moved to mathcook.wordpress.com

check out the new home of this blog, on mathcook.wordpress.com. it's not really fully setup yet. why the move? because i want to try to migrate off of google as bloghost.

Mujadarrah (Jordanian Rice and Lentils)

I borrowed Deborah Madison's ``Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'' from the library.



This one looks like it might one to snipe off EBay or buy off bestbookbuys.com. I have a number of vegetarian cookbooks, having been raised somewhat vegetarian, but really only Yamuna Devi's Indian Vegetarian seems to have reached this level of depth and taste, and it's not an easy, daily cookbook. Madison has simple, to-the-point recipes that capture the core of a dish, like Elizabeth David, but David is shot through with those occasional, little, ineffable extra gems in her writing.

But even so, I just like reading Madison, maybe more than David. I feel like there's so much to learn, and many of the Cal-world-modern flavors and ideas are new to me, having been schooled by Hazan. This is definitely the first Jordanian dish I've ever made -- and I cooked it entirely wrong, not following Madison at all. But it still turned out tasty, which is a big credit to Madison in my opinion.

The problem was that I didn't have white Basmati rice, only brown Basmati, and I had to made dinner quickly and then leave for a late-evening appointment. And we know that brown rice cooks slowly.

So I put in the lentils, toor daal in Hindi or yellow pigeon pea gram lentils in English, and then the rice, as Madison said, and then I realized the brown Basmati would never finish on time. So I transferred to a pressure cooker. Which cooked the brown Basmati on time but made a slush out of the toor daal. And yet, it was good.

The beauty of Mujadarrah, what separates it from an Indian daal, is that there's no spices, no masala, only olive oil, black pepper and onion as the flavor. It is a simplified, highlighted daal, a simple khicherie.


Mujadarrah

Slice an onion into 1/4 inch rounds. Fry in medium-low in 6 tablespoons of olive oil (you know you can't got wrong now) until its mahogany colored. Meanwhile boil 1 1/4 cup of rinsed, sorted lentils (you can use green, brown, or yellow) in 1Q water and a little salt for about 15-20 min. Then add the rice, brown or white, and much black pepper (to taste). Cook covered until the rice is done, about 15 min for white and 1 hour for brown rice. When you're done, then mix in about half of the onions and use the rest to top the servings.

Simple, uses very few ingredients, and very tasty.

Apple Pie - A New Hope

This has been a long and winding road. I first made apple pie (crust from scratch of course) in fall of 2005, and it was incredible. Every time I made it, it came out amazing. The crust was crisp, light, nice, the apples were nice, everything was amazingly tasty. Then apple season ended, and I didn't make any pies or pie crusts until fall of 2006. And I had forgotten something.

The crusts from then on for a long time were tragic. Every time, every time, I would try to follow the instructions, first in Pepin's Technique, since that's where I think I first learned the original nice crusts, then in Julia Child. But instead of pie crust, I'd get nothing but disappointment every time. For years. The apples would be nicely roasted, soft, the crust would, every time, look like it might've worked. And then we'd taste it and it would be atrocious, in some slightly different way from before. Typically they would be hard, mealy, undercooked in some spots and overcooked in some spots.

I mentioned it to the nurse at the dental office once, and she told me that she had foolproof crust recipes, and gave me 4! And I tried a few, and they didn't work. I eventually just stopped making pies altogether, except on very rare occasions when I'd get my hopes up, and then every time they would be dashed by the first bite. But from the bottom, the only way to go is up.

I watched Julia Child's videos, and I saw that she made Tarte Tatin, and that it was pretty easy actually. I made Tarte Tatin, and it worked! The crust was not absurd! It wasn't great, but it was edible, not repellent, perhaps slightly enjoyable. That was the beginning. So I made Tarte Tatin a number of times and was somewhat pleased with it. But Tarte Tatin is not, to my memory, as good as those incredible apple pies in 2005. (Once I remember I processed heavy cream with ice in my food processor and made the butter which I used for the crust, and again, it was incredible, more so than other times. Today I wouldn't dare do that, the butter that you get is soft and moist, which seems like a totally unpredictable thing to put into the pie dough. But it worked once, very well, the butter flavor was even nicer.)

Then in Marcella Hazan I found a recipe for an Asti-style apple tart which was unlike any of the classic apple tarts, and so I made it, and it also came out decently. It is pleasant, aromatic, (it has a lemon and orange zest), very nice. But not like those apple pies.

A few weeks ago I made an apple pie from Pepin, I think, and the crust as not absurd. Again, it wasn't great, but not absurd. From what I recall, it had something to do with limiting the amount of water. But the result wasn't great enough for me to keep track of.

2 pies ago, there was an apple pie in the oven, from Pepin's Cooking with Claudine. No improvement. Then recently we started going to an orchard and got apples. Made a crust using the blender from Julia's Way to Cook. No improvement. She mentions low-gluten pastry flour, which I got, and made another crust with, again no improvement.

Today I made the crust from a website, then I finished it from Pepin's Techniques. Improvement. Definite improvement. What was different?

Water.

Water.

I added more water this time. Up to now, I somehow got it into my head that there shouldn't be a lot of water in the crust, the dough should break apart. This time I added water until I could roll it into a ball. When I rolled the dough out, it was still a little crumbly, hard to handle. So next time there will be more water. When I made the butter myself, the butter was watery! You can only squeeze out so much water from home-made butter.

The bottom of the pie is a bit soggy, so I think a little blind-baking might be in order.

Here's the website.

And just to make sure Dana's recipe stays here, here it is again:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
• 1/4 cup ice water

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

So the key to why this worked for me is that Dana says to make crumbs, then add water until it forms a ball, then wrap and refrigerate. Afterwards rolling it out!

Crab Cakes

Yesterday I made crab cakes for the first time. On Mother's Day when I was leaving the restaurant my sister took my mom and wife, I overhead someone telling the waiter ``Those were the best crabcakes I've ever had.''

