Beethoven's Birthday and Chanukah

See, the conqu'ring hero comes!

Sound the trumpets! Beat the drums!

Sports prepare! The laurel bring!

Songs of triumph to him sing!

George Friedrich Handel's Oratorio Judas Maccabaeus was written to celebrate a British victory in 1746. However, as the Maccabees are also the heroes of Chanukah, it is also an appropriate piece of music for the holiday. The eight candles of Chanukah represent the miracle that took place after the Maccabee victory commemorated in the Oratorio: the oil for the rekindled lights of the temple lasted eight days when it seemed only enough for one day. The image above is a drawing of Judas Maccabee by Israeli artist Arthur Szyk.

Beethoven's birthday is traditionally celebrated on December 16, though what's really known is that he was Baptized on December 17, 1770. To celebrate his 250th birthday, Classical radio stations have been playing Beethoven's music all during this week, and I've enjoyed it. I'm a really big fan of Beethoven, so to celebrate both his birthday AND Chanukah this week, I'm sharing a recording of his variations on a theme by Handel from the oratorio Judas Maccabaeus. 

12 Variations for Cello and Piano on "See the conqu'ring hero comes"

Blog post © 2020 mae sander, images as credited.

Authenticity?

Edward Hopper “Chop Suey” (1929): Authentic American Chinese cuisine.

Yesterday I wrote a review of the book The Best American Food Writing 2020, a collection of short pieces from a variety of online and print magazines, predominantly The New Yorker, New York Times, Eater, and Serious Eats. I mentioned that a recurring theme in these writings was authenticity, which is introduced in the foreword to the collection:

"Stories about people, places, authenticity, and the rich diversity of America’s food scene seemed particularly relevant as the question of what it means to be American has been at the core of recent politics."

The idea of authentic tacos, authentic Chinese food, authentic Soul Food, and other authentic ethnic cuisine is debated, along with the idea of cultural appropriation -- which means white people making ethnic food (authentic or not) and using their economic advantages to finance their efforts, thus edging out the ethnic people who are poorer and don't have those advantages. Several buzz words or a "signifiers," make up a food writing vocabulary that speaks "to a contemporary antibourgeois bourgeois culture that selects for 'authenticity,' 'mindfulness,' and 'transparency'" (p. 207). 

Chinese food is especially subject to disputes over  what is "authentic." The essay by Dan Nosowitz, "What the Heck Is Crab Rangoon Anyway?" explores this topic in a most interesting way. His view:

"Crab rangoon is not inauthentic, and you should not be embarrassed to order it. American Chinese food is its own cuisine, with its own staples and a reasonably long and fascinating history. There’s a fundamental problem with the concept of authenticity in food, because cuisine is constantly mutating and adapting to new ingredients, new people, new techniques, and new ideas. Mexican food would be completely different without the influence of the Spanish and Arab immigrants and colonists; the tomato is not native to Italy; the chili pepper is not native to Thailand. There are old dishes and there are newer dishes, and that can be an interesting distinction. And there is tasty food and lousy food, but using some concept of authenticity alone as a criteria is a flawed approach." (p. 225). 

The essay by José R. Rala called "The Demand for 'Authenticity' Is Threatening Kansas City’s Homegrown Tacos" is a discussion of a particular type of tacos that emerged in Kansas City years ago, but is now viewed as inauthentic. However these tacos have a convincing history in the long-established Mexican immigrant community of the area. In 1958 the Spanish Gardens Taco House was opened by a member of this community. "On the restaurant’s menu were enchiladas, tamales, chili, and a regional specialty that developed as a result of the proximity of the area’s Italian and Mexican communities: fried tacos topped with a ketchup-like 'taco sauce' and Parmesan cheese." They were rolled, fastened with a toothpick, and fried. "The popularity of crunchy, toothpick-sealed Kansas City tacos only rose throughout the 1960s and ’70s." Now, thanks to Yelp, these taco places are much less popular, due in part to "the viral nature of media like Yelp reviews that claim the taco is not truly Mexican." (p. 76).

Indeed, Yelp reviewers turn out to be a major proponent of a particularly vile use of the concept of what is authentic, specifically, in propagating a particularly racist view of ethnic restaurants. In Sara Kay's research report, she makes this case very convincingly: "Yelp Reviewers’ Authenticity Fetish Is White Supremacy in Action." She writes:

"The term 'authenticity' is everywhere. Pundits claim that millennials crave it, restaurants boast authentic dining experiences, and Foursquare asks us to make judgments about it. These claims, often used as markers of quality, are employed by diners and restaurateurs alike— often used by owners to evoke a homespun or faraway romanticism. Nowhere does that come into play more than on user-based review sites like Yelp." (p. 230). 

