#Lets Lunch: A Life Lesson from Hummus

This is part of the monthly Twitter-based #LetsLunch series.  Every month, Lets Lunchers blog about a recipe of their choice on a common topic. This month's topic: Biculttural food! A list-in-progress of other Lets Lunch posts follows the recipe.

I dreaded every day of graduate school. I felt awkward and insecure around my brilliant and worldly classmates, and was terrified of my even more brilliant (and all incredibly famous) professors.

I shouldn’t have been. And now, after a decade of teaching in other programs, I realize my years in the doctoral program in linguistics at UCLA should have been the best in my life (okay, maybe second-best after my two years of living on wine, cheese, and pain au chocolat while teaching English in Paris). UCLA’s linguistics department, to put it in polite academic terms, kicked major ass – but I was too dim to realize it at the time.

Some of the things I dreaded about it back then were the very things that made it such a great place to learn. One of these was the Copy Room Ambush. The Copy Room Ambush worked like this: I’d be minding my own business, photocopying a journal article, when some Famous Faculty Member would suddenly pounce from behind the recycling bins:

FFM: You! You have to give a talk in the Syntax/Semantics Seminar!

ME: But what am I going to talk about?? I don’t have anything ready to present!

FFM: That’s your problem. You’re going to give a talk!

And I almost always did. And all my presentations got ripped to shreds. The discussions invariably veered off onto long digressions, and these digressions led to arguments, and these arguments occasionally led back to my presentation. Or what was left of it, after everyone had taken their shots at it.

It wasn’t just me, either. Everyone’s work got ripped to shreds. The department had a golden reputation and sufficient funding to invite prominent linguists from all over the world to come and present their latest work. We ripped that to shreds too, but not before taking the authors out to dinner.

And yet, all these famous linguists kept coming back when invited. And I kept on working on new papers that I knew would be soundly trashed.

Then, after presenting a paper, I’d rework it and rework it until the protests died down. What didn’t kill my projects – and those of my classmates, professors, and our visitors – made them stronger. And we all knew it.

The department was an insanely busy place, with people presenting research (and getting trashed) just about every day, and a constant stream of interesting visitors from around the world coming through to teach, to collaborate, or just to share their ideas.

These visitors brought non-academic benefits, too. Visitors meant receptions and receptions meant free food – an important consideration for an impecunious grad student. Fridays were a big deal in the department, for that’s when we had our weekly colloquium, usually presented by a visiting big shot. And after the colloquium was a lunch reception.

For me, these receptions were yet another vexing feature of life in the department. First, there was the sheer terror of standing around with a paper plate smeared with hummus or Boursin while trying to make small talk with people who scared the crap out of me. Second was the puzzling contents of those paper plates.

There was invariably something wonky about the food selection. A typical spread consisted of several kinds of cold salads, a fat wedge of Gorgonzola – and several bags of potato chips. Or the assortment would include hummus – served with slices of baguette. When wedges of pita did appear, so would several tubs of salsa or onion dip – but no hummus.

Student members of the Colloquium Committee were responsible for hunting down lunch, and most of my cohorts were scary smart – except, apparently, when it came to food. Perhaps this was because many of them were international students unfamiliar with how the foods they chose were meant to be eaten. Or maybe they were too absorbed in their research on optimality theory or quantifier scope to notice what they were serving us. I really didn't care why our lunches were so weird. All I knew was that it was driving me nuts.

One day, I finally had enough. We grad students were having a meeting to discuss ways to improve various things in the department, among these, the Friday reception. “You know what we need at the reception?” I said, “Matching carbohydrates. What’s the deal with the salsa and bread, and tortilla chips and Brie?”

I saw a few light bulbs go off over my classmates’ heads. “Oh God, we’ve totally been doing that,” someone said.

“Yeah, the chips and butter have got to go," someone else chimed in.

I was too stressed out worrying about my dissertation to remember if we actually did anything about the matching carb situation. But in retrospect, that meeting should have been an “aha!” moment for me: my classmates didn’t think I was an idiot. They actually thought my ideas (about food, at least) had merit and were worthy of serious consideration.

And having seen what the rest of the academic world looks like, I now find myself missing that place I spent years hating and dreading. I miss the caffeinated buzz of our seminar discussions. I miss the thrill of being among the first to hear of new research by bigwigs in the field. I miss my grubby little grad student office and the distant echo of the UCLA marching band practicing on fall afternoons.

And now that I think of it, hummus on tortilla chips wasn’t half bad.

********

The connection between hummus and tortilla chips isn’t as farfetched as it may seem. Lebanese immigrants have a long history in Mexico, especially in the states of Puebla and Yucatán. I ate at a Yucatecan restaurant in Los Angeles once and was surprised to find kibbe (a Middle Eastern meatball made with ground lamb and bulgur) listed among the appetizers. A regional specialty of Puebla is tacos arabes – tacos served on pita bread rather than tortillas. And the Mexican standard tacos al pastor – tacos filled with spice-rubbed meat sliced off a vertical spit – was, by some accounts, inspired by Middle Eastern shawarma.

