Letter from Gainesville: We Are Not All Crazy (A Non-Culinary Rant)

 

The time has come to state the obvious.  For the past few days, my inbox has been filled with anxious messages from friends and family: the crazy Koran burners are from Gainesville! OMG! What are you going to do? I can't believe Gainesville is so filled with crazy people!

 

My answer: It's not. For those who don't know the city, here's the deal:  Gainesville is a small city centered around the University of Florida, both physically and spiritually (UF Homecoming Day is a holiday for the entire public school system and  even the city's recycling bins come in UF's colors, orange and blue). The city's population can be impressionistically broken down into the following subgroups:

 

Retirees: 25,000

 

Normal working adults and their families: 50,000

 

Tobacco chewin' good ole boys who hate those socialist college types but love them Gators!: 15,000

 

UF faculty who've developed a taste for boiled peanuts but hate those darned local hicks:     2,000

 

People who claim they're taking class notes on their laptops, but are actually updating their Facebook pages: 25,000

 

People who are, honest to God, going to file their dissertations this semester, which won't be a repeat of last semester, honest! : 500

 

Members of fringe religious cults that have lost their tax-exempt status and whose property is currently under foreclosure: 50

 

Guess which of these groups is the public face of Gainesville these days?

And what are the rest of us doing about it? Yesterday, there was this , and for a while, there has been this and this. Meanwhile, UF's Muslim student group, Islam on Campus, is planning to spend Saturday feeding the homeless and holding a candlelight vigil. They've also advised Muslim groups from out of town not to dignify the burning with their presence.

But of course, measured speeches from the pulpit and grad students in hijabs making sack lunches don't make for particularly dramatic TV. Neither do most reasonable, responsible actions people take on a regular basis. What does get attention is the loud, the obnoxious, and the stupid. Stupid ideas tend to be simple and make good sound bites ("Islam is of the devil!"), while nuanced, truthful ideas don't ("Islam has some radical anti-American adherents, but most of its followers are peaceable").

 

And since media attention equals legitimacy in the public eye, loud, obnoxious, and stupid people and ideas are seen as forces to be reckoned with. Terry Jones and The Situation are of a piece.

 

Sadly, this is why the voices of the vast majority of Gainesville's population are being drowned out. It's not that we don't care.

 

It's just  that we're not stupid enough.

 

One Ton of Manly Labor

My father grew up in a restaurant. His parents owned the Golden Dragon, a sprawling Chinese eatery in Portland, Oregon that offered egg rolls and grilled-cheese sandwiches on its official menu and bitter melon with black-bean sauce and birds’ nest soup on its unofficial one. He tells stories of after-school hours spent peeling water chestnuts and washing dishes with his brothers and sisters while the flare of hot woks and the rhythm of cleavers filled the busy kitchen. On New Year’s Eve, the kids stayed up all night, serving sweet-and-sour pork and cocktails to mobs of hungry revelers.

Dad’s apprenticeship at the hands of a gifted chef father and savvy manager mother gave him a lifelong love and appreciation of good food and restaurants – and drove him to stay as far away from the culinary biz as possible.

By the time my sisters and I appeared on the scene, Dad generally stayed out of the kitchen. His culinary responsibilities were limited to standard dad stuff – grilling burgers and steaks in the backyard – and a single indoors task: folding wontons.

Wontons – square pasta wrappers folded into elegant little pods around a savory mixture of ground pork, vegetables, and sometimes seafood – are dead easy to make, but there’s a catch: there are no shortcuts for folding them the right way. Our hungry family of six could go through a boatload of them in a single meal, but there was no way Mom could fill and fold all of these herself – not with so much housework to deal with and so much childhood misbehavior to monitor.

So the folding fell to Dad – who brought to the enterprise serious mass wonton-folding chops, courtesy of the Golden Dragon.

I can still see the set-up: it’s Saturday (or Sunday) afternoon, and Dad is at the kitchen table. Mom’s filling, smelling tantalizingly of scallions and sesame oil, sits in a glistening pink mound in a mixing bowl in front of him. Next to the mixing bowl is an open packet of wonton skins, which Dad keeps covered with a towel so they won’t dry out and crack when folded. At his side is a small bowl filled with beaten egg and a kitchen knife (the egg is the glue that holds the wontons together), and somewhere nearby on the table is a baking sheet soon to be filled with perfectly folded wontons.

By time I got to grade school, I wanted to fold wontons too. I was a bit of a tomboy and seriously into origami, and folding wontons fed both these impulses: because Dad was the chief wonton folder in the household, I somehow got it into my head that wonton-making was one of those noble masculine arts, like bug-collecting and compass navigation, that would be worth aspiring too. And properly folded wontons are a thing of geometric beauty. By time I was eight or so, I’d be sitting beside him, folding away. It made me feel powerful and useful.

