About this Blog

...pancetta...

Thu, 2 Sep 2010 20:52:32 -0700

...It never ceases to amaze me that even among food people I know, some of them have no idea, really, what certain things are or where they come from. Not that it’s any of their own fault - it’s the sort of information you have to glean from sources, look for in hidden crevices, seek out with a certain desire that most cookbooks are all too willing to gloss over. It’s the problem, maybe, with society and our culture - or the thing we’re told is our culture - that some questions just don’t need to be answered - some things just ‘are’ and you don’t need to bother yourself with them. I guess I differ from others in this sense; I don’t really care about recipes so much as I only want to understand preparations, context, relationships, ingredients, their history, and their potential. Maybe I just don’t trust what’s out there - maybe I just don’t want to take things for granted - and maybe I just think, the more one knows about anything, the better equipped they are to take things into their own hands.

Pancetta is, essentially, the Italian equivalent of bacon. It’s from the belly portion of the pig - the same cut we use, simply treated a bit differently. It’s cured - dry cured, with salts, sugar and spices, skin removed - but rather than finishing it off under a cold smoke - it’s wrapped up, tied into a sort of log and hung to air dry. This makes it lose moisture, and the flesh becomes denser, more intense in flavor. The spices are different - rather than simply using sugar, and salts - it has juniper, bay leaf, and nutmeg added in to enhance the natural flavors of the pork. And the wonderful thing about the belly of the pig, of course, is that it’s streaked with fat...

The remarkable thing about fat and flavor compounds, is that the fat molecule (similar to vinegar and acids, which also share this ability) carries them very well. There’s a sort of tail, onto which these compounds readily attach themselves and become sort of impregnated, contributing to the whole array of taste. It’s why certain fatty things become succulent and tasty under smoke, or intensified with a few simple herbs and spices... It’s also why, no matter what you do with a chicken breast - it’s never going to be flavorful in the same way...

Perhaps most intriguing about pork - specifically pork fat - is the melting point; where it transitions from a solid to a liquid. It’s almost perfectly suited to the temperature of your tongue. Beef and Lamb fat don’t share this characteristic - their fat will remain chewy and solid in your mouth, and maybe it’s the reason they’ve never become the delicacy that pork has. Because when the fat melts on your tongue, the flavors release, and coat all the surface of your mouth with an unctuous carnival of flavors that linger on and on...

Of course you’d never really know this, or appreciate it any longer in todays world. You’re simply told fat is bad. Bacon, and all it’s derivations, have become a sort of poster child of decadent, self destructive behavior - and we’re best off trimming it all away so we can feel good about a low cholesterol number, or feel as if our waist line isn’t going to expand. But my only purpose here is to help corrupt people; I want them to know what things are, and why they’re worthy of appreciation, why they should be ordering these cuts from their butcher, and ultimately, what they can do with them...

...duck...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:35:10 -0700

I guess it’s time to once again write about something possibly useful, instead of musing about romantic notions. Notions, which may, or may not, reduce my standing among people I know and care about. Having a blog - especially for a person such as myself - easily can give one a bloated sense of importance. Not in any narcissistic way, maybe in simply realizing other people really do wonder about how you approach things. If truth be told, I’m the sort of person who wants to incite riots - coax other people into doing ‘insane’ acts - unusual things, doing deeds that corrupt the status quo. I’m not organized - and often, at my core, I’m quite shy, even though I have spells of utter gregariousness, and extroverted behavior. I don’t hate or fear attention - often I’ll be the first to jump into it - it’s just that lately, I realize, that all makes me prone to being an ass. I’m happier - better suited, for certain - sitting on the sidelines, on the perimeter of it all, watching and studying, and figuring where to plant some seed that I think might take off. I speak in metaphors and analogy - partly because it’s the only way I understand things - partly because I have a difficulty in confronting what I really want or expect... Maybe it’s just my way of saying I’m not a leader of any sort - and maybe having a blog, realizing I’ve figured out something - a way of looking at or doing something - doesn’t make me uncomfortable - it’s trying to explain it - or tell other people the merits of it that does...

