Febrero: Barcelona (and pictures of food)

I have decamped to Barcelona for the next few months, working in libraries by day and trolling bookstores and catching up on Spanish movies by night.  There are three things that have proven to be indispensable for this particular stay: slippers for cold floors in an unheated apartment; my laptop cable lock to thwart anyone who wants to steal my life's work; and my tea infuser, which I should probably never leave home without.

Here's what else I've been up to:

Days #260-265: Quick trip down to Madrid for an international conference of young Hispanists.  Gave my first paper in Spanish in a room that looked like it was preparing for the arrival of a UN delegation.

Plaza Mayor at daybreak

Day #263: I love running in different places, even places where no one else is running.  Today's route: through the Plaza Mayor, past the Royal Palace and around the Campo del Moro.  Chilly morning in Madrid, pretty sure everyone who saw me thought I was nuts.  Didn't see the King.

Day #264: Saw the Basque author Bernardo Atxaga speak.  When I was asked later what he talked about, the best I could come up with was that euskera is an asteroid in the linguistic solar system and translating a novel simultaneously into Spain's four national languages is tricky.

Day #266: I may be missing the Oscars this year, but for once I got to see Spain's equivalent Goya awards, in their mind-numbing entirety, on TV.  Javier Bardem won best actor for Biutiful. He now has more Goya awards than anyone else.  I wonder if he wishes he could give back that one for Huevos de oro?

Biblioteca de Catalunya

 Day #267: My days in the Biblioteca de Catalunya begin, as does the humiliation of trying to use my rusty Catalan with the librarians.


Day #272: Saw Biutiful, and Bardem definitely deserved that Goya.

Day #276: Working on a project about Mauthausen, and was able to meet a historian and the president of the Amical of Mauthausen today.  Making plans to be at the camp for the 66th anniversary of its liberation.

Day #279: Thrilled to have been in Spain on the 30th anniversary of the attempted coup of February 23, 1981 to nerd out on the retrospective articles and TV shows.  Culmination: saw the movie 23-F, in which all of the bad guys have mustaches, and now I know all of the inside jokes, coño!  ¡Quieto todo el mundo!

Day #280: Three more running routes in Barcelona: 1) Down the Diagonal, 2) To the Sants train station and 3) Along the Barceloneta by the ocean, to the Peix (a big fish designed by Frank Gehry, of course)

Day #281: Back to the library...

February Appendix: Pictures of Food

Lentils with chorizo, crusty bread and a nice Rioja.

Goat and sheep's cheese.  This is what the fridge smells like right now.

Berberechos.  Oh! Cockles.  That's why the woman at the market told me they weren't clams.

The berberecho aftermath.

Acategorical Top Ten List of 2008

10. Ada Zelda -- Cutest baby born to one of my friends in 2008 (Note: category unavailable in 2009 due to competition)

9. "Helvetica" -- Best documentary about a font I saw in 2008.

8. Fiddlehead ferns -- Most exciting culinary discovery of the year, this East Coast green helped me move beyond my period of mourning the 18 varieties of lemon available in California. (Pictured at left, with asparagus) Runner-up: Sugar shacks, the best place to drink shots of hot maple syrup right off the still.

7. Black, aka arroz negro -- Best paella of 2008.

6. David Byrne at the Calvin -- Here, the Rock Critic and I agree: the Talking Heads frontman's performance in Northampton, complete with agile modern dancers jumping over Byrne's head, was the best concert I saw in 2008. Runners-up include Wilco at the Shubert, The Hold Steady at Terminal 5, and New Pornographers, also at the Calvin.

5. Dreams from my Father -- Best book to read between November 4th, 2008 and January 20th, 2009.

4. My Parents Got TiVo before I Did -- Most unbelievable technological advance of the year.

3. C, eh? N, eh? D, eh? -- Funniest joke about Canada I heard this year.

2. The Ice Storm along the Mass Pike -- Most eye-popping weather phenomenon I saw in 2008. Runner-up: the 8 feet of snow that kept me trapped in my house one Friday night. OK, maybe it was a foot and 1/2.

1. SJBlog Readers -- Smartest, most loyal blog readers of 2008. And I, SJB, take top honors in the category for most pandering, patronizing blogger of 2008. Everyone wins! Happy New Year!

