Sunny and Windy

Here's a view of the water from the end of a short walk this morning. We had a very easy day. We walked across Key Largo to this very small beach access point among huge fenced-in houses.

After a late breakfast, we got in the car and took a ride down Route 1. We stopped at a historical park where we heard about the railroad that ran through the keys until the famous Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroyed the tracks. What I learned: the use of mile markers to designate location along Route 1 is the legacy of the railroad, where it's a standard way to indicate location. Also that the bridges survived the hurricane, while the tracks were twisted and thrown around. A train trying to save people was derailed, with horrific loss of life.

Finally we stopped at one of the few bookstores in the area. Near the bookstore I saw two advertising signs on opposite sides of the road:

We had a quiet and very nice dinner -- I couldn't resist another local lobster. First we had smoked fish spread, made from local fish that are smoked at the restaurant.

A straw-wrapped wine bottle

What could be more retro than a straw-wrapped wine bottle? Music by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra? Red and white checked tablecloths? Candles in little jars? Garlic bread and cruets of oil and vinegar? If you know what's more retro than all that, please don't tell me.

The stuffed lobsters we ordered were very good. And we did enjoy the atmosphere. Those were good old days, and the AAA guide knows it.

For what we did before dinner see Everglades and Zombie Vultures ate my T-Top.

Key Largo, not just a great movie

Our expert sources (the AAA guide and iPhone apps) told us to eat at The Fish House. We are predisposed towards any restaurant that also has a fresh fish market and buys from local fisherman. No exception here. Grouper, yellowtail snapper and mahi-mahi were the fresh catch tonight, with a variety of preparations on offer. Key Lime Pie for dessert.

The menu says they've been in business since the founding of the Conch Republic, but the web site says 20 years. Whatever. It's lovely.

Speaking of No-Knead Bread

Sunday evening we were treated to a beautiful meal at some friends' house. It included a loaf of no-knead bread that was incredible. Of course I'd heard about this recently-developed technique for bread-making, and maybe tried someone else's version without discussion. Yesterday the bread-maker/hostess sent me copies of the two articles from 2008 that she relied on. On the same topic: the current blog post, Do You Really Want to Make French Bread? by editor (and now blogger) Judith Jones. AND...

Now Harold McGee has spoken! This week's New York Times column is about the famous no-knead breads, including experimental and theoretical information. Don't miss

The Curious Cook

Better Bread With Less Kneading

By HAROLD McGEE

A chef's job

Time magazine recently ran a somewhat surprising article: McDonald's Chef: The Most Influential Cook in America? by John Cloud. The chef, Daniel Coudreaut, grew up in Ossining, N.Y., went to business school, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and has worked in new product development at McDonalds since 2004.

Coudreaut's test kitchen at McD's headquarters, according to the article, is beautiful and modern and very unlike any stereotype of McDonald's. He and his staff experiment with new products only for American sales -- McDonald's adapts its products for each major marketing area. The emphasis is on keeping the successful products and building on them: "you don't mess with the fries."

The ivory tower nature of Coudreaut's outfit -- described at length -- upholds the expectation that "every great manufacturing company runs a crazy R&D department, a place where mad scientists get to fiddle with toys and produce one or two breakthroughs a year."

From this test kitchen have come a number of recently developed McDonald's products. The latest is Mac Snack Wrap -- a tortilla filled with "about half the interior of a Big Mac — a single beef patty, three quick squeezes of special sauce, less lettuce, less cheese, fewer pickles, fewer onions." It costs $1.50 and 330 calories. Coudreaut has lots of leeway to play with exotic or specialized ingredients like endive, dried cherries, wine sauces, and celery root, but his products must appeal to typical McDonald's customers. Further, chosen ingredients must be available in unimaginable quantities, and their preparation must be "so simple that a high school dropout can make it." So he has a challenging job despite his apparent freedoms.

Recently, I read the autobiography of Jacques Pepin, the French-trained chef and early TV food personality. (See "The Apprentice" for my thoughts on it.) Coudreaut provides a striking parallel: Pepin, along with another then-famous chef, Pierre Franey, worked for a decade at Howard Johnson's, which was at the time, the 1960s, the largest American fast-food chain. Pepin described his efforts to create more palatable dishes for the mass market. He had to make sure they could be scaled up in quantity and kept consistent in quantity. They had to be distributed and sold at hundreds of restaurants. He also worked in the hope of encouraging Americans to slightly (at least) expand the range of their tastes. If Coudreaut ever writes an autobiography I wonder what comparable things he will say about his leadership of McDonald's test kitchens.

