In Which Two Edith Wharton Characters Admit to Mutual And Increasingly Shattering Betrayals.

 

i would like to say that there are food experiences i will never forget, but we know the brain does not work that way. or we, to say the least, do not work that way. memory of course is coloured and discoloured as it weathers with age, now losing lustre, now gaining wholly other hues than originally present, and is altogether a fickle and transient critter, serving ends woefully unknowable to the rest of us. we being the possessors (oh ho or awful results, moreso!) of such critters.

strange that i unthinkingly used only language of colour, there, despite talking about taste (although i was thinking about Nabokov not 20 min ago).

in all likelihood, just as i doubt my ability to recall exactly the details of a scene or piece of music or conversation from the past, i presume my remembered tastes to be mostly fabulation – for it is not as if i truly can conjure the taste again in my mouth, however much we like to think that that sort of thing is a common occurrence – but of course the cheese of the thing (memory) is not in total recall but in the veneer of the memory. why we remember it or want to remember it or in what aura we believe we do so.

for that matter, i am too much of a cynic to say “I Will Remember How This Tasted For The Rest Of My Life,” but trying to think on it, what i would say that about, were i seized by romanticist self-deception (it is fall after all), this is what i’ve come up with:

“Creatures of Symbiosis and Decay”

courtesy of John Webster, of the SDMS, admittedly without explicit permission

so begins the section on mushrooms in Harold McGee’s On Food & Cooking (the official abbreviation for which miss hannah mae blair has so graciously informed me, is simply “Harold,” according, supposedly to the Oxford Manual of Style. what?)

anyway, thinking about rot. and the (un)easy slippage, the haunted imprecision of our thoughts about decay, fungus, bacteria, putrefaction, fermentation, etc. actually i have not  been thinking about the latter, but was just struck by the sudden realization of my own lack of mental clarity regarding their differences. the specificities of each are legion, but we totter and weave in and out of appropriate usage. do i understand the difference between mould and decay? putrefaction and fermentation? it is, for the moment, so much mysticism to me, but have faith – i do not intend to persist in ignorance for much longer.

anyway, what i have actually been about:
1. i am fascinated by lobster mushrooms.

i’m glad that someone finally drew a picture of a donut sneezing on a broccoli. and yeah, -a- broccoli. what?

 

i feel a little foolish just reposting something from yet another foodblog, but on the off chance you don’t already read Eat Me Daily, it wasn’t worth missing this: Brock Davis’ Food Art.

dumplings own love (part 1)

noodle factory! noodle factory! all hand pulled, and as i understand it, the dumplings at least made to order. there are unfortunately not so many options for vegetarians, and i cannot decide whether the dish (fat noodles with vegetables) was artfully subtle and i just a hopeless undertaster, or perhaps just  a little enh (enh being one degree less severe of indifference than the now quite au courant meh).

but if you may or mayn’t be able to taste it, you can feel it, there is a certain qualia – call it care or an undefinable specificity of texture, or just the power of faith, but homemade noodles are special and the recollection of my meal is suffused with a warm, rosy hue.

they also feature on the table what has come to be my minimum criterion for taking seriously a chinese restaurant (which may be something regionally specific, and thusly both ignorant and pretentious on my part) – chiles in oil, soy sauce and black vinegar.

you should really probably go, and by all means order the dumplings, as they are the best vegetarian dumplings in town, and, until very recently when finally returned to Quing Hua, the best of any sort.

Noodle Factory
1018 st-urbain (coin de la gauchetiere)
(514) 868-9738
vegetarian/vegan friendly – somewhat
reasonably priced (under 10$ for most mains)

“Pan-African” Carrot Soup, and Yes, I Am A Racist.

because it isn’t an African soup, any more authentically than any other culturally/cartographically obtuse and dehistoricizing “African” anything is  African. brings to mind the Loony Toons cartoon (“Porky In Wackyland,” 1938) where porky pig’s plane is seen traversing the borders of Dark Africa, Darker Africa, and Darkest Africa, before penetrating finally the unknowable territory of “?” (the ineffable heart of darkness, aka, uh, Wackyland).

but anyway it’s a ginger-carrot-fennel soup, containing harissa (tunisian; north), topped with, among other things, (ethiopian/eritrean; east) berbere*-spiced almonds.

