Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Writing Camp is Today

Damian, Kent, and I are off to our first ever writing camp, and so will be off line for a few days.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Calabacitas rellenas de elote (Zucchini Stuffed with Fresh Corn)

Cooking gives me a great deal of pleasure, and I also find it relaxing, which is probably why I cook when I’m stressed out. I’ve been very stressed out about work lately, so today after church I went a little crazy and spent pretty much the entire afternoon making dinner. Tonight it was pork chops in adobo paste, served with stuffed zucchini and lentils with pineapple and plantain. About the only thing I didn’t make from scratch was the cheese for the zucchini. Everything else involved much toasting of chiles, roasting of tomatoes, shaving of fresh corn kernels, blending, and tasting for salt.

Overall it was a success. The only disappointment, from my point of view, was the lentils, which I finished early and reheated in the microwave. Lentils with pineapple and plantain is an unexpected combination. It was so good coming off the stove that I thought it would be the hit of the dinner, but after letting it sit and reheating, it turned out muddled.

Tonight I’ll blog the zucchini, which was a reasonably successful dish. The squash is stuffed with a fresh corn mixture, and on its own was a little bland. But, you serve it with a fresh, warm salsa ranchera, which was out of this world. Together, the zucchini and the sauce combined into something quite tasty.

So here’s the zucchini recipe, along with the salsa ranchera, both of which come from Diana Kennedy’s The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. For the salsa, I broiled the tomatoes and the chiles together. The recipe actually calls for four serrano chiles, but I used only three, and it turned out picante enough.

Salsa Ranchera
1 pound tomatoes, broiled
3 serrano chiles, charred
1 garlic cove, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon salt

Blend the tomatoes, chiles, and garlic together until fairly smooth.

Heat the oil, add the blended ingredients and the salt, and cook over fairly brisk heat for about 5 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan until the sauce has reduced a little and is well seasoned.


Zucchini Stuffed with Fresh Corn
1½ pounds zucchini
2 heaped cups corn kernels
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons milk
salt to taste
6 ounces queso fresco, crumbled (about 1 cup)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 recipe salsa ranchera

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a large shallow baking dish.

Clean and trim the zucchini. Cut them into halves lengthwise and scoop out the inner flesh, leaving a shell about ½ inch thick (Note: my zucchini were on the small side and the shell was nowhere near ½ inch thick). Discard the pulp. Place the zucchini in the dish and set aside while you prepare the filling.

Blend the corn, eggs, milk, and salt to a coarse mixture. Do not add more liquid unless absolutely necessary to release the blades. Mix about three quarters of the cheese into the corn mixture, saving the rest for the topping.

Fill the zucchini shells with the corn stuffing, which will be quite runny. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and dot with the butter. Cover the dish and bake until the squash is tender—about 30 minutes. Serve covered with the tomato sauce.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Tapado de pollo (Chicken and Fruit Casserole)


Mexican summer continues, this time with a Chicken and Fruit Casserole from Diana Kennedy (The Essential Cuisines of Mexico). This one was beyond words. Why don’t they have this sort of dish at any of the so-called Mexican restaurants in this country? The cinnamon and the fruit gave it a warm aroma and a lovely, but not cloying, sweetness, while the olives cut through the sweetness.

A few substitutions and omissions: I did not have the right chicken (word to Safeway: one should not have to travel to a specialty store just to get chicken with bones and skins on it, thank you very much), I substituted chicken broth for sherry, and I left out the capers, since I don’t much care for them. Even with the wrong ingredients, it still rocked. I'm just going to write out the recipe as it appears in the book.

4½ pounds large chicken parts
Salt
6 peppercorns
1 whole clove
½-inch piece of cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
¼ cup dry sherry
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
¼ cup mild vinegar
2 cups thinly sliced white onion
12 ounces tomatoes, sliced (about 2 cups)
1 small apple, peeled, cored, and cut into thick slices
1 small pear, peeled, cored, and cut into thick slices
2 Mexican bay leaves
6 sprigs fresh thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried
1/8 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

To serve
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 large, very ripe plantain, peeled and cut into lengthwise slices
2 tablespoons large capers, drained
15 green olives, pitted and halved

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt. Crush the peppercorns, clove, and cinnamon together and mix with the sugar, sherry, garlic, vinegar, and about 1½ teaspoons salt.