For whatever reason, none of my sisters ever took an interest in wonton folding, so I got to see something they didn’t. My parents were masters at keeping up a unified front before us kids, but when it came to wonton folding, this seemingly impenetrable facade ever so slightly cracked. Dad often warned me not to overfill the skins, lest they burst wastefully when boiled in soup or deep fried, Meanwhile, Mom, who grew up on decadent meals Dad could only dream of in his youth, always scolded him for the stingy amount of filling he used.

“Fred! This isn’t the Golden Dragon!”

It took me a while to figure out how to fill and fold wontons in a way that kept both Mom and Dad happy. The optimal amount of filling had to be small enough not to cause the wrapper to tear or the seams to come loose when folded, but big enough to offer diners a generous meaty bite or two. In wonton folding, as in a functional family life, patience and little compromises are the boring but sure secrets to success.

***********

Mom always made ginormous batches of wontons so she could keep some in the freezer for later. To freeze uncooked wontons, lay them on a baking sheet so they don’t touch and put the sheet in the freezer until the wontons are frozen solid. Once frozen, the wontons can be transferred to a freezer bag for storage. On a cold weeknight when you don’t feel like cooking, take some out of the bag, allow them to thaw, and throw them into a pot of simmering broth for a comforting dinner.

I’ve adjusted the recipe to make a more modest number of wontons—only about 100. I’ve also included instructions for the two most common ways of serving them, cooked in soup and fried. The soup recipe serves 2-4; the fried wonton recipe makes as many or as few as you need. Unless you’re serving dozens of people, you’ll still have some wontons left over for the freezer.

Folding all of these will entail about an hour of meditative handiwork for one person, or a pleasant bonding experience for two.

LEE FAMILY WEEKEND WONTONS

For the filling:

1 pound ground pork

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 clove garlic, minced

2 tablespoons minced scallions, both white and green parts

¾ cup finely shredded Chinese (Napa) cabbage

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper

2 tablespoons cornstarch

For the wontons:

1 package wonton wrappers (available in the refrigerated or frozen foods sections of Asian specialty grocers or better supermarkets)

1 beaten egg or ¼ cup water

For wonton soup:

1 liter chicken broth

2 scallions, thinly sliced

sliced, cooked meat and/or chopped vegetables of your choice (optional)

For fried wontons:

Neutral cooking oil (such as canola) for deep frying

Sweet and sour and/or hoisin sauce

1. Thoroughly combine all the filling ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.

2. Get ready to fold a wonton: Take a wonton wrapper and hold it in your non-dominant hand. Place about 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of the skin. Using a knife or small pastry brush, wet the edges of the skin with water or egg.

3. The first fold is simple: Fold the skin in half diagonally so that it completely encases the filling. Press the edges together, being mindful to squeeze out any air bubbles between the filling and the skin. Be sure the edges are completely sealed, with no gaps.



4. The second fold tends to throw people. Your half-folded wonton now looks like a triangular turnover, with one perpendicular corner and two “arms” (long, sharp corners). Dip one of the “arms” of the wonton into egg or water. Then pull it towards the other arm and press the arms together so that the top surface of one of them is firmly glued to the bottom surface of the other.



The finished wonton should look something like this:



5. Repeat 2-4 until the filling and/or wonton skins are exhausted. (Any leftover skins can be wrapped tightly in plastic and stored in the freezer for use with the next batch. Any leftover filling can be rolled into small balls and dropped into soup as meatballs.) Keep folded wontons and skins covered while you work so they don’t dry out.

6. For wonton soup: Heat broth in a heavy saucepan or pot until it starts to boil. Carefully place about 12 wontons in the pot along with any meat and/or vegetables you’d like to add. (Mom used wonton soup as a convenient repository for leftovers.) When the wontons float to the top of the broth and look wrinkly and translucent, they’re done. Toss the scallions over the soup as a garnish. This amount will serve two or three people as a hearty lunch, or four people as an opener to a larger meal.

7. For fried wontons: Heat about 2 inches of oil in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle on impact, add wontons, one at a time. The number that you can add will depend on the size of your pan, but you don’t want them close enough to touch each other. Fry until the undersides are golden brown; flip and fry until the second side is also golden brown. Immediately remove from the oil, drain well on paper towels, and serve hot with sweet and sour or hoisin sauce.

The Most Exotic Thing I've Ever Eaten

Far-away cultures and folkways intrigue me. But there is one culture in particular that captured my imagination and filled me with fascination and envy. For as long as I’ve known about them, I wondered what it would be like to live among these romantic souls. To breathe in their folkways, so different from mine. To speak their language and sing their songs.

