give them up. And then I don't want to. And so I wander around in a moral quandry, eventually doing little if anything about it. No, I am not writing about being a vegetarian, though similar quandries arise. No, I am not talking about being vegan. Nor am I talking about eating locally. Or organic.

What am I talking about? CHOCOLATE! Chocolate in the form of three layers of chocolate in a lovely mousse cake at Tastings (and then brought home from Wegman's in Canandaigua). Chocolate in the form of christmas presents bought for others. Chocolate in the form of bars alongside the check out counter, meant for impulse purchasing. Or, in the form of chips meant for cookies. Or, in the form of the hot chocolate from Tim Horton's. Or. . . . in the many other forms we encounter chocolate in our lives. Inexpensive or expensive. Fancy or every day chocolate. Here, there and every where, chocolate. We're surrrounded by chocolate.

And yes, there are books about it. I have even reviewed (okay, mentioned) a few here. (Click here.) Now, though, a new chocolate book is making me think hard about that favorite treat of mine: Carol Off's Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet. Don't look for it yet in US stores; it is out in the UK and in Canada, where I got it on a recent trip to Ottawa. I read it a while back and am still struggling not to bring it up every time I see chocolate on the menu. Chocolate, this journalist argues, has a long -- and, alas, ongoing -- relationship to slavery. Big business chocolates from Cadbury to the present have substituted arguments about the bottom line for moral arguments (and this despite the historic Quaker commitments of the Cadbury family) and chocolate continues to be brought to our tables as a result of the forced labor of children who will never be able to eat (let alone afford) the treats we find so seductive. Not, alas, a new topic, but a very disturbing one.

Bitter Chocolate is a combination of historical research and investigative journalism, ranging from tales of those who rescue children from horrifying conditions on African cocoa plantations to global political and economic machinations that fix cocoa prices, from descriptions of highly risky journalistic expeditions into the hinterlands of cocoa producing regions to international conferences seeking to adjudicate agricultural regulations for chocolate production. Written by Carol Off, a Canadian journalist with impeccable credentials who has reported on various conflicts globally, this book points us to decades – perhaps centuries – of chocolate journalism that has sought to uncover (and end) abusive treatment of those who raise hte precursor of chocolate, imperialist (and then postcolonial) abuse that began with conquistadors and continues today. Off points, as well, to decades – perhaps centuries – of active cover ups by those who profit most. The evidence presented in this book indicts us all – and most particularly the multinationals that control the price of cocoa, exerting little if any moral suasion (let alone economic clout) in order to force humane practices. Indeed, Off argues that these very same multinationals benefit immensely from the horrifying practices she describes. As she poignantly puts it, the hands that pick the cocoa, like those North American hands that reach out for candy bars in supermarket aisles, are the hands of children.

Off leaves us with a moral quandary: to boycott chocolate will further devastate the lives of producers struggling with immense poverty while to continue to consume chocolate supports an industry that profits from slavery. Demanding improvements in employment and agricultural practices, she seems to say, is a better option than arguing children should not be employed – since devastating poverty requires an income in order to eat. Changing the political and economic structures is most crucial –including those of the World Bank and IMF. Fair trade chocolate – and organic practices – may be an improvement, but they also embed producers in a bureaucracy that is too often all but incomprehensible. Off should be thanked for exposing truths – and reminding us that chocolate is big business – a reminder that we seem to need every few decades. The industry may move on from the Ivory Coast to Indonesia but the practices are unlikely to change. . . unless. . . .

Unless what? That’s the dilemma – beyond the guilt I now feel when thinking of chocolate, what is the next step? I think of all those abolitionist Quakers in the 19th century boycotting sugar and our (my) contemporary failures. I check out other web sites like this and this and this. I went to this site which lists 7 things you can do to focus on this issue. And I ruminate.

Read the book – and let me know your ideas for a solution.