Spread one third of the onion on the bottom of a deep ovenproof casserole; cover with one third of the tomato slices and the fruits. Add the bay leaves and sprinkle with a little of the herbs, then put half of the chicken pieces on top of the fruits and vegetables and pour on half the vinegar-spice mixture. Repeat the layers, finishing up with a topping of onion, tomatoes, and fruit.

Cover the casserole and bake for about 1 hour, then uncover the casserole for 30 minutes longer, or until the chicken is tender and some of the juices have been reduced.

Meanwhile, heat the oil and fry the plantain pieces until a deep golden brown. Remove and drain. To serve, cover the top of the stew with the capers, olives, and fried plantain.

Monday, July 14, 2008

A Day at the Bay


I had been wanting to take Gabe on a boat ride, so on Friday we drove into the city to take a tour of the bay.

Traveling to the city involves making a series of decisions, most of them involving parking. First, do we want to drive or take a train? Drive, because I wanted to stop by my office while we were in town. Do we park near fisherman’s wharf, or farther away where parking is cheaper? Near the wharf, because we didn’t want to hoof it or take a bus. So we pulled into a parking garage behind Hooters just a block off the Embarcadero, which ended up charging us $16, even with validation.

We parked and headed to the waterfront, where we chanced upon the “Lovely Martha,” docked right at the street. A large man named Roger barked out an invitation to one and all to board and see the bay, only $15 per person.

“What do you think?” I asked my wife. Erika bit her lip, unwilling to commit. I paid and Roger helped Erika and Gabe board, while I dashed to Walgreen’s for some snacks. I returned to find that Erika had staked out a spot at the bow, next the canister holding the inflatable life raft. She sat rigid, eyes straight ahead, as if her very life depended on maintaining that posture.

Mind you, we hadn’t even left the dock yet.

Shortly after 12:30 p.m. we felt a rumbling beneath our feet. A lovely Irish woman cast off and took the helm. Was this Lovely Martha herself?

We left the shelter of the harbor and headed into the bay, where it immediately got choppy. The boat chugged sluggishly eastward toward the bridge while Lovely Martha’s voice lilted through a loud speaker directly over our heads, telling us about Coit Tower and Russian Hill, and how many miles of cable are in the Golden Gate Bridge. It all got whipped away by the wind and sea spray, leaving us no more enlightened at the end of the trip than we were at the beginning, though I did manage to hear that the 89,000 miles of cable in the bridge are enough to encircle the Earth three times.

I pointed out sailboats and fishing boats and ferries to Gabe and encouraged him to grab onto the rail and look over the edge as we crashed through hills and troughs of ocean and felt the spray bite our cheeks. Gabe was entranced; he was especially interested in the buoys.

A brisk wind buffeted us and made us glad we had remembered our sweaters, but sad we hadn’t thought of jackets. The bridge off in the distance was half shrouded by fog. I asked Erika to take my picture, and she looked ready to smack me.

“Do not ask me to turn around,” she hissed. I got up, handed her the camera, and stood directly in front of her so she wouldn’t have to move.

We passed under the arches of the bridge and could hear the clanking of cars driving above our heads. As we passed under the bridge the water got choppier. The Irish lilt told us to hold on as we began a slow turn to starboard. A helicopter overhead flew under the bridge, no doubt to the delight of the tourists aboard.

We headed back into the bay and now that the wind was at our backs the ride felt smoother and warmer. I felt for the passengers seated at the stern, because now they were getting the brunt of it.

As we came around Alcatraz Island, the Irish lilt imparted information that no doubt would have delighted us if we had understood it, but we did not. I explained to Gabe that this had been a prison, then I had to explain what a prison was. As we rounded the island a large sign proclaimed that those aiding and abetting escaped prisoners would be subject to prosecution and imprisonment.

From Alcatraz it was a straight shot back to the harbor. As we backed into our berth Erika’s head finally turned, for the first time in an hour.

