Coffee, Curry, Cranberries

First off: A friend directed me to this blog. It's pretty brilliant. Dammit, why are all the good ideas taken? http://puttingweirdthingsincoffee.com

Also: Breakfast yesterday. I'd been out of town for a few days, so my fridge was pretty empty, and the undergrad I tutor wanted to meet me early (since when do undergrads willingly wake up before noon?), so no time to put something together. So I stopped by Cafe Romeo on my way in to school, which is pretty much always a good idea, regardless of fridge status. The pastry case was pretty sparsely stocked for breakfast time, but on top was sitting a basket of cranberry-curry scones. Yes, cranberry-curry. Of course I got one. And you know what? It was delicious. The cranberry and the curry flavors really worked together, like those Indian/Middle Eastern dishes with savory spices and raisins. Could have even used a bit more sugar on top, to highlight the sweetness. It would have gone beautifully with a nice cup of Assam, but the closest I had was Yunnan. Alas. Still, breakfast success. Put that in your coffee, Mr. Weird Things. I dare you.

Makin' Couscous

Last week I found myself in Marseille for a day (grad school perk #4591: spring break), so I decided to take advantage of that city's history as a point of entry for North Africans coming to France and find some good couscous. The reviews all said La Kahena; the reviews were all right. There is a lot of couscous in Marseille, a lot of it cheaper than what La Kahena has to offer, and a lot of it, I'm sure, very good, but this stuff was worth the trip. I couldn't decide what kind to get - veggies? lamb? merguez? - so for 16 euro I ordered a complet, which had all sorts of things in it, and if I spoke any French I could tell you what they were. What I do know is that they were delicious. There was merguez - I adore good sausage, and this was awfully good sausage - and chicken; a shish kebab and some sort of chop, both of which I suspect were lamb, though I wouldn't swear to it; a big, fluffy, heavily-cumined meatball (nope, I have no idea what the meat was, but it sure tasted good); a hard-boiled egg; and all sorts of veggies, including chickpeas, zucchini, carrots, celery, turnip (I think?), and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. The toppings came heaped over a mound of couscous, accompanied by a bowl of the deeply spiced, dark red liquid they'd cooked in, for spooning over top. The whole thing was enough for at least three meals, and I left wishing I had an extra stomach to put it in, or at least somewhere other than my carry-on to keep a doggy bag. (Do they even do doggy bags in France?) I don't really recommend Marseille as a place to visit - busy, dirty, supposedly dangerous, reminiscent of Palermo but with less interesting stuff to see - but if you do find yourself there I would urge you to find La Kahena, and bring your tupperware.

Five days later, back in New Haven, and desperately missing the south of France. My Nicoise cookbook is still in the mail, so first up on the "recreate amazing things I ate over break" agenda is couscous. Nica's doesn't have merguez, so I got chorizo instead. I really don't feel like grilling five kinds of meat, so that'll have to do in the protein department. I picked up all the veggies I could remember, plus some potatoes, just because. Claudia Roden's "Book of Middle Eastern Food" has a wonderful couscous recipe, and she encourages you to improvise around it, so I did, based on memory and preferences. She also included instructions for steaming the couscous over the simmering stew i the traditional way, which I did with a jerry-rigged vegetable steamer, a couscousier being one of the rare kitchen gadgets I don't actually own (though my birthday is coming up, you know...). Glad I tried it, but steaming's totally not worth the work - next time I'm just boiling it in stock, the old-fashioned way (see Mark Bittman for more detailed instructions on that). The stew, however, was absurdly easy (chop, simmer, eat) and entirely delicious, and now my apartment smells wonderful. Instructions are below. As always, adjust to taste, and based on what's on hand at the moment. I put a lot of things in; you don't have to, though I should mention that even though I usually don't like hardboiled eggs or turnips, they're delicious in here.

Moroccan-ish Couscous (adapted from Claudia Roden)
1/2 lb chorizo (or merguez, or other appropriately-spiced sausage)
1 can chickpeas
1 onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
A few carrots
A few small potatoes
A few small turnips
1 or 2 stalks celery
1 medium tomato
1 zucchini
1 egg
1 thick-ish coin of ginger
Half of a small cinnamon stick
A generous amount of cumin
Cayenne pepper to taste
Salt & pepper to taste
Olive oil
Couscous (or, for the gluten-free, quinoa or millet)

1) Chop the veggies and sausage into the kind of chunks you'd want to find on your spoon, not too small but still bite-sized.

2) Put everything but the couscous, egg, tomato, and zucchini into a pot. Add a drizzle of olive oil. Cover with water and simmer for an hour.

3) Add the zucchini and tomato, taste for spices, simmer for half an hour more.

4) While all that is simmering, cook the couscous and hard-boil the egg.

5) Serve the stew over the couscous, with the hard-boiled egg on top. salt to taste. Devour. Makes great leftovers.

