Helpfulness: Not all it's cracked up to be.

I hate blog posts that start with “Sorry I haven’t posted in so long!”, but, sorry.  I haven’t posted in a while.  Coupla reasons:

1. Lighting in my new kitchen is dim and awful, and it’s really hard to get good food pictures in there.  The photography went from “neat daily challenge” to “chore to get even one decent image.”

2.  After documenting my food for a while I figured out:  Hey, I eat in a way that makes me feel good and happy, I don’t need to examine it so closely.  I’m sure I’ll be back at some point when I’ve cooked something awesome and manage to take a decent photo of it, or just turn this over to Twistie to blow your mind with guest posts.

3. I’ve been more wrapped up in work and other creative pursuits than in food.  My short film The Wardrobe just got into its first film festival (EgoFest in Brainerd, MN if anyone’s out that way).

4.  I started a new blog at the beginning of the year at CaptainAwkward.com.  It’s full of curse words, brutal honesty, and sci-fi references, so if your vision of me is of a nice lady with recipes and pretty pictures you might want to just stay here. However, if you want to read about how to survive a bad breakup with the help of Dune or how to tell well-intentioned people to Shut The Front Door, stop on over.

Which leads me to my next topic.   Today I got a “helpful” comment from a total stranger, “Tom.”  Here it is:

I’ve been really debating how to respond to this.  I feel like Tom really, really wants to be helpful, and my temptation to tear a permanent hole in the walls of his soul with blistering sarcasm would be overkill (or perhaps lost on him entirely).  It’s so routine and normal for people to be dieting or to give each other advice on dieting that it doesn’t seem all that offensive or out of the ordinary, so my response feels disproportionate by comparison.  And yet?  It’s just so uncalled for and out of line, and it bugs me that it’s so commonplace.  Which of these two options is more strange:

1) A healthy happy fat person who eats pretty healthy, likes cooking and sharing recipes, and occasionally eats wheat (OMG!), dairy (GASP!), sugar (NO!), coffee (EEK!), alcohol (JESUS IN HEAVEN COME AND SAVE US!) and more than “a piece or two of dried fruit for dessert” (PEARLS = CLUTCHED), and who might not be actively consumed with trying to lose weight (THE MOON JUST TURNED TO BLOOD), or;

2.  The fact that it’s normal in our culture for people to casually and with great helpfulness tell complete strangers “Yes, but what you NEED to be doing is________” around this one issue.

Tom, you tried – you sort of admitted the possibility that this blog might not be about losing weight, and again, I think you really meant to be supportive and encouraging and not a condescending douche. But once you got those disclaimers out of the way, you still couldn’t resist telling me what I NEEDED to be doing.  There are a couple of things I need to do this year: 1) Get a pap smear and a dental cleaning 2) File my taxes by April 15.  3) I forget, but I’m sure that whatever it is is also none of your concern.

Listen.  These are the situations where people who are Not Me are within bounds to advise me about food:

1. I have consulted you as a nutritionist or other medical professional, and I have asked you “Do you have any recommendations for improving my diet?”
2. You are the waiter in a restaurant and I have asked you the question “What’s good tonight?”
3. I see you eating something that looks delicious, and I ask “Wow, that looks really delicious.  Where/how did you obtain/make that?”
4. You ate something delicious and want to tell me about it, because maybe I will want to eat it too.

That’s not because I’m fat and sensitive about it.  That’s is because I am an adult human being who is separate from you, and you are an adult human being who is separate from me, and the world would be 1,000,000 times better if we all agreed that there were personal spheres of things that are just not our business.

Other people do this activism stuff way better (and certainly more politely and with more science) than me.  Mostly I just want to  make movies, cook when I have time, and explain the world 1 Star Wars reference at a time. Still, I feel that this stuff comes up in ways that are meant well but ultimately unhealthy and damaging, so I feel the need to say something on behalf of people who are less certain of their own badassery.

Whether you are fat or thin or talking to someone who is fat or thin, here are some good assumptions:

• Fat people already know about (and have tried) All The Diets.  All of them. Yours, that thing your cousin did that worked so well, the thing Oprah mentioned on her show that time.  WE KNOW.
• “Meaning to be helpful” = often really unhelpful.
• The number of people who want to hear about the diet you are on, were on, are thinking about being on, or anything else about your personal weight loss journey approaches zero.
• The number of people who want to hear weight loss advice from you approaches zero.
• At the limits (where it approaches but does not equal zero) you’ll know because the person will explicitly ask you.
• In other cases, you left the front door open.  Please go and shut it.

The other upside is that when you work for one of these dudes they GET gift baskets and then your office is full of beautiful pears and gourmet popcorn for the entire month of December.  Adjunct faculty at an art school don’t get Harry & David gift baskets.