Turkey3

Regular readers of the SJBlog may remember that I enjoy recycling, sometimes in unconventional ways. For instance I saved the moving boxes that I bought through Usedcardboardboxes.com to move from California to Amherst, as well as the moving paper and bubble wrap, and reused them to move to Northampton, and then gave them all away through Craigslist to needy local drifters who were imminently moving to parts unknown.
Anyway, last week I made my first Thanksgiving turkey, weighing in at 14.75 pounds. Since Thanksgiving, I have eaten 5 leftover Thanksgiving meals -- all basically copies of the original meal. In the interest of variety, tonight I put the turkey to work by making this Turkey Hash (I modified the recipe: since I was too lazy to go buy celery I used zucchini, and tossed in some extra herbs I had sitting around), and boiled the crap out of the rest of the bird for turkey stock.

Also, Addison helped herself to morsels of turkey carcass out of the trash twice. Recycling rules!

Pie Count 2008

1. Pecan -- February, for a Valentine's gift, went well with a nice bourbon.

2. Strawberry-Rhubarb -- June, for a BBQ, went well with Micheladas and red meat.

3. Cherry -- July, for the 4th of July, out of local cherries from Our Nation's Capital, went well with freedom.

4. Blueberry -- August, with wild Northern Wisconsin blueberries, went well with milk and plate-licking.

5. Pumpkin -- November, for Thanksgiving, went well with whiskey and gluttony.

Day 9: iJam(ón)

Forget the 3G iPhone. I want an iJam. Or an iJam nano. Actually, I think I may have had one for dinner last night.

Day 5: Paella, paella, paella, paella, goose!

VALENCIA, Spain -- Tonight I partook of la quinta paella -- the fifth of five paellas -- over the course of a little over 48 hours. Valencia is the birthplace and proud keeper of the Spanish paella tradition, and I agree: it's better here. The first two paellas we ate al fresco at a traditional Valencian barraca, a waterside grass-roofed house in the heart of La Albufuera, a national park with a long, skinny lagoon where paella was, in fact, born.














The next two were at La Pepica, an historic seaside restaurant in the city that ol'Ernest Hemingway made famous in his posthumously published novel The Dangerous Summer. I was able to confirm at La Pepica that the mixing of arroz negro (which gets its hue from squid ink) and the paella variation we had before us (not technically paella valenciana, which includes rabbit), is not a faux pas. In fact, to me it recalls the classic New York black and white cookie: such culinary harmony. Served with lemon and alioli, a spread of garlic and olive oil whipped to a creamy consistency, we had no trouble polishing them off.













It just seems right to spend a beautiful Sunday in Valencia eating nothing but paella, so we topped it off with a paella mixta (with chicken, green pepper, shrimp, and chirlas -- tiny bite-sized clams) crafted by Mario, who claims that having summered in a town south of Valencia as a kid makes him a self-styled homemade paella expert. Judging by his paella, I have no reason to doubt this argument. It was a little sickly-looking only because we lacked azafrán (saffron), which gives paella that warm yellow glow.

Sadly, after I leave Valencia tomorrow, I'm going to have to start thinking about something other than food.

Day 4: Mmm...pescado

VALENCIA, Spain -- Scenes from the Mercado Ruzafa:

Fish

SJB thinking about fish

Tender bunnies

Lest I be the last to post about bagels

While we were in Seattle last month, ERD and I became the latest casualties to the SKBK bagel-making craze. As you can see from the S and D-shaped bagels in the above photo, however, we proved that people who only make round bagels are suffering from a severe lack of bagel-imagination. Also, although the everything bagels were indeed delicious, plain ol' salt bagels also had their charm.

Now will you post the recipe, Bagel Mistress?!?

Let them eat kale!

There's been a lot of talk around these parts about the raw food diet, the whys, the whynots, the logic behind championing a diet that extols the virtues of unprocessed, unadulterated, living food eaten the way our ancestors did while necessitating an electrodomestic army of juicers, blenders, food processors and food dehydrators to make anything palatable and nutritious enough to survive on. And then there's the fire question. But, anyway, I'll save the rants for ed002d, who today marks two weeks raw; two weeks until cheese makes its triumphant return.