Hummus ma lahma is a hearty Lebanese treatment of hummus that tops the already rich chickpea puree with spiced ground beef. Here’s what I imagine a second- or third-generation Lebanese-Mexican in Yucatán might do with this dish: give the beef a local flavor with hot peppers, olives, raisins, and capers. The beef topping is inspired by the filling in a Yucatecan specialty, queso relleno (hollowed-out balls of Gouda filled with seasoned ground meat), and is inspired by Rick Bayless’ pork-based queso relleno filling.

HUMMUS MA LAHMA WITH YUCATECAN FLAVORS

FOR THE HUMMUS:

1 14-ounce can chickpeas, drained

3 tablespoons tahini

1 small clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/3 cup water (or as needed)

salt to taste

1. Puree all ingredients except water and salt in a food processor until smooth. With the motor running, gradually add water as needed to obtain a soft but spreadable consistency.

2. Add salt to taste.



FOR THE SPICY BEEF TOPPING:

1 cup chopped onion

1 large hot banana chile, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons neutral cooking oil, such as canola

1 pound ground beef

1/3 teaspoon ground allspice

2/3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/3 cup raisins

1/8 cup capers

1/3 cup chopped green olives

1 large pinch dried (or chopped fresh) epazote (optional)

2 teaspoons vinegar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1. Heat oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion, chile, and garlic and cook until tender.

2. Add spices and stir several seconds until fragrant.

3. Add the ground beef and cook until no longer pink.

4. Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer 20 minutes to blend the flavors. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

PRESENTATION:

Put the room-temperature hummus in a serving bowl (preferably a wide, shallow one, but any kind will do). Top with some of the hot beef mixture (you’ll have some left over; it makes a great filling for tacos, empanadas, or a ball of molten Gouda cheese). Garnish with sliced hot chiles and/or chopped cilantro. Serve with pita wedges and/or tortilla chips.

Check out how the rest of the Lets Lunch bunch created their multicultural dishes!

Cheryl‘s Goan Pork Curry Tacos at A Tiger in the Kitchen
Eleanor‘s Wok Picadillo at Wok Star
Ellise‘s Margarita Cookies at Cowgirl Chef
Emma‘s Kimchi Bulgogi Nachos at Dreaming of Pots And Pans
Grace‘s Taiwanese Fried Chicken at HapaMama
Jill‘s Southern Pimento-Stuffed Knishes at Eating My Words
Joe‘s Grilled KimCheese Sandwich at Joe Yonan
Lisa‘s Sunday Night Jewish-Chinese Brisket at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lucy‘s Coconut Rice Pudding with Mango at A Cook And Her Books
Nancie‘s Chili-Cheese Biscuits with Avocado Butter at Nancie McDermott
Rashda‘s Mango Cobbler at Hot Curries & Cold Beer
Renee‘s Asian-Spiced Quick Pickles at My Kitchen And I
Steff‘s Chicken Fried Steak at The Kitchen Trials
Vivian‘s Funky Fusion Linguini at Vivian Pei

The Sandwich, (Nearly) Perfected

This is part of the monthly #LetsLunch series, a Twitter-based festival of food based on a different them every month. This month's theme is eggs! For more great posts in the series, check out the hashtag #LetsLunch on Twitter, or Karen Morley's list here or Lucy Mercer's Pinterest compilation here.


Sandwiches are deeply personal things, and one’s taste in sandwiches reveals much about a person’s personality and character.  Thus, opinions about what constitutes an ideal sandwich will be as varied as humanity itself, and any debate on the subject is bound to grow long and heated: For one, what qualities make a perfect sandwich? For that matter, how exactly should the term be defined – do open-faced sandwiches count? Do wraps? And if wraps count, why not burritos, pasties, and other edible material enclosed in bready stuff?

           

My taste in sandwiches, which my husband, Glenn, shares, tends to run to the big, brash, and exuberant, which is puzzling since neither of us are big, brash, or exuberant by any stretch of the imagination. Being mature adults, we’ll eat crust-less tea sandwiches to be polite and boring gas-station industrial-turkey-on-industrial-sliced-bread things when we’re on the road and nothing else is available. But our favorites are hot, on substantial, crusty bread, and loaded generously with boldly flavored fillings: crusty, gooey Cubans, juicy hot French dips with lots of horseradish on the side, spicy, meat-and-vegetable filled Mexican tortas.

           

Because we have rather strong opinions about what the platonic ideal of a sandwich can be (these can vary slightly according to our mood), we can always think of ways to make a good sandwich even better.

           

“This is really good,” Glenn said at a local Cuban place one day, tucking into a garlicky roast-pork sandwich on a crusty pressed Cuban roll, “but it needs to be spicier.”

            

Of course, authentic Cuban food is not hot and spicy, and never has been – but he had a point worth considering.