Some Like It Hot

No, this is not about Marilyn Monroe in the film “Some Like It Hot.” But, it is about heat – in fact, a book entitled Heat by Bill Buford, former fiction editor at the New Yorker, a founding (I think) editor of Granta, and author of one previous nonfiction book. A gift, the book came along to Medicine Hat in my briefcase, with a tiny bit of work and it was the first thing I dove into when I got into my middle seat on the way to Calgary. The book is subtitled "An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" and is a romp through Buford’s explorations of kitchens and kitchen learning in New York and Italy. (It has been suggested that juxtaposing this to a blog become book, Julia and Julia, would be a good idea – a woman and a man each spending time following the tutelage of famous chefs – and a butcher – of their own gender. Julia Child, on the one hand, Mario Batali, on the other. Not to mention French versus Italian. Hmmm. Maybe once I read Julia and Julia. Meanwhile, it is Billy boy Buford only.)

Heat is actually a great read. I found myself describing it as a real book – a readable book, with occasional moments of writerly beauty. Too many books on food-related topics are so chatty that they are not worth the money – too quick, both in their reading and, one suspects, in their writing. Facile, perhaps. Not this one. It brings together autobiographical reflection with food lore and travel to Italy and character sketches of famous people. Heat includes descriptions of making sausage in Italy and carrying a whole pig up into a New York apartment in order to practice butchering skills. It describes the pasta station at Babbo – and the grill – and Mario Batali’s well-known foibles. (I think I have walked past Babbo on occasion and not attached it to its famous reputation. I have to admit I am not sure I want to eat there now, having read Heat, given the depiction of Batali’s personality – generous, I admit, but pretty awful in other ways.) There are comments on the incredible sexism –and racism –of restaurant kitchens – alongside discoveries about the almost unattainable simplicity of good food. There are revelations about the incomparability of various cultural (and even regional within Italy) understandings of cuts of meat as well as a moment or two on the place of memory in cooking. Like some films in recent decades, the book ends with the promise of a sequel – perhaps on French food.

But for some reason, Heat seems to be more. When I began reading, I thought it was more or less a paean to Molto Mario, that red headed Italian/Irish man of television fame. It is, in fact, much more. It is more, even, than its subtitle, though the words deployed there are accurate. On occasion, Buford is near transcendent in his “more.” By this, I do not mean more food, or more excess like Batali’s late night magnums (and many of them), but a different more. In this book, there are gems – beautifully written sentences and occasional paragraphs. They appear unexpectedly rich amongst the lighter fare – and are worth a return visit. Here are a few bits from his depiction of pasta-making and its wonders, as he learned it from an Italian woman named Betta:

My mind empties. I thnk only of the task. Is the dough too sticky? Will it tear? Does the sheet, held between my fingers, feel right? But often I wonder what Betta would think, and, like that, I'm back in that valley with its broken-combed mountain tops and the wolves at night and the ever-present feeling that the world is so much bigger than you, and my mind becomes a jumble of associations, of aunts and a round table and laughter you can't hear anymore, and I am overcome by a feeling of loss. It is, I concluded, a side effect of this kind of food, one that's handed down from one generation to another, often in conditions of adversity, that you end up thinking of the dead, that the very stuff that sustains you tastes somehow of mortality. (p. 198)

And, here are a few sentences that particularly struck me in Buford's description of Dario, the Dante-quoting butcher of the subtitle:

His was a calling, not a trade-- he was an artisan, not a laborer -- and his 'works' were about history and self and being Tuscan and only indirectly about dinner. They amounted, ultimately, to a tortured response to grief, and the 'works' had become Dario's way of remaining in touch, physically (those giant hands), with those who are no longer with him. When you come to his shop, he didn't want you to see a butcher -- and wouldn't be able to say why -- but he knew what you would see instead: an artist, whose subject was loss. (p. 281)

I think I may start re-reading Heat on the way back from Calgary to Toronto. Like trying a recipe a second (third or fourth) time, I think I will discover more. . .

(Not persuaded? See this New York Times Review.)

X Marks the Spot

Xacutti is a restaurant discovered by our favorite bathroom reviewer some years ago in an airplane magazine reviewing Toronto restaurants. While the fad for Xacutti has come and gone, we keep returning. The food is regularly tasty, the space is nice and not too anything, and it is a little away from the crowds of downtown Toronto. The food is a sort of modified Indian and, well, we like it. While on occasion the food has been uneven, the service is always friendly despite our tendency to be a bit late for our reservations even at the height of Xacutti’s “in “moment. And, really, the food is good.