And oh, their food. I wanted to taste their food. The way they wrote about their food made me drool. But none of the restaurants I frequented in my Los Angeles childhood served it. Nobody I knew made it. Mom occasionally made ethnic dishes from the classical European repertoire—osso buco, coq au vin—but wouldn’t go anywhere near the dishes I dreamed about. You wouldn’t like them anyways, she said.

But two years ago, I had the opportunity to live among these people. They tended to live in the rural outskirts of town, and no longer kept many restaurants in our area. Their best dishes, as is the case with many cultures, were well-kept secrets served at home.

Then I discovered that my bird-watching buddy Luz, a Colombian biologist, shared my fascination. It was an autumn Saturday, and we were wrapping up a happy morning looking for migrating wood warblers.

“Oh, I found this restaurant that has this crazy food!” she told me. “It’s right by I-75! I’m going with my friend Valerie for lunch—want to come?”

Would I? I’d never had a whole meal of this mysterious cuisine, and this would be my chance. “That would be awesome—what’s this place called?”

She inhaled in happy anticipation. “Cracker Barrel!”

Yes—Luz and I were fetishists for the food and culture of the American South. I always wondered what it would be like to be a real Southern lady who made fluffy biscuits and towering layer cakes, and served friends fresh-squeezed lemonade on the back porch of an ancient family plantation. Luz went so far as to marry a guy from Tennessee. Her now-former mother-in-law made killer fried green tomatoes.

Luz’s friend Valerie was a biology postdoc from Toulouse, and offerings at Cracker Barrel were even more exotic for her than for us.

“Dumplins? What eez ‘dumplins’?” she asked, peering at the menu.

“Well, they’re kind of like—well it’s hard to describe.” Luz said. “But you have to try the fried okra!”

I knew this was the tourist version of Southern cuisine, and it only whetted my appetite for the real thing. This meant I’d have to find a friendly local who could teach me more about it.

But where would I find such a person? Rumor had it the old-line Southern natives in my little college town resented – and hence, avoided – the Yankees and foreigners attached to the university. After all, people who put tempeh on their pizza and drink unsweetened iced tea are not to be trusted.

Then I remembered that I actually knew a real live Southern lady who didn’t hate me. And I’d been sitting across the table from her on Monday nights for months.

Susie Baxter heads a writing group I belong to, and is a proud native Floridian, born and raised in rural Suwanee County. (This is the north-central part of the state, just east of the panhandle.) One of the first things newcomers learn about Florida is that the more north you are, the more South you are: Suwanee County is closer geographically and culturally to neighboring Alabama and Georgia than to far-away Miami or Palm Beach.

Susie’s memoir-in-progress about her childhood in Suwannee County is a delicious mélange of everything Southern: quiet dirt roads, a homemade rope swing hanging from an ancient oak in the yard, dusty tobacco fields, mysterious bullet holes in floorboards, and of course, lots of food—all cooked lovingly on a wood-burning stove, and almost all grown on the family property.

Meals in Susie’s childhood were filled with all those mysterious Southern foods I’d read about for years, but never seen served anywhere – let alone tasted. Among these are hoecakes.

I discovered that the term ‘hoecake’ is used across the South to refer to a number of different griddled flatbreads, ranging from simple mixtures of cornmeal and water to white-flour-based breads resembling giant scones. The name ‘hoecake’ recalls the old tradition of cooking the cakes on the back of a hoe. (Most sources spell it as two words, but Susie spells it as one, and I’m following her lead – and recipe –here.)

Susie's family’s version is a cornmeal-based griddle cake enriched with eggs and milk. Her family often had them with meals in place of biscuits or bread. Here is Susie’s description of her family’s recipe, from her upcoming memoir, “I, Susanette...”

"Mama often made hoecakes for supper, instead of cornbread or biscuits that required a hot oven, which heated up the house. To make hoecakes, Mama measured the ingredients very precisely—a handful of freshly ground cornmeal, a half a handful of flour, a clump of lard, an egg or two, a pinch of salt and baking powder, and just enough fresh cow milk to make the mixture into a batter.

She checked the temperature of the iron skillet by sprinkling a few drops of water in it. When the water danced, she knew it was hot enough. She poured the batter into five separate puddles, cutting off the stream as each puddle spread to three or four inches. In less than a minute, bubbles formed on the surface of the puddles and began to pop, an indication that it was time to flip them. Her hoecakes always turned out brown and crispy on the outside but soft and warm inside..."

Like biscuits and cornbread, hoecakes can be eaten with either savory or sweet accompaniments. At her childhood meals, Susie used them to block out the taste of turnip greens, which she hated. If she managed to get down enough of those dreaded greens, she also got to have hoecakes for dessert, drizzled with cane syrup.

Susie’s mother made her hoecakes from homegrown corn (which her family brought to the mill to be ground into meal) and home-pressed cane syrup. For city girls like me and Luz, this is as strange, exotic, and wondrous as food can possibly get.