"When reviewers picture authenticity in ethnic food, they mentally reference all the experiences they’ve had before with that cuisine and the people who make it— and most of the time, reviewers view those experiences, whether from personal interaction or from interacting with media, as not positive. Reviews tend to reflect the racism already existing in the world; people’s biases come into play. According to my data, the average Yelp reviewer connotes 'authentic' with characteristics such as dirt floors, plastic stools, and other patrons who are nonwhite, when reviewing non-European restaurants." (p. 231).

"And when reviewers use 'authentic,' they put unfair expectations on restaurateurs to maintain a low set of standards for their establishment— much lower than any restaurant serving Western cuisines. The language directly supports a hierarchy where white, Western cuisine is allowed more creative latitude to expand, explore, and generate profits than its non-Western counterparts. The use of 'authenticity' in the dining landscape is counterintuitive. Its usage to promote white supremacist norms furthers an atmosphere that’s antithetical to the spirit of authenticity. The language of authenticity holds up the supremely inauthentic— a single ideology that supports possibly the most powerful social group: white people." (pp. 233-236).  

Several other essays in Best American Food Writing 2020 also touch on the development of "authenticity" as a way to critique foods and restaurants. For some time, I've been very suspicious of the way this idea is used -- I've written a number of blog posts about other discussions of the topic, particularly on the subject of American Chinese food and Chop Suey Restaurants of the early 20th century (especially this one: What is authentic?) I've therefore found the theme of "authenticity" in this book particularly interesting.

Also interesting but outside the realm of "food writing" -- a number of food shows on Netflix seem obsessed with authenticity of various cuisines. Many episodes of Chef's Table created by David Gelb, Ugly Delicious with David Chang, the Taco Chronicles, and probably others emphasize the "authenticity" of whatever cuisine they are covering -- and they cover a lot! I especially remember one episode where three of the major explorers of "authentic" cuisine gathered at the same time: the late Jonathan Gold, Gustavo Arellano, and David Chang. 

Blog post © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

"The Best American Food Writing 2020"

"The world has changed so much so fast since the pieces in this volume were written and published that I’m convinced the book will read like a time capsule." -- Silvia Killingsworth, Foreword to The Best American Food Writing 2020, published November 2020.

Reading this year's Best American Food Writing is indeed like looking at a time capsule. The book has a lot of great articles, though I was frustrated by the large number from the online magazines Eater and Serious Eats because I have already read them. Although it's a very good collection, it really does reinforce my sense that I am in some kind of terrible purgatory, alienated from the world that I have known most of my life.

The republished essay that most totally brought home my alienation was about grocery stores, and an effort (pre-pandemic, of course) to make them more attractive to shoppers. Many people have been switching to big-box stores like Walmart, to farmers' markets or boutique-type shops, to online shopping, or elsewhere, and store owners feel the pressure to do something. Author Joe Fassler wrote "The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store" about Kevin Kelley, an architect who was redesigning the grocery-store concept for a few ambitious grocery owners. Fassler explained the challenges to the traditional grocery business -- for example how "Americans started cooking at home less and eating out more" (p. 86). Then he described how Kelley proposes to save their bacon. First, a summary of experiential shopping in a variety of venues:

"Kelley says, grocers can’t be satisfied with providing a place to complete a chore. They’ll need to direct an experience. Today’s successful retail brands establish what Kelley calls a 'brand realm,' or what screenwriters would call a story’s 'setting.' We don’t usually think consciously about them, but realms subtly shape our attitude toward shopping the same way the foggy, noirishly lit streets in a Batman movie tell us something about Gotham City. Cracker Barrel is set in a nostalgic rural house. Urban Outfitters is set on a graffitied urban street. Tommy Bahama takes place on a resort island. It’s a well-known industry secret that Costco stores are hugely expensive to construct— they’re designed to resemble fantasy versions of real-life warehouses, and the appearance of thrift doesn’t come cheap. Some realms are even more specific and fanciful: Anthropologie is an enchanted attic, complete with enticing cupboards and drawers. Trader Joe’s is a crew of carefree, hippie traders shipping bulk goods across the sea. A strong sense of place helps immerse us in a store, getting us emotionally invested and (perhaps) ready to suspend the critical faculties that prevent a shopping spree." (p. 92).

There were a number of descriptions of what shoppers experience in a variety of stores from big chain grocery stores to a smaller regional ones. I wondered if I could really remember what it's like to go shopping in person for groceries or anything else. Of course I remember it, but there's a dimming quality in the memory, sort of like remembering my trips to Paris or Hawaii, where I've been many times but not recently. Not the same as thinking about what I do at least once a week. Like the Cowboy Caviar and Corn Chile at Trader Joe's -- I've almost forgotten them.