I have no idea what any of that has to do with cutting up a duck... Maybe it’s the fact that I do cut up a duck in a certain way - using different parts for different things - that it’s sort of a literal, and metaphorical parting of it...

You could easily roast your duck - but then - sadly, it’s sort of a single meal affair. I don’t gravitate to things like that so much as making it last for a long while and letting it serve different purposes...

...first times...

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:35:39 -0700

Something I’ve only recently discovered about myself - and maybe, it’s not really that I’ve discovered it about myself so much as realized, maybe, is missing from almost everyone else - is the endless need for another ‘first time’.

Maybe the biggest attraction for me with cooking, is simply being able to always find something that is simply that. My biggest nightmare, I know, is to wake up everyday and do the same thing over and over and over, for days, months, even years on end. I don’t know how some people - virtually everyone I know - manage that routine and remain sane. Maybe it goes to defining success - maybe other people are much more cunning, happy to fall into a routine, willing to bet it all on tomorrow or the next day, finding a simple joy in doing a few things well, believing that someday they’ll have a fat retirement plan they can cash out and be able to finally play golf all they want. Maybe I’m cursed in that way - both through circumstance, and personality, I realize that more than ever, it’s my exact definition of being imprisoned.

Success to me - what I really and truly only want out of life, is to experience a parade of new things, new sensations, and new thoughts every day of my life. Then, I want the time to savor it - to reflect on it, to re-live it in my mind - thinking about all the things that made it so wonderful. The icing on the cake is to share it; to laugh, be awed, have a mutually astounding experience of some sort; uncertainty, and maybe even bliss. It’s that very attitude that makes me happiest when I’m knee deep in something I know only little about, improvising along the way. It’s the same thing that drives me to eat raw things, finding joy in eating a kidney or trying to make a dinner from fresh testicles, cooking a pig’s head, or handling things that make me feel uncomfortable. Wondering on the one hand, if I could eat them, and on the other hand, knowing I can’t resist trying.

Perhaps it’s because my whole has been defined and made meaningful from things such as this - probably, I’m sure, others, too - though they’ve seemingly learned to tune it out, move on, and bury themselves in the latest news report, or other more ‘pressing’ responsibilities. Not only do I still ponder what I felt the first time another persons tongue was probing my own mouth, the first time I inhaled, didn’t gag, and enjoyed it, the first time I experienced the soft buzz of alcohol, I’m constantly seeking out a new ‘similar‘ experience. Age does that to you - makes you think you have more things behind you seemingly, than in front, at least in terms of sensations. But I’m always still looking for that next one - that next ‘first time’. Experiencing something so utterly beyond the imagination or expectation - that ‘thing’ that so totally surprises you, that is so totally and completely new. That’s what I live for. To experience that, day in and day out, to convey it, to try and infect other people into that same line of thinking, is my only real mission in life...

...common ground...

Mon, 2 Aug 2010 22:30:35 -0700

Years ago - when I was entering my 5th and final year of architecture school - a year dedicated first and foremost to our ‘thesis’ project, I remember finding myself wondering what, exactly I was going to do for it. It was later in the first semester - the one where we dedicated ourselves to not only determining our ‘project’ of choice, but ideally, where we were to be spending our time and the better part of the semester vetting it out, developing a ‘program’, and compiling all the pertinent information we’d need to design it in the second and final semester.

It must have been Thanksgiving break - about 2/3’s into the semester, and I’d managed to do nothing. One of the sobering aspects about being in school at that stage, is that nobody will ever fail you. You can, as I did, show up for weeks, even months, on end with a blank stare and nothing other than “I hope I figure it out” as an answer, and receive an approving nod. They know, the professors, and you know that at the end of it, all that matters is that you have something to show them. The process doesn’t matter.