**********

Amazingly, I lucked out on my first attempt to re-create Susie’s mother’s recipe. Since Susie is small-boned and petite; I guessed her mother may have been as well, so “a handful” would have been about half a cup at most. To get the combination of crunchiness and softness, the batter would need a lot of fat and tenderizers such as milk and eggs – so I interpreted “a clump” of lard to mean about a quarter of a cup. I’m not sure exactly how close this comes to the original, but it does fit Susie’s description perfectly: the cakes are brittle and crunchy on the outside, soft and almost creamy on the inside. They look like ordinary pancakes, but their texture is distinctly different--and a lot more interesting.

Susie’s Mama’s Hoecakes

½ cup cornmeal

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ cup lard or vegetable shortening

1 egg

¾ cup milk

¼ cup neutral cooking oil. such as canola

1. Mix together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
2. Add the shortening and rub it into the cornmeal mixture with your fingers until it is completely incorporated.

3. Add the egg and milk and stir until a smooth batter forms. It should be about the consistency of pancake batter.

4. Heat a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil when the skillet is hot.

5. When the oil is hot enough to cause a drop of water to sputter on contact, start cooking the hoecakes. For each hoecake, pour a large spoonful of batter into the hot skillet. It should spread into a 3-4 inch round and almost immediately start bubbling. When the top of the hoecake is riddled with bubbles and looks nearly dry, flip it over and cook until the second side is golden brown.

6. Keep the finished hoecakes warm in the oven until all are done. Serve hot as a side dish with supper, or if you’ve been very good, for dessert with syrup.

Relishing Bad Peaches, or Memories I Wish I Didn't Have

They say eating peaches straight from the tree is a magical experience. They lied.

The peach trees in my life have been filled with peaches and disappointment in equal measure. When I was growing up, one of our neighbors was blessed with a runty but prolific peach tree. It was barely six feet tall, but managed to produce hundreds of small yellow peaches every summer.

And every summer the same thing happened. Our neighbor Mrs. Yung would tell us that if the birds didn’t eat them, she was going to have her gardener pick and dump those peaches. They’d tried to eat them before, she’d tell us, and they were terrible—all bitter and mealy.

And every year, Mrs. Yung’s eighty-something mother-in-law would sneak over to our house with a big paper bag full of peaches. She had lived through wartime in China and couldn’t bear to see food wasted.

One year I was the one who opened the door when she made the drop. She didn’t speak English and knew I didn’t speak much Cantonese, so she simply pushed the bag into my hands and raised an index finger to her lips. I knew the secret wasn’t one to keep from my parents, but from her daughter-in-law.

And bless Grandma Yung’s heart, but those peaches were downright wretched.

I told this story many years later to some colleagues at California State University, Fresno, where I’d landed my first full-time teaching gig after grad school.

“Oh, I can tell you why those peaches were so bad,” one of them said. “It’s because they weren’t culled. If you grow stone fruit, you have to cull the fruit as they grow. Otherwise the tree works too hard and none of the fruit can produce enough sugar. Tell your old neighbors they have to leave only a few peaches on each branch. That way, they’ll have a smaller number of good peaches rather than a bunch of bad ones.”

Fresno is in the heart of California’s farming belt, in an area known for its copious crops of stone fruit. It is also known for urban sprawl and an utter disdain for zoning restrictions, so my new-ish condo complex was right across the street from a working peach orchard. In early spring, the orchard burst into bloom, and humongous clouds of pink-and-white flowers greeted me on my run every morning. By late spring, the blossoms fell to the ground like snowdrifts and were replaced by tiny green fruit. On my morning runs, I’d see dozens of workers on ladders working intently on the trees, no doubt culling the majority of the fruit to ensure the sweetness of the rest.

And one day in mid-summer, a large sign appeared by the normally-chained-off driveway leading into the heart of the orchard: FRESH PEACHES FOR SALE—OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

YES!

My husband and I wandered down the tree-shaded driveway and bought a purple paper bag holding eight big peaches. They were still rock-hard, but we were sure they’d be great in a few days. We decided to research peach pie recipes while waiting for them to ripen.

We waited. And waited. Then some of the peaches went from rock-hard to flaccid and shriveled. I peeled and sliced them, and made my pie. Meh. Sour and boring and just...meh.

And don’t get me started on the last batch of peaches I bought, just last week. Georgia peaches, no less.

“These are awful,” my husband said after tasting one. “People around here don’t know anything about peaches.”

“They’re Georgia peaches. Georgia is supposed to be famous for peaches.”

“Well, I bet they send all the bad ones to Florida.”

So we were stuck again with another batch of mediocre peaches. Like Grandma Yung, I hate wasting food, even lame and disappointing food, so I had to think of a way to make those peaches palatable.

