New Year's Hot Pot: Party Food for Homebodies

(A slightly different version of this piece was published last year in Salon.com.)

If life were fair or logical at all, I should have been the queen of party girls. I grew up in the Hollywood Hills (yes, those Hollywood Hills), only a stone’s throw from the legendary party district where Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, and Frank Zappa started their careers. On weekends, our neighbors (never the ones my parents hung out with) held epic blowouts with valet parking and hired DJs playing the coolest new music for their glamorous friends. In recent years, my parents have taken to complaining about the noise from paparazzi helicopters hovering over Britney Spears’(embarrassingly close) house.

And I spent almost every evening of my teen years among the stars... sitting in my room. Doing algebra. Or writing essays about Julius Caesar. Or plowing through some other wholesome and useful activity that would allegedly make me into a better person. Even New Year’s Eve – the one holiday where staying up late, wearing lots of makeup, and actually leaving the house are practically legal requirements – was spent at home with Mom and Dad.

But New Year’s Eve was different. The rest of the year, Mom and Dad kept me (and to a lesser extent, my younger sisters) on a tight leash out of concerns for our safety and well-being. But on New Year’s Eve, we stayed home because of Dad’s tale of the loneliest night of his life.

Dad’s annual recollection of the loneliest night of his life was, and sometimes still is, the cornerstone of my family’s New Year’s Eve celebration. It also reminded us why we always spent the most festive night of the year barricaded in the family room in sweats and slippers.

Dad’s recitation could only occur if a few necessary conditions were met. First, the TV had to be tuned to the annual bacchanal in Times Square, preferably with Dick Clark chirping happy platitudes in the background. Second, Dad never volunteered the story. Just as a child obligatorily initiates the ritual retelling of the Passover story, it was up to us kids to jump-start the narrative that made our New Year’s Eve different from all others.

“Daddy! Daddy!” we’d yell as the soon-to-drop Times Square glitter ball filled the TV screen, “Tell us about the loneliest night of your life!”

Then he’d smile. And slowly begin his tale:

“The loneliest night of my life – It was New Year’s Eve, 1957. I’d come down to New York with a couple other interns from Temple. I didn’t know a soul in New York City.

“The other guys all had dates for New Year’s Eve. They offered to set me up with someone, but I didn’t have the money to treat a gal to dinner.

“So they all went off, wining and dining, And I was all by myself.

“I wandered around the city and ended up in Times Square. All those people, drunk and laughing. And I never felt so lonely in my whole life. Alone in the crowd.”

Then he’d sit back. And there would be a pregnant and solemn silence. For about half a second.

“Ooh, poor Daddy! You’re not lonely now, are you?”

“Yeah, you’ve got US!”

“Tchih!” Mom would mutter, rooting through the cupboards for champagne glasses.

And this was why, Dad would explain, we always spent New Year’s Eve at home: holidays meant nothing without loved ones nearby, no matter how much hype and glitter you threw at them. Ergo, nothing could be more meaningful than observing the passage of another year in the place we loved best, in the company those closest to us. Even if this meant our holiday was almost indistinguishable from every other night of the year.

The key word here is “almost.” The differences between New Year’s Eve and ordinary nights at our place were few, but significant. First, we kids were allowed to stay up until midnight, with no lectures about the virtues of going to bed early. Second, there was almost always caviar (and champagne for Mom and Dad), to be consumed as close to midnight as possible. The very idea of feasting on exotic delicacies at that forbidden hour seemed to me almost as decadent and glamorous as going out to celebrate.

And finally, we’d always have something special for dinner before our late-night festivities. It was never anything near as elaborate as our Christmas or Thanksgiving feasts – but always something out of the ordinary.

Very often, this something special was a Chinese hot pot, a brash, blinged-out version of Japanese shabu-shabu, traditionally served in the winter.

Technically, the hot pot is just soup, but its execution makes it special: it starts as a big pot of plain simmering broth in the center of the dining table (it’s kept hot over a heating unit), into which diners toss thinly sliced meat, vegetables, and seafood. Diners remove these goodies as they cook and eat them with rice and dipping sauces – typically, jarred Chinese hot sauces or simple mixes of soy sauce and sesame oil.

As the meal progresses and more ingredients are added and taken from the pot, the broth grows richer and more and more flavorful – and becomes a luscious and soothing final course when everything else has been eaten.

Another thing makes Chinese hot pot special, too: it can’t be made, nor eaten, by just one person. Nor is it a good choice for a first-date or business meal: getting all those morsels of meat and vegetables in and out of the pot and into one’s mouth entails lots of vulgar reaching across the table and occasionally, seagull-like theft from other diners. And no matter how careful you are, broth and sauce will end up dripped all over the table.

This means the only people with whom one can judiciously share a hot pot are those who you know will put up with you no matter what – which makes it scarily appropriate for an intimate celebration of family solidarity, observed at home in sweats and slippers.

CHINESE HOT POT

This dish is so simple and open-ended it doesn’t really require a recipe, just a few guidelines.

The Broth: Allow about 2 cups of broth (Mom uses canned chicken broth) per person. By tradition, the broth is heated to boiling and kept hot in a special hot pot with a chimney, as seen above.

Hot coals are traditionally tucked into the base of the pot to heat the broth. But the few times my family actually used this thing, we used canned Sterno (the same stuff used to warm chafing dishes and fondue pots). In recent years, we’ve switched to a less-evocative but more-powerful tabletop induction unit and an ordinary soup pot to hold the broth.

The Rice: Prepare about 1 cup cooked (1/2 cup raw) plain white rice per person.

The Good Stuff: Standard hot pot ingredients include thinly sliced beef (such as flank steak cut against the grain), thinly sliced chicken (dark meat is preferred over white by Chinese convention, and is cheaper too), cubes of tofu, fresh, shelled oysters, shelled and de-veined shrimp...pretty much any protein in bite-size pieces that cooks quickly in boiling broth. Asian markets often have packages of pre-sliced meat and chicken specifically for hot pot; these will cut your prep time even further if you have access to them. Allow about 1/3- ½ pound of mixed meats per diner. (This can vary, of course, depending on the appetites of the individuals you’re serving.)

Good vegetables to include in a hot pot are dark leafy things that cook quickly: spinach, or even better, water spinach or garland chrysanthemum leaves (available in Asian markets and every bit as fragrant and wonderful as their name suggests—and a perfect foil for rich broth and meats). Allow several big handfuls of these per diner, bearing in mind that these vegetables will wilt and shrink when cooked, so you’ll probably need more than you think.

The Sauces and Setup: Put the hot pot full of heated broth in the middle of your kitchen table. Don’t bother using your best tablecloth, or any tablecloth at all, for that matter. Turn on whatever heating unit you choose to use, and try to keep the broth at an active simmer. Set out a bowl, a pair of chopsticks or a fork, and a soup spoon for each diner.