I've always loved crabcakes. I never made them myself though. I used to buy frozen Maryland crabcakes from Trader Joe's in Los Angeles and cook them in a little toaster oven in my kitchen-less studio apartment. Trader Joe's was always a little too hectic though.

So anyway overhearing that guy say that triggered my crabcake desire. Then summer vacation started and we wanted to celebrate so we went to a nearby restaurant and ordered.. crabcakes. They were good, but pricey. Then a few days ago we were at Costco and bought a 1 pound can of crabmeat for $15 which is a good price I think.

I started off by reading Jacques Pepin's recipe. He always surprises me with his subtlety and .. artistry. There's really no other word for it. So I made something like this:

1 pound crab meat, store mayonnaise, 3 ounces of white bread, black pepper, a little red pepper, olive oil. Some thyme, dill if you have it. Mix it up, pat into cakes and shallow fry. They are pretty loose.

Pepin recommends a garnish which is lovely: 1 avocado, 1 tomato, olive oil, red wine/balsamic vinegar, black pepper. Chop, mix and serve the cakes on top.

From doing this I learned something. The crab cakes I made were simpler than any I've had before. Not as many spices and flavorings. Not as much bread. What I learned was that Pepin, being a master chef, was just trying to highlight the crab, adding just a few touches here and there. Whereas when you buy crabcakes at a restaurant, they're often trying to stretch the crabmeat.

My crabcakes were better because they had way more crab in them! Even compared with expensive restaurants and Trader Joes.

The only flaw with my crabcakes was that they didn't really hold together that well. They were a bit like a crab hash. Which means add egg. The other thing to do is to make your own Mayonnaise. Next time.

You can buy a can of crab meat or steam a live crab and pick it out yourself --- or you can go crabbing like my friend took me once, but if you get wild crab it's very good just by itself, steamed or boiled.

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is easy, you take an electric mixer, beat egg yolks, then slowly dribble in olive oil until it's mayonnaise.

Tartar Sauce

Tartar sauce is mayonnaise, finely chopped pickles (you can use a food processor or grater,) chopped onions, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

Crab Cakes from Jamee Ruth (whom I've never heard of)

1 pound of crab meat, chopped onion, 1/4 cup mayonnaise chopped cilantro, 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 1.5 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning, chopped jalapeno pepper, salt, white pepper, 1 egg, 5 tablespoons olive oil, 1/4 cup all-purpose, tartar sauce. Also a baking sheet and wax paper.

Pick any shell from 1 pound of lump crab meat. Gently blend the crabmeat, onion, mayonnaise, cilantro, some of the breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs, the Old Bay, jalapeno, salt and pepper, but don't overmix. Stir in the beaten egg. Add breadcrumbs until the mixture holds together as cakes. Make 4-8 cakes on wax paper, saran wrap and chill for 30 minutes to 24 hours.

Mix the remaining tablespoon of breadcrumbs and the 1/4 cup of all-purpose. Heat oil in a frying pan. Coat each cake with the flour mix and put into the frying pan for 3 minutes each side.

Osso Buco Semplice

This is a nice dish, and not hard to prepare --- but you have to leave time, about 2.5 hours start-to-finish. I cooked it out of Hazan several times, but not often since the Osso Buco veal cut is pricey when it's even available. It's been mostly for special occasions. But today we went to the grocery, Whole Foods, and they had Osso Buco for $13/pound. Not bad. Still pricey, not as pricey as usual. And I thought, when am I going to make this anyway if not now? So I bought it. I thought I'd freeze it and use it one day for a special dinner...

When we got back I looked through Hazan and I thought, ah, well it's a little involved. Then I looked at Elizabeth David, and I thought, as usual, ah, the essential recipe. Elizabeth David understood that having the essence of the recipe meant you could then be creative with it. So I suppose Hazan's recipe might taste better, more complex, than David's, but it also doesn't show you the core of the recipe. Once you know the core, you can do what you like with it. The core of Osso Buco is an excellent dish, a marvel of simplicity actually. And Hazan isn't hard either, once you see what you're doing.

After reading David's recipe through carefully (as I do now and didn't do as a beginner,) I knew I could cook it tonight, even though it was getting late. Which would mean I didn't have to freeze and then thaw the osso buco, which makes it better. Freezing and thawing meat well makes a big difference, I'm beginning to think, in your final dishes. For example, we eat Korean bar-be-cue, and we buy American Kobe beef and freeze it. It's always been a problem thawing that, since if you don't thaw it well then the thin slices don't come apart nicely. So I started putting it down from the freezer into the fridge the night before, and now it's perfectly thawed, and I'm sure it tastes better than when I used to have to quick-thaw it in a Ziploc in warm water --- if nothing else it's more reliably thawed all the way through.

But when you have a nice piece of meat, then it's best not to freeze it at all. So here's what I cooked, based on David's recipe:

Osso Buco

2 ossi buchi cuts, good amount of butter, 2 peeled tomatoes, 1/2 cup wine. Use a pan that will fit the ossi buchi without crowding. Brown the ossi buchi on all sides in the butter. Toss in the wine, let it bubble for 10 minutes. Meanwhile chop the tomatoes. After 10 minutes, toss them in along with 1/4 cup of water. Cover. Simmer for 2 hours.

Great dishes don't get simpler than that. Osso buco is always served with risotto Milanese (do the Italians know how to live?) and gremolata. I didn't have a lemon to grate the peel of, and I didn't have Italian parsley, so I made up Jackson-o-lata, which was pretty good. I took 6 basil leaves from my plant (in the photo!), tore them, mixed them with some lime juice and a chopped clove of garlic. That goes on top of the ossi buchi and gives them a little extra flair.