Thanks to Evelyn who told me to read the Time article.

Why people like fast food breakfasts

From the Washington Post, an article about the effect of high unemployment on breakfast sales at fast-food chains -- sales are in decline. The unemployed don't have money for a fast-food breakfast, and besides, they don't have to get up and go in the morning. No big surprise, but then there was a very interesting observation:

Cultural historian Barry Glassner said Americans have an unusually complex relationship with food, influenced by convenience and status. We want our food quick and easy, and at the same time we use it to show our rank in the pecking order. Fast-food breakfasts, he said, can fulfill both purposes.

"In America, it's considered a mark of our industriousness that we're very efficient in our meals," said Glassner, a professor at the University of Southern California. "In other times and places, you would be seen as a little crazy."

I never thought about eating fast food as a marker of American industriousness. I just thought we were always in a hurry, and liked to avoid waiting. When he put it this way, it seems obvious, like a lot of ideas that one has not quite formed. I'm re-reading the book Chop Suey by Andrew Coe, tracing Chinese restaurant food in American life -- in the early days of Chinese restaurants, a similar combination of convenience, status, and low prices drew Americans to Chinese restaurants, then often called Chop Suey Houses. I'm not sure that they had yet started eating on the run, though.

Ginger

So many ways to eat ginger! I didn't realize I was so crazy about it, and then began to count. In the pantry and refrigerator I found raw ginger root, Chinese candied ginger, crystalized ginger, Lebkuchen from the German Christmas box, English ginger cookies, English ginger preserves, and an ancient (and often refilled) tin of powdered ginger. One small piece of my friend Elaine's gingerbread cake in the freezer didn't get into the photo. More great ginger items are Japanese pickled ginger to eat with sushi, ginger ale, ginger ice cream, chocolate-covered ginger, and good old-fashioned American ginger snaps. In Australia I once ate a ginger candy bar: jellied ginger covered with chocolate.

Its origins are in east Asia, but ginger has definitely traveled widely.

Overused! or, a note from the imperfect pantry

A local Houston food blog called Eating Our Words had an interesting list: The Top 5 Most Over Used Spices, including condiments too. I may be guilty of some of their indicated excesses. So here's the list with my own comments -- if you want to see theirs, click on the link:

1. Garlic -- I may be guilty when it comes to fresh garlic. The pizza I have in the oven at this very moment is probably way too garlic-heavy. However, I can ignore the bloggers' comment: "Despite what you may think, adding tons of garlic powder doesn't give your dish lots of garlicky flavor." I hate garlic powder or garlic salt. Never have them on hand. I think they taste terrible and in fact not even like fresh garlic.
   
2. Lemon Pepper -- I have never used it. But I completely agree with them: if you want the taste of lemon, use lemon! I think I've eaten dishes where someone was guilty.
   
3. Sriracha Hot Sauce -- I just bought my first bottle of this last summer. And I'm on my second bottle. Maybe I better pay attention! I have noticed how often it's on the tables at small diner-type restaurants. Maybe it's a fad.
   
4. Soy Sauce -- guilty. It's so easy to pour it on. It works in non-Chinese food. It's salty but you can pretend you aren't salting.
   
5. Salt -- I try to behave myself with the salt shaker -- see point 4. And I hate anything to be oversalted, which lots of restaurants do. I think I'd put this one at number 1.

I would rather have food be a bit more spicy than bland. That corresponds to several of the commenters over at the Houston blog, who say you can't have too much sriracha or too much garlic, though one lists chili powder as a candidate for overused.

Besides this nice starter list, I think my excesses include herbs de Provence (also in my currently baking pizza) and maybe parsley flakes (ditto). I know I have to keep refilling my jars with these two. Also I might put onions on the list. I put them in everything, and can't help myself. It's an interesting exercise.