Am I real? Frequent grocery shopping maybe contributed to my sense of being real. Yes, grocery stores may have to change, but before the predictions started to materialize, most of us found ourselves unable to shop anywhere, because of the pandemic. Fassler writes: 

"The world existed before supermarkets, and it won’t end if they vanish. And in the ongoing story of American food, the 20th-century grocery store is no great hero. A&P— the once titanic chain, now itself defunct— was a great mechanizer, undercutting the countless smaller, local businesses that used to populate the landscape. More generally, the supermarket made it easier for Americans to distance ourselves from what we eat, shrouding food production behind a veil and letting us convince ourselves that price and convenience matter above all else. We let ourselves be satisfied with the appearance of abundance— even if great stacks of unblemished fruit contribute to waste and spoilage, even if the array of brightly colored packages are all owned by the same handful of multinational corporations. But whatever springs up to replace grocery stores will have consequences, too, and the truth is that brick-and-mortar is not going away anytime soon— far from it." (p. 103).

Doesn't this seem odd and alien in our current situation with its abrupt changes to all shopping? 

Certainly the articles in Best American that describe various restaurants should also seem unreal and unrelatable. To me they don't seem all that disconnected from my current reality because famous food writers like the ones represented here write about restaurants that I would never patronize anyway (the only exception is a description of Sparky’s in Hatch N.M. a famous diner where I once ate a chili cheeseburger). My favorite writers in this collection deal with the concept of “authenticity,” and what it really means, which I might write another post about. Articles about appropriation of ethnic foods by profit-seeking and better-funded mainstream entrepreneurs are interesting as well, and I wish I could go to a nice Mexican restaurant somewhere in the Southwest, or to an Asian restaurant in Fairfax, VA. But it’s going weekly to grocery stores that I really miss. 

It's only been a few months since I read The Best Food Writing 2019, edited by Samin Nosrat, and I had much the same feelings about it. (Blogged here:  Best American Food Writing 2019)

The year 2020 really is like no other!

blog post © 2020 mae sander.

It's Still Chanukah!

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, a recently published mystery tale, was a Chanukah gift from my sister. I started reading it Friday (the second night of Chanukah), and finished it on Sunday, enjoying every minute. It's a well-plotted mystery full of surprise twists with a number of very amusing characters. Quite a few of them live in a retirement village in England where they have a club that meets on Thursday in the jigsaw room, scheduled between Art History and Conversational French. The narrative includes a lot of very amusing wisecracks and observations about popular culture, which I like about this first-time author (who appears to be well-known as a British TV personality, but not to me).

The purpose of the Thursday Murder Club is for the members to spend their two-hour time slot revisiting murder cases from police files illegitimately kept by a former police officer who lives in the Village. It's an armchair pastime for intelligent people with a bit too little to keep them occupied. Baking lemon drizzle cake or going out for coffee or shopping is one thing; figuring out murders is something else. Of course a real murder stirs them into real -- and effective -- action, despite their advancing age. Other characters in the novel are couple of police officers (yes, they eat donuts), a few random criminals (some in hiding), and a very unpleasant real estate developer. Quite a good read: I am grateful to my sister for discovering it for me.

Chanukah dinner the third night of the holiday:

note Len's great rye bread just behind the candles.

Soup in my newest soup cup.

The fourth night: a platter of latkes for two.

It's sad to make them for just us, as we often have as many as 10 at table

for the holiday. That said, it's a lot easier to make a smaller number of latkes.

Latkes with applesauce, sliced pear, creamy yogurt, and a glass of wine.

 which I'm sharing with Elizabeth's virtual Tuesday drinking party.

The last candle to go out in the bird menorah that I

bought in Jerusalem in 2006 at the Israel Museum gift shop.

Four more nights of Chanukah to go!

Blog post and all photos © 2020 mae sander.

 

Murals in the News

 

New York City: dining at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant, which seems to be surviving the pandemic closures. In business for decades, Veselka has been a celebrity favorite: "If it weren’t so popular, Veselka (Ukrainian for rainbow) would be a cult hangout." Source: "The Bittersweet Tale of a Diner, a Toy Shop and a Changing New York," New York Times.

At left is another view of the Veselka mural on their patio. Their menu sounds fantastic! I wish I could eat there. (Image from Veselka website here.)

Shah Alam, Malaysia. "A doctor collects a swab sample outside a clinic." Photograph: Lim Huey. Source: "The Nutcracker and a canine mascot: Thursday's best photos" in the Guardian. Reading articles in other news sources, I've seen several other photos of this clinic mural with different people in front of it.

Paris, France. "Brothers Rudy (left) and Joël Lainé, pictured in the dining room of New Soul Food-Le Maquis" from an article about several new American soul food restaurants in Paris. See: "The New Soul Food of Paris Black chefs are exploring 'Afropean' identity and building on American soul food’s long history in the European dining capital" by Alexander Hurst, Eater online magazine.