           

At another Cuban place, we discovered another excellent sandwich, the prosaically named pan con bistec (“bread with steak”).  It was, as its name promised, a steak sandwich on that crusty Cuban bread crisped in a sandwich press – but what made it special was its additional toppings: tangy grilled onions and a generous strewing of crispy shoestring potatoes. The combination of contrasting flavors and textures was spectacular.

           

“You know what would make this even better?” Glenn said. “A fried egg on top!”

          

 “You think fried eggs make everything better,” I said.

            

“Well, they do!”

            

And after further reflection, I realized this wasn’t a half-bad idea.

            

Since it’s always constructive to act on good ideas, I devised a sandwich that incorporates everything we love –the crispy, pressed bread of a good Cuban, the flavorful grilled meat and spice of a Mexican torta, and those lovely, crunchy shoestring potatoes to add a refined look and textural interest. And, of course, the whole thing is topped with a fried egg. Because fried eggs really do make a lot of good things even better.

            

Like all my favorite sandwiches, it’s a shamelessly  messy thing to eat,   more suitable to being devoured in big sloppy bites with beer and friends than nibbled at over a business lunch. It’s built to make a statement: “Here I am in all my shameless glory, wouldn’t the world suck without my presence?” It’s big, brash, and exuberant, and unafraid of making a grand impression -- or thoroughly annoying the timid and squeamish.

            

Totally unlike quiet, boring, cautious old me. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I was so happy when I put this sandwich together: It’s not an exact reflection of my character – far from it: It’s a reflection of the person I’d love to be.

THE PERFECT SANDWICH

Serves 2

2 long French rolls or 6-inch lengths of Cuban bread, split

2 small steaks, such as breakfast steaks

2 eggs

Hot sauce (such as habanero or Tabasco) (optional)

½ cup shoestring potatoes (the snack variety found in the chip section)

For the marinade:

Juice of 1 lime

1 large clove of garlic, minced

¼ cup olive oil

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon red chile flakes (or more to taste)

For the sautéed onions:

¾ medium onion, sliced

1 jalapeno pepper, cut into slivers

1. Combine the marinade ingredients in a shallow, non-reactive pan and add the steaks in a single layer. Allow to marinate for about 30 minutes.

2. Remove the steaks from the marinade and pat dry when you’re ready to cook them. Reserve the remaining marinade.

3. Spoon off a couple of tablespoons of the oil from the marinade and heat in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the steaks and cook until lightly browned and both sides and cooked through.

4. Remove the steaks and set aside, covered. Add the onions and jalapenos to the pan and sauté until the onions are tender. Add a few spoonsful of the remaining marinade along with the steaks, and cook about two minutes more, until the steaks are heated through and the marinade is slightly reduced. Remove the pan from the heat.

5. Assemble the sandwiches:  Spread about a teaspoon of hot sauce on the inside surfaces of each roll or bread length, then divide the steak and the onion mixture evenly between the two sandwiches. (You may need to slice the steaks to get them to fit into the rolls.)

6. Cook the sandwiches in a sandwich press until warmed through and crisp on the outside.

7. When the sandwiches are nearly done, heat  1 tablespoon canola oil in a nonstick pan and fry the eggs to your taste.

8. Gently open the pressed sandwiches and top each with a fried egg and half the shoestring potatoes. Close the sandwiches and enjoy immediately with lots of napkins.

Let's Lunch: Even Greener Green Chorizo

Sometimes I envy normal people with normal careers. When such normal people travel to Mexico, they get to enjoy margaritas and sunny days at the beach. Or maybe sunny days strolling through picturesque bazaars or scenic historic ruins.  And when they come back, the splash of lime juice over a salt-rimmed glass  or the happy blare of a mariachi band is all it takes to bring them back.

Lucky them. My trips to Mexico were never truly fun – unless your idea of fun involves enduring six-day work weeks filled with frantic note-taking while being snickered at by locals, stalked by bribe-exacting police officers, and practically choked to death by antimalarial prophylactics the size of marbles.

So let it be stated for the record that if you’re looking for a carefree good time south of the border, researching indigenous languages in rural Mexico is not the way to go.

There were some good things about these trips, of course. First and most importantly, they were the only opportunity of the year for me to get the data I needed for my research back when I was still in academia. Second, they were (practically) free – grants covered most of my costs. (Normal people who kvetch about how hard it is to redeem frequent flyer miles have never had to write a 20-page grant proposal every time they wanted to save themselves some money when traveling.) Third, there was the Indiana-Jones-like cachet of traveling to places so remote they have neither paved roads nor dependable running water. Fourth was the food – locally grown and made from recipes and techniques dating to a time when everyone was a locovore by necessity. The food was incredible enough to keep me going back.

But on my third work trip to Mexico, I almost didn’t get to eat anything interesting. This was because my mealtimes were obstructed by a force that never caused  any trouble on my previous trips:  my travel companions.