So I was lucky enough to inherit some beautiful pears (all eaten), some fancy jams (Some will be eaten, some will be recycled as hostess gifts.  Maybe at your house.), and smoked salmon.  Really good smoked salmon.  And it prompted me to make a brilliant breakfast sandwich.  What you’ll need:

• 1 bagel, toasted
• 1/2 avocado
• A bit of smoked salmon
• Whatever else you’d eat with that – I like thin-sliced red onion, tomato, and lots of freshly ground black pepper.  If you have capers, fresh dill, etc. go ahead and throw it on.

Mash the avocado on half the bagel.  Build the sandwich.  Eat it.  No cream cheese required.

Long live the Harry & David gift basket!  Long live the breakfast sandwich!

Not photogenic, but tasty.

I finally have a little time to both cook and write about cooking after a busy semester and producing a short film.  So back to it, yes?

The cookbook is Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen, and the soup of the day is Winter Vegetable Chowder.I should probably make more recipes from this cookbook, because every one I have made has been a winner, but then when I open the cookbook I’m like “Oh, that’s your favorite soup, you should make that one” and I just keep repeating old favorites.  Part of this is because many of the recipes are time-consuming and involve a lot of peeling and chopping, and it takes a few times through to have them become second nature.  But the time spent makes a huge batch of delicious soup that is tasty and substantial enough to be the main course at a dinner party, and the techniques you pick up serve you in making other soups.

How do you make chowder without bacon, or a thick roux to start?  Madison has brilliantly figured out a way to make the soup authentically “chowdery” by simmering milk with aromatics – onion, parsley, herbs & spices – so that it thickens and becomes very savory and flavorful.  You assemble the main body of the soup separately and then you add the aromatic milk as a last step.

Here’s the recipe, adapted from hers:

Winter Vegetable Chowder

The Milk & Aromatics

• 2 cups of milk (I recommend whole milk here.  You’re making a vegetarian chowder that’s pretty healthy, and you need the milkfat to carry flavors for you.  Skim milk is a “why even bother?” proposition.)
• 4 large parsley branches
• 1 large thyme sprig or 2 pinches of dried
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 onion, sliced
• 1 garlic clove, halved
• 10 peppercorns, lightly crushed with 5 juniper berries.  (I do not have juniper berries in the house, so I just went with peppercorns. I wonder if a dash of gin would do the same thing or just be a waste of good gin?)
• I usually add a few stalks of celery broken in large chunks.

The Soup

• 3 tablespoons of butter.  Again, if this freaks you out maybe it’s not your soup, because this is spread across THREE QUARTS of soup.
• 4 leeks, about an inch across, white parts plus 1 inch of greens sliced diagonally about 1 inch thick and rinsed (see what I mean about the chopping?)
• 8-10 cups of root vegetables, peeled and cut into bold, attractive pieces.  Recommended vegetables:   I used potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and chunks of butternut squash.
• 2 cups or 10 ounces of carrots, peeled and left whole if only 3 inches long, otherwise cut into large pieces.
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp. chopped parsley
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Phew….after all that peeling and chopping I realized that I need a new vegetable peeler.  Anyone have recommendations for an awesome vegetable peeler?

Instructions:

1. Put all the ingredients for the milk & aromatics in a saucepan.  Slowly bring to a boil, then turn off the heat. Cover and set aside while you prepare the vegetables.

2.  Melt the butter in a wide soup pot. Add the vegetables, bay leaves, and parsley and sprinkle with 1.5 tsp. of salt.  Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or so to heat them up, gently moving them about the pan.

3.  Stir in the flour, then add 5 cups of water (or stock).  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the vegetables are tender but still a tad firm. Should take about 20 minutes.  Strain the milk into a blender, add 1 cup of the vegetables, and puree until smooth.  Add the puree back to the soup.  Taste for salt and season with pepper.

Madison suggests serving with little cheesy toasts made with country bread and slices of Cantal or Gruyere in the bottom of a soup bowl and then ladling the soup over it.  That’s probably really tasty and if I were making this for a dinner party I would totally do it, but as a weeknight supper + lunches for the next 5 days it seemed like gilding the lily.

Let me tell you about today’s lunch sandwich, which I did not photograph because I am a fool:

• Slice off some crusty D’amato’s bread
• Lay down a thin bed of roasted red peppers
• Top with a few paper-thin slices of genoa salami
• Add the same amount of sopresatta
• Add a thin slice of fontina
• Put the other piece of bread on top and eat.