Bristol, England: "People photograph a mural by the British artist Banksy titled Aachoo!!" Photograph: Geoff. Source: "Rescued puppies and a sneezing Banksy: Friday's best photos" in the Guardian. Bansky, the mysterious artist whose works seem to appear out of nowhere, and whose identity is a secret, acknowledged responsibility for this work in an Instagram post. The value of the house is supposed to have skyrocketed, as a Bansky mural is worth something like millions of dollars.

 

Mitchell, South Dakota. Annie Gowen in the Washington Post reports that people there ignored the coronavirus for months and went about their lives normally, unmasked and undistanced. Recently, however, the infection rate and the death rate became very high, and the city council considered a mask mandate. The meeting took place at the 19th century Corn Palace, the landmark of the town. I was very interested in the article and also in the historic murals in the photo. The caption: "Residents — some in masks, some not — speak during the city council meeting at the Mitchell Corn Palace on Nov. 23." (KC McGinnis for The Washington Post)

I'm a big fan of public art, and I'm lucky to live in a town where murals are valued and artists supported. I also keep my eyes open for murals in news photos from distant places. Sometimes the murals are a backdrop for scenes of daily life, but often, they have a meaning for the news that's happening in the photos where they appear.

Favorite Chanukah Song

 

 "Ocho Kandelikas," a Sephardic Jewish song in the Ladino language, is my favorite Chanukah song. Flory Jagoda, the author, recorded the video in 2010; there are several other Youtube videos of her performances of the song, if you're curious. Probably based on a Turkish folk song, "Ocho Kandelikas" celebrates the eight nights of the festival of Chanukah. It's basically a counting song, that starts "eight candles for me." Each repetition counts down ... eight, seven, six... and so on. 

American songwriter and folk singer Flory Jagoda was born in Bosnia in 1923. Her life history is very interesting: she lived in various towns in Bosnia until the beginning of World War II, when the Nazis were hunting down the Jews. She and her family fled, eventually ending up in Italy where she met and married an American GI and then moved to America. She currently lives in Northern Virginia. For a more detailed biography, see her Wikipedia page: "Flory Jagoda.”

This year, Chanukah began on Thursday, December 10.

In the photos: the first two nights of Chanukah at our table. We are mixing things up this year: we had Chinese takeout for the first night, and leftovers from the takeout for the second night. The cliché is that Jews have Chinese food for Christmas! Although we are alone this year, we have been lighting candles each night, and I'll be making the traditional latkes one night soon. Of course we miss the usual get-togethers with friends and family that we have enjoyed throughout the years.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander.

“Little Gods” by Meng Jin

Meng Jin is a first-time author. Her book Little Gods was published early this year. I read it this week, and found it very appealing because  of the setting, which is both familiar and unfamiliar. The book begins in Beijing at the moment of the Democracy Movement of June, 1989. I remember this well not because I was there, but because my husband had students who were passionately interested in democracy for their home country of China, and during the month-long demonstrations they were in contact as much as they could be with friends and fellow students who were engaged in the events and in the tragic ending of the protests. 

Little Gods presents several points of view about the protests, mainly the views of individuals in Beijing who were much less committed to the protests than the students who told us about what was happening. The book begins with the birth of a baby girl, Liya, in a Beijing hospital not far from Tienanmen Square where the protests were happening. 

A series of vignettes  reveal the first seventeen years of Liya’s life, along with the history of her parents, friends, and caregivers. Her father, a committed supporter of the democracy movement, disappears into the void of violent repression of the Tienanmen Square protests. Her mother, Su Lan, didn’t agree with him. “Democracy fever, Su Lan called it, mingzhu bing. She hated that her husband had caught it. She did not believe he actually understood the issues or even cared. She accused him of using political fervor as an excuse to look away from a weakness inside himself.” (p. 136)

After Liya’s birth, her mother manages to return to her life as a physics student, and to move to America where she’s able to pursue her research while bringing up her daughter. The mother’s physics research is about the nature of time, which the daughter applies to her life and her search for identity. Although it’s not stated explicitly, the mother’s repeated changes of research advisers and schools suggests that her ideas are not accepted or respected, and she eventually gives up her goals for a more ordinary job.

A key to the lives of Liya’s parents and their fellow students in the 1980s is that being selected as a student of physics was a possibility only for the very top students, and was desired because it created a chance to study in America as few other disciplines did. This too is familiar from the lives of my husband’s physics students, some of whom moved on to fields that they found more appealing after they completed their PhDs. Also, after 1989, some of them were never able to return to China because of their open support for the protests, another part of history that helps understand Meng Jin’s book.