Both of them – a colleague I’ll call Joel and a graduate student I’ll call Deirdre – were as gringo-y as gringos get – fair-skinned, cold-weather-loving Midwesterners.  Since this would be their first trip to Mexico and we’d be traveling to a hot region in the middle of August, I did my best to let them know what to expect.

They responded enthusiastically to my e-mails and phone reminders to bring sunscreen, bug spray, and extra  batteries for our video equipment, so I figured they were on top of things and ready to go. It was only when we were at the airport about to take off did they drop a major bombshell on me.

“Well, of course I’m concerned about the sanitation issues,” Joel said as we strolled toward our terminal. “And finding enough speakers to have a statistically sound sample. And also the language – do you speak Spanish?”

“Sure,” I said. Well, duh – we were going to be in a tourist-free, predominantly Indian region where even urban Mexicans were a rare sight – how else would we communicate?

“Good, I’m glad to hear that – we’ll need your translation services.”

Holy cow. “Wait,” I said. “You don’t speak Spanish?”

Joel shook his head. So did Deirdre.

“Do you read it?” I asked.

They shook their heads again.

Great. My Spanish wasn’t all that great either – I could read it fine and spoke it competently enough  to muddle gracelessly through whatever I needed to do, but serve as the mouthpiece for two needy, helpless Midwesterners for three weeks? Not so much.

They chose to drop Bombshell Number 2 on me a short time later, when we were looking for dinner in the airport.

“Oh yes, I think I should tell you,” Joel said, “Deirdre and I are both vegetarians – will that be a problem down there?”

Only if you want to eat, dude, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Well…”

Here’s the  deal: in rural Oaxaca, where we were going to be, the diet of the sustenance farmers in the tiny village where we’d be working was, indeed, predominantly vegetarian – beans, rice, corn tortillas, home-grown vegetables – but the food available to visitors in the slightly bigger market town nearby where we’d be staying and having most of our meals?  Our dinner options could be described in three words: carne asada tacos.

From my previous trips, I knew these tacos would be wonderful – as would be everything else in the market stalls and tiny food stalls here in town . Oaxaca may be one of the poorest and most primitive states in Mexico, but its native cuisine is among Mexico’s most baroque and creative – for instance, the region is justifiably proud of its seven distinct, equally complex mole sauces , each a colorful and elaborately wrought amalgam of roasted and finely ground nuts, spices, fruits, vegetables, and/or chocolate. Oaxaca’s dishes of pride are what one finds in most restaurants – and while many are vegetarian, many of the best and most beloved of them contain meat.

And this is why my mealtimes in Oaxaca on that trip – the times of day that I looked forward to the most – were ruined.

We ate breakfast every morning at a tiny fonda – basically a little stall with no written menu – near our hotel in the small market town where we were staying. (Our grant allowed us the luxury of a $10/night  hotel, since I figured out – correctly – that my colleagues couldn’t possibly last three weeks in the village, where electricity and running water weren’t guaranteed.)  Every morning, the owner of the fonda, the most patient person who ever walked the earth, would come to our table and recite the day’s offerings, which I’d translate into English. And every morning, my colleagues said the same thing.

“Ask if it has any meat in it!”

“Does it have any meat in it?” I’d ask as politely as I could in Spanish, wanting to fall through the floor.

Almost none of the breakfast dishes, which mostly involved freshly made corn tortillas enrobed in various vegetable-based sauces, did. But this didn’t assuage my companions’ paranoia: in their minds, this alien land was just lurking with  invisible critters and critter bits.

“Ask if the sauce has any meat in it!”

“Ask if the vegetables were cooked in meat broth!”

Even after being assured that everything was, indeed, meat-free, Deirdre rarely believed me (or the poor local I had been interrogating). She’d lift her plate of beans  or entomatadas – tomato-sauce-covered tortillas – to her face, sniffing loudly. “It smells like it has meat in it!” she’d  wail, as if betrayed.

I wanted to die.

Still, there were some great things about that trip -- and my companions, when I wasn’t trying to feed them. I'll always remember the pleasure of watching their eyes light up at the big Sunday market near our hotel and showing them the amazing  18^th century church in the village – which would easily qualify for national landmark status had it been located in the U.S. or Europe. And unlike the crew I worked with back home at the time, they laughed at my jokes and were (mostly) easy and fun to talk to. In the end, we became friends -- although I still wanted to strangle them at mealtimes.

So in honor of the Trip From Hell and my vegetarian buds, I’ve devised a vegetarian version of a little-known Mexican sausage variant, green chorizo. Most people are familiar with the bright-red, wonderfully greasy and spicy version of chorizo, but a green version also exists – brightly flavored with cilantro and parsley along with spices and chile.

My green chorizo was inspired by recipes by the two Anglophone masters of Mexican cooking, Rick Bayiess and Diana Kennedy. Bayless’s green chorizo recipe is minimalist – a few herbs and chiles ground, mixed into ground pork, and quickly cooked. Kennedy’s version is a bit more complex, involving a puree of spices. herbs, and chile  mixed with meat, stuffed into sausage casings, and aged for a short time before cooking.