If you can find them, also provide each diner with a hot pot basket (a small wire basket on a long handle, as seen in the photo above): the baskets are used to recover cooked ingredients from the pot. If you can’t find these baskets, have a couple of serving spoons available for diners to use.

Next, set out the rice and raw hot pot ingredients, as well as small dishes of Asian hot sauce (such as sriracha sauce or sambal oelek) and soy sauce mixed with a few drops of sesame oil. Then make sure you have lots of napkins.

To serve: Place some of the meats and/or seafood into the hot broth, then some of the vegetables. Instruct diners to hold their freaking horses and try to behave themselves until the meats are cooked (this should take no more than five minutes). Then allow them to extract whatever they want from the pot (Hey! No pushing! There’s plenty to go around!), to be eaten with rice and dipping sauces.

Replenish the broth with meat and vegetables as needed. When you’re out of meat and vegetables (or when everyone is too full to eat any more) spoon the broth into bowls to enjoy as a final course. By this time, it will have absorbed the savor of meat, vegetables, and good conversation, and will be a perfect cap to a New Year’s feast.

Biscotti, Naughty and Nice

Claude was my first and only – and I’m glad it was him.

He was a raffish blond who resembled a perpetually hung-over cross between Daniel Craig and Julian Assange. He spoke with a nearly incomprehensible French accent, which only added to his mystique. Women flung themselves at him, and he flung himself back at them with equal enthusiasm.

And he was the chef who hired me for my first and only full-time cooking job, in the pastry kitchen of an impossibly snooty beach resort in California. There, he showed me a strategy for making biscotti – twice-baked Italian cookies – that I’ll never forget.

I have no idea why Claude chose to hire me. Perhaps nobody else applied for the job. Or maybe nobody else applied who could pass the hotel’s strict background checks and drug tests. In any case, he was the only chef among dozens I contacted who was willing to take a chance on a freshly minted culinary school graduate who was (1) nearing middle age and (2) whose most recent job title was “Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow.”

But that wasn’t the only reason I was lucky to be hired. Claude had worked under several three-star Michelin chefs and had won numerous awards for his desserts. This was precisely the kind of chef I dreamed of working with. Someone who was serious about pastry. Someone who could teach me everything.

And I found out way more than I wanted to know.

“Ah,” he said during the pastry team’s ten-minute morning break one day, shortly after I started. “Tomorrow I go back to Las Vegas. I will finally get my driver’s license back!”

I knew that he had previously been the lead pastry chef at a luxury hotel restaurant in Las Vegas, and that he still owned a house there—but the driver’s license bit, I didn’t get.

“Oh, what happened to your drivers’ license?” I asked.

He hemmed. “Eh. It is complicated.”

Mike, one of the other cooks, beamed gleefully. “Three letters: D…U…I!”

Back in cooking school, the instructors’ mantra was “the chef is always right!” Chefs, they warned us, were like four-star generals: they were not to be questioned, challenged, or God forbid, mocked. Ever.

Apparently, Claude’s pastry team never got that memo. And neither did Claude – he just kept on feeding us ammunition for our relentless barrage of jokes (most of which went over his head) and (usually) affectionate teasing. The DUI was just the start of it.

“You know what ze womans like at Hennessy’s?” he said one day, referring to his regular watering spot, “When you bring zem tacos from ze bar. Without zem asking.”

“So wait—you introduce yourself to women by buying them tacos from the bar?” Mike asked.

“Not buy zem—zey are free. At the bar.”

“So you bring these girls tacos that are already theirs for the taking and you expect them to be all impressed?” Renata, another cook, asked incredulously.

“But zey are free—and ze womans, zey like it!”

“Allo my dahling,” purred Mike in his best French accent. “I bring you tacos from ze bar. Zey are free! Now weel you come to bed wees me?”

Claude was – in his own words – “a very bad boy.” But he treated us women in the pastry kitchen with perfect courtesy. Ditto the team’s guys. When he showed up every morning (usually hung over), he’d solemnly circle the room and shake our hands. When our shifts ended, he made a point of shaking our hands again and thanking us for our work.

By this time – late afternoon or early evening for those of us on the day shift – it was often clear that he’d taken a generous swig or two from the bottle of Jack Daniels he kept in his locker. But where his team was concerned, his professionalism never wavered.

As for women outside the pastry department, all bets were off.

“Hola, mamacitas” he’d purr ungrammatically to Elizabeth, his favorite Mexican-American dishwasher.

“EEEE!” she’d squeal in reply. Whether she squealed from pleasure, embarrassment, or bemusement with Claude’s mangled Spanish was anyone’s guess.

Claude knew he couldn’t treat women employed by the hotel the same way as those he found at Hennessy’s. And female hotel employees were smart enough to keep their clothes on around him, at least while in heavily trafficked areas. But then, a brief and wondrous window of opportunity opened for him: he was offered a job back in Las Vegas by one of his Michelin-starred mentors, and he promptly gave his two-weeks’ notice.

Now what could hotel management do – fire him?

On his last day at the hotel, Elizabeth was at the dish sink when Claude approached her with a napkin-covered plate and a big grin on his face. “I make zees for you!” he announced proudly.

Elizabeth dried her hands on her apron, pulled off the napkin -- and jumped back screaming.

“Ay! Ay! No me gusta! I don’t like it!”

The rest of us ran over to the sink and stared at the plate, which was now on the draining board.

Smack on the center of the plate sat an anatomically correct, slightly larger-than-life-size penis baked of biscotti dough. Because Claude was a consummate professional, he had carefully rolled the thing in sugar before baking it, just as our recipe required. And because he was Claude, he had decorated it in great detail with several kinds of chocolate.

I hope I never see white chocolate used that way ever again.

*******

It was easy to see why Claude chose biscotti dough as the medium for his project: we always had tons of it at the ready. Biscotti are great cookies to make during the holidays because they travel and keep well (both the dough and finished cookies can be made ahead). They're also cute – when made normally, they look like little slices of bread – and they taste great.

Biscotti are traditionally served as an accompaniment to coffee. But recently, I discovered biscotti that were actually flavored WITH coffee, and they were addictive. Here’s my version of coffee biscotti, studded with hazelnuts and topped with a safe-for-work drizzle of white chocolate.



ESPRESSO-HAZELNUT BISCOTTI

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 2/3 cups sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon finely ground dark coffee beans

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs

3 eggs yolks

½ cup whole hazelnuts

Sugar for sprinkling, as needed

1 cup white chocolate chips

1. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and ground coffee in the bowl of an electric mixer.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla.

3. Add egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Using a paddle attachment at medium speed, mix the ingredients until almost combined.

4. Lower the speed to low and add the hazelnuts. Mix until nuts are evenly distributed into the dough. The dough will be soft.