A hand-made statue of the Goddess of Democracy — a version of the Statue of Liberty — towered over the vast number of protestors in 1989, and this is the image that sticks in my mind, along with the destruction of uncounted lives at the hands of Chinese soldiers from far outside of Beijing. The memory of this protest means something quite different to the people in the story, and for this reason, I enjoyed learning how a modern Chinese-American, Meng Jin would write about the events that now seem far away and not in her personal memory. (Image from Wikipedia.)

One slogan of the protestors, printed on the t-shirts that we bought in 1989 in support of the students’ organization, was “You cannot massacre an idea.” Reading the book, I’m not really sure that the reality of another 31 years of Chinese history proves this hope. In a way, the fading of Liya's mother’s dreams of a career in physics seem to parallel the fading of the dream of democracy and a number of other characters’ dreams in this readable but rather sad tale. Unfortunately, the novel's ending is a bit fuzzy, not written as effectively as the well-thought-out early chapters, but it’s still a very interesting novel.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander.

 

Curried Cultures

Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, published in 2012, is an anthology of scholarly articles about food in India and in the Indian communities in the US and England. It includes studies and observations about restaurants, restaurant owners and workers, food in various communities and social classes in India, interactions between food, religion, and caste in Indian society, immigrant communities and how they work, and more. 

"Teaching Modern India How to Eat: 'Authentic' foodways and regimes of exclusion in affluent Mumbai" by Susan Dewey (pp. 126-142) is a particularly interesting offering in Curried Cultures. The book is much too varied and has far too much material to summarize as a whole, so I'd like to summarize just this one article as an example. 

The author begins with two quotations. The first is from the famous Indian-British food writer Madhur Jaffrey, who points out that Americans crave authentic taste: "Anything fake is deplored, fake foods included." The second quote is from Rahul, a restaurateur in Mumbai, who says "So much of what we call 'fusion cuisine' is really just confusion... I want to teach people ... to really understand that authentic cuisine is all about the subtleties of differences." At the start, Dewey makes the observation "Foodways constitute a powerful means by which individuals demonstrate their membership in privileged groups," a process that's "intensified in Mumbai." This huge metropolis, with tens of thousands of eateries incorporates many interesting features: enhanced upward mobility, opportunities for women's careers, a substantial media industry, and many foreign influences, including residents who have spent time abroad.

"Connections between food and power have extremely deep roots in Hindu South Asia, and prohibitions on the exchange of foods between individuals of different castes, genders and ethnicities" are an important component of the way food establishments are run there, Dewey observes. For Brahmins, especially, "taboos on food exchange and consumption are still alive and well." In addition, for all Hindus, there are religious views on how to balance food consumption, such as the ideas of "hot" and "cold" nutrients. Restaurants serving Indian food reflect these and other concepts of authenticity in local foods. At the same time, the cosmopolitan nature of the city has enabled many international restaurants and festivals of foreign food and alcohol (once absent from Indian culture) to become popular: American fast food, fine French wine, Middle Eastern dishes, Thai cuisine, Chinese food, and more. 

The huge gap between wealthy jet-setters and the six million inhabitants "who have no housing at all" affects everyone, including restaurateurs and their customers. There's a large range of offerings in this context, from street food vendors at the low end to exclusive, members-only restaurants where the rich can pay enormous prices to avoid contact with those that they deem unsuitable (or maybe untouchable). An interesting example is restaurants that prepare the same dishes that are traditionally made by itinerant vendors, but serve the street cuisine with more class, and claim to be more hygienic than the street vendors.

Regulation in the name of hygiene and high standards is often used to intensify class differences and control the poorest and least attractive vendors. Between the lowest and highest establishments, there are many possibilities. Trendy restaurants in upscale shopping centers, for example, cater to ambitious socially mobile young people. Many aspire to become more modern not only by adopting Western culture and by traveling, but also in choosing lifestyles that imitate Western notions of fitness and health, for example, via membership in exclusive fitness centers or with personal trainers, as well as trends in dining. The author's detailed description of this trend is very interesting. I learned a lot from Dewey's article, and especially from her many specific vignettes of life in Mumbai.

On the whole, Curried Cultures is a very hard book to read because many of the authors write in painfully stilted jargon. For example, the first sentences of the Introduction by editors Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas:

"South Asia is a new hub of intersecting global networks nourished by proliferating material and symbolic transactions propelling bodies, things, and conceptions across national boundaries. In this book, traversing national boundaries is the contingent operational definition of globalization. That implies at least two things: globalization becomes more visible after national boundaries crystallize; and we witness a new kind of self-consciousness about the connections between various locales and between the local and the superlocal in this phase of globalization." (p. 3)

I don’t object to jargon when it is needed to express complex thoughts, such as the language used in scientific papers. Most of these articles, however, could be written in perfectly good standard English without any loss of meaning, and with considerable added clarity and readability. 