I cut up two of them and put them in a coffee cake with good results. When raw, the peaches were dry and mealy, but baking brought out what little juice they had and improved their texture. Surrounding them with oodles of butter and cinnamon sugar didn’t hurt, either.

But what to do with the rest of them? Whatever I did would have to mitigate all the flaws of my bad peaches – lack of sweetness and flavor, miserable mealy texture, and plain old ugliness – while bringing out whatever good qualities they had. I knew whatever I came up with would unlikely be a recipe for the ages. Dishes made from mediocre ingredients rarely are. My goal was an honorable rescue mission, rather like helping a D student gain the skills needed to earn a B.

My coffee cake showed that cooking bad peaches improves them, so that would be my first strategy. Mushy, mealy peaches don’t hold their shape well when cut up and cooked (or when cut-up and left raw, for that matter), so I needed a preparation in which the shape of the peach pieces wouldn’t matter. I also needed something that would add flavor and texture to the mushy peach pieces, and that would compensate for – or exploit – their lack of sweetness and peachy aroma.

I decided upon a peach-based relish: the peaches would form a sunny and fruity-enough base for a tangy, spiced-up condiment. Minced onions and red bell pepper add savory notes and texture. Sexiness and spice come from an only-in-Florida specialty: datil chiles, which are grown commercially only in the area immediately surrounding St. Augustine. Datils are close relatives to habaneros and are just as hot – but a bit sweeter. Like habaneros, datils have a fruity aroma (which helped bring out what little my boring peaches had) and a lingering, smoldering heat that tends to sneak up on you. It’s just what you need to breathe a little life into dull peaches.

Peach Rescue Relish

2 cups peeled and chopped fresh peaches

¼ cup finely diced red onion

¼ cup finely diced red bell pepper

1/8 cup finely diced celery

1 seeded and finely chopped datil or habanero chile (use half if you are averse to heat!)

2 tablespoons canola or other neutrally flavored cooking oil

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

1-2 tablespoons brown sugar

½-1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1. Heat a wide saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the oil, then add the onion, bell pepper, celery, and chile. Sauté, stirring, until the vegetables have softened and become translucent.

2. Add the peaches and allspice to the vegetables. Stir to combine. Lower heat to medium and cook, stirring regularly, until the peaches give off their juice and start to dissolve. Add water if they start to stick to the pan.

3. Taste the mixture and add enough sugar and vinegar to give a good balance of sweetness and tanginess. (“Good” can mean anything you want it to, so this can go as sweet or as tart as you like.)

4. Store the relish covered in the refrigerator. Serve with ham, grilled chicken, or with good bread and cheese.

My Worst Job (and Best Pork Chops) Ever

I once had the worst job ever, and all I got from it was a secret for great pork chops.

I was just out of college, and working as an au pair for a family living near Lyon, France’s second-largest city. I was a hard-core Francophile, and this gig seemed like a dream come true.

In retrospect, there were clues the size of Humvees that something was very, very wrong with that family, but I was too starry-eyed to notice.

“The family has three children,” read the typed letter the Paris-based au pair agency sent me along with my contract. “A a nine-year girl, and six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. A baby is expected on August 1.”

Wait – August 1? Isn’t that the day I’m supposed to start working for them?

Yup. And when I got there (the baby beat me by a couple of days), I discovered the new arrival was the least of my worries.

Maman, as she had informed me in an introductory letter written in creepily impeccable penmanship, did all the laundry herself. At first, I wondered why she bothered mentioning such a trivial detail. When I got to Lyon, I realized why: Maman didn't just do laundry. She did laundry the way Kobayashi does hot dogs. She ironed every single sock and piece of underwear her family wore, and engaged the housekeeper (who came in every day) in endless debate about the proper technique for folding fitted sheets so that they lay perfectly flat in storage.

Meanwhile, the children were screaming for her attention, literally and figuratively. Six-year-old Lisette demanded that all her drinks be fed to her in a baby bottle. Her twin brother Remy reverted to bed-wetting. Celine, their gentle and intelligent older sister, burst into tears at the tiniest provocation – an undone ponytail, the wrong kind of cereal at breakfast. And the first new French expressions I learned in that household were “But he did it on purpose!” and “You’re mean! I’m telling Mom!”

Oh yes, the twins had also just been diagnosted with dyslexia; could I also spend some time helping them with their lessons after school? After all, who could be better qualified to treat a pair of emotionally traumatized French children with a learning disability than a self-absorbed twenty-two year old party animal with French as a third language?

Back in the States, I was considered a master babysitter. Kids liked me, and I liked them. Ditto their parents. This was in part because I could understand everything they were saying. But in Lyon, everything I needed to communicate to my charges seemed to require vocabulary I didn't have--why hadn't I learned the word for "head lice" in any of my French literature classes?