5. Divide the dough into three pieces. Shape each into a log about 10 inches long and 2 inches wide. Place the logs several inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet, sprinkle with sugar if desired, and bake at 325 degrees until puffed and golden brown, about 20 minutes

6. Cool the logs, then cut them on the diagonal with a serrated knife into ¾-inch thick slices.

7. Lower the oven heat to 300 degrees. Place the slices on baking sheets and bake until hard and dry, about 20 minutes.

8. Cool the slices. Melt the white chocolate in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water.

9. Decorate the biscotti with the melted white chocolate as desired. When the chocolate has set, store the biscotti in a covered container in a cool, dry area.

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.

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.

The Dogs of War

The last Friday of the month meant two things to me back in grade school: air-raid sirens and hot dogs. Both of these things disturbed me.

I never got used to the melancholy wail of those sirens, which were strange box-shaped speakers tucked into odd corners all over Los Angeles, where I grew up. They went off on the last Friday of the month, my parents said, because people were testing to make sure they worked.

"Why do they have to work? What are they for?" I asked.

"In case there's a war and bad people want to drop bombs on us, that's when they'll turn them on," Mom said. This was during the twilight of the Cold War – at this point, those sirens were probably tested more out of habit than need – so Mom never bothered to mention the N word: nuclear.

The sirens always went off just before noon, when I was in school. My teachers pointedly ignored the rhythmic keening outside, urging us to focus on our lessons. My classmates never seemed to notice the sirens, for noon on the last Friday of the month signalled something far more portentious: Hot Dog Day!

Hot Dog Day was a big deal because our school was so small -- the student population hovered at just over 100. In the following years, the school would grow into a high-powered private academy catering to the children of Hollywood executives, but during my years there, it was still experimental, funky and low budget. The school was too small to have a cafeteria or vending machines, so students were responsible for providing their own lunches (no soda or candy, please) – except for the last Friday of the month, when we were treated to hot dogs!

On Hot Dog Day, several volunteer moms set up big white electric steamers full of hot dogs on one of the picnic tables in the outdoor lunch area. On a nearby table were paper plates, bags of buns, and squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard. There were also carrot and celery sticks, individual bags of potato chips, and usually, individually-wrapped cups of ice cream for dessert.

Oh joy.

I didn't understand why everyone loved hot dogs. Something about the combination of a cold gummy bun and a random rubbery sausage just failed to move me. And I hated, just hated, the assumption that just because I was a little kid I was supposed to adore them. "You don't know what you're missing!" the Hot Dog Moms would scold as they watched me toss my nearly-untouched dog in the trash every month.

But one day, in fifth grade, my hot-dog-loving classmates experienced a life-changing crisis of faith.

Adam, one of the popular kids, came running into our classroom just before roll call in a wide-eyed panic, clutching a dog-eared copy of the most recent Consumer Reports. In it was a scathing exposé on hot dogs: many national brands tested by Consumer Reports, including the one we ate every Hot Dog Day, were filled with contaminants such as rat droppings! We'd been eating rat droppings!

The terrifying news went viral. By lunchtime, all but the youngest kindergarten kids were up in arms about the feces-filled hot dogs. What should we do?

Because this was the pre-No Child Left Behind era, our teachers were free to throw aside their lesson plans and turn this crisis into a teachable moment on consumer rights and civic responsibility. First, we discussed the credibility of our information source: Consumer Reports was, sadly, a very credible source, so it was probably true that we'd been eating rat poo.

Next, we discussed our options. I don't remember exactly how the discussion unfolded, except that it involved a lot of class votes. In the end, our class decided to compose a petition to the principal asking that we change hot dog brands – there were a few brands that got glowing reviews from Consumer Reports, and we proposed these as alternatives. I'm sure our canny teacher worked a lesson on rhetoric and composition into this somehow.

The principal, impressed by our diligence, passion, and proper use of punctuation, agreed to change hot dog brands. (Given the brands involved, this probably doubled the school's monthly hot dog expenditures.) But the next time the air-raid sirens wailed and the white electric steamers came out, we circled the picnic tables warily. The moms running the operation had saved the wrappers from the hot dog packages to show any skeptics.

And as usual, I took my hot dog and tossed it after a few polite nibbles. It still didn't do anything for me. But at least this time, nobody gave me any lectures about what I had been missing.

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

I got over my hot dog hatred in junior high, when I discovered chili. Chili makes everything better.

I also figured out a few general points about hot dogs: First, the buns have to be warm, preferably toasted. Second, just as I learned in fifth grade, the quality of the dog does count. Third, the relation between the hot dog and the bun needs to be mediated by stuff. Lots of stuff. Chili is one of the best things one can use to marry a dog to its bun. My former home town of Los Angeles is arguably the world capital of putting stuff on hot dogs: Chili! Bacon! Pastrami! Guacamole! Cheese! Cole slaw and sauerkraut and kimchee! All of the above! The stuff that goes with hot dogs in Los Angeles can even be abstract, as in the case of Law Dogs, a stand that offers both hot dogs and legal advice.

My version of a dressed-up dog was born of two influences: the curried mincemeat rolls my husband used to enjoy during his school years in South Africa, and the German fast-food treat currywurst (sausage served with a spicy-sweet curry-flavored sauce, with or without a bun). My dog is like a chili dog in spirit, but with a different flavor profile, one shamelessly ripped off from other culinary traditions and made into something that would most likely be unrecognizable back in the lands of its origins.

And nothing could be more American than that.

Afro-Teutonic Dogs

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons neutral oil, such as canola

3/4 pound ground beef

¼ cup finely diced onion

1 small clove garlic, minced

½ large tomato, seeded andfinely diced

1-1/2 teaspoon curry powder

½ teaspoon cayenne

¼ cup tomato ketchup

¼ cup water



The rest:

6 hot dog buns

6 good-quality hot dogs

finely diced onion and tomato for garnish (optional)

To make the sauce:

1. Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add onions and garlic; cook until the onion is translucent.

2. Add the ground beef to the pan. Break it up with a spoon or spatula; cook, stirring, until the meat is no longer pink.

3. Add the tomatoes, curry powder, and cayenne; mix thoroughly with the meat.

4. Add the ketchup and water, mix thoroughly with the meat and simmer, over low heat, about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are dissolved and the flavors are blended.

To complete the dish:

1. Toast the buns and heat the hot dogs in the manner of your preference.

2. Spoon some of the sauce inside a toasted bun, top with a hot dog and diced onion and tomato if desired, and enjoy.

Koeksisters: The South African Sweet That Sucks

I was born in Pittsburgh and raised on a steady diet of Brady Bunch reruns, Barbies, and TV dinners, with the occasional ten-course Chinese banquet thrown in. My husband Glenn grew up in Johannesburg with childhood memories of being chased out of a river by a charging hippo and thinks Christmas was meant to be a summer holiday.