I wish a competent journalist could be employed to revise this book, but that will never happen! However, many journalists do write about this topic; for example, in this week's online "Taste" magazine, you can read "The Curry Powder Has Left the Curry," a survey of curry in cuisines in Asia, the New World, and more. Or you can read the very well-written and researched book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors by Lizzie Collingham. I've reread this book often since its publication in 2006. It's often cited as a classic by the authors in Curried Cultures.

Review © 2020 mae sander.

Winter Creatures

"Shed No Tears" by Caz Frear

Cat Kinsella, the young sleuth who narrates three police procedural novels by Caz Frear, sometimes reminds me of Nancy Drew, the original Girl Sleuth. She's earnest and bright, she has a boyfriend who doesn't play much of a role in her sleuthing (even less than Nancy's beau Ned), she doesn't have much of a domestic life, and she gets very involved in her detecting. I think I like reading the Cat Kinsella books now as much as I liked reading Nancy Drew mysteries in my childhood. 

Enough nostalgia for Nancy Drew. Let's talk about Shed No Tears, the latest of Frear's three books, released last week. Unlike Nancy Drew, whose father is a criminal lawyer, Cat Kinsella's father is a criminal. This makes her uneasy about her identity as a police officer. Her inappropriate family is always trying to draw her back to her roots, and in this book, they do play a role, which works right into the plot without being a digression. That's a good thing!

As always, I like to see what detectives eat, and what the criminals eat as well. The detectives in Cat Kinsella's police station eat whatever they can get in the course of the suspenseful and action-filled investigation. It's a very hot summer, and Cat is constantly suffering from the heat: there's no air conditioning in London offices or apartments, and this creates part of the high-pressure atmosphere in which they work. Some of the other officers make it hard as well, as Cat and her close co-workers find them very off-putting, such as Peters, who eats a bacon brioche in a morning meeting, and another named Blake:

"Can you imagine Blake eating a Big Mac?” “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat,” says Steele. “I don’t think he’s human. I think he was created in a lab in the bowels of Scotland Yard.” (Kindle Locations 1295-1297). 

Being so busy that they have little time for real meals is an indication of how tightly wound the author makes their police business. For example, her co-worker Parnell hasn't had time for a meal, but:

"Parnell’s leaning against the windowsill, eating a Kit Kat from the vending machine. He was all set to finish Peters’ stone-cold brioche until he saw the look on my face and tossed it in the bin." (Kindle Locations 2769-2770).

A while later, Parnell shares a "finger" of the Kit Kat with Cat. Then the two of them pay a visit to the home of a mob personality of interest, who is ostentatiously baking cookies, obviously a pose:

"He picks up a wire rack of cookies. “You want one?” I’d love one. In fact, I’d love the whole batch. It’s been a long old morning on just a quarter of a Kit Kat, and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut, as Parnell is fond of saying." (Kindle Locations 2861-2863).

Needless to say, Cat doesn't take the offered cookie. 

Later, during a long session with various colleagues, Cat encounters another vending machine:

"Craving solitude, I detour to the bathroom, then the vending machine, then I snag a rare patch of shade at the back of the station, guzzling down a can of Fanta while checking messages on my phone."(Kindle Locations 4935-4936).

Finally, the suspect -- no longer baking cookies -- is in custody, and they have this interchange about a fancy restaurant where he was involved in questionable activities:

“Eight o’clock-long day, huh?” I say, as casual as a colleague at the end of a hard shift. “Are you feeling OK, Simon? Did you get something to eat?” 
“I got something, yeah. Couldn’t tell you what it was though.
“Not exactly La Trompette,” Parnell says with undisguised pleasure. “By the way, you didn’t mention you kept an office there. We’ve got a search team over there right now.” 
“Have you?” He adjusts his cufflinks, eyes lowered. “Well, if they’re stopping for a late supper—’ cos I’d say searching’s hungry work— I recommend the baked lobster tails and the tarte tatin for afters. Best in London.” He looks up. “Of course, what I’d really recommend is saving yourselves the overtime bill. You’ll find nothing.” (Kindle Locations 5018-5024). 

Cat several times stands up her boyfriend Aiden when she's supposed to have a picnic or other meal with him. They do eat one not-particularly-memorable dinner in a restaurant -- when she arrives, he has already ordered “Bruschetta and penne something" for her, but she has to wait a long time while eating only breadsticks. Truly unmemorable food! (Kindle Location 2452).

Finally, there's one sad scene at the very end, in a high-priced nursing home where a retired officer is staying. Cat unconvincingly tells him he'll soon be going home, though the opposite is clear:

“And to what?” he says, without a shred of self-pity. “Sure, I’m better off in here. I’ve company. The mattress is a damn sight better than the one I have at home. And I get to eat . . .” He turns slowly, very slowly, picking a fancy embossed menu off the nightstand. “Cajun-spiced chicken with corn and pumpkin hash, instead of something-on-toast every night. (Kindle Locations 5350-5353).