I say it must have been Thanksgiving, because I was in San Francisco - a thousand miles - a world away - from Pullman and my 14x60 mobile home and architecture school. I had spent the better part of the day wandering around the city, downtown, through Chinatown, eventually winding up somewhere near fisherman’s terminal looking out at Alcatraz, the fog, and the Golden Gate bridge. I remember sitting there, feeling totally uninspired about everything, until one thought occurred to me... the water.

That was going to be my thesis project, I thought - water! A day earlier, I’d discovered that there was a public ‘bath’ - Sutro Baths, now in ruins - and I’d wanted to see it - my sister, who I was visiting, had agreed to take me there the following day... It became the subject of my thesis, and the location for my project - built over the ruins of concrete forms abutting the ocean.

I didn’t really understand the appeal of it - and when I finally returned and began putting together my ‘thesis’, I was greeted with a lot of sniggers and hushed laughter about doing a public bath in San Francisco, but somehow, I didn’t care - I felt something about it that broached some semblance of honesty I’d been missing for too long. Really, what puzzled me most, is that nobody else seemed to put the same thought into their subject matter... 
Looking back now, I know exactly what and why it appealed to me - and it’s a similar thing I find in cooking; Everyone can relate to water. Every culture, every person, has an intimate need and relationship with water.

Whether it’s a ritual for bathing or not - elevated to some form of delight, ecstasy, shrouded in ritual - it’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that anyone, anywhere on the earth can understand it, because everyday, they themselves commune with it, engage in it, depend on it.

The Bathhouse, like cooking, is a medium to express something far larger - a common language that all people speak innately, a means of elevating something that is only a simple, yet utter necessity, into art. Changing the mundane into an aesthetic experience that touches the deepest realms of the soul and heart.

It’s a common theme in my life - finding the essence of language that all people speak and understand. It’s not a language of words, or prescribed steps, or politics, or gossip. It’s the language of the soul - of thirst, hunger, desire, and sensation and satiety. Maybe I’m drawn more to cooking, and less to architecture, because over the years it’s become apparent how corrupt some of the other forms of art have become; abstract, catering too much to current cultural trends and forgetting about the genuine aspects of it. Cooking is, somehow, always pure - it’s always fleeting, simple, destined to be repeated day in, and day out... It’s a common ground we all have and understand, something we can see and appreciate, see the volumes and depths of each other in outside of any particular ingredient or recipe...

...pork belly roulade...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:21:46 -0700

Like pieces in a puzzle, sometimes things sort of shake out - worlds collide, and you find some new thing that comes about from it all...

Since discovering one of my favorite little grocery stores almost always carries pork belly, I often, and only, simply used it to make bacon, or pancetta. That was until recently, when I discovered another use for it. Now defunct, a lovely, yet eclectic oyster bar in my neighborhood introduced me to this idea - a small pinwheel of pork belly - braised with some sweet and savory things, and served over rice. While it dawned on me that something like that might be good - it’s a hard thing to sell to someone else, or to even talk about to others - sort of like having some strange fetish that no one would quite get... When somebody else is doing it, though, and puts it on their menu - it somehow becomes more ‘normal’... Acceptable, even...

This is one of those dishes - ingredients, actually - that’s a bit like foie gras; so rich, so surreal in texture, flavor, fatty goodness, that you really can’t imagine eating it too often. And yet, if you have a taste for things like this, you’ll never stop thinking about it once you’ve tried it. The second and third times, it only seems to get better... Because, every once in a while, you need something that borders on the fringe of frightening - the sort of thing you wonder if you really should be doing to yourself, or encouraging others to eat - and every once in a while, I’ve found the answer is a resounding, yes. You should do this - as often as your conscience will let you... When I die - I want it to be with a full belly, hopefully of something like this, and a smile on my face - not clutching a rice cake...

It is, so far as I make it, more of an idea than recipe...