And people think I'M the exotic half of the pair.

Glenn's tales of growing up in South Africa never cease to intrigue me. Even more exotic to my mind than Glenn's explanations of strange South African regionalisms (when Anglo-South Africans say they'll do something "just now", this means "I'll get around to it when I darn well feel like it") are his recollections of South African food. South African cuisine features items such as biltong (venison jerky) and boerwors (farmer sausage) that sound to me like names of things people would fight over in a science-fiction novel ("The Alliance has captured the biltong and taken it back to Nebula 9! We're doomed!").

Glenn's childhood memories are also filled with traditional English plum puddings, a kind of cornmeal mush called mealie pap, various curries and stews, and the enticingly named monkey gland steak, which contains neither monkeys nor glands. All of these dishes reflect the vibrant and often volatile mix of African, Dutch, English, and Indian cultures that molded his homeland.

But the most baroque and intriguing of all the South African treats of his youth is the oddly named koeksister: a braided or twisted fried pastry soaked in flavored syrup until, according to Glenn, it is juicy enough to squirt syrup when you bite into it. Koeksisters are so rich that even the most ardent koeksister fanciers warn against eating more than one per sitting – and yet most traditional koeksister recipes produce several dozen of the things. Perhaps people needed all those extra calories to outrun charging hippos.

The name "koeksister" comes from the Afrikaans words for "cake" and (obviously) "sister". I suspect the "sister" part refers to the two or more strips of rich dough entwined to form a single pastry. The origins of the dish itself, though, are not clear: some sources claim they evolved from traditional Dutch doughnuts (Afrikaners are descendents of the Dutch immigrants who arrived in South Africa in the 17th century); others claim they were brought to South African by Cape Malay slaves originally from India and Indonesia. Some in the latter camp posit the koeksister to be a direct descendent of syrup-soaked Indian fritters such as jalebi and gulab jamun.

A third camp, however, splits the difference, noting the existence of two distinct koeksister variants, each favored by a different demographic: a spicy, cakey (and often coconut-coated) version favored by the Cape Malays, and a less-aggressively flavored type favored by Afrikaners.

In scouring South African cookbooks and the internet for recipes, I've found two basic types: those leavened with baking powder, and others leavened with yeast. Since the yeasted versions would have a more bread-like than cake-like consistency, I wondered if the yeasted version was the Afrikaner variant, and the baking powder version the Cape Malay one.

This theory, though, proved to be problematic: the koeksister version Glenn grew up making (from a recipe given to him by an Afrikaner family friend) was leavened with baking powder, soaked in a plain sugar syrup, and was more cookie-like than breadlike. So the origins of the yeasted version remain a mystery—at least to me.

The recipe Glenn used growing up is long gone. The recipe below – made with a biscuit-like dough and a ginger-and-lemon-infused syrup – is intended to resemble that lost recipe as closely as possible, except for the extra flavoring in the syrup. It is a hybrid of several recipes from a number of different sources. One of these recipes –from Anna Trapido's book Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela, later re-printed in The Guardian, comes with a striking story: these koeksisters were served to Mandela, shortly after his election, by the widow of apartheid architect and former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd.

One can scarcely imagine a more potentially awkward meeting – or a more appropriate way for these two individuals to break bread than over a sweet confection as twisted and complex as the events that brought them together.

Koeksisters (South African syrup-soaked fritters)

Makes about 14 5-inch pastries

Preparation note: It is notable that while there is nearly endless parametric variation in koeksister recipes -- yeasted or non-yeasted dough, braided or twisted strips, flavored or plain syrup -- virtually every recipe emphasizes the same technical point: for the proper levels of juiciness and crunchiness, koeksisters must go immediately from the deep fryer into the ice-cold syrup. You'll know you've got it right if you hear an audible sucking sound as the sizzling koeksister drinks in that icy syrup.

And this secret to koeksister success may be one of the few things most South Africans can agree on: if it doesn't suck, it's not going to be any good.

For the soaking syrup (start the day before)

3 cups granulated sugar

2 cups water

Zest of ½ a small lemon, in large pieces

3 large slices peeled fresh ginger (slices should be about the size of poker chips and about ¼ inch thick)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine ingredients in a heavy saucepan; boil together over medium heat for 10 minutes. When cool, transfer to a storage container and chill overnight.

For the koeksisters:

2 cups cake flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

½ cup milk

neutral oil (such as canola) for deep frying

1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. Rub the butter into the flour mixture with your fingers until the mixture has the texture of cornmeal.

3. Add the milk and mix until a smooth dough forms. Wrap dough in plastic and allow to rest for at least 2 hours.

4. Roll the dough out on a floured surface into a 5 x 14 inch rectangle with a thickness of about ¼ inch.

5. Cut the dough into strips about 5 inches long and ½ inch wide. Twist pairs of strips together, pinch the ends, and allow the koeksisters to rest, covered with a clean dishcloth, for about 15 minutes.

6. While the koeksisters are resting, heat about 2 inches of oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat.

7. Meanwhile, pour some of the syrup into a small container so that it's at least 3 inches deep. A small loaf pan is ideal for this. Keep the loaf pan filled with cold syrup in the refrigerator until ready to use.

8. When the oil is hot but not smoking (about 350 degrees) put in a test koeksister: cook it until it swells and is evenly golden brown.

9. When it's done, remove it from oil, allow excess oil to drip off, then plunge it immediately into the cold syrup. Keep it completely submerged in the syrup for about 10 seconds, then remove and place on a rack set over a cookie sheet so that any excess syrup can drain off.

10. Break it open: if it's cooked all the way through, the oil is at the right temperature and you can continue frying and soaking the remaining koeksisters. If the outside is browned but the inside is raw, turn down the heat.

11. Continue frying and soaking the koeksisters as directed in 8 and 9, adding more cold syrup to your soaking container as needed. Serve with coffee and conversation.

The Fruit Tart of My Nightmares

Dreams of flying speak to your ambition. If you dream of ghosts, you fear death. But what does it mean if the dream that haunts you and leaves you in a tearful sweat of panic every night is about—fruit tarts?

In The Worst Dream Ever, I'm walking through a large open-air market. The market looks exactly like the touristy Farmers' Market at Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles, with one difference: instead of endless stalls featuring oranges, T-shirts, and miniature California license plates onto which you can have your name printed, the market in my dream sells nothing but pastries—beautiful, elegant, glazed little confections in every imaginable shape, each glowing with jewel-like fruit, glossy ganache, or delicate filigrees of caramel or icing. Every one of them looks and smells more fantastic and fragrant and mouth-watering than the last, and I long for them all.

But since this is The Worst Dream Ever, I'm running through that market empty-handed in a crazed frenzy of panic and indecision: I have no idea which treat to choose, but I know there is some horrible, unspoken penalty for choosing badly. The clock is running down— for some mysterious reason, I only have a few minutes in that market and have to leave almost as soon as I arrive—and I'm paralyzed by self-doubt. Or stupidity. Or something. And in The Worst Dream Ever, I always have to leave that marvelous world of sweets without tasting anything.