Lamb - Italian Stew and Spicy Indian Cubes

I never liked lamb. It was one of the first dishes I tried when I started out learning to cook --- in fact, out of Hazan. Surprising, now that I think about it, that it failed --- I think it's the only dish out of Hazan that didn't work for me. It was her lamb stew. I had to go to the kitchen to look up the recipe again, since her book is in the kitchen since I use it regularly. But I haven't looked at this recipe since 2002 or so. So now I see that the reason I chose it was because it had so few ingredients:

Lamb Stew with Vinegar and Green Beans

1 pound fresh green beans, 1/4C olio, 3 pounds (!) lamb shoulder with bone cut into 2" cubes, 1/2C chopped onion, salt, pepper, 1/2C red wine vinegar.

Cut the ends of the beans, heat the oil, brown the lamb, take it out, cook the onion 'til it's golden, put back the lamb, add the salt, pepper and vinegar, boil vinegar for 30 sec while stirring. Add the beans, cover, and simmer for 1.5 hours (!). Add water if necessary.

I might try it again, I remember working on it as when I was a Ph.D. student, I was excited, I decided to learn to cook and decided on learning out of Hazan's Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Pepin's Techniques. But I remember that I didn't read the recipe through, I didn't know it would take 2 hours, I'd never prepared green beans. I was working with 3 pounds of smelly lamb! And after all that, when I tasted this lamb stew, it was too gamy. So I avoided cooking lamb since then, though I probably ate it occasionally in North Indian restaurants.

The only time I enjoyed lamb was when this chef visited a friend of ours and made lamb-burgers with mint. They were excellent.

But then I came across Jaffrey's excellent Indian lamb cubes.

Spicy Indian Lamb Cubes

3 tablespoon oil, 1.5" ginger, 4cl fine chopped garlic, 15 curry leaves if you can find them, 1# lamb 1" cubes, 2 teaspoon garam masala, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, .25 teaspoon turmeric, .25 teaspoon pepper, 1 gr chopped chili, .5 teaspoon salt, black pepper, 1.5-2 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat oil in a pan at medium-high. Add ginger, garlic, curry, and stir. Add lamb, cut the heat to medium low. Add the garam masala, ground cumin, turmeric, pepper, chili, salt. Add .75C water, cover the pan, and simmer gently 50min. Then add black pepper, lemon juice and serve it forth.

And they are spicy, not gamy, and delicious.

Pasta alla Mafia

As I said in my last post, I've been cooking from Anna Del Conte's Portrait of Pasta, a nice book. I borrowed it years ago from the library, made the Horace pasta and another one, both were excellent, then returned the book and didn't make the Horace pasta for a while. I didn't know I copied the recipe into a file on my computer. So recently I checked and found the file. I like chickpeas, and leeks are nice because they keep for a while in the fridge. Then just a few days ago I saw a copy online for $1.25 shipped so I bought it.

The recipe I made last night is in del Conte's ``modern'' recipes section. She calls it Pasta alla Mafia because of its Sicilian origin but doesn't explain the title beyond that. I've always had a fascination with the Mafia, with all gangsters. Three of my favorite movies are John Woo's ``A Better Tomorrow'' trilogy.



(3:03 is a classic shot. But looks like you can watch the whole thing on Youtube now. Which I might do. A Better Tomorrow has scenes in Hong Kong restaurants, it makes me want to make Chinese food again. But I'm prevented. Maybe I should go through that list of recipes that don't use many Chinese ingredients from Dunlop a little more tonight.)

So back to Pasta alla Mafia. I visited Sicily once, I kept thinking whether to go to Corleone or not, in the end we didn't. Not that anyone would mistake us for Mafiosi. But many parts of Sicily were beautiful. I remember walking around in Palermo behind our hotel, which near the Quattro Canti, trying to reach the harbor to get on a hydrofoil to some island, the buildings were old, run-down, but full of character. A little like Napoli --- the pizza in Napoli was monumental.

For this Sicilian recipe you need anchovies. Anchovies have been defamed in the United States. This is probably due to incompetence. Anchovies are probably awful if you don't know what to do with them; I know what to do with them, and because I learned from Hazan, I've never tasted a bad dish with anchovies in it --- in fact I've tasted few bad dishes at all. But I remember when I was a kid and would've parroted the idea that anchovies are awful to anyone who asked me. Only the UK eats worse than us here in the US --- the Italians and French know what to do with anchovies. But ignorance is hard to overcome. If you don't want to use anchovies in this recipe, leave them out. Put in canned tuna instead if that makes you feel better. If you want to learn to use this fine ingredient, then my advice is to get a glass jar of imported Italian anchovy fillets in olive oil. I keep mine in the fridge but I doubt it's necessary.

Pasta alla Mafia

You need anchovies, pitted olives, chilies, citrus rind/zest, spaghetti, garlic, olio. You take the citrus rind and zest and put them in a saucepan with the olio and let it mingle. Bring the pasta water to a boil. Chop the chilies, garlic and olives. Add the chilies and garlic to the oil. Throw the pasta into the water, take out the citrus rind and heat the pan. When the oil is hot, add the anchovies, and mash them up with a wooden spoon until they're just a paste. Add the olives. When the pasta done, toss everything together.

Mangiare.

Indian Chappali Kebabs

I grew up on my Mom's Indian vegetarian food. Indian food is not the easiest to get off the ground, because most dishes require a mixture of spices from tray of about 8 spices: turmeric/haldi, coriander/dhania, cumin/jeera, pepper/mirch, garam masala, poppy seeds, mustard seeds/rai, cardamom/elaichi. (Recipedelights has a nice translation of more ingredients than I have heard of.)

But once you have these spices, then you can make Indian food. The easiest starch that goes with Indian is basmati rice, but I've been trying to use up my Jasmine rice and that's good also.

I don't make Indian food much --- though I grew up on it, because my Mom lives nearby so whenever I want something I phone her --- and because once I learned a little bit about how to make it, I settled for making passable dishes without much work. But the thing is, I've never learned the art of flavoring Indian food by fine tuning each spice to each dish, nor have I learned any non-beginner dishes.