After Dinner Update

My pizza actually came out delicious. Not a bit too much garlic. I used 2 chopped garlic cloves, lightly browned in olive oil. Then I simmered it with an 8-oz can of tomato sauce with lots of herbs de Provence, but not too much. And topped the crust, which had been rising, with a few black olives and a few slices of cheese. Last time we ordered delivery pizza we had meatballs so I decided to use some Trader Joe's turkey meatballs as well. It was quite successful.

Odd photographic note: my automatic camera signaled that one of the meatballs was a face.

Chirashi Sushi

This sushi came with a beautiful presentation; also delicious -- the vegetable garnish was a welcome surprise. We ate at Sadako, one of many appealing restaurants in our area. On the way we walked by 2 other Japanese restaurants, one Thai, one Vietnamese, and one Chinese restaurants in a total of 4 blocks! I had never been here before, and I was very pleased.

"The Lightning Thief"

The ancient Greek gods live among us, continuing their ancient rivalries and pettiness and breeding with mortals. As in the legends, their half-blood offspring have the potential to become heroic figures in the continuing struggles among the various gods, but first they have to come to terms with their unusual identity. That's the premise of Rick Riordan's very popular kids' series about Percy Jackson, full name, Perseus.

In this, the first of these books, Percy, son of Poseidon, goes on a quest with a satyr and another half-blood, the daughter of Athena. They travel from New York to Los Angeles where, among other things, they discover the entrance to Hades. In their heroic adventures they encounter gods, monsters, furies, heroes: the full mythological treatment. They reprise many of the legends about the original Perseus.

I found that the most interesting elements of the characters are those borrowed from Greek mythology -- the arrogance and abrasiveness of Ares, Athena's jealousies, Posidon's son's ability to gain strength from water and even breathe when under the sea, the desire of the satyr to find where Pan may still live, the dedication of a Centuar who has been a teacher for 3,000 years, the brutal strength of the Minotaur, the spookiness of the River Styx. The half-blooded children were often threatened by the other gods; a summer camp in New England offered them a safe haven and place to discover their heritage. But for the most part, they were reliving myths.

The caretakers at camp fed Percy ambrosia and nectar, which tasted like popcorn and chocolate, to help him recover from injuries he suffered in fighting the Minotaur. Corn and chocolate: new-world foods to underscore how the old gods are now embedded in America. Maybe so. For camp meals, the staff served barbecued meat and burned a bit as a sacrifice to the gods. Percy also liked fast food, and often fell for it when offered by someone like the Medusa.

Percy's realization of how his heroic fighting capabilities was dramatic. His diagnosed ADHD makes him a better sword fighter. Campers' lives included other ironies, as well. They weren't able to adjust to life in modern American schools, and most couldn't learn to read English, because they were "programmed" to read ancient Greek (maybe the least plausible of the implausible things of the book). Some details are amusing. But I found the adventures a bit mechanically done.

The Lightning Thief is readable, but Neil Gaiman's American Gods contained many more original ideas and clever characterizations in using more or less the same premise. I'm a fan of young adult and even kids books, but The Lightning Thief isn't quite complex enough for my taste. I prefer the works of Gaiman, Lewis Carroll, or J.K.Rowling. I'm glad Riordan has found a way to get modern kids to learn the myths, though.

Update on the movie of this book: "The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips says that 'this could be the start of something adequate.'" Great movie recommendation, no?

And another update: my discussion questions for book club:

1. This question is for the parents/grandparents of kids who like the book. What appealed to the kids? Assuming that they have little or no prior knowledge of Greek myths, how did they react to the embedded tales of heroes, gods, and monsters?
2. Riordan himself refers to "archetypes" or "primal forces" (p. 86). They've been used in Western lit over and over, high and low (example: French playwright Racine is as high as you can imagine, the TV series on the Labors of Hercules was farce, Neil Gaiman's uses are playful, Ovid's retelling of myths was maybe in the middle.) Riordan uses the Greek gods along with Centaurs, the Minotaur, the Fates, the Furies, the Hellhound, Medusa, the Satyr's search for the Great God Pan, the Oracle, etc. What is so powerful about these? How does he borrow their power for telling a good story? What does he do that's original? Does he add more than a few jokes like Hades being in LA or Ares being a biker? Are there any other treatments of mythological themes you want to compare?
   