Among the treats that tempt me the most in The Worst Dream Ever are glossy tartlets filled with custard and topped with glistening mosaics of glazed fresh fruit. These tarts have haunted my waking dreams since forever. In grade school, I thought they represented culinary alchemy: they looked amazing—and yet they were covered with fruit. Fruit! Back then, that word automatically brought to mind abstemious little boxes of raisins or slices of apple that adults tried to pass off as dessert if there was no ice cream left. But those tarts magically turned oh-so-good-for-you fruit into something worthy of an extended nagging campaign.

But in my waking life, just as in my dream, the magic of those fruit tarts remained out of reach.

"They look better than they taste," my parents warned me whenever I begged for one. And on the rare occasions they indulged me, I had to admit they were right: they almost all had tough crusts, lumpy or runny filling, and sour, hard fruit. My early attempts to make them myself weren't much more successful.

Only when I got to cooking school many years later did I figure out how to make fruit tarts taste as good as they look. There are a few secrets:

Perfect fruit tarts require perfect fruit. Since the fruit on classic fruit tarts isn't cooked and is a huge part of the final taste profile, it must not only look great, but taste great on its own. If it's not sweet and ripe enough to eat straight off the tree (or more realistically, straight out of the fridge), it doesn't belong on a fruit tart.

Pastry cream is your friend. Pastry cream, which forms the creamy filling of the tarts I learned in cooking school, is a thick, flavorful, and eminently well-behaved custard stabilized with flour or cornstarch. It's the only classic French custard that can (and must) be boiled. Because it's meant by design to withstand high cooking temperatures, as long as you stir it constantly while you cook it and don't do anything too crazy, it's unlikely to separate or curdle or otherwise disappoint you the way more fragile custards can. I can't remember what I was putting in my fruit tarts before I learned about pastry cream, but whatever it was, I'm not going back.

Chocolate! Just about every fruit tart recipe warns you to serve the darn things immediately after assembling them or face the wrath of God (and your guests). This is because the moment the custard filling hits the crust, the previously crispy crust starts to moisten and toughen, and the moment the fruit touches the custard, it starts to release its juices and shrivel up while simultaneously making the custard runny. Yum.

This could be why the tarts I ate as a child were such a disappointment: they were probably fine when first assembled early in the morning, but by the time I got my greedy little paws on them just before dinnertime, they were well past their prime.

There are a few sneaky tricks, however, to extending the fleeting lifespan of fruit tarts. If you choose self-contained fruits such as blueberries, the sagging/leaking fruit problem (temporarily) goes away. In cooking school, I learned a particularly lovely trick for avoiding soggy crusts: line the cooked tart shells with a thin layer of melted semisweet chocolate and allow it to harden before addding the pastry cream. The chocolate forms a protective barrier against the moisture of the filling. Problem solved—and the addition of chocolate makes the tart of my dreams—at its Platonic ideal, a luscious combination of buttery pastry, creamy custard, and sweet/tangy summer fruit—even better.

I haven't had the Worst Dream Ever in years. But now I know that at least one of the elusive sweets in that dream will always be in reach, for the price of some good seasonal fruit and a little elbow grease. It comforts me to think these two facts are directly related.

And I never did figure out what that dream was supposed to mean.

___________________

The Fruit Tart of My Nightmares (adapted from Professional Baking (second edition), by Wayne Gisslen)

Preparation notes: This recipe is not nearly as complicated as the following writeup suggests: the filling and dough for the tart shells can be done ahead of time, and the end results will be well worth the trouble. Leftover tarts may not be quite so ethereal the morning after, but they still make a killer summer breakfast.

Tart shells (makes enough dough for 2 12-inch tarts or about 12 4-inch tartlets)

3 cups cake flour

1-1/2 tsp. salt

1-1/2 tsp. sugar

6 oz (1-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, chlled

2 eggs

4 tsp. water

¼ tsp. vanilla

1-1/2 tsp. finely grated lemon zest

1/3 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl.

2. Cut the butter into small cubes, add to the flour, and rub the butter into the flour with your fingers until the mixture forms lumps the size of small peas.

3. Combine the remaining ingredients in another bowl, then add them to the flour and butter mixture.

4. Toss the mixture lightly until just combined. Pour the mixture onto a floured surface and knead lightly until everything is uniformly combined. Do not overwork.

5. Shape the dough into a flat rectangle, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least half an hour before shaping.

6. When the dough is chilled, divide it into portions to line your tart molds: each portion should be enough to form an even ¼-inch layer on the bottom and sides of each mold; exact amounts will depend on the size of the molds. Roll out each portion to fit the mold; press firmly onto the bottom and sides of each mold. Put the dough-lined molds in the freezer to harden for at least half an hour before baking.

7. Place the now-frozen tart shells in their molds on a baking sheet; prick the tart shells several times with a fork, and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven until lightly browned.

8. Line the baked shells with chocolate. Lazy way: When the shells come out of the oven, immediately put into each enough chocolate chips to cover just under 2/3 of the bottom of each shell. When the chocolate has softened (about 3 minutes), spread it over the bottom and halfway up the sides of the shells with a small offset spatula. Fancy way: Wait until the shells have cooled completely. Then, melt the chocolate gently over a water bath; once the chocolate has completely melted, use a small offset spatula to spread into each shell just enough of the chocolate to coat the bottom and lower part of the sides completely. In either case, make sure the chocolate has completely cooled and hardened before adding the filling.

In principle, the lazy method runs the risk of trapping steam in the shells, causing them to toughen. But the tart shells I've made this way have still turned out pleasantly flaky.

Pastry cream (makes enough for 2 12-inch tarts or a dozen 4-inch tarts)

2 cups milk

½ vanilla bean OR

1 tsp. vanilla extract

4 tbsp. sugar, divided

5 egg yolks

3 tbsp. corn starch

1 tbsp. unsweetened butter

1. Put the milk and half the sugar into a small saucepan. Scrape the insides of the vanilla bean (if using) into the milk; add the scraped bean to the milk as well. Cook over medium heat until it steams.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, remaining sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla extract (if using).

3. When milk is hot, pour a about ¼ cup into the egg mixture and whisk until combined. Gradually add the rest of the milk while whisking continuously.

4. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and return to heat. Cook over medium-high heat, whisking continuously, until the mixture is thick and starts to bubble. Be mindful to hit the corners of the saucepan consistently when whisking; the mixture will start to thicken and cook there first.

5. When the mixture is thick enough that the tracks of a whisk pulled through it stay in place, take it off the heat and pour it into a mixing bowl. Add the butter and whisk until the butter is fully melted and incorporated.