This time we had: an amuse bouche which consisted of an inch square tapioca cumin fritter on top of tamarind chutney (thanks to the chef and to our waiter who recommended we get a different starter since this was the amuse bouche!), two starters (cinnamon guava ribs with masala strings as well as bengali spiced vegetable cakes with tamarind mustard sauce; okay, we got pappadum and mango chutney too), two entrees (one a bengali chicken curry served as a whole breast and part of the thigh; the other sea bream), and yes, a dessert – ginger donuts with vanilla ice cream and caramel cardamon beneath. The best of the items was the vegetable cakes; they turned out to be round balls made with beets – light, fluffy, a little bit of heat, surrounded by a little dab’ll do ya of red sauce (the tomato) and even less yellowish sauce (the mustard)! Very good. And, the tapioca cumin fritter served from the kitchen as a treat changed my view of tapioca forever. The tidbit was beautifully tasty. The dessert, too, was fun – though we thought there was a bit too much cinnamon taste and too little cardamon and ginger (and this despite the fact that I love love love cinnamon sugar donuts). Notice the entrees came last here – well, they were perfectly ok, and even good – but not terrifically memorable. My chicken was cooked quite nicely, very moist, with sauce featuring just a tiny bit of heat and the sea bream was, I heard, “not too exciting.” All in all, a tasty, fun, meal – we’d return. And, you should try Xacutti. Don’t expect over the top fancy (you won’t pay as places known for that either). Don’t expect ethnic Indian in a real sense. But do expect a good meal in a nice place with an easy pace and. . . . X marks the spot.

DRINKS: Xacutti is a place for drinks as well as wines. This time, along came a flight of champagnes (which I suppose should have been called a flight of sparklers, since only 2 were true champagnes – there was a prosecco di valdobbiadenne italla, a pol roger reserve, and a veuve clicquot) for one of us and a “celestial fizz” for me (the prosecco, with cognac, grand marnier, and cranberry). We had Voss water to drink – a water I actually actively like. I think we had a glass (or two of tine) but I admit it – I didn’t write down what we had. It was good. And, I did NOT have a tamarind margarita this time, but I usually do --absolutely the right edge of tart and alcohol. . .

SERVICE: As always, nice and patient with our lateness.

SETTING: On College street, away from the maddening crowds. The restaurant interior is calm and white, with blue lights behind the bar. There is parking around the corner, but the parking goddesses were with us and we parked right in front of the window! In winter you enter the door immediately to the right of their entrance – thereby letting diners stay warm rather than cope with the incoming cold each time a new diner arrived.

ON THE WALLS: One of my favorite aspects is the lights above the bar, a sort of chandelier meets graffiti with sheets of paper (or plastic?) with notes on them attached. But the walls – I simply cannot remember – except they’re white (I think.)

BATHROOM REVIEW: Ask the expert: Anonymous Bathroom Reviewer -- what did you think? They’re in the basement, under the bar – and the women’s room had a really interesting sink. I was fascinated by the musical difference between the basement and the restaurant per se. Indian (basement) and pop or something (restaurant). I might have switched them.

OVERALL: X marks the spot. We return. And, we’ll return again.

ALSO REVIEWED: Here, here and here.

LOCATION, ETC: 503 College Street, Toronto. Phone is 416-323-3957.

WEBSITE: Can't find it tonight. Maybe you can!

Do the Twist: Alpine Bakery

Another new bakery. It's a trend. For those of us familiar with Alpine Bakery from the Geneva Farmer's Market, they now have a storefront operation in Geneva. What's best? Their hazelnut twists -- a sort of puff pastry twisted around some ground chocolate and (you guessed it) hazelnuts. I had one today -- which may explain why it felt a little like summer in Geneva even though it is December. (That, or global warming?) They also have a delightful raspberry and lemon danish. I go to Dustin's (aka normal bread on Washington Street) for my bread (and some scarily good chocolate chip bars). If you love Dustin's bread, check out this youtube video of his work or this picture from Flickr! Or head there.