My version combines (most of) Kennedy’s flavorings with Bayless’s weeknight-friendly technique, Using an idea from another chef I admire, Deborah Madison, I made my chorizo vegetarian by using crumbled firm tofu instead of ground pork.

It’s not authentically Oaxacan (traditional Oaxacan chorizo is red and shaped into ping-pong-ball-sized rounds), but my version does have a lively, spicy, flavor and pretty green color. It’s lighter and less greasy than “real” chorizo, and appropriate for Lent, St. Patrick’s Day, and dinner with difficult friends you really want to keep, after all.

VEGETARIAN GREEN CHORIZO

Inspired by recipes from Rick Bayless , Diana Kennedy's book   The Art of Mexican Cooking; and Deborah Madison's book This Can't Be Tofu!: 75 Recipes to Cook Something You Never Thought You Would--and Love Every Bite

1 (14-ounce) carton extra-firm tofu

½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

½ cup chopped cilantro

1 poblano chile, coarsely chopped

2 serrano chiles, coarsely chopped

½ cup cider vinegar

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

½ teaspoon dried oregano

1 bay leaf

1 whole clove

5 black peppercorns

2 teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon each cumin seed and ground coriander

3 tablespoons neutral cooking oil (such as canola) for frying

Corn tortillas, crumbled cheese, shredded cabbage, salsa and/or guacamole for serving

1.Using your hands, crumble the tofu finely and place in a colander set over a bowl. Allow to drain while you prepare the remaining ingredients.

2. Put ¼ cup of the vinegar in a blender jar and add the garlic, salt, and spices. Blend until all is finely ground.

3.Add the rest of the vinegar and the chiles and blend to a smooth puree.

4.Add the parsley and cilantro and blend  to a smooth puree.

5.Put the drained, crumbled tofu into a bowl, add the puree, and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Mixture will be a pretty green.

6.In a heavy sauté pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the green chorizo and cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is thoroughly hot and most of the liquid has evaporated.

7. Serve with tortillas and garnishes.


This post is part of the monthly, Twitter-based #LetsLunch series -- every month, participants share their recipes and stories about a dish reflecting that month's theme. This month is green food month! I'll post links to fellow #LetsLunchers in a bit -- now's a great time to enjoy your veggies!


Linda at Spicebox Travels on Kale Chips
Charissa at Zest Bakery on Pandan Tapioca with Coconut Cream
Grace at HapaMama on how to brew the perfect pot of tea
Ellise at Cowgirl Chef on Notos Pesto
Cathy at Showfood Chef on Matcha Green Tea Cupcakes with Matcha Green Tea Butter Frosting
Lucy at A Cook and Her Books on Green Bean Soup with Butter and Chives
Lisa at Monday Morning Cooking Club on Natanya's Soon-To-Be-World-Famous Avocado Dip
Eleanor at Wok Star on Ginger Honey Wok Brussel Sprouts
Karen at GeoFooding on Asparagus with Poached Eggs

Let’s Lunch: Tommy’s Chili and Rock n’ Roll Dreams

It was the dawn of the 80s, and we were hard-rockin’ renegades, living life in the fast lane on the edges of the Los Angeles music scene. We were young  – I was sixteen when we started – but worldly: we were L.A. girls after all.  Yes, we’d seen and heard it all, unlike those pathetic teenage runaways on Hollywood Boulevard who came to town corn-fed and starry-eyed and ended up strung-out, destitute, and disillusioned.

We knew better. WE were going to be famous!

And we knew that becoming famous would take a lot of work. Mark, our leader, never failed to remind us of this. Mark was a motorcycle-riding veteran studio musician and a bit older than the rest of us – he was already 26 – and he liked to quote  from Jackson Browne’s song “The Load-Out ”: “Pack it up and tear it down/ They’re the first to come and last to leave/ working for that minimum wage…”

“Yeah, this is what the industry’s all about,” he’d say as we’d collapse, hot and sweaty, after yet another couple of hours hauling instrument cases, microphones, amplifiers, tangles of  second-hand extension cords and piles of sheet music down the rickety set of stairs from our rehearsal room to our van for yet another concert. “Gotta pay your dues. The music world’s cutthroat—no one will respect you unless you can carry your own weight. And you know what, guys? You’re doing it.”

In those days, we never stopped doing it. There were eight of us:  Suzanne played drums, Kentia, Maria, and/or Mark played guitar, Sandy and Sue played keyboards, Judy and Michelle provided vocals, and I played bass.  Another girl, Dana, was our permanent stage hand  -- she already had both a drivers’ license and free use of her dad’s van, both of which were essential to our existence as a functioning band. We rehearsed for several hours every weekday afternoon, and sometimes on weekends.  I heard our songs in my sleep and tapped their rhythms with my fingers as I ate or studied or watched TV. I grew thick, ladybug-shaped callouses on my fingertips from the ridged metal strings of my electric bass. I could hook that bass up to my amp and troubleshoot said amp with my eyes closed.