6. Put the mixing bowl into a larger bowl filled with ice cubes and continue whisking until the mixture is cool. Store the finished pastry cream in a covered container until you're ready to assemble the tarts.

Fruit:

Amounts vary depending on the size of the tart or tarts you are making, your choice of fruit, and how generously you want to decorate your tart.. Do not use any fruit that browns easily when cut (such as apples or pears), nor any that release huge amounts of juice when cut (such as oranges), nor those not sweet enough to be eaten alone (such as cranberries). Good choices include blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, pineapple, and kiwis.

Glaze:

½ c. apricot jam

6 tbsp. water

Combine the jam and water in a small saucepan; whisk together over low heat until combined. Pass mixture through a strainer. Return the glaze to the saucepan and keep over low heat until ready to use.

Assembly:

1. Using a pastry bag or a spoon, fill each tart shell with an even layer of pastry cream.

2. Now the fun part: top the pastry cream with cut fruit or whole small berries in any decorative pattern you wish.

3. Gently dab warm glaze over the fruit with a clean pastry brush.

4. Enjoy the tarts, and serious bragging rights, as soon after assembly as possible. If not serving the tarts immediately, store them covered in the refrigerator.

Cooking in Lyon: The Secret of the Secret Sauce

This is a story about French home cooking, and a dish that won't be found in any cookbook.

The story unfolded during my after-college stint as an au pair in charge of four kids in suburban Lyon. One of my responsibilities was cooking dinner for the kids, who ate at seven o'clock, just before their seven-thirty bedtime. Madame Pontal, the matriarch of the brood, promised she'd show me everything.

The potential coolness of this proposition cannot be exaggerated: Paris may be where Americans went for their food pilgrimages, but Lyon, France's second-largest city, was where Parisians went for their culinary splurges. The Saturday morning bullet train from Paris to Lyon was nicknamed the Bocuse Express for its population of hungry riders headed to lunch at Paul Bocuse's legendary restaurant just outside Lyon. Several equally brilliant stars in the culinary firmament also shone from Lyon's suburbs. To add to this embarrassment of riches, the city was also famed for the robust regional cuisine of its informal bistros, mostly run by women.

And here I was in Lyon, soon to learn real French home cooking from a genuine Lyonnaise mère de la famille!

"Tonight, the children are having pâtes," Madame Pontal announced one evening. "This will be very simple. Just cheese and sauce."

I knew pâtes meant "pasta", and I couldn't wait to see what kind of simple, yet rich and flavorful preparation she would teach me. What would be in the sauce? Butter? Shallots? Herbs? A touch of rustic local wine quickly cooked off to a child-safe hint of terroir?

She threw a few handfuls of dry spaghetti into a pot of boiling water as the children scrambled into the kitchen. "Pâtes!" one of them yelled with glee at the sight of the boiling spaghetti. Now I was getting hungry too.

It was now five to seven. Madame Pontal's pasta sauce must be crazy simple, since she hadn't pulled any other ingredients from the refrigerator yet. Maybe it was just pasta with butter and cheese tossed in just before serving. But she distinctly said there would be sauce. Does melted butter count as a sauce in France? My curiosity was killing me.

The younger children wiggled into their seats at the kitchen table while the nine-year-old eldest daughter rooted around in the kitchen drawers and refrigerator. Aha! She must know what's in the sauce! And this secret pasta must be one of those primal gateway dishes, like Toll House cookies in the States, that first draws young cooks into the kitchen.

Madame Pontal drained the spaghetti and put it in a serving bowl. I carried it to the table. And then I saw what the eldest daughter had pulled out for the pasta.

A tube of tomato paste. A hunk of processed Gruyere. And a cheese grater.

God help me.

The children gleefully squirted earthworm-like wiggles of cold tomato paste onto their spaghetti, topped it with waxy shreds of supermarket cheese, and dug in.

"There's still some left; are you hungry?" Madame Pontal asked me.

I thanked her and said I'd fix something for myself later, after the children were in bed.

------------------------

And for your dining pleasure, here is the second-most-appalling pasta preparation in human history, courtesy of the otherwise sane and reasonable (and utterly charming) Japanese YouTube cooking channel "Cooking with Dog". It is, as the video explains, a "unique Japanese" take on spaghetti, featuring a sauce of ham, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms—and ketchup. Don't hit me.

What this has in common with pâtes façon Pontal is that it is a perverted take on Italian cuisine by people who ought to know better: both French and Japanese cuisines are famed for their delicacy, sophistication, and profound respect for tradition—all of which mysteriously fly out the window when dishes of foreign origin are concerned.

This weird spaghetti "Napolitan" differs from its French relative, however, in that it's actually kind of tasty. Yes, I've tried it. Twice. I couldn't help it. It's the Sanjaya Malakar of pasta recipes: a jaw-dropping train wreck of a dish so strange and shameless you can't help marveling at the very fact of its existence.

My only "improvement" on the dish was due to cheapness and sloth: I was not about to make a special investment in loin ham (whatever that is) just for the sake of this recipe, so I used a few pieces of classic Southern country ham—a.k.a. redneck prosciutto—that I had in the freezer. So my version was probably less sweet, and more smoky and tangy than the original, with a certain trailer-park cachet the original "Japanese" version lacked.

I can't believe I'm writing this.

Napolitan (Japanese-style tomato ketchup spaghetti)

Adapted from Cooking with Dog

Serves 2

Ingredients:

150 g. (5.29 oz.) spaghetti

1.5 liters (6.3 cups) water

2 tsp. salt

½ medium onion, cut lengthwise into 1/3" slices

1 clove garlic, minced

4 slices pork loin ham, cut into 1/3" slices

5 button mushrooms, sliced 1/4" thick

1 bell pepper, seeded and sliced into 1/8" strips*

2 tbsp. olive oil

3 tbsp. tomato ketchup

3 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese

½ tbsp. butter

chopped parsley for garnish (optional)

Method:

1. Put water and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil for the spaghetti.

2. While the water is heating, heat olive oil in a deep saute pan over medium high heat. When hot, add onions and cook until they start to brown.

3. Add garlic to the saute pan and cook until it releases its aroma.

4. Add ham and mushrooms to the onions and garlic and cook until lightly colored.

5. Add the bell peppers to the mixture and stir to combine.

6. Add the ketchup and 3 tbsp. boiling water (from the pasta pot) and stir to combine.

7. Set sauce aside. Add spaghetti to the boiling water and cook until done to your liking.

8. Reheat sauce and add the spaghetti, butter, and 2 tbsp. parmesan. Stir to combine.

9. Garnish with parsley if desired. Serve with additional parmesan cheese for topping.

*Note: The original recipe called for two bell peppers, but the Japanese bell peppers used in the video are significantly smaller than those found in the US.

The Burger of a Lifetime

The smell of burning money was making me hungry.