Shed No Tears has been on my wish list for months. I'm glad I finally got to read it. I'm quite fond of Cat and her attitudes towards her family, her fellow police officers, her problematic family, and her boyfriend. I'll be happy in a couple of years when I expect to read another sequel. I blogged about Caz Frear's earlier Cat Kinsella novels, here: Sweet Little Lies, and here: Stone Cold Heart. This blog post is copyright © 2020 by mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

"Drinking Song"

 

Here is the popular drinking song, or "Brindisi" from Verdi's opera La Traviata. It's a cheerful song in a tragic opera -- the death of the character Violetta in the last act is very famous for its pathos. In recent weeks, to celebrate drinks of all sorts with a number of other bloggers, I've posted folk songs or blues, so today I made a classical music choice. I'm sharing this with the weekly event at Elizabeth's blog Altered Book Lover.

Downtown Ann Arbor Murals

The Ann Arbor Art Association has sponsored 12 new murals on walls around downtown.

I've posted images of some of them before: here are two new ones that I visited today. 

The artist's name is Midnight Olive.

I love the very colorful mazes on three of the large walls.

Along the adjacent wall is a black and white mural by Ann Lewis.

It continues on another wall by a different parking lot.

The 12 murals, including these, were completed between August and October of 2020. The Art Association website explains how these murals were funded: "To make this dream a reality, we crowdfunded throughout July of 2020 and the community raised over $50,000 to pay the artists and cover other mural expenses like equipment rentals, paint, permits etc. Once the goal was met, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) matched the $50,000—doubling the impact of all donations through their Public Spaces Community Places program." (source)

 Blog post © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

Ottolenghi's "Flavor"

My newest cookbook: Ottolenghi's Flavor, published September, 2020.

Co-authors are Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage.

Flavor is illustrated with beautiful photos of the food from the book's many recipes. These recipes are about half vegan and half vegetarian, with occasional non-veg ingredients, mostly optional, like a few anchovies or some chicken stock. The emphasis is on creating vivid flavors for vegetable dishes, using a wide variety of international ingredients from South Asia, Japan, China, Korea, the Middle East, and more.

The chilled avocado soup recipe calls for a garnish of spicy olive oil cooked slowly with crunchy garlic and whole spice, as well as a bit of sour cream (I used Kefir), some chopped cucumber and pepper, and a sprinkle of dill. It was quite delicious!

Za'atar is a Middle-Eastern spice that's used in several of the recipes.  Pictured: my box of za'atar which I bought during my most recent trip to Israel -- that's why it's labeled in Hebrew, which I can't actually read or write myself. The recipes in the book use it in original ways. In anticipation of trying more of the recipes, I've also purchased several types of fresh red and green peppers, a jar of Korean chili flakes, some harissa, and a box of white miso paste.

One interesting recipe that I tried is called "Za'atar Cacio e Pepe." That is, a reinterpreting of a Roman classic, Cacio e Pepe -- pasta with cheese and black pepper.  "Messing with an Italian classic is not something that we do lightly, but adding za'atar really doesn't take anything away from the much-admired simplicity of this dish," the authors write. The photo shows my cooked spaghetti, from which the cooking water is being reduced to create a sauce with butter, spices, and cheese.

The finished dish, garnished with fresh thyme. The recipe 

specified marjoram, but I didn't have it, so I used thyme.

This dish was really impressive tasting, though a bit fussy to prepare.

Salad of cucumber, za'atar, and chopped lemon. It's winter so I did not

have all the fresh herbs and greens required by the real recipe, but I did my best.

In 2016 we had dinner at Ottolenghi's restaurant in London.

Here's a photo of the kitchen of the restaurant for inspiration!

My first experience with Ottolenghi's recipes was cooking from the book Jerusalem, coauthored by Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Recipes I've made from Jerusalem -- and in fact most of Ottolenghi's characteristic recipes -- also make innovative use of unusual condiments, traditional preparations like harissa or Korean chili paste, and a wide variety of vegetables. I'm looking forward to trying more of the recipes. I'm so enthusiastic about the book that I've set a few copies of it, and of Ottolenghi's baking book, as holiday gifts.

Blog post and photos © 2020, 2016 by mae sander.

Cthulhu Comes to Mexico

Mexican Gothic, published June, 2020

In the New Yorker this week is a list of "The Best Books We Read in 2020." Staff writer Rachel Syme chose Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Mexican Gothic, a story about events in El Triunfo, a small and mysterious town in Mexico, in 1950. A very creepy family live there, in a horror show of a house. At the beginning, Noemí,  a very innocent young woman from Mexico City, is sent there to rescue her cousin. The cousin, Catalina, is the wife of one of the residents of the house, and has sent a mysterious letter begging for help. 