We next scoured the area for a place to eat, and I decided Erika deserved something nice-ish for being such a trouper, so we settled on Tarantino’s. Erika ordered mahi mahi, which was delicious, while I decided to try the sand dabs, which our menu declared were a local favorite. Gabe had chicken fingers, which has become his standby every time we go out. Our table overlooked the dock where Lovely Martha gently rocked, awaiting her next load of passengers. A fishing boat was docked nearby, where a lucky angler stood cradling a four-foot shark in his arms.

Our window also overlooked the stretch of the Embarcadero where the Bush man plies his trade. His brand of street theater consists of holding a pair of tree branches and crouching down, then startling unsuspecting passers by. This seems to be a singularly asinine way to make a living, but it turned out to be unbelievably entertaining. The women lunching at a table near ours were able to predict with a high degree of accuracy which oncoming pedestrian would be startled next. Another table near ours watched with rapt attention, bursting into laughter every time the Bush man succeeded.

Erika was impressed enough to drop a dollar into the man’s tip jar as we walked back to the car. As we walked by he shouted out to some nearby tourists, “If you’re going to stand there and take my picture, please donate. If I took a picture of your bush you can bet your ass I’d give you a dollar.”

As we walked away I asked Gabe what his favorite part had been.

“The buoys,” he said. Go figure.

And what was Erika's favorite part of the boat ride? Getting off.

Monday, July 7, 2008

It's sugar, fer cryin' out loud

So I bought some soy milk to try with my cereal, because I’m lactose intolerant. The carton for Silk soymilk is all about being green, environmental, and organic. It hits all the right eco buttons: it’s USDA certified organic, and the carton proudly informs me that “this soymilk is made from soybeans that were not genetically engineered.”

Well whoop de do.

I would be inclined to buy the least organic, most genetically engineered soymilk out there as long as it tasted tolerable and didn’t cost twice as much as dairy milk.

What really gets me scratching my head, though, is on the list of all-natural ingredients we get “organic evaporated cane juice.”

Well. Turns out I use evaporated cane juice every day: I put a dash in my tomato sauce to make it tangy, I sprinkle it on my strawberries, I caramelized it with my sweet potatoes, because, wait for it, evaporated cane juice is sugar.

When we have to use euphemisms to make our organic health food pass for organic and healthy, doesn’t it seem that it’s time to admit it’s a scam?

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Chicken in escabeche


Tonight’s dinner left me completely content, which is a rarity. Usually I find something to grumble about, something that should have been done differently. Tonight, though, was really, really good. We did Chicken in escabeche with Sweet potatoes and lime.

Chicken in escabeche
Originally, escabeche was a way for Spanish cooks to essentially pickle food as a way of preserving it. Today, if you eat chicken in escabeche in Spain, you’re eating chicken that has been cooked, then cooled, in its marinade, and served at room temperature. This dish, from Sunset Mexican is not Spanish escabeche; it’s something wildly, wonderfully different.

For the escabeche paste (you will use 2½ tablespoons of this paste)
8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 teaspoon each ground allspice, ground cloves, ground cumin, and ground coriander
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons dry oregano leaves
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
2 tablespoons each orange juice and white wine vinegar

For the chicken
2½ tablespoons escabeche paste
3½- to 4-pound frying chicken, cut up
1½ cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon salad oil
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1 7-oz. can diced green chiles
1½ tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 1½ tablespoons water
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1. Prepare escabeche paste: Mix all ingredients until blended. If made ahead, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Makes ¼ cup.
2. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Using a sharp knife, deeply pierce chicken all over. Rub paste on chicken, pushing some under skin. Place in a 9- by 13-inch baking pan; pour in broth. Cover and bake in a 400 degree oven until chicken is tender when pierced (about 40 minutes).
3. Remove chicken from broth. Drain and strain. Skim and discard fat from broth; reserve broth.
4. Place drained chicken on a preheated broiler pan 4 to 6 inches below heat. Broil, turning once, until well browned (6 to 8 minutes). Or, grill on a lightly greased 4 to 6 inches above a solid bed of medium-hot coals. Cook, turning as needed until well browned (10 to 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, heat oil in a wide frying pan over medium heat. When oil is hot, add onions and cook, stirring, until soft (about 10 minutes). Stir in chiles, reserved broth, and cornstarch mixture. Continue to cook, stirring, until sauce boils and thickens, Stir in cilantro. Spoon sauce over individual servings of chicken. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Sweet potatoes with lime

Again, from Sunset Mexican. These sweet potatoes actually call for tequila, but since I had none sitting around, I just left it out, added water, and bumped up the lime a little. I doubt that’s an adequate substitute for tequila, but it turned out great. The only drawback is the vast quantity of butter required, but it helped push the sweet potatoes from ordinary to out of this world.