As an observer of the diet and occasional participant, I've mostly been pleased with the various raw concoctions to emerge from my kitchen that in some cases would be worthy of eating even when back on the hard stuff. Last night's salad, for instance, with mixed spring greens, strawberries, pecans, cilantro, sunflower seeds, red pepper, carrots, grape tomatoes, dried figs and dressed with a green onion/garlic/honey/olive oil/balsamic vinagrette was a winner. So was this raw marinara sauce over zucchini "pasta." A raw pesto (basically regular basil pesto, hold the parmesan cheese) over shredded jicama and carrots also stood up to its cooked brethren. Avocados with salt and pepper, and maybe a little lemon juice, are always tasty. Smoothies for breakfast are easy and delicious, and you can sneak in spinach, kale and hemp seeds amid the bananas, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, pear, or whatever else you throw in without really noticing anything but the change in color (and the green stuff stuck between your teeth). Oats soaked in lukewarm water (which is OK by raw standards) are pretty much the same as your standard cooked oatmeal, 'cept they're cold, which is unfortunate, but with enough fruit and maple syrup (grade B is apparently preferred by the raw foodists), you forget about the temperature.

But the real fun has been in my on-going cookie and truffle experiments. So far, I've made three prototypes with my handy mini-food processor, all of which have earned passing marks, though hopefully through more experimentation (coupled with augmenting weeks-long desperation for variety), I should be able to bring their grades up. My first attempt was these almond, coconut, raisin, honey, vanilla extract and cardamom "cookies." They were pretty good.
My second and third attempts have been chocolate truffles, the first batch made with raw cacao, honey, almonds and agave syrup; the second batch without the honey but also with coconut milk. Dusted with more coconut or cacao powder, they look pretty, but they have not attained the sweetness I was hoping for. Clearly, further experimentation is needed. The SJB raw test kitchen will continue apace as long as raw food is called for, or until the end of April, whichever comes first.

Mmm, Pentagons

In one of my finer moments, I purchased a chocolate Pentagon (milk, although dark and white were also available, as were Capitol buildings and militaristic bunnies) at a Costco in Washington, D.C. last weekend and gave it to dl004d and the Grand Marnier as a housewarming gift. Happily, it was a hit!

The Macoun: A Review

Behold: the Macoun

The Pioneer Valley is currently awash in apples, and I have found my new local favorite: the Macoun. Having tried Romas, Empires, Jonagolds, Red Jonagolds, Fortunes, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Cortlands, Galas and Macouns at the Quonquont Farm in Whately, MA, the Macouns were standouts. Sweet, tart and crisp, they mimic a MacIntosh without the pretense. With a tight speckled skin that emerges from red-black to bask in moments of golden yellow, they resemble a dark starry night cut by a rising sun. A bite brings forth a satisfying crack, revealing pristine white flesh and complex flavor that makes you think: damn, this is a good apple.

S'more oysters

This week I went camping on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington's Puget Sound. It was beautiful and rustic, a quintessential camping experience. That is, with one exception: while my hosts, the Kents, were snacking on s'mores, I was digging in to the local oysters I picked up at a nearby gas station for $5.50 a dozen. Following the advice of some guy who was walking by as I filled a bag with these enormous mollusks, I steamed them over the campfire.

They were, without a doubt, the best oysters I've ever had. Briny and delicious. I ate eleven of them.

If I wrote for Zagat's

At Fonda in Berkeley "Solano Ave. yuppies" enjoy "smokey" and "extremely expensive" mescal served by a bartender with an "unusual, almost eerie, in-depth knowledge" of the age of agave plants and "many tattoos." A great place for a "quick lesson in Mexican tequila land politics" at the bar before "sheepishly" heading off to a "rival" restaurant.

"Spitting distance" from the Claremont Hotel, Rick and Ann's serves "unpretentious California home cooking" to a local crowd. Be prepared to "eat breakfast once at the Peet's next door while you wait for your table to eat breakfast again" on the weekends, but Rick and Ann's is "blissfully accessible" at dinner and for weekday breakfast. The appetizer plate of carrot and celery sticks is "tasty" but "smacks of kindergarten snacktime."