...immigrants rule...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:48:23 -0700

It’s one of the areas of my life where I can see the stark difference between my own world view, and most of the rest. Where I know, just how much looking at the world through cooking and food has changed me forever.

It’s all too easy to look at the world in terms of political policy and current crises, and form an opinion about what must be done to fix it... But I simply don’t any longer; I love immigrants - raw, un-Americanized, completely foreign. I love that they still see this country as a place to come to, rather than a place to run from... Most of all, I’m glad they bring their culture, their cooking, and their ingredients...

Growing up in the suburbs, living a sheltered and ‘safe’ existence, never really prepares you for places like this. It’s truly foreign in every way... Looking up and down the aisles of this place, this dingy little treasure - it’s undeniable - there really is a world outside of and well beyond the doorstep of your home. Places where people truly live in a manner completely different than you or I. People who have totally different traditions, totally different dreams and ideas about what’s wonderful.

I don’t know that I remember my first visit here, although early on, I recall an incident in the parking lot, with an angry customer hurling a bag of fish heads over cars and shouting at the cashier. We’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy... or QFC, Safeway, or Thriftway, for that matter. One look at the meat case makes it clear. None of the familiar cuts are to be found, outside of maybe a pork shoulder, or a chuck roast... More likely, you’ll find beef shins, tripe, marrow bones, knuckles and usually some skirt steaks. In the pork section, there’s belly slices and slabs, tongues, and glistening purple orbs; kidneys! There’s also, usually, pint size cups of pork blood with salt, fresh hocks and shanks, and packages labeled simply as ‘pork trim’ - a selection of fat and skin. On occasion, if you’re lucky, there are even whole pork heads, which I felt obligated to purchase the first time I saw one, simply because it was there and available... Down the way a little bit - there are packages of chicken feet, along with oddly familiar chicken breasts, sitting close to another set of packages of livers from pork and beef, and amazingly, even more tongues, from beef, veal and lamb.

The fish case doesn’t feature a dazzling array of filets or freshly boiled crab legs - more things like fish heads, whole mudfish, and a few tilapia... Occasionally, they’ll have whole salmon, packed on ice, which they’ll unceremoniously throw into a plastic grocery bag if you ask for one...

It’s reflective of the neighborhood - a good way of knowing who really lives nearby - who the neighbors really are...

It’s predominately Asian - although there’s a healthy mix of Mexican influence as well. Aisle 1 is the meat section, but on the backside - Aisle 1b, Aisle 2a and 2b, are all dedicated to the Mexican clientele. Aisle 3a and 3b is dedicated to one particular Asian group - bottles of fish sauces, noodles, cans of pickled quail eggs, various chestnuts and bamboo shoots, and jars of pickled mudfish are there... On the next aisle, though - Aisle 4a and 4b, it’s similar - yet somehow, slightly different... Maybe more Vietnamese instead of Chinese? I have no clue - other than it’s another aisle - laid out in virtually the same manner, this time with bottles of hot bean pastes, slightly different cans of pickled quail eggs, slightly different rices, and jars of different fermented and pickled fish...

The freezer section is another treasure trove; always on hand are rabbits, duck (the same exact duck Thriftway sells for $5.49/lb is always here for $2.79/lb...), frog legs, wonton wrappers, a variety of squid, more mudfish, and prawns with head, claws and antennae intact, poking through the cellophane wrap. I found a durian here once, and much like the pigs head, I felt obligated to buy it. I brought it to a family barbecue and ended up eating most of it alone in a secluded corner of the yard, but it tickled me pink.