My credibility with the kids was sinking fast, with no bottom in sight.

And my popularity with Maman (who, family friends confided in whispers, was "very fragile") was also tanking.

“I’m not at all pleased at how you’ve done this," she barked one morning after I'd spent half an hour cleaning the twins' room. "Look at the shoes on the floor!--" (said shoes were lined up neatly along the edges of the beds) "-- Nothing should ever be on the floor. I want the housekeeper to be able to just run the vacuum under the beds every day. And the beds! Look how loose those covers are! It’s not sanitary. You need to change the sheets every day. And make sure the new ones are good and tight, with no wrinkles. Otherwise, how are the children supposed to sleep?

There was no pleasing anyone in this family. So I retreated to the one place where I still felt competent: the kitchen. One of my responsibilities was making dinner for the children every night, and my dinners impressed even Maman. One day, I devised a cauliflower souflle that puffed like a blimp in their cranky old gas oven. Another time, I made Vietnamese-style egg rolls. They turned out a bit wonky, but what child doesn’t love deep-fried objects with a sweet dipping sauce? Friends and relatives drifted in and out and showed me a number of interesting and simple French dishes, which I tweaked and experimented with in my daydreams.

Now there were two women in the house passionately devoted in some aspect of household maintenance while studiously avoiding the very people we were doing all this for.

This was an untenable situation and we all knew it. We agreed that I’d leave at the end of the month. This would give me time to find a job in Paris, where my favorite cousin was studying music and had an apartment she could share. But I ended up leaving much earlier than that.

One Sunday afternoon—Sundays being my day off—I came back from an errand to find that the children had dragged the mattresses off their beds and down two flights of stairs to build a fort in the front entryway. This was another thing that drove me nuts: I was in charge of tidying the children's rooms because Maman and Papa both felt the children were too young to make their own beds – but they were quite capable of pulling stunts like this almost every freaking day.

It’s Sunday, I told myself. I’ll deal with this later. I stepped around the mattresses and went up to my room in the attic.

A few minutes later, I heard hysterical screaming downstairs. Not the usual parental yelling like my mom used to do. It was a weird, primal, and manic wail, like the cry of a wounded animal on meth, and somewhere in there my name was being repeated over and over.

I heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to my room, and Papa was at the door, looking panicked and apologetic.

“You need to leave for Paris tonight. I’ve already paid for your ticket.”

“What? Why?”

He looked over his shoulder. “She’s very fragile right now. And you really should have brought those mattresses back upstairs.”

I left gladly. And I brought their pork chop secret with me. It’s one of the only things about that job that I remember with fondness.

********************************

My French family’s pork chops are unusual but dead simple: dredge your pork chops in sugar and pan-fry them. The sugar caramelizes and adds a lovely burnished color and bittersweet flavor to the chops.

I think I learned this preparation from the children’s eminently sensible paternal grandmother, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that it’s the only thing that family did regularly that was simple, agreeable, and actually worked the way it was supposed to.

Quick Caramelized Pork Chops

Ingredients:

Pork chops (about 3/4 inch thick), any number

Sugar for dredging the pork chops (amount will vary)

Neutral cooking oil, such as canola, for frying (amount will vary)

Salt and pepper to taste.

1. Put some sugar in a pie tin. Dredge the pork chops in the sugar, so they’re completely coated.

2. Put a heavy skillet over medium heat. When the pan is heated, add enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet.

3. Saute the pork chops, allowing about 3-5 minutes per side for chops of 3/4-inch thickness. If the sugar starts to brown before the chops are cooked through, turn down the heat. Avoid moving the chops around too much as they cook.

4. Remove cooked chops from the pan, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately. Bon appétit!

Note: The caramelized sugar has an annoying tendency to stick to the cooking pan. If this happens, fill the pan with about an inch of water and allow it to simmer gently while you eat your pork chops. By time you’re done with your meal, the sugar will have dissolved.

East Meets West: A Pan-Asian Take on “Coffee Cake”

My gateway booze in college wasn’t Bud, but Kahlua. By sophomore year, coffee was running through my veins and needed to be replenished at a rate of seven cups a day. By senior year, I was running with a fast crew of night owls who’d put on a pot to brew at midnight. We liked to tell ourselves we were studying.

Since then, I’ve gotten my habit under control and straightened out my life, but I still have a huge soft spot for coffee-flavored sweets. But for all its popularity, coffee isn’t exploited as a flavoring as much as one would think. Apart from some really nice espresso-white chocolate biscotti I tasted recently, I haven’t found too many other coffee-flavored treats apart from the usual range of ice creams, hard candies, and old-school French pastry fillings.