1 pound sweet potato (or yam)
6 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon lime juice
½ tablespoon water
salt and pepper

Peel sweet potatoes; coarsely shred.

In a 12- to 14-inch frying pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add potatoes and sugar. Cook, turning occasionally, until potatoes begin to caramelize and looks slightly translucent (about 15 minutes). Stir in lime juice and water and continue to cook for 3 more minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes about 3-4 servings.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Summer movie rentals I: Vantage Point

Caution: Spoilers

We rented Vantage Point the other day. This is a political thriller in which the same half-hour in an action-filled day is told from different points of view, hence the name, Vantage Point. The plot hinges around a plot to assassinate the president of the United States at an anti-terrorism summit being held in Salamanca, Spain. It’s topical and action-packed and mildly suspenseful.

However, there were some problems, some trivial, some not. Among the trivial: as a fan of all-things Spanish, I can’t for the life of me understand why they would set the movie in Spain, but film it in Mexico. That’s right: all the exterior scenes, including the never-ending chase that occupies the last half hour of the movie, were filmed in Mexico City. They even built a replica of Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor, in Mexico City. If you’re going to take the trouble to run an entire production in Mexico, why not just set it in Mexico? Here’s the thing: the movie gains nothing dramatically from being set in Spain, and therefore would lose nothing dramatically by being set in Mexico.

Quibble 2: the last third of the movie is taken up with a long chase that takes place after the last big reveal. Thus, there are no more surprises and no betrayals, so by the time the chase ends and everything is resolved it all feels anticlimactic. This seriously undermines the film’s central gimmick: that of showing the action from different points of view. This sort of gimmick implicitly promises that the audience will see something new from yet another point of view as part of the film’s resolution; the last reveal, as it were. There is no last reveal, which, in turn, shows the gimmick for what it is: simply a gimmick, and not well thought out, either.

Quibble 3: It seems to me that the whole point of showing different points of view is to examine relative truth; in other words, every change of point of view changes the tone of the film because we are not just seeing what is happening from a new angle, but we are also getting a different interpretation of what we are seeing. The problem with Vantage Point is that this change of tone does not occur. Instead of a new twist on what we are seeing, all that happens is a visual “meanwhile, back at the ranch.”

Quibble 4: I lied when I said there were no reveals at the end, or that nothing new happens. In fact, the happy ending occurs because the main terrorist—who has spent the entire movie showing himself to be a ruthless killer, not shy about blowing up an entire plaza full of innocent people to get what he wants—swerves to miss an innocent child in the street. He swerves, tips over, and the game’s up. Sorry if I’ve ruined it for you. Does this mean that the terrorist is a complicated guy who can’t be judged as bad because he won’t run over a child? Or does it mean that his character is not well thought-out? I think the filmmakers were aiming for the first, but achieved the second.

So: some good performances, especially by Dennis Quaid. A reasonably entertaining chase through the streets of Mex—er—Salamanca. But in the end, for me, anyway, unsatisfying.

These kids today

So we were at the park having a picnic with some friends and this little girl, about 6 0r 7 years old comes over to our table and says "where are the kids' drinks?"

"There aren't any" we reply, because besides what Gabe was drinking, there weren't. She gets this wide-eyed look and gives a frustrated grunt, then goes back to her own table. Her parents and their friends continued chatting, oblivious.

Then when we're eating our delicious sausages, she's back. "Can I have a hot dog?" she asks.

"No," I say. She gives us another look of disbelief, as if to say "how dare these adults refuse me what I have so rightfully demanded?"

So, my question is, if you're at the park with your kids, and your kids start pestering another group in a not-cute way, shouldn't you intervene and tell your kids to knock it off? This girl's mom did nothing.

Friday, July 4, 2008

I want one of these

This product is no doubt a boon to many people, but I have to wonder at the marketing strategy.