3. The half-blood kids in the special camp in The Lightning Thief believe that their dyslexia, ADHD, and other "disabilities" are caused by their godly nature. They can't read English because they are "hard wired" for ancient Greek. They fidget because they are always ready for battle and always watching out for whatever. Percy the hero feels completely vindicated when he learns this interpretation of his problems. First, how do you react to this claim? Does it ring true? Second, what about kids reading the book?
4. Aside from the mythology, this book to some extent follows the format of a road book: characters on the road being followed by bad guys and seeking something. Is this successful? How does it merge into the mythology part?
   
5. If you could have a Greek god as a parent which one would you pick?

Cooking Chinese Food

This evening I made Chinese food and served it on red plates for Valentine's Day combined with Chinese New Year. I found several recipes online for foods that are supposed to make one live long and prosper.

Above are some of the ingredients for chicken and shitake mushrooms
wrapped in lettuce leaves. The finished dish:

I also made angel hair pasta with a sesame-peanut sauce,
garnished with cilantro, green onion, and lime slices.
And below, the ingredients for steamed fish with aromatics and baby bok choy.

The fish:

I wrote about Chinese traditions for New Years a few days ago; see Chinese Valentine's New Year.

Another Obituary

A mystery author that I've not read, though he is popular with my friends and family: Dick Francis, British mystery writer, dies.

Grim Reality

Little Man, What Now? is a novel by Hans Fallada (born Rudolf Ditzen -- his pen name comes from stories by the brothers Grimm). Written in around 1930, it depicts two years in the life of a pathetic young couple in depression-era Germany. The hapless "little man" of the couple, called Hans Pinneberg, and his wife is called Bunny (in the translation by Eric Sutton). I have known about this novel for a long time, always meaning to read it, and finally, I've done so. (The image is from the now-obscure Hollywood movie based on the book -- I've never seen it.)

When the novel begins, Pinneberg and Bunny, an unmarried couple in their early 20s, are at the gynecologist's office learning that she is pregnant. His job is completely inadequate to support a wife, let alone a baby, but they decide to marry and do what they can. As the German economy declines, he is less and less able to earn a living, and by the end he, Bunny, and the baby are living on a combination of money from the dole and from her earnings from darning and mending. A hut out in the fields beyond the city of Berlin has become their home.

Both of them -- especially Pinneberg -- are naive and simple, and rarely comprehend important signals that would help them to cope with life. Other characters in the novel turn to illegal or quasi-legal money-making methods, or simply steal wood to heat their houses. Some consider various ideologies: nudists, anti-semites, Nazis, and Communists all have their adherents among the folks of Pinneberg and Bunny's acquaintance, but ideology has no place in their outlook. Bunny says she believes in the solidarity of all workers -- they don't however act in solidarity when Pinneberg takes her advice. Satire and irony often soften the harsh observations of this very simply-written book. Eventually, it's made clear that the answer to their desperation is honest work to enable self-respect and a decent human life, without ideology at all. Even gifts of money are useless, in their view; money can only prolong their illusions.

Bunny's skills as a cook are non-existent when she first marries Pinneberg: she tries to make soup from half a pound of peas, a bit of meat, and 5 quarts of water. "It's the water that's the trouble," he explains to her. "The water is too thin." So she leaves the pot on the boil: of course it burns up. (p.76) Later, she learns how to cope, but she has cravings. She buys half a pound of smoked salmon for their dinner, but as she leaves the shop, she ducks into a doorway and eats just one slice from her share. By the time she arrives at home, she's finished it all, and returns weeping with guilt. (p. 104)

Later, though, she makes a careful budget to enable them to live on his decreasing salary. Line items include butter and margarine, eggs, vegetables, meat, sausage and cheese, bread, fish... but of course he loses one job after another, and by the end, she's happy to take mending jobs because the rich people she works for feed her while she's working. And she tells him where he can buy a few cheap bananas and a bit of butter for the baby.

Fallada, I learned, led a difficult life. He stayed in Germany throughout the Nazi years, but was addicted to drugs and committed to a mental institution for some of that time. He wrote several other books that were less well-known in America. It's hard to read this book without thinking he knew all about the future, the war, the disasters, the unravelling of the lives of so many like this little hapless, foolish, but so-human couple.

