Five minute university

I was poking around on YouTube and I found the following clip from Father Guido Sarducci: "Five Minute University." As a professional speaker of Spanish I'm particularly interested in what he says the average college graduate remembers from two years of college Spanish. Enjoy.

Chinese Chicken and Chili Soup

I’m systematically going through my cookbooks and looking for recipes to try. Tonight it was Chinese Chicken and Chili Soup, from One-pot, Slow-pot & Clay-pot Cooking, by Jenni Fleetwood (New York: Hermes House, 2002). I had to substitute a serrano chili for the red chili, regular mushrooms for the shiitake, and Japanese vermicelli for the rice noodles. Also, the recipe calls for a Chinese sand pot, which I do not own, so I used an oven-safe glass Dutch oven.

So, I used the wrong chili pepper, the wrong mushrooms, the wrong noodles and the wrong pot. Oh, and I didn't warm the bowls. It still turned out fine, though, and I think we’ll try it again. One caveat: even finely chopped the lemon grass was distracting and occasionally off-putting; we kept hitting hard chunks that were reminiscent of biting sand. Next time we’ll leave the lemon grass in bigger pieces so we can remove them once the soup is done.

1 5oz boneless chicken breast portion, cut into thin strips
1 inch piece fresh ginger root, finely chopped
2 inch piece lemon grass stalk, finely chopped
1 red chili, seeded and thinly sliced
8 baby corn cobs, halved lengthwise
1 large carrot, cut into thin sticks
4 cups hot chicken stock
4 green onions, thinly sliced
12 small shiitake mushrooms, sliced
4 oz (1 cup) vermicelli rice noodles
2 tbsp soy sauce
salt and ground black pepper

Place the chicken, ginger, lemon grass, chili, corn and carrot sticks in a Chinese sand pot. Pour over the hot chicken stock and cover.

Place the pot in an unheated oven (I forgot and preheated the oven; no big deal with the pan I was using). Set the temperature to 400 degrees and cook the soup for 30-40 minutes, or until the stock is simmering and the chicken and vegetables are tender.

Add the green onions and mushrooms, cover, and return the pot to the oven for 10 minutes. Meanwhile place the noodles in a large bowl and cover with boiling water – soak for the required time, following the packet instructions (my noodles had different directions).

Drain the noodles and divide among four warmed serving bowls (I didn’t warm the bowls). Stir the soy sauce into the soup and season with salt and pepper. Divide the soup between the bowls and serve immediately.

Vancouver Blues

I flew to Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday for the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society conference, where I chaired a panel on Hispanic Literature and spent a good deal of time hanging out with the panelists, who happen to be old friends of mine from graduate school.

Vancouver, apparently, is beautiful, although after a flight that arrived an hour late, followed by another hour through customs and yet another hour on the shuttle bus for an accidental tour of the city’s downtown hotels, I was in no mood to find the place charming.

I found my friends Damian and Eric already at the hotel. I’ve seen Damian lately, but Eric I hadn’t seen in a good four years. I was pleased to see he’d acquired some grey.

We strolled down to the waterfront. It had rained earlier in the day, and the sky was still overcast (apparently in the Pacific Northwest, gloom is the default; meteorologists forecast when office workers can dash outside to catch a moment of fleeting sunshine). It was quite chilly as well.

We looked across the inlet and watched seaplanes land and take off. Out on the water floated a dock dominated by a giant Chevron sign, presumably so the planes can fuel up without coming to shore.

Gloomy or not, waterfronts always cheer me. I’ve often said that if it hadn’t been for my tendency to get seasick just by stepping on a dock, I would have been a sailor.

We ambled into Gastown, the historic downtown, which has gone from urban blight to urban renewal in the past few decades (although there’s still plenty of blight to be seen; we must have been accosted by half a dozen homeless in the space of a few blocks). In the middle of it all stands a statue dedicated to Gassy Jack, the legendary founder of Gastown. Unfortunately, Gassy Jack received his nickname for talking too much; I was hoping for a much more aromatic tale behind his moniker.

When hunger struck we went looking for someplace to eat. We rejected McDonalds, which, despite the red maple leaf emblazoned on the golden arches, struck us as not quite quintessentially Canadian. I’m not quite sure how we ended up at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

Once comfortably seated I decided to try communicating with the natives in their own dialect.

“Where’s the washroom, eh?” I asked the waitress. We achieved communication and I found the restroom.