Performances, of course, were what we lived for. We didn’t get too many calls for paid gigs, but when we did, boy did it feel sweet. Never mind that they weren’t in the most prestigious of venues – in time, we knew we’d be on regular rotation at the Troubadour or the Roxy or some other Sunset Strip hotspot where a talent scout from a record label would certainly discover us – but, as Mark said, we were still paying our dues.

So off we went to our humble gigs. There was the charity fundraiser in the parish hall at Christ the King. And the dinner meeting of area Catholic school principals at Notre Dame High School, an especially tough crowd.  (We played only mellow instrumentals for them.)  But no matter who we played for, we gave them our all – that was part of the game plan too, according to Mark. Every performance, he said, has to be your best if you wanted to make the big time. And someday we’d be able to look back and laugh about those evenings playing half-amplified Doobie Brothers and Pat Benetar covers (had to be considerate of the neighbors!) for venues filled with nuns and squealing children. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a necessary part of our journey.

Besides, we had no choice.  Yes, we were rockers at heart, destined for stardom. But officially, we only existed for four units of fine arts credit towards our graduation. And what serious club would listen to an audition tape from an outfit officially called the Immaculate Heart High School Contemporary Band?

Mark’s hands were tied. His rock’ n’ roll dreams burned even more brightly than ours, but he couldn’t afford to lose his day job as the school’s music teacher. And because we didn’t want to lose the coolest teacher in the school, we dutifully limited ourselves to our school-sanctioned gigs.

But after our performances, we allowed our dreams to take full flight. Somehow, no matter where we had performed in town, we always ended up at the same place for dinner afterwards: Tommy’s, a beat-up hamburger joint in a seedy neighborhood close to downtown. It was cheap, open late, famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) for the distinctive, gut-busting chili that came with every burger, and best of all from our perspective, known to attract a racy crowd of night owls, especially musicians. In short, it was a de facto industry canteen for strivers, and we considered ourselves card-carrying members of this club. Forget boys or horses or whatever other stuff the other girls at school were into: nothing felt better to my 16-year-old self than biting down into a sloppy, shamelessly greasy Tommy’s burger late on a Saturday night, chili dripping down my arms and  bass lines still pounding in my head.  It was the taste of dreams come to fruition: I’ve just been paid to rock my heart out, and my music paid for this burger! With five bucks left over! And Mom and Dad said I’d never make money in music!

I savored every savory, goopy bite, every word of our fantastical banter about record contracts and auditions and tours. I knew there would never be another time like this in my life, and I was right. For a short while, Tommy’s oh-so-dangerous burgers weren’t the only thing that rocked in our ordinary Catholic schoolgirl lives. We did, too.

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Tommy’s burgers have been a favorite late-night post-party alcohol mop for Angelenos since the 1940s.  The recipe for Tommy’s chili – an object of passionate craving and even more passionate revulsion – remains a closely guarded secret.  Whatever’s in it, it probably won’t win any Texas chili competitions: it is clearly intended to be used as a condiment, rather than eaten as a dish by itself. It has a distinctively thick, gravy-like texture, and while it tastes distinctively of beef and chiles, it contains neither sizable pieces of meat nor any discernible chile heat (at least not to me -- but some  people do go on about how spicy it is).

Those who have attempted to back-engineer the mysterious condiment (there are many) are mostly in consensus that it involves a roux of flour deeply browned in fat, preferably beef fat. But some have suggested that the distinctly smooth, thick texture comes from boiling the ground meat in the sauce base to cook it, rather than browning it -- this will cause it to cook into a thick paste, rather than into distinct little meaty granules. I’ve decided to split the difference and use both techniques: a dark roux based on rendered fat from the cooked meat (there should be a lot of it; this isn’t a diet recipe), as well as additional ground meat simmered into submission in the dark, chili-scented sauce. Some recipes call for dried onion flakes, garlic powder, and even industrial beef patties to replicate that deliciously sleazy, fast-food taste. Others, however, point out that none of these things probably existed when Tommy’s first opened, so couldn’t have been part of the original recipe. Since I don’t keep those things around the house, I used fresh onions and garlic, as well as freshly ground beef – but as most recipes suggested, I used the fattiest, cheapest fresh ground beef I could find.

I won’t pretend that my version can pass for the original – it can’t, and I’m sure nothing can. (Tommy’s is now a small chain in the Los Angeles area; my husband and I agree that a Tommy’s burger only tastes truly right when eaten in a dangerous neighborhood after 10 p.m.) Instead, I think of my take on that chili the way I now think of my girlhood covers of those Doobie Brothers songs – a competent, agreeable, slightly more wholesome tribute to the original.