Things I didn't know

I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook - I make my own yogurt, roll out fresh pasta, regularly whip up Szechuan and Indonesian and Thai food, make souffles and risotto and the occasional loaf of bread - but this morning I came across something I didn't know how to do: I had no idea how to hardboil an egg. Well maybe not no idea; I mean, I knew it involved an egg and a pot of boiling water, probably with some salt thrown in. But other than that? You can't exactly look at the thing and see when its done. And few self-respecting cookbooks have instructions on how to do that sort of thing. So thanks to Mark Bittman and 'How to Cook Everything' for stooping to my level and giving the needed remedial lessons. 10 minutes in the pot, and my egg came out lovely. It ended up on top of a spectacular Moroccan couscous, by the way, about which I'll post another day. Lesson learned, lunch success.

Some light reading

What's making me hungry right now:
-The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee - Well written, well researched, generally fascinating.
-Travels with Alice by Calvin Trillin - Hilarious. But this being Trillin, are we really surprised?
-Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid - just made their Laghman sauce with noodles, but without the bell peppers and with cumin, chili peppers, and soy. So maybe it wasn't actually laghman sauce anymore, but it was delicious.
-My Bread by Jim Lahey - I want to make every recipe in there. Will update when I do.

What's killing my appetite:
Insatiable by Gael Greene - You had a lot of sex with a lot of famous people and ate a lot of extravagant meals in France for your big-deal job at New York Magazine. I get it. Can we move on now?

Mango Devil Fruit

Turns out I'm horribly, gruesomely allergic to mangoes. Or rather, the oil in the mango peel. Which happens to be related to poison ivy. Not fun. So thank you grad school for having a great health care system and cheap access to drugs. Fuck you, mangoes. And all my love to Thali Too for serving lemongrass lassis.

Best. Sandwich. Ever.

Toasted seeded rye bread.
Melted sharp cheddar.
Sliced green apple.
Sauteed onions.
Bacon.
And the thinnest spread of maple syrup.
Nirvana on a plate.

100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die

While we're listing goals...

I didn't do quite as well on this one.

[ETA - I'm updating this after my 2 1/2 months in Indonesia & SE Asia. Unsurprirsingly, there's a lot to add.]

1. Almond milk
2. Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
3. Asian pear
4. Baby bok choy
5. Baijiu
6. Beef brisket
7. Beggar's Chicken
8. Bingtang hulu
9. Bitter melon
10. Bubble tea - my favorite
11. Buddha's Delight
12. Cantonese roast duck
13. Century egg, or thousand-year egg - not so bad, actually.
14. Cha siu (Cantonese roast pork)
15. Char kway teow - Indonesia
16. Chicken feet - a little chewy for my taste
    
17. Chinese sausage
18. Chow mein
19. Chrysanthemum tea
20. Claypot rice
21. Congee - (aka bubur ayam, in Indonesia. Pretty sure I also had it at a Vietnamese pace in Philly once.)
22. Conpoy (dried scallops)
23. Crab rangoon
24. Dan Dan noodles
25. Dragonfruit
26. Dragon's Beard candy
27. Dried cuttlefish - no, but I saw a vendor with a cart of them
28. Drunken chicken
29. Dry-fried green beans
30. Egg drop soup
31. Egg rolls
32. Egg tart, Cantonese or Macanese
33. Fresh bamboo shoots - picked 'em myself in Laos
    
34. Fortune cookies
35. Fried milk
36. Fried rice - the only Chinese food I'd eat until age 10 or so, when I discovered wonton soup.
37. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
38. General Tso's Chicken
39. Gobi Manchurian
40. Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
41. Grass jelly - I think so.
42. Hainan chicken rice
43. Hand-pulled noodles
44. Har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings in translucent wrappers)
45. Haw flakes
46. Hibiscus tea aka jamaica aka Red Zinger
47. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
48. Hot and sour soup
49. Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger -????
50. Hot Pot
51. Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
52. Jellyfish
53. Kosher Chinese food
54. Kung Pao Chicken
55. Lamb skewers (yangrou chua'r) - street vendor in Flushing
56. Lion's Head meatballs
57. Lomo Saltado
58. Longan fruit
59. Lychee
60. Macaroni in soup with Spam - eew?
61. Malatang
62. Mantou, especially if fried and dipped in sweetened condensed milk
63. Mapo Tofu - my current favorite thing ever
64. Mock meat
65. Mooncake (bonus points for the snow-skin variety)
66. Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
67. Pan-fried jiaozi
68. Peking duck
69. Pineapple bun - (the Indonesian variety)
70. Prawn crackers - krupuk udang, served at nearly every meal in Malang
71. Pu'er tea
72. Rambutan
73. Red bean in dessert form - once, as a child, thinking it was chocolate - never again.
74. Red bayberry
75. Red cooked pork
76. Roast pigeon
77. Rose tea
78. Roujiamo
79. Scallion pancake
80. Shaved ice dessert
81. Sesame chicken
82. Sichuan pepper in any dish - Sichuan pepper in every dish!
83. Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
84. Silken tofu
85. Soy milk, freshly made
86. Steamed egg custard
87. Stinky tofu
88. Sugar cane juice - with lemon in a Singapore hawker center
89. Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
90. Taro like a cross between a potato and an apple, except delicious. Helped harvest them in a little village in Java.
91. Tea eggs
92. Tea-smoked duck
93. Turnip cake (law bok gau)
94. Twice-cooked pork
95. Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
96. Wonton noodle soup
97. Wood ear - I'm pretty sure
98. Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
99. Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
100. Yunnan goat cheese