Maybe what’s most intriguing, beyond any of the specific ingredients one might find here, beyond the contrast between ‘their’ stores and ours, is something even more profound. I’ve pondered this a lot in recent years as I’ve fallen into cooking. I wonder, do we really have a culinary tradition of our own? Certainly, the French aren’t overly excited about seeing Golden Arches cropping up along their countryside... The Italians aren’t hoping to cook more frozen lasagna from Stouffers... The Germans aren’t looking to replace bratwurst with Oscar Mayer wieners... It seems as if the only real claim we have to culinary tradition, is that we’ve made a mockery of lovely foods, turned them into the equivalent of kibbles and bits, engineered them and suited them to production first, quantity second, and quality, maybe never. Slowly over the years, we’ve used our engineering and production prowess to steal one the most sacred and lovely things from ourselves. Simple ideals, such as every area grows things different - that different lifestyles and circumstance yield different approaches to cooking and creating. Even more, we’ve lost sight of the fact that it really matters.

There’s something about eating real things, that come out of your own circumstances and abilities that resonates and fulfills you. It’s encouraging, perhaps, that more and more, things like farmers markets, local wineries, micro-breweries are sprouting up, that people are looking for local things. Not because it will save the planet, or that it caters to some slow food movement, because it’s putting us back in touch with where we are in the world, and what really matters. It’s encouraging because instead of cooking Italian, or French, Japanese, or Mexican, we’re starting to cook more in the spirit of the Italians, the French, the Japanese, and the Mexicans.... We’re beginning to - at least on a small scale - understand the treasures of discovering our own vernacular of food, our own genuine traditions...

Every subsequent wave of immigrants, I think, gives this back to us, teaching kids who grew up in the suburbs, eating typical ‘suburban’ things, that there’s a whole other world out there - other ways to look at things, cherish them and use them in ways we’ve never known.

...360 minute meals...

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:30:14 -0700

Perhaps, for me, one of the more grotesque concepts of current culture is that of the 30 minute meal... There’s a certain person who’s popularized this idea, and I’ll admit I sort of like her; she’s spunky, adorable, even a little bit sexy, with her sultry voice, brunette hair, and round hips - not to mention that she cooks... But this idea - and it’s not just any idea to me - is a complete bastardization of what cooking really is. It’s unforgivable. It makes me think, she’s got to be in league with the devil...

I’m at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. If there’s a meal I could cook in 30 minutes, I’ll find a way to drag it out for hours and hours on end, mixing in making some bread, drinking an extra beer, or making it point to sit and enjoy a smoke and just think about things for a while.

If I’m making something with mayonnaise - I’d prefer to make my own, from scratch, instead of scooping some out of a jug. If my recipe calls for ham, or pancetta, I likely won’t make it if I don’t have some that I’ve cured myself, hung up and air dried for weeks beforehand... For me, it’s not just the 3 hour meal, it’s a 3 day meal, a 3 month meal, a meal, ideally, that simply never ends.

I don’t know what the fascination is, really, with eating whenever and as often as you experience hunger. Maybe I’ve seen it from a different perspective - it’s not about the food, it’s about making the food, experiencing it in every conceivable way beyond the mere sensation of it crossing over your tongue. Cooking feeds your soul in a way that merely eating cannot.

Thirty minute meals teach you all the shortcuts, all the things you ‘don’t really have to do’ to wind up with something close... Ultimately, even closer is the drive through window, and something to gulp down, as you truck down the road to your next important endeavor. There’s no history, no appreciation for any of it, no time to look at, smell, or savor any of it...

But maybe the worst of all is the simple idea is that making a meal is something to be hurried and rushed along - an inconvenience - stuck there into a day of soccer practice and other activities people seem to always have time for, instead of the centerpiece of a lifestyle - a place where people sit and talk and have experiences, sensations and smells they’ll remember and relish for a lifetime.

...the perfect date...

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 15:38:51 -0700

This morning while out on a walk I had one of those moments. I call it ‘blissing out’ but maybe it’s just a nonsensical term no one else understands or experiences... It’s one of those times where I find myself totally introspective, looking through a totally different set of eyes - because often mine are shut while doing this - feeling things through a set of totally different senses. It’s a sort of moment where I feel the most amazing buzzing throughout my body -a glowing sort of lightness, a flutter of white noise in my ears...