TRIBUTE TO TOMMY’S CHILI

1-1/2 pounds fatty ground beef

2 tablespoons neutral cooking oil, such as canola

4 tablespoons flour

½ cup minced onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 tablespoon cayenne (or to taste)

3 cups beef broth

1.Divide the beef in half.  Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large, heavy pot and add half the ground beef, breaking it up as you do so. Cook, stirring constantly, until the meat is brown and crumbly and no pink remains. Transfer the cooked meat to a bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving any juices and rendered fat in the pot.

2. Add the flour to the fat and juice in the pot and cook on medium high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture turns a pale tan. Add the onions and continue to cook until the mixture turns reddish-brown. Quickly stir in the garlic and spices and cook for about a minute more, until the garlic releases its scent.

3. Add the broth and whisk until the flour mixture dissolves. Stir in the cooked beef, then the raw beef, breaking it up as you go.

4. Simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens and reduces. When done, it should be thick enough to coat a spoon. Taste and add salt if needed (both my beef broth and chili powder contained salt, so I didn’t need any more  -- so be sure to taste your chili before salting it).

5. Serve over cheeseburgers, hot dogs, or fries, preferably late at night in a suspect neighborhood, with good friends nearby to share the evening.

This post is part of the monthly, Twitter-based #letslunch series: on the first  (or sometimes second) Friday of every month, LetsLunchers blog about a dish or their choice based on a given theme. This month's theme is music. At least I hope it is!


 I'll try my best to post links to other LetsLunchers' posts as they come in -- check them out:


Linda at Spicebox Travels on the Buena Vista Social Club, Cuban beans and mojitos, and the Chinese diaspora


Ellise at Cowgirl Chef on Tiger Cakes, a tribute to her new favorite song, Valentine's day, and chocolate


Cathy at Slow Food Chef  on Southern chicken and dumplings, inspired by Roxie Waller.


Rashda at Hot Curries & Cold Beer on "Besame Mucho", banana bread, and memories of her father.


Patrick G. Lee on what (not) to eat during an organ concert.


Rebecca at Grongar Blog on traditional Jewish kishka and a song inspired by it.


Lisa at Monday Morning Cooking Club on Hawaiian songs and macadamia wafers


Steff at The Kitchen Trials on Garth Brooks, pina coladas, and coconut cake


Free Range Cookies on how the Bee Gees inspired the creation of gluten-free Thin Mints

Eating Butterflies: Festive Treats for Ordinary Days

It used to crack me up how people on TV and in magazines portrayed “four-course banquets” as the very height of festivity and luxury. I was just a boring little kid who never got to go anywhere interesting, and I’d been to more TEN-course banquets than I could count. And as Dad constantly reminded me and my sisters, we were even more fortunate than other people and their trivial roast-beef feasts, for our banquets featured the classic dishes of ancient China, and the culinary traditions of China are even older and more sophisticated and refined than those of France and Italy: Did you know, he liked to tell us, that the Chinese invented pasta, and it only got to Italy because of Marco Polo?

Banquet season for our family was whenever Grandma Lee came to visit us in Los Angeles. She was an expert and prodigious networker decades before the term was even invented, and her week-long visits involved nightly ten-course feasts, each serving seemingly hundreds of friends, relatives, and business associates in the Chinese-American community whom she just had to see. I have no idea who paid for or planned these events, but I was sure Dad was right about the proper place of Chinese cuisine in the culinary pantheon -- the food was luscious: whole, steamed fish topped with scallions and ginger, burnished marinated and roasted chicken or squab surrounded by a ring of crunchy shrimp chips that looked like disks of candy-colored Styrofoam, and tender morsels of quickly stir-fried steak in a peppery sauce, along with seven other, equally appetizing courses. It made the inevitable series of  lengthy Cantonese speeches before each meal (which even my parents said were boring and formulaic) worth it.

Only one course was inevitably disappointing at these celebratory events: dessert. No matter what exotic luxuries had come before, dessert almost always seemed to be an afterthought in Cantonese banquets. There were usually orange slices and maybe some almond or fortune cookies, and very occasionally, some vaguely sweet soup that, like a postprandial bowl of Raisin Bran, really didn’t seem sweet  or decadent enough to count as dessert. The only time when Grandma’s banquets didn’t end  anticlimactically was when the extended family met in San Francisco. This was because younger members of the local clan usually procured a rum-drenched, cream-puff-topped layer cake from Little Italy to end our otherwise authentically Chinese meals. 

Those cakes made me wish I were Italian.

“Chinese food is healthy,” Dad said when I asked him why we didn’t have good desserts like other cultures. “We’ve known for a long time that people aren’t supposed to eat a lot of sweets. Americans are just figuring that out now!”

I learned later that Western-style dessert didn’t exist as its own course in Chinese tradition, and that the few sweets that did exist were more likely to be served as snacks than with meals. (Some of these traditional snacks, such as those mildly sweet soups, got co-opted into playing the dessert role at the banquets I had attended.)  I also learned, contrary to Dad's lectures, that there do exist sweet and shamelessly unhealthful Chinese treats worth pursuing.