I tried learning some South Indian food but I didn't progress. I never got good and fast at dosas... which is one of my favorite foods. I need to get back on that. Lately I've been working on Madhur Jaffrey's book, and it has some meat recipes.



Since growing up I've been corrupted into eating meat, and so I tried some of these recipes. I've modified her Chappali Kebab a little, because I don't eat 1.5 pounds of ground beef in a sitting, only a half pound between me and my wife. But rather than reducing everything by 2/3, which would then call for 1/6 of an egg, (which I may try at some point,) I instead boosted the amount of chickpea flour. It's not bad, but I think that much chickpea actually changes the taste, and not all for the better. The bitterness of raw chickpea makes an appearance. But they're not bad, and they're fun to make. I think in India these are made with ground lamb or goat, since I never heard of Indians eating beef. But this is what I do:

Indian Chappali Kebabs

Get the rice going (I use a rice cooker.) Thaw .5 pound of beef (I put it in a mylar sandwich bag in warm water.) Brown about 4 tablespoons of chickpea flour (besan) in your iron pan on medium, stir from time to time. Brown a little more than 1 teaspoon each of whole coriander and cumin along with the chickpea flour. Chop a small hot green pepper, put in the mixing bowl (or use powdered red chili,) and break the egg in. Leave the pan off the heat once the chickpea flour is browned. Wait until the rice is done and the beef is thawed. When that's done, then dump the beef into the mixing bowl, and then add the chickpea flour and spices (you don't want to add warm chickpea flour to the egg without the cool beef or it might cook the egg!) Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in the iron pan, form 4 balls from the beef, flatten them into disks, and put them in the iron pan. Flip every 20 seconds, until they're done, about 2-3 minutes.

To get Jaffrey's original, which she claims to have reverse-engineered from a Manhattan take-out, use 1.5 pounds of beef, only 2 tablespoons of chickpea flour, only half an egg, and a little more coriander and cumin.

Horace's Chickpeas, Leeks and Pasta Soup

So tonight I'm setting up a beautiful chickpea and leek pasta soup based on a recipe I found in Anna Del Conte's excellent book Portrait of pasta. This is a great cookbook because it has a section of historical recipes and they've all been great, and it's fun to read about dishes that some historical figures might've eaten.

So the chickpea and leek pasta comes from Horace's Book I, Satire VI, Non Quia, Maecenas. It's a charming poem, Horace's Satires are available for free download from Project Gutenberg, which is one of the best sites on the Internet. So in this Satire, Horace is talking to the rich Maecenas, whoever that was, and says that although Maecenas is rich, he is content with his life. Horace talks about his father:

If I have lived unstained and unreproved
(Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved,
I owe it to my father, who, though poor,
Passed by the village school at his own door,
The school where great tall urchins in a row,
Sons of great tall centurions, used to go,
With slate and satchel on their backs, to pay
Their monthly quota punctual to the day,
And took his boy to Rome, to learn the arts
Which knight or senator to HIS imparts.
Whoe'er had seen me, neat and more than neat,
With slaves behind me, in the crowded street,
Had surely thought a fortune fair and large,
Two generations old, sustained the charge.
Himself the true tried guardian of his son,
Whene'er I went to class, he still made one.
Why lengthen out the tale? he kept me chaste,
Which is the crown of virtue, undisgraced
In deed and name: he feared not lest one day
The world should talk of money thrown away

and then goes on to talk about how he whiles his days away in the Forum and the Circus, and sometimes winds down back at his house to a dish of chickpeas (vetch,) leeks and pasta. (Though I don't get how if his father was poor, he could afford to have sent him with a group of slaves behind him. But anyway.)

The leek and chickpea is what I will have tomorrow. It's a tasty dish. Here's an adaptation of Del Conte's .. adaptation of Horace? I use a slow cooker for all my beans --- I can't have beans without the slow cooker now

Horace Chickpea and Leek Pasta

You will need 1/2 box or more pasta, 1-2 leeks, 2-3 tomatoes, 6 ounces chickpeas, 1-2 bay leaves, parsley, salt, pepper, and 1 stick of celery. Soak chickpeas overnight, change the water once, drain and rinse (I do this in my slow cooker bowl.) Cut the white part of the leek into small rings. Add the leek, tomatoes, chopped celery, bay leaf, salt, and lots of ground pepper to the soaked chickpeas. Cover, boil, lower and simmer --- I slow cook on low all day, Del Conte says simmer 3 hours. Do not uncover.

When the chickpeas are tender and you're ready to eat, boil the pasta, drain, and fry it in olive oil. Add the fried pasta and oil to the soup and cook until the pasta is tender. Add the chopped parsley and serve with grated parmegiano on the side.

Sichuanese Dishes without Chinese Ingredients

I've been a fan of Fuschia Dunlop's since I met a couple who lived for a year or so in China. We went over their house and they made a Sichuanese hotpot for us (I think they used Dunlop p347 as a guide, but since they lived there I suppose they might've been doing their own thing,) in a beautifully crafted Chinese copper brazier. The meal was remarkable (this couple also made Ethiopian food for us, and homemade Gouda cheese... both of these were also exquisite.)



Anyway so during the Sichuanese hotpot evening, I asked the wife which Chinese cookbook she recommended, and she recommended Fuschia Dunlop, so I bought it. And I was converted to Sichuanese food, or maybe just Dunlop's food.

Many things aren't exactly fast or easy in Dunlop, but some things are. But I worked on Dunlop and I gained some skills in Chinese food. And one thing is that Chinese food is the most fun food to make of any cuisine, in my opinion.