We'd been at it for three days. Each day was the same: get up, put on those ridiculous white sweat suits, then catch a cab to the funeral home. Then spend the next twelve hours folding strips of gold-flecked paper into symbolic gold ingots so our grandmother would be able to spend her otherworldly life in the manner to which she had been accustomed.

We never knew Grandma very well; distance and a language gap kept us apart. And in the traditionally misogynistic Chinese fashion, Grandma never put much importance on her daughter's daughters. But in the end, her last wish was for a big, traditional Chinese funeral with all her embarrassing and now-grown-up American granddaughters present, and whatever she wanted, she got. So there we were, in Hong Kong, trying to navigate the utterly alien terrain of Chinese mourning rituals.

And we weren't the only ones baffled by the proceedings. The ceremony Grandma wished for and got was traditionally Chinese in the same way that being mummified and buried in a pyramid is traditionally Egyptian: everyone had a vague idea of how it had been done in times past, but no one had any idea how to pull it off in real life. Somehow, Mom's family managed to cobble together a three-day marathon of leavetaking involving copious amounts of incense, loud gongs, stale candy, and a twenty-something male soothsayer with a perm whom I'm pretty sure was making stuff up as he went along.

And my role in this operation was to make money. Lots of money.

My sisters and I folded reams of paper into packing boxes full of symbolic ingots, which we handed off to Dad, who fed them into an incinerator in the back of the hall.

We never got to eat during our days of folding and burning. For whatever reason, the idea of stopping for lunch just never came up. But the smell of burning paper reminded me of wood smoke and backyard grills—and the nagging emptiness in my gut I'd been trying to ignore.

By time we got back to our hotel the final night, it was almost ten o'clock. We sat dazed in the hotel's elegant dining room, still dressed in white sweat suits and reeking of smoke and incense. The restaurant staff knew the only reason anyone would be wearing white and smelling like that in Hong Kong was because they'd come from a funeral, and they treated us with great sensitivity. But I felt as if I'd spent the past three days participating in a fumbling historical reenactment, rather than a ceremony of mourning. I felt numb and exhausted, and sad that I didn't feel sad.

I desperately needed nourishment. But I couldn't bring myself to think of the pleasures of food. so I ordered the dumbest, most boring thing on the menu: a hamburger.

What arrived was both utterly unremarkable, and the best thing I ever tasted.

It was a standard high-end hotel hamburger: Two halves of a better-than-average industrial bun splayed across a large white plate. A generous round of beef topped one of the halves; a ruffle of romaine, a pallid slice of winter tomato and a few rounds of white onion topped the other. There were probably French fries involved as well.

But it came to the table in a swirl of savory steam that I can still smell now, and I could see and hear it sizzling as the server set it in front of me

I took a sip of cold Tsingtao and dug in. A rivulet of hot red juice flowed from it at the touch of my knife. I speared a forkful of buttery pink meat, faintly salty and smoky, as if seared quickly on a very hot wok. And I realized this dumb, wonderful burger was exactly what I needed.

I ate slowly, filling myself with the taste of flesh and flames and blood. That taste was everything the white sweat suits and burning paper and incense were supposed to evoke for me, but didn't: the fine and violent boundary between life and death, and the strange and fraught connection between those on the edges of that boundary. Suddenly, being here didn't feel so strange and pointless. I knew it wouldn't be long before we'd be home, and life would go on.

And I also knew that no burger could taste quite like that ever again.

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My Hong Kong burger can never be replicated. But here is the next-best thing, an homage to my grandmother and to my favorite grilled-beef banh mi (Vietnamese-style baguette sandwich) from Banh Mi Che Cali in Fountain Valley, California. That sandwich was a thrilling combination of hot lemongrass-scented meatballs on a crisp and fluffy fresh baguette, topped with crunchy-sweet Vietnamese-style pickled vegetables, slices of fresh jalapeño pepper, and sprigs of fresh cilantro.

Grandma had roots in French Indochina and was rumored to be part Vietnamese. And I always believed that addictive grilled-beef banh mi was everything most burgers aspire and fail to be: a perfect melding of hot and cold, crunchy and soft, sweet and savory. I hope Grandma would approve.

Beef Banh Mi Sliders

Serves 2-3

For the pickled vegetables:

½ c. peeled and shredded raw carrot

½ c. peeled and shredded raw daikon

1 tbsp. rice vinegar

½ tsp. sugar

Combine all ingredients; set aside until you're ready to assemble the sliders.

For the burgers:

1 lb. ground beef

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp. lemongrass, minced

1 tbsp. fish sauce

a few grindings of black pepper

1 tbsp. canola oil

2 tbsp. soy sauce

1 tbsp. water

2 tsp. sugar

1. Pound the garlic, lemongrass, and pepper together with a mortar and pestle until they form a paste.

2. Mix the garlic/lemongrass paste, fish sauce, and ground beef together in a medium-sized bowl.

3. Shape mixture into six mini-burgers.

4. Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add oil and cook the mini-burgers to your liking.

5. Remove finished burgers from pan; cover and keep warm.

6. Remove pan from heat. Add soy sauce, water, and sugar. Residual heat from the pan should cause the mixture to immediately sizzle and thicken. If this doesn't happen, return the pan to heat until it does.

7. Add cooked burgers and any juices that may have accumulated. Heat through and flip burgers so that they're evenly glazed. Keep warm until ready to serve.

For assembly:

6 French rolls (the kind with crunchy crusts and soft insides)

1 thinly sliced jalapeño pepper

a handful of fresh cilantro sprigs, washed and dried

good-quality mayonnaise, as needed

1. To obtain a more burger-like proportion of meat and bread in the sliders, slice each roll crosswise into thirds. This should leave you top and bottom "buns" of roughly the same size, as well as an extra middle piece. Put aside the middle pieces and make croutons with them later. Heat the tops and bottoms in a low oven.

2. Spread the insides of the warmed roll halves with mayonnaise. Place a few jalapeño slices on the bottom half of each roll.

3. Put a warm mini-burger on top of the jalapeños, top with pickled vegetables and cilantro, then the top half of the roll. Serve immediately.

The Sacred and the Profane: How To Make Tortillas

Tortillas are sacred in the Zapotec village of San Lucas Quiaviní, Oaxaca. Devotees worship then by ripping them into little pieces and dunking them into soups, slathering them with spicy stews and sauces, wrapping them around little pieces of grilled meat, or otherwise laying waste to them in any number of thrifty and freakishly delicious ways, each field-tested and perfected by centuries of experimentation and practice.

The hellishly complicated Zapotec language spoken in San Lucas also venerates tortillas. The language has, among other things, a pronoun system that distinguishes referents according to the speaker's respect for them: animals and children are referred to with one set of pronouns; close friends and family with another. At the top of the linguistic pecking order are the reverential pronouns, used only to refer to God, saints, and a small number of culturally salient elements, such as the sun and moon—and tortillas.