L. (The Bride): Do you want to go to Hot Doug’s tomorrow and then come pick up/try on your bridesmaid’s dress?
Me: Yes.

Our tradition (usually practiced on Mondays during the summer) is to order three sausages split in half so we can have few bites of multiple kinds.  Sausages, from left to right:

• The Atomic Ribeye: Damn Spicy Ribeye Steak Sausage with Horseradish Cream Sauce and Crispy Fried Onions
• Catalonian Pork Sausage with Saffron Rouille and Mantoro Cheese
• Hungarian Smoked Pork Sausage with Smoked Paprika Mustard and Mustard Seed Gouda Cheese

I’m really tempted by the Portabella Mushroom and Swiss Cheese Pork Sausage with Blue Cheese Dijonnaise and Shiitake Mushrooms sauteed in Duck Fat.  Maybe next time.

If anyone knows a reliable place for alterations either downtown or on the North Side of Chicago, let me know.

This morning I made mushroom soup, also by adapting one of Anne-Catherine Bley’s recipes, to take to a brunch party along with the leftovers of the carrot-ginger soup.  These recipes are more of a method where you start with onions or shallots cooking in olive oil, add a vegetable you like and some broth or water, cook until tender, puree, and serve – sometimes you add the creamy substance (coconut milk) during the simmer, sometimes you stir it in at the end (cream or milk).  Her squash and/or pumpkin soups are served with a crisp piece of bacon to use as an edible stirrer.  If you can make one, you can make them all.  Cauliflower leek?  Broccoli puree?  Tomato ginger?  You’ll be seeing a lot of them in this space in coming weeks because they are so simple, cheap, and satisfyingly rich-but-healthy.  Keep reading for recipe and sad story.

The mushroom soup took about 30 minutes, and required:

• 1 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp olive oil, heated in a heavy pan
• 2 shallots, chopped and sweated in the hot fat
• 1.25 lbs mushrooms, washed and sliced, added to the shallots and stirred well, cooking for about 5 minutes
• A splash of Marsala wine (substitute any white, rose, or cooking sherry that you have around) and a generous shake of salt and pepper
• 1.5 cups water, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup cream
• Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes
• Let cool slightly and puree in a blender or with a stick blender until you have savory, velvety perfection.

So I made the soup, making my house smell amazing in the process, packed it into a Tupperware, brought it to brunch, unveiled it, and somehow dropped it on the floor without the lid being secured, so soup splashed all over my shirt, my jeans, my shoes, and my friend’s floor and cabinets.  Tragedy.  I licked the soup that ran down my arm off my arm, and my friends drank the few swallows that remained in the container, and we agreed that I should make that soup again soon.

Years ago I had a subletter named Rula.  I remember two things about Rula.

1. She had a cat who never, ever, ever came out of her bedroom because it was terrified of my cat.  Whatever my cat did to her cat that first day when we both went to work was terrible, swift, and decisive.
2. This soup recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. butter or olive oil
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 large shallot, finely diced
• 1 whole chicken breast, chopped into small bite-sized pieces.  I make P. do this because raw chicken breast makes me gag.
• 1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
• 32 oz. chicken broth
• salt & pepper
• splash of white or Marsala wine
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
• 1 lemon (optional)

Instructions:

1. Heat butter or olive oil in a heavy pot.  Add garlic and shallot and sweat them for 1-2 minutes.  Throw in chicken pieces, stir to coat them.  Shake a good amount of salt and freshly ground black pepper over the chicken pieces.  Cook them through.
2. Add mushrooms, stir well, cook them for 1-2 minutes.
3. Add broth and a splash of cooking wine.
4. Bring to a boil, then cover, lower heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.
5. Stir in cream.
6. Squeeze a fresh lemon wedge into each bowl when serving.

Serve with crusty bread or toasted pita and something crisp, raw, and green on the side to complement the richness of the soup.

If anyone’s still reading, this soup is pretty good.  It comes from the fabulous Anne-Catherine Bley, proprietor of Le Bar A Soupes in Paris.  I added about 1/3 cup of grated ginger, 3 cloves of garlic, and a pinch of curry powder to the mixture.  That was a good choice.

Bacon, goat cheese, red onion, tomato, and lettuce from the Andersonville Farmer’s Market.  Good work, farmers!

Indonesia and the U.S. are strengthening educational ties.

This makes me want to get on a plane and go teach film classes in Indonesia for a year.  When winter returns to Chicago, double that.  In the meantime, it gives me the excuse to post pictures of things I ate and saw in Indonesia.  The dinner above is from a seafood place on the beach in Bali.  The cab driver taking me to the airport insisted that I go before leaving the country, and arranged to pick me up in enough time so I could have one last great meal before flying out.  You pick your fish out of a tank, they kill it and grill it for you and serve it with a big pile of spinach.  I had a squid and some tiger shrimp.

It’s a big world.  Go eat and drink it in.