At least, not in the U.S. In Canada, the Coffee Crisp—flaky wafers sandwiched with a sugary coffee-flavored filling and coated with chocolate—can almost be considered the national candy bar. When I living there, I also saw coffee-flavored chewing gum, a notion that goes too far even for me: doesn’t one chew gum to get rid of coffee breath?

But some of the most unusual and tasty coffee-flavored confections come from Japan, a country not known for its coffee-drinking habits. Coffee jelly – essentially sweet black coffee set with gelatin – is a case in point. It’s is one of those amazingly simple, yet out-of-left field concoctions that make one think, “Wow, I wish I’d thought of that!.”

Since good ideas tend to spread, variants of this treat have migrated to other traditionally coffee-free regions of Asia, and even to Asian enclaves in the US. My favorite coffee jelly variant came from a Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurant in southern California, where it was misleadingly labeled “layered coffee cake” on the menu: it consisted of layered coffee and coconut-flavored gelatin cut into pretty striped cubes. It was cool and smooth, firm but melting, and the coconut added creaminess and flavor.

I must have scarfed down three or four of those pretty little striped cubes during that dim sum brunch, and I’ve been promising to re-create that “coffee cake” ever since. My version pays tribute to Vietnamese-style coffee (strong, fresh French roast swirled with sweetened condensed milk), and features layers of coffee- and condensed-milk-based jelly. (It’s worth noting that in parts of Asia, sweetened condensed milk isn’t seen as just a utilitarian mystery ingredient, but as a condiment in its own right – and deservedly so.)

At dim sum meals, sweet and savory items are traditionally served together, and diners can choose to eat the available offerings in any order they please. But the coffee jelly also works nicely as a light stand-alone dessert, garnished with a touch of chocolate sauce.

Of course, this garnish isn’t traditionally Chinese – but neither is the jelly itself.

Coffee and Cream Jelly

For the coffee jelly:

¼ cup sugar

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

2 cups fresh hot coffee (use decaf if serving to children or those sensitive to caffeine)

½ cup cold water

½ cup boiling water

1. Pour the cold water into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and stir to combine. Break up any clumps of gelatin and ensure that all of the gelatin is moistened.

2. Pour the boiling water over the moistened gelatin and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved.

3. Add the hot coffee and sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Set mixture aside (do not refrigerate; you want the gelatin to remain liquid).

For the condensed-milk jelly:

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk)

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

½ cup cold water

½ cup boiling water

Optional garnish:

chocolate sauce as desired

1. Pour the cold water into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and stir to combine. Break up any clumps of gelatin and ensure that all of the gelatin is moistened.

2. Pour the boiling water over the moistened gelatin and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved.

3. Stir in the condensed milk. Set mixture aside (again, it needs to remain liquid, so don’t refrigerate it).

Assembly:

1. Pour 1 cup of the coffee jelly mixture into a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan. Refrigerate until the jelly has partially set: it should be solid, but still sticky when touched. (This is the only remotely tricky thing about this recipe: If the layer is fully set, the next layer won’t stick to it and the layers will slide apart when the jelly is un-molded or sliced. If the layer is not sufficiently set, it will collapse when the next layer of jelly is added, messing up that neat geometric effect you’re going for.)

2. When the coffee layer is set but sticky, carefully pour 1 cup of the condensed milk jelly on top of it.

3. When the condensed milk layer is set but sticky (it sets faster than the coffee layers), pour 1 cup of the coffee jelly over it to form the next coffee layer.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to form the fourth and fifth layers.

5. When the top layer is set, the jelly is ready. To un-mold, sit the pan in a container of hot water for about 30 seconds. Remove, and run a knife along the edges to loosen the jelly. Invert the mold over a cutting board.

6. Cut the jelly into blocks or slices as desired. For best results, dip the knife you use in hot water and wipe it clean between cuts.

7. Plate and garnish with chocolate sauce, if desired.

Fire and Ice: Shape-Shifting Soup for Sultry Days

Summer has always been my favorite season. As a child, I loved my mornings by the pool, my lazy popsicle-filled afternoons playing with my Barbies, and those long, late sunsets scented with barbecue smoke. So deep was my love of summer that I sometimes suspect I chose a teaching career so I could still have my summer vacation. Since then, I've had to write lesson plans and review thesis drafts while slurping on popsicles, but summer has still been still a joy.

But the best part of summer for me is that it is the season of "why not?." The wide-open summer days of my childhood were filled with twisted experiments: Why not spend two days sewing a smocked and pleated doll dress? Why not write a rambling, twenty-page ghost story that made sense only to me? Why not take that pewter salt shaker my parents got for their wedding up into the hillside behind the house so I could pour salt on all the snails that had been eating up Mom's flowers? (Because I might drop this non-replaceable item down a storm drain, where it lies to this very day?) And as an adult, my summer "why-nots?" turned into some of my best research and writing.