It happened as I was passing by one of my favorite trees - the only one of it’s kind on my street - one I’d never noticed before I got out of my car. It took me a while to notice it, longer to pay attention to it, but I loved it immediately - the way the light would shine through a sea of spatulate, leafy fingers, making a lovely contrast of glowing greens and deep, emerald shadows. It’s a horse chestnut tree - not totally common to this area, but hardly rare - except on this length of street.

Reaching it on my walk and passing by, is always a symbolic place for me, where I feel as if I’m well past my house, away from things I brood about and get caught up in, or that I let weigh me down and distract me. It’s exactly 1/2 mile from my front porch, but sometimes, like today, it’s a universe away.

This morning wasn’t sunny at all. There was no amazing spectacle of light and color, rather cloudy and damp, though the rain had let up. Walking by it, I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath through my nostrils as I usually do, and ‘let go’, to hopefully get sucked in to whatever the wind and weather has to offer... Today, it was a lovely combination. The rain evaporating on asphalt, mixed with alder smoke from somewhere and the tinge of salt air from Puget Sound made me think of a place I used to - years ago - eat lunch on occasion. It’s on the waterfront of Elliot Bay - a small, rustic place that serves salmon grilled over a hot smoky fire, with large wedges of russet potatoes deep fried...

I walked along with my eyes closed, finding myself back there, on the waterfront, remembering the shuffle of feet, laughter, layers of voices, waffle cones and ice cream and even, finally, noticing the garlic in their tartar sauce... I could smell the creosote on the pilings and heavy timber decking, kelp slowly roasting in the moving tide... It was a beautiful, if not amazing sensation, and it made me think of something really, really obscure. Since food, and the sensual experiences such as this is are all I really seem to live for these days; it made me think of what I’d consider to be the ‘perfect date’.

I know most people think they’d want to go to a nice restaurant, maybe afterwards a show. Or maybe they’d like to have someone bring them breakfast in bed, or simply sit at home and watch a movie and fall asleep in someones arms. I’ve got something far more different in mind... I know it’s a little bit odd to start off a perfect date quite this way, but there would have to be, I’m now convinced, a blindfold involved.

I’m sure that this would be perfect because it’s exactly the sort of game and sensory play I’d love to have, love to do, love to experience. Maybe it’s an insight into how odd I am, but I don’t worry about that at all any longer. I’m not here to conform, or pretend to be normal in any way. And the point of this blog wasn’t really to tell you why my risotto recipe will make you a hero at the next dinner party - I’m here to just be me...

One person would be the guide - the other person would be the one ‘experiencing’ it. There’d have to be a guide of course, because of the blindfold. And the purpose of the blindfold is, of course, that it would shut off one of your most obvious and over-used senses - the ability to see. Immediately, the idea of being blind, not for just a few steps, but hours, a day - a weekend - is sort of interesting - you’d never get to the point where you could use a cane - pick up cues from traffic - or even know, really, how to get anywhere. You’d be totally dependent on the other person, surrendering to them and wherever they wanted to take you... Now as a guide of this sort of expedition - this ‘date’ - you might want to plan accordingly; would you want them to figure it out? Or would the bigger goal just be to expose them to a panoply of different sounds, smells, touches and tastes? It’s up to the guide, of course, but for me - I want the unknown roller coaster... I’d want to be taken away, first in an unknown vehicle, or better still - an unfamiliar form of transportation - maybe on the back of a motorcycle... Or maybe a limousine, with a soft and plush ride, where you never feel corners or bumps...

I know if I was the guide, I’d study a Mozart opera, or maybe something like Humoresque, and probably try to parallel the ebb and flow of the sensations to somewhat match the rise, flow and meter of the music... I’m not a musician, but at least I’m thoughtful in trying to emulate the sentiment... And maybe at this point, it’s not about smells or sounds or flavors so much, because you start to remember; there are things like shade and light - you could park that someone, or be parked yourself, on a sunny bench, warmed to the core with the light of the sun, rub their neck or feet, only then to pull them into the shade with a loose and lazy breeze to sharpen them up again... Of course for me there’d be food involved - no doubt about it...