Cross the Bay to hit "the only two places open after 6" at the Embarcadero Ferry Building in San Francisco. While you wait hours for the only reservation you could score at The Slanted Door, try the Market Bar for "oddly attentive service," "ten dollar cocktails" and oysters on the half shell. The Bar's "oyster man" will tell you, if you ask where the oysters come from, that "half are from the Atlantic; half are from the Pacific." Figures.

By the time you get to The Slanted Door, you will be "famished" and "so hungry you'll pay any price for anything." First sit down for a half hour in the lounge area and devour "scrumptious pork ribs" and "signature spring rolls" before arriving, "completely full," but "obligated to order dinner anyway" at your table. Your "devoted" server will "nod knowingly" every time you order something, even when you "betray your East Bay ignorance" by asking if the mussels are served "raw or cooked." Don't forget to check out the "semi-Marxist" bathroom arrangements.

Perhaps wanting to eat at a more "normal hour," you'll be pleased to note that The House on Grant Ave. in San Francisco's "strip-club friendly" North Beach neighborhood has not yet been "so discovered as to not take reservations from the likes of you." Yet. You may want to ask your server to "write the specials down," instead of "rattling them off like she's selling them at an auction," but then again, you may just want to "take your chances" with "what you're able to remember." Entrees can either be "spectacular" or "something I could have ordered somewhere else," so "good luck."

Back in Berkeley, if you've got "money burning a hole in your pocket" and "foodie aspirations," you'll want to eat "late, I mean really late" at Chez Panisse. Your server will sport a "difficult-to-characterize European accent," will be delighted to explain to you that the "nettles on your pizzetta are cooked in such a way so as not to sting you" and that there are "many ways to write 'cookie' in pretentious-sounding foreign languages" on the dessert menu. You'll love the "arts and crafts decor" and while the people at the next table may be "bad-mouthing restaurants in your hometown," you'll leave "extremely satisfied," "excited to have been allowed inside" and "out of cash."

Chicken Soup for the O'hare Traveller's Soul

I'm back in the Bay as of 3am this morning, after long, delay-ridden flights from the East Coast. Yesterday I ended up having a few more impromptu meetings with faculty and saw the rain and slush side of New England. I'd forgotten about that, too.

As soon as I was finally off the interview clock yesterday, my body immediately responded with the release of the collective stress of months in the form of a nagging bug that followed me through shuttle rides, flights and airports. I've decided that airports are the single worst places to feel nauseous, because you can never escape the smell of pizza, and it's almost impossible to find soup. I did, however, manage to locate some chicken noodle at O'hare during my 4 hour delay, but its effects were lessened by that damn pizza smell and the hours and hours of Anna Nicole Smith funeral coverage on airport CNN. Talk about nauseating.

So now comes the waiting, but honestly, as long as I'm not outside gate C17 at O'hare for the next couple of weeks, the waiting can't be that bad.

Candy distraction

These last couple of weeks have been occupied with a near-constant anticipation of the ringing of the phone: applications for jobs for next year are out, and interviews at the MLA are lining up. Rest assured there'll be more on that in the coming weeks. Probably more than anyone cares to hear, but it becomes all-consuming, I'm afriad.

Anyway, in my quest to distract myself from waiting for the phone to ring, I put my Martha Stewart hat on this weekend and baked for, like, three days. I was excited to try out a recipe for Angel Food candy that I found in the Isthmus a few years ago. Angel Food candy, I discovered after searching for it in the aisles of drugstore chains on the East Coast, is only available in Wisconsin. It's, in fact, made by Kaap's Old World Chocolates in Green Bay, and my grandmother used to have a dish of it around every Christmas. Long story short: I made it, and took some photos. And here they are:
The first step is to boil 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup light corn syrup until they hit 295 degrees on a candy thermometer. Then you toss in a tablespoon of baking soda, which turns the whole thing into a lava-like mess that could easily win an elementary school science fair. Miraculously, all of this crap left in the pot just dissolves right off when you pour boiling water on it.


When you turn this crazy amorphous blob out into a buttered pan, it looks like a deflated and deboned turkey, sort of. You let it cool, and then take a blunt object to it to bash it into pieces, which are extremely irregularly shaped. But that's what we want. Homemade candy is all about being irregularly shaped, digo yo.
Next, you double-boil up some semi-sweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli, but only because they sell it in giant blocks at Trader Joe's. It was a pain in the ass to break up, though) and dunk your irregular candy into the chocolate, making a fine mess, as you can see.