Now I started learning to cook when I was finishing my Ph.D. at UCLA.. Actually perhaps I had tried a few dishes before that, out of the Moosewood cookbook, which I haven't used for years, if you know what I mean.... So when I decided I wanted to stop eating out all the time and start cooking, I wanted to learn from some time-tested books. And so I bought 2 books, one was Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, and the other was Marcella Hazan's The Essentials of Classic Italian Cuisine

(I'd been to Italy a number of times and remain a devotee of the country, the cuisine, the people, the architecture, the art, the history, the churches, the ruins, the gelato, the culture, the lifestyle.) Pepin was good, I used him to buy a few tools in the beginning (see my 1st post), and to learn a few basic things.

Marcella Hazan taught me to cook.

Since then I've collected a lot of cookbooks, read what's good and what's bad in cookbooks. Dunlop is a good cookbook, one of the best. Sichuanese cooking isn't hard, but you do need one skill that I didn't have as a beginner --- reading the entire recipe, preparing all the steps in advance, and being ready. You need this skill particularly when you're cooking Sichuanese, because once you're done with the prep, and your stove is on, and the oil is starting to smoke in your wok, everything happens very, very, very quickly. And that's what's fun about it.

So I made a bunch of dishes. Here's a simple, fast easy one, which isn't from Dunlop but was taught to me by the husband from the couple mentioned above.

Chinese Fried Rice

Prepare 1C rice. (I make Thai jasmine rice when I cook Chinese, it's what I find at my Chinese grocery so I suppose it's what they eat there.)

Meanwhile, chop 2 green onions, 1/2" ginger, and 2 cloves garlic. Beat 2 eggs with some salt. Now heat your wok with some peanut oil, superhot, just until it starts smoking. (If you don't have a wok, use a large pan that as much of rice can fit in as possible.) Throw the eggs in, they will fry and cook very quickly, slide them out. Heat some more oil, add ginger, then the rice. Mix and coat the rice with the oil, then cut in the egg, then toss in the green onions, and salt.

Anyway, now, my wife has barred me from making Chinese food because of the melamine thing. Now it's understandable --- but Chinese food is so much fun to make. So I'm going to go through the recipes in Dunlop and list which ones can be made with non-Chinese ingredients. Here's my list so far.

No Chinese Ingredients

• Sea Flavor Noodles p93
  
• Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers p96
  
• Mr. Lai's Sticky Rice Balls with Sesame Stuffing p97
• ZHONG dumplings! p102 (these are a culinary masterpiece)
  
• "long" wonton dumplings p104
  
• steamed pork and pumpkin dumplings
  
• steamed pork and cabbage dumplings
  

Yacai Only (Yacai is a Chinese ingredient, but it's only 1)

• Dan Dan Noodles p88,
  
• Mr. Xie Beef Dan Dan Noodles p89,
  
• Yibin Kindling Noodles p91,
  
• Spicy Noodles with Soft Tofu p92
  
• Leaf-wrapped Sticky Rice Dumplings

(I changed Dunlop's titles from using the word glutinous to using the word sticky. The etymology of the word glutinous is that it comes from the word gluten which is related to the word glue. Hence glutinous rice can be thought of as related to gluey rice --- but that's problematic for a different reason, so I went with sticky rice, which is another common translation. But sticky has a different etymology --- people used sticks to 'stick' things to other things...)

The Siren Song of Ova

Eggs are one of the best items to have if you like fast, cheap cooking, and want excellent food. Eggs are the simplest excellent dish. You can make eggs just as well as some fancy Lyonnais chef can, here's the recipe:

Heat your iron pan. Put in 1-2 tablespoons of butter. Crack 2-3 eggs in a small bowl and mix, but not thoroughly. Wait until the butter just smokes and then dump the eggs in. It will sizzle, the clear albumen will turn white. Shake the pan back and forth over the heat as the eggs cook, this gives the eggs a little bit of fluff. Then slide out your omelette onto a plate, salt and pepper. Done. You could pay $300 for the same omelette.

There's all kinds of yakking in cookbooks about the perfect omelette and whatnot. There's nothing to it. The perfection of the omelette is that it's simple. Anyone can do it, easily. That's the perfection. It's not that someone who went to Le Cordon Bleu and then staged with some supercool celebrity chef like Susur Lee can make it any better. It's already perfect.

You crack the eggs into a small bowl, mix them up, dump them into the just smoking butter, shake the pan as it cooks. That's all.

There's also boiling the eggs. Put the eggs into room temperature water in a pot. Turn on the heat. Wait for it to boil. Keep the boiling very gentle, so the eggs don't break. Wait about 10 minutes (you'll have to do this by trial-and-error to find what consistency you like.) Dump out the water and fill the pot with cold water. Take out the eggs after a minute or so and peel the eggshells and the skin. Eat with salt and pepper. Perfection.

One silly thing I remember about boiled eggs --- I once went to Turkey for sightseeing. I wanted to see the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire --- being a classical history buff. So we were in Istanbul and we were served breakfast every morning at the small hotel we stayed at. And every morning it was hard to peel the skin off the eggs. We marveled that the Turks didn't know that you should chill the eggs right after boiling them to make it easier to take the skin off. The older lady who prepared the breakfast didn't speak English, and we didn't raise the point with anyone. So then we came back and we met a lady who raised chickens, and also my cello teacher raised chickens, and they'd give us their fresh eggs from time to time. When we boiled them and chilled them, the skins were hard to peel.... Turns out that the freshest, best, eggs, are hard to peel even if you chill them right after boiling. And so the Turkish breakfast lady wasn't the ignoramus, we were.

But anyway what's the siren song about? Eggs are attractive, a perfect dish, so simple, so easy, so fast, so flawless.... But there is a flaw! Eggs are pure protein, and they don't reach their highest until they are paired with a starch! How many times there were eggs in the fridge, and butter, and perfection awaited, but no, there was no bread! (Rubbing some garlic on toasted, sliced, French or Italian bread that has been drizzled in olive oil is the way to go. Bruschetta.) So now I keep potatoes on hand, but potatoes take a while to cook. And so the siren song of the eggs, ever beckoning, luring, leering.