I think maybe an ideal place or setting, to at least wind up for the ‘crescendo’ - would be Pike Place market. It’s the ultimate spot for this sort of adventure... It’s difficult enough to walk through even with sight, so the guide and the ‘experiencer’ dynamic change yet again - would you let them lose your touch? Or would you wrap your arms around them, holding them in with a conviction you’ve not before? There are parts that are dank, and depressing - smells of musty concrete and layers of bums’ piss - and while that’s not romantic in any way - it’s a vivid contrast to the other things - the way leather smells where they sell belts and wallets of various sorts - the way the light filters in some spots and bakes you through un-insulated glass. The smell of people smoking cigarettes in a stairwell, fresh fish, vegetables, fruits... Old bookstores with shelves of yellowing pages... Incense burning at a head shop... Unknown spices... A building vibrant with life, and many different functions... Greasy Thai food being cooked on a western facing space in an oil that hangs heavy and thick in the air... Flowers upstairs in a spot near the shade... Then there are the voices - tourists, different languages, different conversations, of which - you only ever get a snippet of - a small taste of everything and everyone in a way you never really realized... Street musicians and panhandlers... Odd hands and hips touching you, and you touching them, unable to pull away from any of it - like a massive tide in which you simply sink in...

And it would be - even though, you’re both totally dependent on each other for the ‘date’ - a completely different experience for each of the participants. The one ‘experiencing’ it might be rushing back to a million different places; where they first smelled sausages being grilled, or rosemary, or a nectarine... Or suddenly hear a voice that sounded eerily familiar...

And then there’s the food. Maybe, possibly, the most titillating part of all - feeding grapes to the other one, or a few fresh tomatoes - or running a flower under their nose - maybe you don’t place the bite of food - and it would have to be many bites of food from everywhere, because the rest of the day is about little snippets and sensations - from dull and soft, to extreme and blatant - maybe you don’t place them firmly or easily on their tongue, but you tease them with it... you let it dance around the corners of their mouth, across their lips, and make them bite for it... Because maybe the most important thing isn’t really the eating - but that they experience the food in the same way - feeling a drop of melon juice slip down your chin - the acid of a lemon - the deep and nutty sweet smell of a smoked fish... And so it goes - a sample of this, a bit of that, some easy and knowable - other bits challenging and surprising....

And maybe at the end of it all you retire to a set of stairs together, sitting one behind the other, arms and legs wrapped around the other like an envelope to a letter...And you sit and feel the last bit of sunlight on your faces - and maybe that’s the point where the blindfold comes off, and you sit together with a full stomach, a full heart, and eyes which have seen nothing all day, staring into the the most vibrant sunset and just enjoy the blissful silence of it all...

...saying hello...

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:24:49 -0700

Almost as quickly as I had to abandon my last wild yeast project, I noticed these little jewels growing not more than six feet from my barbecue. These are the native variety of blackberry, not to be confused with the wildly invasive, though tasty, Himalayan blackberries only now beginning to flower. It’s been relatively dry the last few days and I’m at the point where I’m thinking about trying my little experiment again - earlier this time, just to see what sort of results I might get now...

In addition to these, just below them, tucked up close and near some ivy...

...knife tricks...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:50:48 -0700

This is one of the few areas of my life where I’ve discovered, I’ve become nothing less than a bit of an uncompromising prick. I haven’t much sympathy or admiration for people who cannot, or do not own a sharp knife. I have even less sympathy or admiration for people who cannot or do not, or aren’t at least trying to sharpen their own knife or knives.