But, once dry, the angel food candy has a lovely hard chocolate outside, and...



...a crackily caramelized -sugar interior. Yum!
This, after only five hours of toil in the kitchen, is a labor of love.

2(3.14159)

Cheese: It's what's for dinner.

Front page story on this morning's New York Times: Wisconsin is losing the cheese race to California. By early next year, cheese experts forecast, California will lead Wisconsin in cheese production. Apparently, California's "Happy Cows" have been producing more milk than Wisconsin's "Stoic Cows" for a decade, but the cheese thing really smarts.

I just want to say this: I know I live in California, and yes, I even like California, this is true. But I wish no ill will toward Wisconsin's cows, dairy industry or stem-cell research facilities. In fact, I hold Wisconsin cheese, ice cream, milk, beer and stem cells very dear. I get a surprising amount of shit about this, and I just want to preemptively defend myself: it is not my fault that Calfornia produces more cheese than Wisconsin.

The fatty tuna I ate last night looked like Spam

Except imagine twice the fat, such that the tuna meat separated into what looked like mini slices of Spam. If I closed my eyes and asked my dinner companion to distract me with inane rambling, I could stomach it. It just tasted like tuna, but fattier. However, with my eyes open, it was one of the least appetizing $5 pieces of fish I've ever seen, much less eaten.

Garlic Fries Return (Again and Again)

Pac Bell Park aka SBC Park aka AT&T Park is famous for its garlic fries. I went to a Giants game last night, not having been to a game since 2001, and remembering only that I had to have the garlic fries. $6.25 and about 8 hours in line later, I had a mushy, stinky mound of "Gordon Biersch Garlic Fries" in front of me. Oh, the first bite: Tangy, spicy raw garlic floods the palate. Sinuses are cleared. Friends move an extra three feet away when your mouth is opened. The eleventh bite: Garlic never tasted so good. Funny, this hot dog also tastes like garlic. The twenty-sixth bite: Cloves of garlic reconstitute themselves in your stomach. The mint they've thoughtfully given you tastes like garlic. Vampires are seen exiting the stadium. Ten minutes after the last bite: This may have been a mistake. Thirty minutes after the last bite: Oh, this most certainly was a mistake. A pound of garlic stages a sit-in throughout your intestines. Your eyes are swimming in garlic. Three hours after the last bite: Heinous. Garlic envelops your body. Your tongue could be served with a nice shrimp scampi. The fries have clearly been genetically engineered to resist multiple attacks of Pepto Bismal. Twelve hours after the last bite: Your pillow smells like garlic. Your breakfast tastes like garlic. Toothpaste is useless. Garlic oil does not come off in the shower. It will be late afternoon by the time you regain control of your taste buds.

And yet I ask you: Who can resist the garlic fries?!? No one can resist the garlic fries.

Chocolate Caaaaaaake!

A few lucky readers of this blog (or people who date readers of this blog) sampled another entry in my chocolate cake-making project last night, and the reviews are in. It was good. The recipe was requested. So, for those of you not enjoying the leftovers right now, here it is:

Team Taboo Chocolate Cake

(née "Azo Family Chocolate Cake" from the NYTimes)

8 1/2 oz. unsalted butter (that's 2 sticks + 1 T. for normal people)
7 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
(50% or higher cocoa -- I used Scharffenberger Semisweet, which is 62% cocoa)
5 large eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 9 in. pan (springform, but, again, normal people should use whatever they have) and set aside. In microwave oven, melt the butter and chocolate. Stir to blend.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together egg yolks and sugar. Stir in flour, then add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry. Fold whites into chocolate mixture just until blended. Pour into cake pan.
3. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove cake from oven and allow to cool for 1 hour. Wrap with foil and refrigerate until cake is firm and cold, at least 2 hours. Two hours before serving remove cake from fridge and bring to room temperature. Now, if you're a busy person who is running late to catch BART and can't wait for the cake to cool, chill and warm up, rest assured it will taste good even if you don't follow these instructions to the letter.
4. Slice (center of cake will be fudgy) and serve, with whipped cream or, even better, homemade ice cream -- plain is ideal, but vanilla would also be good. Enjoy!