Reading Syme's recommendation, I was convinced: I bought it yesterday and already read it. Here's what she said.

"What makes 'Mexican Gothic' so fresh is not only its cramped, crawly ambience...but also the fact that it’s steeped in a deep colonial history that haunts the narrative. Is the house in El Triunfo really sick? Or is it just tainted by colonizers who want to strip the land down to its bones? Moreno-Garcia deftly raises these questions and then brings them all together in a gory, monstrous, and utterly satisfying twist."

Mexican Gothic definitely belongs to the genre of horror fiction -- not a type of novel I usually read. Like anything that is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying, you can't stop looking, or in this case, can't stop reading. The English family that inhabit the threatening house, and have lived there for over half a century, aren't just living there: they are trapped by the house and it's poisonous and murderous past, but I won't reveal more spoilers. The Gothic elements definitely include sexual threats to the pure and untouched Noemí, as well as many other creepy features that may be similar to other horror tales.

One repeated theme throughout the novel is the captivating idyll of fairy tales, which Catalina, the older of the two cousins, would read to Noemí during their childhood. In their thoughts are constant references to Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty, and to the horror of fairy tales:

"She recalled, rather grimly, that certain fairy tales end in blood. In Cinderella, the sisters cut off their feet, and Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother was pushed into a barrel full of snakes. That particular illustration on the last page of one of the books Catalina used to read to them suddenly came back to her, in all its vivid colors. Green and yellow serpents, the tails poking out of a barrel as the stepmother was stuffed into it." (p. 86). 

Moreno-Garcia has written several earlier novels that refer explicitly in their titles to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, though I've never read any of her other books. Mexican Gothic has some powerful resemblances to Lovecraft's tales. Lovecraft hated non-white people, and his monster Cthulhu embodied an inexpressible threat to white people (blogged here). Mexican Gothic, in contrast, depicts a supernaturally evil monster who himself is a white supremacist from England. He's the cruel colonial owner of a silver mine where Mexican workers have slaved and died, and he espouses eugenic and other racist theories that Noemí's college major, anthropology, have made her able to dispute. 

Another aspect of the theme of racism is the pallor of the very white people in the horror household, in contrast to Noemí's native Mexican complexion. The first person from the house that she meets is the most extreme example: "He was fair-haired and pale— she didn’t realize anyone could be that pale; goodness, did he ever wander into the sun?— his eyes uncertain, his mouth straining to form a smile or a greeting." (p. 17). Later: "He seemed a bit ghostly, still standing by the doorway, with the glow of the lanterns and candles in his room lighting his blond hair like an unearthly flame." (p. 179). And a reaction of one of the English wraith-like people to Noemí: “And what a pretty face you have. Dark skin, dark eyes. Such a novelty.” (p. 236). 

The anti-racist reversal of Mexican Gothic from Lovecraft's hatred of dark people makes it somewhat amusing, though knowing Lovecraft's work isn't necessary to enjoying the novel -- there's plenty to ponder if you are just aware of current racial politics. Other parallels to Lovecraft's work also appear -- for example, the association of the monstrous paterfamilias of the household with overpowering stinks, also a feature of the horrors presented by Lovecraft, as well as other writers. 

The passive and uncooperative servants and townspeople in the novel also create an atmosphere reminiscent of the New England towns which Lovecraft's alien monsters terrorized. Very nondescript meals (English style) that Noemí is served also recall the dull food in these New England towns; her first dinner: 

"The plates were taken away in silence, and in silence there came the main dish, chicken in an unappealing creamy white sauce with mushrooms. The wine they’d poured her was very dark and sweet. She didn’t like it." (p. 28).

Or the next morning: 

"Breakfast was brought to her on a tray. Thank goodness she did not have to sit down to eat with the whole family that morning, although who knew what dinner might bring. The chance for solitude made the porridge, toast, and jam she had been served a bit more appetizing. The drink available was tea, which she disliked. She was a coffee drinker, preferred it black, and this tea had a definite, faint, fruity scent to it." (p. 37). 

And at the end, the theme of fairy tales reappears at a crucial moment in the action:

"The scene reminded her of a picture in one of her childhood fairy tale books, when the wedding banquet is in place and an evil fairy walks into the room. She recalled the table laden with meats and pies, the women wearing high headdresses, and the men in box coats with huge sleeves." (p. 256). 

As I mentioned, Mexican Gothic is so suspenseful that you just can't stop reading! While it has similarities to traditional horror tales, including the Greek myth of Persephone which it mentions, it also has a highly original slant on the usual forms.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander.

Winter Fruit: Satsumas

 

Winter starts December 1