The presence of tortillas in the Zapotec pantheon finally made sense to me once I visited San Lucas to investigate that language: Tortillas appeared at every meal, without fail. Whenever I tried to get a Zapotec translation for a sentence such as "I already ate", what I invariably got back was "I already ate tortillas." The term for taking communion in the Catholic church translates literally as "eat the holy tortilla." If the dozens of missionaries trolling rural Oaxaca for lost souls had any sense at all, they'd translate the middle of the Lord's Prayer as "give us this day our daily tortilla."

And those tortillas are worthy of adoration. The most common variety in the village are big, thin corn tortillas—about a foot across—often faintly dusted with the ashes of the open fires over which they were cooked. I thought that I'd get tired of eating them three times a day over the two- or three-week duration of my trips down there, but I never did.

Over the course of several trips to San Lucas, I slowly figured out how to make those amazing tortillas. For reasons soon to become clear, I've never tried to make them this way myself—and I hope I never have to.

Truly Old-School Oaxacan Corn Tortillas

Preparation time: about a year

Actual work time: a couple of months

Equipment needed: a grinding stone (metate) and a stone hand roller (mano), a fireproof flat skillet (comal), at least one adult male relative, one donkey, and at least two children or female relatives

Yield: Never quite enough

Ingredients:

seed corn (amount varies according to the size of your family and property holdings)

lime (ditto)

1. A year before serving: Have your husband or other trusted male relative plant the seed corn. Ensure that they plow and weed the cornfield regularly.

2. Once the corn crop has matured, allow the corn to dry on the stalk. Cut the dried cobs off the stalks, load them onto the donkey, bring them home and set them in an airy, covered area to dry further. Do not let your other animals get to them at this point.

3. Remove the dried corn kernels from the cobs, using either your fingernails or better, an old, already denuded corncob. Better yet, have your kids do this. It will take a several hours.

4. Save nine pesos for round-trip bus fare to Tlacolula, Go to Tlacolula and buy some lime to process the corn. Bring along that bag of cactus fruit you picked while taking the sheep out to graze—if you manage to sell it, you'll more than cover the expense of the bus fare and lime.

5. If you haven't done so already, gather up enough firewood for about an hour of cooking. Once back home, light a fire, dissolve the lime in a large container of water, dump in the dried corn kernels, and cook gently over the fire until the skin of the kernels can be easily rubbed off. Let the corn sit in the cooking water overnight. Drain the corn, rub off any remaining skin from the kernels, and set aside.

6. Grind the corn on a stone metate with the stone roller, using a firm forwards-and-backwards pushing/rolling motion and sprinkling water onto the corn as needed to keep it moist and pliable. The ground corn mixture must feel silky-smooth when rubbed between the fingers; there must be no sign of grittiness. (Gringos who buy "stone ground" tortillas that appear to have chunks of Corn Nuts in them are seriously deluded.) This stage will take a couple of hours. Transfer the silky mass to a large bowl.

7. Light another fire and place a large comal (round earthenware griddle) on top of it to heat. Set up your tortilla press and your bowl of ground corn near the fire. Line the plates of the tortilla press with pieces of plastic cut from an old shopping bag.

8. When the fire and the comal are hot, start shaping the tortillas: take a fistful of the ground corn mixture, roll it into a ball, put it into the press and push down hard to flatten it. (Note that tortilla presses in Oaxaca are the size of pizza pans, and so are the tortillas made in them.) The tortilla should be thin and perfectly round. Carefully remove it from the press and immediately place it on the hot comal. It will start to smoke and bubble within seconds. Once the bottom is set and lightly spotted with toasty brown dots, flip it over with your fingers, taking care not to burn yourself. Remove from the comal when the second side is cooked through.

9. Place the tortilla in a linen-lined basket for storage. Repeat the shaping, pressing, and griddling process several dozen more times.

10. Keep the tortillas covered to prevent them from drying out, gather up more firewood, and prepare the remaining dishes for the day's meals. Serve with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at least 3 per person, per meal.

11. Repeat steps 5-10 every day for the rest of your life. Repeat steps 1-4 as needed.

Interestingly, expat San Lucas natives now living in the States tell me that not all tortillas can be referred to with reverential pronouns. This privilege is reserved for homemade tortillas back home: anything store-bought (or, God forbid, that comes in a re-sealable bag with NO TRANS-FATS! printed on it) is referred to with a socially neutral third-person pronoun, if spoken of at all.

If you've tried to work through the recipe above, you won't need to wonder why.

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Here is a my shortcut-filled take on a classically thrifty Oaxacan way to make tortillas the center of a hearty breakfast or simple supper: the tortillas are napped in a rich, savory sauce made from seasoned and pureed black beans. The sauce has startling blackish hue, but set aside any visions of the Deepwater Horizon: instead, think of that striking color as either evocatively earthy and primitive, or cutting-edge elegant. Either way, you'll have a stunning-looking plate, even if you must use unholy tortillas from the supermarket.

Enfrijoladas (corn tortillas with black bean sauce, Oaxacan style)

Preparation time: 45 minutes

Actual work time: 20 minutes

Yield: 2-3 servings

Ingredients:

1 15.5-oz. can black beans (unseasoned if possible)

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/8 c. white onion, roughly chopped

½ tsp. dried epazote, crumbled (Epazote is a Mexican herb that is almost inseparable from black beans in Oaxacan cooking, and well worth procuring)

8 or 9 corn tortillas

1/8 c. neutral oil, such as canola

Salt to taste

For garnishes: thinly sliced white onion, crumbled or shredded white Mexican cheese (such as cotija or quesillo), chopped cilantro, avocado slices (optional)

1. Heat the beans, garlic, onion, and epazote together in a saucepan over medium heat until the garlic and onion are soft, about fifteen minutes.

2. Transfer bean mixture to a blender or food processor, blend until smooth.

3. Return bean mixture to saucepan. Cook over medium heat, adding enough water or broth to form a thick but pourable sauce. (It should have the consistency of a thickish bean soup, but not be gloppy.) Taste and add salt if needed. Transfer the sauce to a wide skillet and keep it warm while you prep the tortillas.

4. Now it's time to assemble the enfrijoladas: Heat the oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. Fry each tortilla for a couple of seconds on each side to soften it. As each tortilla becomes soft and pliable, remove it from the oil, allow all excess oil to drip off, then dip the tortilla in the bean sauce and fold it in half. The tortilla should be completely coated in sauce. (In Oaxaca, where the tortillas are ginormous, they are folded into quarters, like crepes.)

5. You can either arrange the dipped tortillas decoratively on individual serving plates (allowing three or four per serving as a main course) or put them all in a common serving dish. Either way, nap them with any extra sauce, top with any of the garnishes listed above, and serve immediately.