One of these was an occasional treat we’d use to get from Chinatown bakeries, called a butterfly cookie. It only bore the vaguest resemblance to a butterfly, and wasn’t really a cookie – rather, it was a twisted, crunchy deep-fried confection drenched in thick, sticky sugar syrup. It was also larger than a normal cookie – about six inches long, the perfect size for getting a grade schooler’s hands completely sticky. Consistent with Chinese tradition, we never had these at the end of meals, but only as snacks – the usual routine was to buy about half a dozen of them after a weekend dim sum lunch in Chinatown, take them home in the standard-for-Chinatown pink cardboard box tied with red string, and munch on them while watching badly dubbed 1950s-era Japanese monster movies on some local independent TV station. Butterfly cookies weren’t officially special-occasion food, but like ice cream cones, they made ordinary days feel a little bit special.

The recipes for homemade butterfly cookies I’ve found differ in a couple of respects from the ones I remember seeing in Chinatown. For one, they’re much smaller (they’re generally made with fried wonton skins, which are only about 4 inches square), and almost always call for a simpler finish of powdered sugar rather than syrup. 

But for me, that sticky syrup is what made the butterfly cookies of my childhood so much fun to eat – both for the decadent sweetness it contributes, and the distinctive stickiness. The great thing about eating a properly made butterfly is that while it’s crispy and brittle, it generates very few crumbs when you break off a piece or bite into it. This is because the syrup coating will form long, almost tensile strings that will keep the shattered crunchy shards securely attached to the rest of the pastry, so none will be lost or wasted. The only mess will be from gobs of syrup on your fingers, but you can alleviate this problem by holding the butterfly with the wax-paper square on which it is typically sold.

Most likely, modern home cooks adapted the powdered sugar route because it’s easier and (arguably) prettier. But the end result will be a lot messier to eat (crumbs and powdered sugar everywhere!) and nowhere near as much fun.

When preparing this post and formulating my recipe, my South-African-born husband mentioned that butterfly cookies drenched in syrup were the standard end-of-meal treat in Chinese restaurants when he was growing up. (He remembers them being called “bow ties” rather than butterflies, but he was definitely referring to the same confection.)

So it turns out that somewhere in the world, there are Chinese restaurants that end meals with memorable sweets. As always, there is wisdom to be gleaned from the customs of others.

CHINESE BUTTERFLY COOKIES

24 wonton skins

Canola or other neutrally flavored oil for deep frying

2 cups sugar

½ cup water
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Shape the butterflies. Stack two wonton skins on top of each other (keep the remaining skins covered to keep them soft and pliable) and cut the stack in half lengthwise. Each half of the stack will form a single pastry.

Cut a 2 ½-inch long slit down the center of each stack.

Pick up one of the stacks. Fold one end of the stack towards you, push it through the front side of the slit, then pull it up through the back side of the slit. This will form two twists along the sides of the cookie.

 Repeat the cutting and folding until all the butterflies are formed. Keep the already-shaped butterflies covered with a towel to keep the wonton skins soft.

Meanwhile, heat about 2 inches of oil over medium heat in a heavy saucepan. When it is hot, drop in a test butterfly: if the oil is at the right temperature, the butterfly will immediately rise to the top and start puffing up.

When the oil is the right temperature, add as many pastries as will fit easily without touching (there should be some room around them) and fry, turning once or twice, until golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels.


Make the syrup: Combine the water, lemon juice, and sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. (The lemon juice doesn't add much flavor; it prevents the syrup from getting crystalized.) Cook until the syrup thickens. Test the syrup by placing a small drop of it into a bowl of ice water: the syrup is ready when the drop forms a pliable, sticky ball that can be pressed flat between your fingers. When the syrup is ready, plunge the bottom of the pot into a large bowl of cold water to stop the cooking.


Dip the pastries: Using tongs, take each butterfly and dip it into the syrup, ensuring that it is completely covered. Place the dipped pastries on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper or baking parchment (do NOT put them on paper towels or they'll stick).

The butterflies can be eaten immediately, or stored in an airtight container, with layers of pastries separated by waxed paper. 

This post is part of the monthly #LetsLunch series -- this month's theme is festive sides from your family heritage. Okay, I heard it wrong and just did a random festive dish. My bad.

Here are the fine bloggers also doing lunch today: The list will be updated throughout the day as more terrific posts come in, so stay tuned!

A Cook and Her Books 
on festive  black-eyed peas and greens -- lucky food for Southerners! 

Patrick G. Lee 
(no relation, but he sounds like a fun guy!) on baby pecan pis.

HapaMama 
on fruitcake and generosity, two essential components of Christmas.


Spicebox Travels 
on Trinidadan pastelles  - Caribbean Christmas tamales -- and an easy way to make them.

 Free Range Cookies
on crunchy, crunchy salads -- made of baked veggie chips! 

A Tiger in the Kitchen 
on a Singaporean potato-and-sausage casserole, traditional at Christmas. UPDATE: This post also contains the complete, updated list of this month's #LetsLunch participants -- check it out!