The Zen of Dishes

Cooking is well and good, but when I started out, I hated doing dishes. That was one of the big draws to eating out, in a way, was that you just go, pick something, someone brings it out prepared, you eat and pay and that's it. No dishes. When you eat at home, though, there's a big pile of dishes. The pile is so big, sometimes it's hard to know how it got that big. What to do?

Well there's a few things. Mostly one has to look at dishes from a philosophical perspective. When they're there and you have to do them, and you'd rather do something else, they don't just go away. In fact, for me, when they're sitting there, they cause more trouble than washing them. I hate having dirty dishes sitting in the sink.

I read Kitchen Confidential by Bourdain a few years back



it's a blast --- anyone who likes cooking should read it. He talks about a restaurant where the head chef came by where a junior chef was cooking and the station was not immaculate. The head chef pressed his palm into the crumbs or whatever was on the station, then held his palm up to the junior chef and said ``this is your mind.'' Which sums it up exactly. Another quote that comes to me is Glenn Gould, who said that you don't play the piano with your fingers, you play it with your mind..

So anyway, how clean my kitchen is reflects how my mind is working. If there's something messy there, then as I cook, I don't have time to think about what's different about this mess in a split second when I need to move something, and what ends up happening is that the small mess causes a bigger mess and more work. Whereas if I clean up whatever it is right away, the kitchen is ready for whatever might come up, everything is where it needs to be if I need something immediately. It's a tool thats ready to go. Rather than mess-ups cascading on each other, I can save something in an instant.

But enough about saving things. It always has to happen, but we strive to read the recipe beforehand and know what's coming and what to expect. So dishes.

Now there's a professor down the hall from me who studies Eastern Philosophy --- I teach math. I asked him once why it's important to teach math to students. He said the only thing that matters, for example when a student is doing a calculus problem, is the moment when the student is absorbed in the math, when they are living math for a minute or for half an hour. In that half-hour, their mind is in a single state. There's no stress, there's no worries, there's flow. It's a rare thing and a pleasurable thing.

When I do dishes, there's a flow. It doesn't have to be a new, fascinating dish, a new ingredient, an amazing novel, a great movie, a beautiful piece of music. Now when I started doing dishes, it was cumbersome, messy. It took a few weeks before I did dishes without thinking about this new cumbersome chore. Now I just do them. It's part of my life.

Overall, I think cooking and doing dishes is faster than going out. I cook better than stuff I can afford to buy (I had an awful hotdog recently.) And it's not unpleasant once I started doing it regularly.

Supersonic Thai Curry with Jasmine Rice

OK so the cookies are a bit much, I agree. And this is about fast, cheap cooking that is excellent. Well here's a fast, cheap dish that dances in the mouth (not saltimbocca, though)!

I'd always liked Thai curry and Thai food in general. I took a class once at Pasadena City College with Yupa Holzner, and actually made Pad Thai (I haven't really made it consistently since, it seems to me to involve a certain amount of preparation.) She didn't teach me how to make curry either. From Bhumichitra's book, I learned to make a vegetarian curry, and then I simplified it until I've got the cheapest, easiest, and fastest yellow Thai curry. Its a pretty good book but its a little long on ingredients.




If you're in the San Fernando Valley, then most Sundays the Thai Wat of Los Angeles has food stalls, made by members of the Wat. There's some of the best Thai food there, we used to go from West L.A.

So to eat curry, you will need to prepare Thai jasmine rice ahead of time. I have invested in a nice rice cooker, since I eat Asian food constantly. It's a great time saver, especially the programmable timer, but I used to cook rice in a pot for a long time. These recipes are for 1 person. All regular white rices cook according to the same recipe.

Rice in a Pot

Take 1 cup rice into the pot. Pour in water, stir and drain 1-2 times to wash the rice, finally drain it thoroughly. Then add 2 cups water, a pinch of salt, and if you like, some oil. Cover and boil. When it just starts to boil, lower the heat to a very slow simmer. Done in about 20-40 minutes. Check the pot as little as possible --- open it quickly, tilt the pot, and use a spoon to peek at the bottom of the pot, if there's water, put it back, if not, the rice is done.

Supersonic Yellow Thai Curry

You need: a pack of yellow Thai curry, 1-2 cloves garlic, 1-2 potatoes, 2-3 green onions, a can of Thai coconut milk, soy sauce, salt, oil (peanut, canola or olive are best,) sugar

Chop the garlic and fry in oil (about 1 tablespoon) on medium heat. Chop the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes or smaller. When the garlic is a little transparent and golden, add a tablespoon or so of the curry and stir-fry for 30 seconds --- it may spatter so be careful! Now pour in 1/3 can of coconut milk and let it cook for about 1 minute, then sweep the potatoes in and cook for 5-7 minutes. Meanwhile chop the green onions --- chop the white finely and the green into slanted slices about 1" long or so. Add the green onions to the curry in 5-7 minutes, then sugar, salt and soy sauce to taste. Eat with the rice.

Chocolate Cookies

I like chocolate. A lot. I got into cookies once when I watched the Matrix again (for the nth time)... The scene where Neo first goes to see the Oracle, and she's baking cookies.



So while I lived in Salt Lake City I went to Avenues Bakery --- they have amazing cookies. I got a bit addicted. Its a nice little cafe, but after paying $ for cookies a number of times, a person like me starts searching for a way to make them at home. As I made different cookies over the years, I kept some notes.

So then I moved away, and I didn't make cookies for a while. We had a child, there hasn't been a lot of time... So a few days ago I was looking through my copy of



which is an inspiration... I lived in Los Angeles for 14 years and the La Brea Bakery was one of my favorite spots there. Some of the recipes are a little over my head, but I've made several and everything I've tried came out very well. Silverton's chocolate chip scone is wondrous, as is the Crottin de Chocolate, and it was in the scone that I began dumping more and more chocolate.