Then I moved to Florida.

Summer in Florida, to put it as diplomatically as possible, sucks. The combination of hundred-degree heat, stifling humidity, and a preponderance of stinging, biting, dengue-fever-bearing invertebrates the size of Mini Coopers makes the very idea of stepping outside repulsive. To add to the misery, my two favorite hobbies -- cooking and birding -- become nearly impossible: turning on the stove only aggravates the heat, and the birds, quite sensibly, migrate to more pleasant locales or lie low during the summer. Even the snowbirds retreat to their former breeding grounds in Michigan or Minnesota.

Still, one needs to eat during hot weather, and summer, thankfully, brings forth loads of ripe fruit and vibrant veggies that make eating one of the few pleasant things about summer in Florida. Cold soups are a great way to showcase the bold colors and flavors of summer without generating a lot of heat in the kitchen: they look super-fancy, they accentuate and highlight those lively summery flavors, and will thus earn you major bragging rights. Best of all, you don't have to sweat (much) to earn these.

Because summer is still my season of "why not?," I decided to mix things up a bit. My goal was to come up with a soup with maximal cooling power. An obvious way to cool things down is to freeze them: why not use cold soups as a base for savory ice creams and granitas? (This isn't just my heat stroke speaking; other cooks have done this with great succcess.) A less obvious -- but much older -- trick is to cool things down by adding heat: hot chilies are favored in hot climates not just because they grow there, but because their heat stimulates perspiration -- which results in cooling. And even eating chilies in an air-conditioned dining room can be therapeutic: an energetic little blast of fire may be just what a jaded palate needs at the end of a long, muggy day.

My experiment resulted in combo of two shape-shifting soups: a creamy, chile-spiked avocado-coconut soup and a cooling tomato-mint gazpacho, served with frozen avocado ice cream and frozen gazpacho granita. The combination of icy, spicy, creamy, and tangy tastes and textures is both cooling and stimulating. Who says icy treats have to be sweet?

Fire and Ice

Tropical Avocado Soup and Ice Cream

1 tablespoon canola oil
1 (15-ounce) can light coconut milk
1 large clove garlic
1-1/2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 minced serrano chile
1/2 teaspoon. minced lime zest
1/4 cup chopped minced cilantro
2 ripe avocados
salt to taste
lime juice to taste

1. Heat a saucepan over medium heat, add oil, then add the garlic, ginger, zest, and chile. Saute about 2 minutes, or until the ingredients start to become limp and release their scent.

2. Reduce heat to low, add coconut milk, stir, and let simmer over low heat about 20 minutes.

3. Mash the avocados, add to the soup base, mix with an immersion mixer or transfer to a blender and mix until the mixture is smooth. If soup is too thick, thin with water as needed.

4. Then add a tablespoon or two of fresh lime juice and add salt and extra lime juice to taste. Bear in mind that cold soups need to be seasoned a bit more aggressively than warm ones.

5. Chill the soup and keep it refrigerated until ready to serve. Whisk thoroughly and stir in cilantro just before serving.

6. To make the ice cream: pour about 1 cup of the soup into a bowl to form a shallow layer. Place the bowl in the freezer. Stir the mixture regularly as it freezes to break up any ice crystals. Keep frozen soup covered.


Minted Gazpacho and Granita

2 cups peeled, coarsely chopped tomatoes (about 2 large)
1 cup peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped cucumber (about half a large one)
1/3 cup coarsely chopped onion
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves
Salt to taste

1. Put all ingredients except the salt in a blender and blend until smooth. Add salt to taste (see notes in step 4 of the preceding recipe), mix thoroughly.

2. To make the granita: Pour about 1 cup of the soup into a bowl to form a shallow layer. Place bowl in the freezer. About once an hour, remove the bowl from the freezer and break up any large frozen pieces with a fork before returning the bowl to the freezer. The granita is ready when it forms grainy frozen crystals.

Final Assembly:

1. Since the frozen soups tend to freeze harder than regular ice cream, remove them from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving to allow them to soften a bit.

2. Pour a small portion of each soup into a small bowl or cup and top each with a small scoop of the opposite frozen soup. Serve each diner two bowls of contrasting soup. Then you will have both the small-plates trend and the savory ice cream trend covered in a single dish. Trendy you!

Alternate presentation: transfer the chilled soups into measuring cups or other receptacles with pouring spouts. For each serving, hold a pouring container of soup in each hand and simultaneously pour a stream of each down opposite sides of a a shallow soup bowl (pour slowly). Ideally, each soup will occupy half the bowl with a neat dividing line between them. Then top each half with a small scoop or quenelle of the opposite frozen soup. Serve immediately.