"Reflecting the Sky"

Hong Kong is full of mysteries. In S.J. Rozan's novel Reflecting the Sky, detective Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith arrived from New York and within hours were in the midst of a kidnapping case. Before they had a moment's rest they were chasing perps and clues through the colorful streets, back-alleys, outer islands, temples to local gods, night markets, food stalls, high-rise hotels, luxury apartment buildings, modern shopping centers, seedy waterfront businesses, ferry boats crossing the water, film studios, and old colonial homes. They rode the famous mile-long escalator up the mountain. On Hollywood Road, among the internationally know antique shops, they tried to get information about an international triad (or gang) whose smuggling activities might be part of their case.

Bill and Lydia worked with a Hong Kong police officer who grew up in Alabama. A few times, they ate street food like skewered squid with vegetables or delicious meals in a local restaurant. Other times Lydia put up with instant noodles or other convenience food in the police station.

I loved every suspenseful minute of this adventure. Above all, I was captivated because I was in Hong Kong myself at about the same time. One Sunday, we walked into the financial center with its ultra modern sky scrapers and were astonished to find thousands of Filipino nannies sitting on benches, blankets, and folding chairs in groups, talking, eating, giving each other manicures, dancing, listening to boom boxes, and otherwise socializing. In the story, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith visited exactly this meeting place to search for a possible connection in their kidnapping case -- Bill was fortunately fluent in Tagalog so he could get information.

The description of these women, in Lydia's first-person account, made me think of our walk:

And mostly, they were eating. The aromas of roast meats and sauces pungent with unfamiliar spices made my mouth water, and as I watched plastic containers being popped open and paper plates being passed I wondered how many breakfasts I could really eat. (p. 156)

Even the plastic boxes of food being shared by these women on their day off reminded me of my own experience. I visited many of the other locations described in the story, especially a couple of out islands. Here are my photos from a fishing village at the far side of the territory:




Fruit and vegetables at Stanley Market:


For my review of another Lydia Chin mystery see "A Bitter Feast".

Portion Size

Several newspapers have commented on the FDA efforts to improve nutrition labeling by making food portion sizes more realistic; for example, in the New York Times, One Bowl = 2 Servings. F.D.A. May Fix That. Anyone who reads food labels has occasionally been outraged by small bags of potato chips that contain "1.5 servings," or by a microwaveable bowl of soup with a one-time removable top with "2 servings." (What do you do, take it to work, eat half, and then ask around if anyone would like the second serving?) Or our joke about the mint girl scout cookie boxes that should be labeled "contains two single-serving packs."

Quaker Oatmeal, one of the oldest and most reliable food boxes, has ALWAYS (I mean all my lifetime) had a table of servings beginning with 1 serving equals 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1 cup water, and 1 dash salt, optional; the calorie count in the federally mandated information-box is 1/2 cup, 150 calories. My newest box -- same old cylinder with the Quaker's picture on the logo -- includes the same table of measured amounts, but with a new column in red:

HEART HEALTHY SERVING SIZE:
3/4 cup oatmeal
1-1/2 cups water
dash of salt

Never mind the noble pretense -- Quaker Oats is supersizing!

Chinese Valentine's New Year

This Sunday is both Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year. I am beginning to look for a menu that honors both of them.

The traditional Chinese New Year menus are chosen to bring longevity, riches, peace, wisdom and virtue. Some of the most well-known foods:

• Fish -- the Chinese word for fish, yue, means abundance so fish bring good fortune and good health. Whole fish are luckier because cutting them up uses a knife or cleaver, which are unlucky implements. However, fish balls (or meat balls) with ingredients chopped before the holiday arrives are also traditional because of the round shape
  
• Lettuce -- the word "choy" for green vegetables also means good luck, and lettuce is the luckiest. Other greens like Chinese cabbage or broccoli also appear on New Year's menus. No word on the gangster use of "lettuce" to mean money.
• Foods representing "gold" -- foods to make you rich are gold in color (oranges, tangerines, pomelos, gourds) or resemble gold bars, especially dumplings or spring rolls. I find this interesting as in many European traditions, gold foods or even edible gold were popular for the same reason.
  
• Noodles -- are long, for long life. You have to eat them without cutting them, preferably by slurping.