I write pastry recipes that I work on or develop on the inside cover of my copy, and so when I wanted cookies a few days ago, I started following along the recipe I wrote there years ago. Its Tollhouse by way of Avenues by way of Silverton by way of... my chocolate obsession. I did a double-take when I saw how much chocolate I was adding, but I plowed on --- how bad could it be? So here goes... hang on to your hat. Frankly I don't even really claim the cookies taste like cookies should, nor that they're good in the way we generally want of cookies. They've got so much chocolate that I think they're kind of half-truffles, and extremely dark ones at that. So these are a bit about appreciating 99% chocolate itself, not sugar, not flour... baking chocolate and butter... everything else is secondary in this recipe.. And make sure you have a glass or 2 of milk... I can't eat more than 2 cookies in a sitting because of how much chocolate there is...

Chocolate Cookies

You will need 1C nuts, 2 sticks butter, 1.5C brown sugar/white sugar/honey/molasses, 2 eggs, 2C unbleached all-purpose... baking soda, salt, 1 pound of good quality 100% chocolate, 1/2 vanilla bean (optional), 1C rolled oats

Preheat to 375. Chop 1 cup of nuts (I like walnuts) and slightly roast them in the oven as it preheats --- from time to time check and take them out if they're fragrant. Chop and ``cream'' 2 sticks of butter (if they're from the fridge they will loosen up as you work.) Add 1.5 cups of brown sugar (white sugar works also), beat in the 2 eggs. Now take a tablespoon, fill it about halfway with baking soda and then carefully add water until its almost full, mix and put into the dough (normal people probably use a small bowl and don't try to save on dishes this much.) Mix in the 2 cups of all-purpose.

Get a cutting board, serrated knife (bread knife works well) and the 1 pound of chocolate (if its in a block... if yours is already chopped or chips then skip this step.) Gradually press the bread knife into the chocolate block, it should give and break. Keep chopping the chocolate until you've got chocolate pieces that are bite-size or smaller.

If you're adding it, slice open the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the dough. Take the chopped roasted nuts out add to the dough. Dump in the 1C rolled oats.

Now mix until the dough starts coming together. Try to make sure the butter pieces get somewhat mixed --- they don't have to be completely mixed, but they shouldn't be big chunks separate in the dough either.

From this dough, I pull off 4 cookies and bake for 15min in a small brownie pan (dishes again.) I divide the rest of the dough into 8 batches, roll each batch into a small log, saran wrap and freeze. These can be baked later, about 15-18 minutes at 375.

Bread and Muffins and Valrhona

Making bread is one the simple, cheap, and fast pleasures of cooking. I made my first breads --- focacce --- out of Dunaway's great book No Need to Knead.



I chose that book because I wanted to learn to make Italian bread --- the title make it look easy and fast. And its true, you don't need to knead in those recipes. But you do have to stir more vigorously than usual --- and I've since found that kneading isn't hard if you're just making a loaf for yourself. But anyway I've been delighted with every bread in that book that I've made.

But lately I've been making bread out of The Tassajara Bread Book by Brown.



This is a great book --- its all whole wheat. There's a decadence to white bread that whole wheat changes to worthiness. Whole wheat has a familiarity, an easiness. When I eat whole wheat that I baked, I feel good --- when I eat white bread that I baked, I feel a little celebratory.

Brown also also great muffin recipes. I was never a big fan of whole-wheat muffins, but I am a chocolate aficionado, and I've been dragging around several plastic containers of Valrhona cocoa that I bought from Surfas years ago and have always been saving ... So I put 2+2 together, and now I douse Brown's muffin recipe with Valrhona cocoa and some roasted nuts. In this recipe, by the way, Brown mentions mixing the dry and the wet ingredients separately and combining and mixing as little as possible. I used to skip that since it seemed like one of those fussy instructions that someone writes because thats how they always do it... But that one makes a difference in terms of the lightness of the muffins. I don't know why. Well this is the recipe I make which I've adapted from Brown's. Now I am also a fierce devotee of Elizabeth David's, and so I won't write out recipe in the ingredient/step1/step2 fashion, but more in her conversational fashion.

Preheat to 375.

So first the wet bowl, put in 1/4c olive oil (butter tastes better if you like). Use the same measuring cup to put in 1/2c molasses or honey (I found that when I reuse the oil-coated cup the honey or molasses doesn't stick to the cup.) Beat an egg in and then pour in 1 1/2 cups milk.

In the dry bowl, measure out 2C whole wheat. Mix in 2 tsp baking powder, a large pinch of salt.. And then the cocoa. I pretty much go all-out, I'd say about 1C or more, and I'm burning Valrhona.

Anyway, then grease the muffin tin. Now muffin tins are something else. I used to use the nonstick ones you get at the supermarket --- but as I said in the stocking-up post, I now avoid all nonstick. Nonstick wears off, and then you have to buy another pan while digesting some odd substance. So I got a heavy aluminumized steel muffin pan from Williams-Sonoma (before Lehman Brothers crashed.) It makes a big difference, and it was worth the money --- and its not nonstick and still it sticks much less than the cheap nonstick pan did. I think nonstick coating is just a way to sell cheap muffin pans that don't stick for a month or 2. I say avoid the nonstick, either use a disposable aluminum one from the store or get a good quality non-nonstick one.

So... grease up the muffin pan.

Now for the key, subtle step. Combine the wet and dry bowls into the larger bowl, and mix as little as possible to get a lumpy batter.

Hold the bowl over the muffin pan ``slots'' and very gently tip the bowl and pour the batter into the slots. First time or 2 will be a mess.

Finally, I chop some dried fruit over the muffins and pop the pan in the oven. I do the chopstick test: take a chopstick and see if it comes out clean, for me its 18min, but Brown says 15.