But for a twist on your day, try the Alpine Bakery. Where is it? 10 Castle Street in Geneva. It seems likely to be open 7 am until at least 3 pm. I think they're closed Mondays. Think of it as a new breakfast option.

Let us know what you think!

Ithaca Times-- But I Digress. . .

It has been a bit of a semester this time around --and so blogging has been a bit spotty and not so cooking focused. And only recently did I realize that the Ithaca Times piece that was a round up of local food blogs mentioned Cooking with Ideas. Ok, the blog is said to "digress." And in the comments, I even saw I had commented on the piece earlier. Hmmm. Anyway, I agree, of course, though I am not sure what "digressive" means or what I am digressing from or to or about or. . . . . . . This is, of course, a blog subtitled Eat Drink Read Think. Anyway, the article takes up other upstate food blogs as well. Laura Rebecca's Kitchen has the full article at her November 23 entry.

Watch This Blog For. . . .

What will appear here in the next while? Well, watch here for:

*A Fishy (or Not) Review: Charles Clover's The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat. They say this is Rachel Carson for the 21st century.

*Chocolate De-Romanticized: A Review of a New Book on Chocolate.

*Popcorn Fantasies: Ruminations on Food and the Big Screen

and maybe even a bit of cooking and restaurant reviewing. . . . . . . . and maybe I can come up with an inerview with a mystery chef.

National Noodle Ring Day and more

Rumor has it that December 11 is National Noodle Ring Day. Who says so? A web site called "Bizarre Food Holidays." They do not, however, say what a noodle ring is. I have no idea, despite this picture which I found on the web and insert to the left! But I love holidays. Other possibilities this month:

Dec 15 National Lemon Cupcake Day
Dec 17 National Maple Syrup Day
Dec 18 National Roast Suckling Pig Day
Dec 19 Oatmeal Muffin Day
Dec 21 National Hamburger Day
Dec 21 National French Fried Shrimp Day (two holidays in one?)
Dec 24 National Egg Nog Day (okay, I thought it was Christmas Eve.)
Dec 25 National Pumpkin Pie Day (yep, for some this is another twofer. Not for everyone of course.)
Dec 27 National Fruitcake Day

Truffles Translated

Death in the Truffle Wood is a mystery novel by Pierre Magnan. Originally published in French in 1978, it has been recently translated and is available in English. I bought it in Canada where the paperback is out in a UK version. Amazon.com lists the US publication date as June 2007 and it will be a hard cover at that. Once again, the Canadians (via the Brits in this case) are out in front!

The novel is a peculiar read with peculiar themes and an odd tone that is simultaneously troubling and easy going. Peculiar. Peculiar. Odd. My favorite character is a pig -- Roseline -- who hunts for truffles. The humans are all a bit unreal seeming -- not because of the writing or the translation, I think, but because their relations to life are awkward (as depicted in the novel). Provence is an uncanny place in the story, and its inhabitants are somehow both vague and very particular. I cannot say how the author accomplishes this. I'm not sure I want to . . .

The food appears as truffles dug from beneath trees and sold in markets. And, it reappears as an occasional meal mentioned as the tale moves along. A black and white dish with truffles beneath the chicken's skin sounds lovely. Now and then a truffle eaten raw and whole and hungrily. The tale, though, might put you off truffles -- especially if you are vegetarian at heart.

As you can tell, I am not sure of this book. I am most definitely uncertain -- I am.

ZEEEEEEEEEEK

ZEEK is subtitled "A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture." The Fall/Winter issue is a spectacularly interesting food issue. Yep, another Mags and Fags purchase while in Ottawa a few weeks ago. My favorite is "Goldbergers and Cheeseburgers," I think, because it fits with various examinations of American religion in a recent course I taught. It has the following subtitle:"Particularism and the Culinary Jew." But all the pieces are interesting -- in various genres (poetry, metafiction, creative nonfiction). The back lists an article on "Lesbian Drag Hasidim" -- somehow I missed that one. Maybe the lesbian drag occurs in the many images throughout the magazine. Hmmm. I'd say more, but then it might never get to the blog. So, maybe more later. Meanwhile, check it out. Really worth it. ZEEEEEEEEEEEK.