I guess it’s a variety of reasons which have led me to become this sort of bastard, the sort of person I don’t usually lay claim to being. To most, strangers especially, I’m engaging, light hearted and affable. And to most of the normal world, the sharpness or ability to sharpen a knife means little if anything in terms of a skill or a testament to ones character. To me, it speaks volumes. I admit I’m an utter a freak, a complete misfit, totally misguided in my priorities - a person who would prefer to spend most of my life daydreaming in the sunshine, with a cool breeze blowing across my ample forehead, wondering how one might best cook a hummingbird, if you could catch one, and had nothing else to eat...

I know some of the reason, or at least a good place to start, but first I need to give you something to contrast it with... I’ll go off on a little tangent here, about what my days are like, what I really do and what some of the frustrations are with it...

I am, at least I can call myself one legally, an architect. Years ago, going to architecture school and learning drafting and lettering, it was sort of implied that once you mastered this skill, you had something with which you could work from, something which would last you an entire career - something you could take with you anywhere - sort of like learning a special language, all with the intention that you could do something further with it... A short time after leaving architecture school, CAD became all the rage. I’m not a technophobe by any means - I used to love the latest gadgets and computers - and I was one of the first to eagerly embrace it. But after starting to cook, I realized what a hollow, shaky, meaningless world our lives are evermore becoming based upon.

CAD programs, like any other software, change - the structure, the format, the interface - from how you input information, how you format it, even to how you actually draw it. It’s a vicious cycle - computers become obsolete because they won’t run the latest version of a program - and the latest version won’t recognize or do things the way they did last year - you’re stuck, constantly learning, upgrading, spending time ‘getting up to speed’, trying to relearn a skill-set merely so you can function or communicate with the rest of the world... It’s a cycle that most people are easily caught up in and look at as topics of conversation or things to think about or anticipate - Some even look forward to it...

But not me. Sharpening a knife is, thankfully, a skill that some programmer somewhere isn’t going to change tomorrow for the sake of selling a new version of their software. And it’s glaring, the difference to me now, between my world and anyone else’s. It’s something I’ve taught myself, practiced endlessly, and only recently gotten ‘adept’ at doing. I’m proud of it, proud of knowing how to do it, and proud of the fact that I know it’s never going to be replaced or changed on the whim of someone, somewhere, for no particular reason except to sell me something I don’t need... Sharpening a knife - knowing what makes ‘sharp’ - makes me sufficient in ways that go beyond batteries and cords and the latest hype...

This particular knife is my ‘everyday and everything’ knife - a 7” Shun Santoku knive with a hollow edge (‘grantons’). I use this for slicing tomatoes, shaving garlic and sometimes prosciutto, spatchcocking a chicken, skinning pork bellies, coring an apple or removing an aitch bone from a leg of pork. That’s not to say it’s always the best knife for the task I’m doing - I’ve got a beautiful set of knives - many of them unused, which I’ve left packaged neatly away for mainly one reason. I haven’t been able to sharpen them properly. Until recently...

What makes this different from most other knives is a few things; first the metal itself, it’s a combination of microscopic layers of Stainless Steel, and a high carbon steel. Stainless steel, in and of itself, is extraordinarily hard to sharpen, but it’s durable. Once it’s sharp, it stays relatively sharp. High Carbon steel is rather the opposite - it’s easy to sharpen but it doesn’t hold an edge for long.

Another difference, and an example to the sort of thing you don’t and won’t know unless you look around for a while; is the bevel - the angle of the cutting edge. Most Japanese knives, and this one is no exception, have a 16 degree angle, versus a 20 or 22 degree angle on most American and German knives. It’s a bevel that’s more in line with a straight razor. It’s another reason why I’ll not send my knives out to be sharpened - they’ll reshape the bevel to a different angle...

I’ve that done that already, unwittingly dragging it through various sharpening ‘tools’ hoping to get it back to what it had been like. This knife has been in my kitchen for about 4 years now. It’s gone from razor sharp, to dull, to moderately sharp, to me totally re-establishing the proper bevel and honing it, so that it’s as sharp as it was the day I got it...