Aio e Oio and Salsa di Pomodoro

Now that you have a little equipment, you need some ingredients. One of the most reliable daily foods is spaghetti. Once you learn how to make it, you can always make it. You can have vegetables and meats in the sauce, its basically a 1-pot meal. Here's 2 that are the height of simplicity, and they're tasty. When you go grocery shopping, you will need:

• several boxes of spaghetti --- whole wheat if you like
• a few heads of garlic
• cans of peeled tomatoes --- ones that say 'Product of Italy' are best but you can use American. It may have some basil in it. You can also use fresh roma tomatoes, they give a different flavor.
• saran wrap
• a few onions
• butter
• olive oil
• hot chilies
• salt (good sea salt is cheap in Asian markets.)
• A small block of parmegiano

That's it. Now you can make:

Aio e Oio --- Raw Garlic, Chili and Oil Sauce

This is the simplest. If you pull on the bumps under the skin of the garlic, you find little cloves, about 20, in each head. Peel the 'paper' off and chop a few cloves. Chop a few hot chilies. Fill your largest pot 2/3 full of water, cover and bring it to boil on high heat, throw a handful of salt in. (For the garlic chili and oil recipe you need extra salt in the pot, since sprinkling salt in at the end doesn't work very well.)

I find that a 1lb (500g) box of spaghetti makes 4 meals. What I do is I open the top of the box, put my left hand over the opening, and turn the box over so that the spaghetti is resting on my hand in the box. Then I can let a little bit of the spaghetti out and eyeball how much 1/4 (or 1/2 if cooking for 2) of the box is.

Take how much spaghetti you're going to cook and throw it in the pot; it might not fit in --- don't break it --- just push on it with your wooden spoon, it softens quickly and will go in.

Boil the spaghetti uncovered on high heat. After 5 minutes, take a fork and pull out a single strand and take a small clean bite off the end. If you see the faintest core of white and the rest of the spaghetti clearer, then its done. It probably won't be after 5min, so every minute or 2 after that take another strand and check.

Get the colander ready in the sink.

When its done, dump the pot out over the colander to catch the spaghetti. Put the spaghetti back in the put, throw the garlic and chilies in there, and then pour out as much olive oil as you like to make it glisten as you toss the spaghetti --- roughly 1 tablespoon per person. You might want to eat this only for dinner since your breath might have a bit of garlic on it.

Variation: Aio e Oio (Cooked)

Do everything as before except, as the spaghetti is boiling, heat your frying pan, pour some olive oil in and the garlic. It should sizzle and turn a little golden, then turn it off. When its a bit cooler, throw in the chilies ( chilies burn easily, the smoke is powerful and makes you cough and your eyes water.)

When the spaghetti is done, then toss with the cooked garlic and eat as before.


Finally, the last thing you can make is the classic tomato sauce.

Salsa di Pomodoro (Simple Tomato Sauce)

Now tomato sauce is easy. You can buy a jar of it in the grocery market, but that's not what I'm going to write about here. The jar is fine, but once you open it, you have to finish it soon, and the jar sauce generally isn't so great that you keep coming back for more tomorrow and the day after. Its better when you make it, and its simple classic.

Peel off the skin of the onion. For each you will need 1/4 of the onion, the rest you can saran wrap back into the fridge.

In your saucepan, melt some butter on medium-low (about 1 tablespoon per person.) Put in some of the peeled tomatoes (about 1/4 of the 28ounce can per person). Put in the onion. Taste a teaspoonful. Cook on medium low.

Meanwhile shred some parmegiano, get the pot of water boiling for the spaghetti, and cook and drain the spaghetti. Taste the tomato sauce from time to time.

After about 20 minutes you will see the tomato sauce is thickened, shinier. Taste it again, see if its done. Take it off by 30 minutes at the latest and toss with the spaghetti, put parmegiano and mix. Cut in some more butter if you like.

Stocking Up

So the first thing to do if you want to start cooking is to get some equipment and some supplies. Since this is all about cheap and easy cooking, these will be minimal.

If you're like I was when I started cooking, I didn't know what basic equipment I needed. Some of the cheapest equipment, it turns out, is the best. I use cast iron for all skillets, griddles, frying pans --- I used Lodge and I like every item I got from them. Professionals use heavy aluminum, rich people use copper, lots of people use stainless steel since its cheap and you can get it in the supermarket. And finally there's nonstick at lots of price points --- I avoid all nonstick. Nonstick looks good in the store, but all nonstick eventually wears and peels and becomes very sticky. Then its time to BUY another pan. Better to get something that lasts and cooks well. (There are a some legitimate uses of a nonstick pan, but its more of an encumbrance in the beginning.)

Heavy skillets hold and distribute heat the best, so the copper, heavy aluminum and cast iron are better than the light stainless ones. Now of these, cast iron is the cheapest. There's a small catch, though... Cast iron needs to be seasoned (after which it is truly nonstick!) and it needs to be cleaned, dried, and oiled soon soon after each use. You can't let it sit moist for an hour or it will rust. (Even if it does rust, you can clean the rust off and then reseason the pan though.)

All of which is a long-winded way of saying:

• get a cast-iron skillet --- and you will need to also get:
  
• a small and a large stainless steel pot, just get what's cheap. If you can, get them with glass lids so you can see what's happening inside as things cook.
• A wooden spatula
• a large wooden stirring spoon,
• large stainless mixing bowl
• grater --- get a box type that you can place over a plate
  
• colander
• cutting board.
• a few plates, bowls, cutlery as necessary
  

Knives

Which brings us to the only item where spending more now pays off. Knives. I use Henckel's Classic knives, they are heavy, stainless. I also have a set of GATCO knife sharpening stones, you can hold off on these in the beginning if your market offers free sharpening. But you do have to keep your knives sharp.