The Chinese New Year holiday is celebrated over several days, and on some of the other days a large number of other foods are eaten for good luck, including a vegetarian meal; luxurious buffets with shell fish, sea weed, sticky-rice balls, and, lotus-root dishes; elaborate hot-pot meals, and many others.

I don't see much overlap with Valentine Day foods, though wearing red and decorations in red brings luck in Chinese tradition and is also the color for kids on Valentine's Day. Chocolate and heart-shaped candies are not particularly associated with Chinese menus, though there are sweets included in many of the feasts for the holiday.

Addendum: the Valentine Day and Chinese New Year timing is indeed unusual. According to the L.A.Times: "This is a rare convergence -- it's only the third time since 1900 -- and it won't happen again until after 2030."

Mimi Sheraton's Life

Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life is more of a memoir of food-writing and restaurant-reviewing experiences than a full autobiography. The chapters on Mimi Sheraton's New York Times reviewing and other celebrity activities were much less interesting than one very surprising chapter titled "The Care and Feeding of Passengers, Patients and Other Captives." In this chapter, she describes a number of projects that made her aware of "the wide gap between genuinely good intentions and bad results," though some of her observations undermine the idea of good intentions.

"I often wonder how any food could possibly be so badly prepared and handled. In noir moments at hospitals or on long flights, I try to figure out how I would go about re-creating the horrors before me. Where would I start? In what diabolical cookbook would one find such recipes? On what ignominious grocery shelf is the special seasoning marked 'Institutional' that is surely used to impart the characteristic flavor and aroma, a combination of chemicals, foodishness, stale sweetness and desolation?" (p. 160)

Sheraton explored the methods and motives of people who provided school lunches and breakfasts, hospital meals (after a two-week hospitalization, she emerged as a consultant), airline meals (back in the day when airlines provided little trays with what appeared to be meals), food in museum cafes, and prison food. She even visited an off-shore oil rig where -- improbably -- the food wasn't so bad. A historic note on food for the British military outposts in the mid-19th century made it clear that the problems she found were far from new.

Her analysis leaves little room for optimism. Lack of funds, need to please people with widely varying tastes and expectations, and many other obstacles seemed to de-rail any of her efforts to make improvements.

As food autobiographies go, this wouldn't be at the top of my list -- I prefer, for example, A. J. Liebling's Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, which I think influenced Sheraton's title or Ruth Reichl's several volumes, which I think influenced her restaurant-review chapters. But it was a good read for my very snowy afternoon.

The second-to-last donuts?

Jesse examined the contents of the doughnut box and selected another cinnamon-sugar.
"Moll?" he said, and offered the box.
"My God," Molly said. "keep those away from me, you animal."
Jesse shrugged and pushed the box toward Suit. Suit took out a honey-dip and bit into it. (p. 244)

I know that one more Jesse Stone novel by Robert Parker is about to be published, posthumously. And maybe more are in the publisher's pipeline. But somehow, I feel as if these characters, who speak so tersely and eat so appetizingly, are no longer quite as alive, now that their creator has died. Night and Day, source of this typical little quote, was published in hard-cover a year ago, just now in paperback. Another titled Split Image is coming in a day or two. Maybe there will even be one more with Spenser. But I'm sad that like so many good things, these series are all coming to an end. No more donuts.

Traditional Food

I decided to make chili for dinner. We ate in the living room while watching the annual great event.

My favorite commercial was the one with the eco-police, who shine a light in the kitchen window to catch a guy throwing a banana peel in the wrong garbage can -- composting crime. And who break up a hot-tub party because the water is heated to 105º and arrest a driver at a road block for having a foam coffee cup. Nobody likes the eco-police!

My second-favorite commercials were the Dorritos commercials, especially the one with the dog who puts a no-bark collar on a guy and takes his Dorritos.

My third-favorite had humans in a big pool doing loop-the-loops, jumping through hoops and catching treats in their mouths, just like dolphins in a dolphin show. Very special-effect heavy.

Lucky thing: Whole Foods had a special on almost all the ingredients for the chili.

Alice's Birthday Cake

From the recipe in Tiana's Cookbook.
See today's earlier post for more about New Orleans Cookbooks.
Happy Birthday, Alice!