and it’s delicious. sautée 1 medium onion, a couple cloves of garlic, 1/2 a cup of chopped fennel and as much ginger as you can bring yourself to grate in a lot of butter and some salt. add ~2lbs thinly sliced carrots, add some more butter and some coriander (powdered or just ground seeds) along with the carrots and stir around a good bit. then add 4 cups of stock (i used 1 cube Harvest Sun onion bouillon) and cook at medium heat until good and soft. in the meantime roast half a bulb of garlic and a handful of almonds in the oven.

when the carrots are, as i said, good and soft, toss in the (now peeled, duh) roast garlic, and if the soup needs to be thinned up (which it very well may) add a splash of cream/yoghurt/milk/soy/almond beverage, and approx the same of orange juice, then blend that shit til smooth.

crush the almonds together with some berbere* spice.

this is basically all you need (plus coarse salt and fresh ground black pepper, shit!), but should you be so stocked, serve with the crushed almonds, a squirt of lime, some good ricotta and a bunch of cress, for freshness, all drizzled with walnut oil and a glug of olive oil.

the walnut + almond in this may strike you as unnecessary, but i feel they contribute body and intellect, respectively.

what i like about this variation on good ol’ carrot-ginger soup is how the berbere/harissa/almond gives it a certain depth and complexity, beyond its hearty and heartwarming qualities.

*Berbere Spice!

Give the Piano Player A Drink, Because He’s Bringing Me Down.

1. peter mayle bores me. (“man, i can’t tell you how much i love being rich and living in provence and getting paid to write about how much i love being rich and living in provence. these books, i don’t know, they just write themselves!”)

btw, i’m going to be in provence in november and it’s going to rule and i’ll likely tell you all about it. expect a tone of either a) smug satisfaction, b) starry-eyed adoration, or c) inebriate gibbering.

2. so feeling the first two REM albums these days.

3. so definitely going to Le Gourmet Burger (a facebook page but no website? one bereft of a menu, no less? i’m not even going to dignify that with a link), which apparently has middling burgers, but excellent sweet potato fries. not in the least deterred by the former, as a veggie burger (which they have) is more or less the sum of its condiments, and since truffle mayo and caramelized onions are among those available, the outlook is fair. (believe you me, however, that those aforementioned condiments shall not have an easy go of it, where is concerned my critical vigour)

4. torn as to which version of “Gimme a Pigfoot (And Bottle of Beer)” i prefer. i lean, usually, toward Bessie Smith’s, but last night Nina Simone’s rendition was really putting it up in my guts. perhaps no decision is necessary?

no, i like bessie smith’s better. ’sangrier.

The Appropriate Vanity-Concerning Aphorism is (i assume) on the Tip of My Tongue

it is folly, i believe, to insist upon the separation of vanity from our enjoyment of food (pretend for a moment that this is à propos of anything). it may in fact be more honorable, and more tasteful to consider a meal solely on its own merits and not our associated private pretenses, but i’m having none of it.

i am instead having the experience of my already delicious dinner enhanced by the sense of moral superiority imparted by it also being tremendously healthy. i don’t intend to waste anyone’s time (oddly enough) prattling on about how i’m not a health snob (i’m not), but in fact a regular junk-food-loving joe (also inaccurate), and i don’t think one needs to atone for their garbage-eating in any self-flagellating fashion, but i have eaten nothing but (a surfeit of) cookies for the past eight hours, and precisely what i need right now is parsnip, rapini, and seeds.*

it be autumn right now and you all should make a point of not missing out on the cornucopia of hearty vegetable delights currently at your disposal.

and not only is this shit delicious, but you benefit psychologically from the shameless self satisfaction of enjoying bitter greens and stinky, pungent root vegetables. party on.

*why you should never come to me for recipes:

You Can Not Believe How Seriously This Has Knocked My Dick In The Dirt.

no longer can you blame your eating your own shit on laziness alone (calm, dishonourable, vile submission that it is) because Julia Child is going to show you how to make an omelette in 20 seconds.

YEAH THAT’S RIGHT. TWENTY SECONDS.

i want to tell you the story of me discovering this (drunk, 3am), and trying it for the first time (3:03 am, still drunk) and how excited i got (very), and how much i love julia child (bandwagon jumping my eye, i was all up on this, like last year) but i think the less commentary the better. suffice to say, you can do this, and it will improve your life immeasurably (both in terms of the quick and ready availability of omelettes and your own self-esteem).

yeah, i would say that.

engouement – an excessive or irrational liking for something.

from french, obviously, and i think rarely spoken in english, but what is interesting is the double meaning in french: both the above “sentiments favorables et excessifs que l’on conçoit sans grande raison pour quelqu’un ou quelque chose,”  and a more literal meaning of “an obstruction or blockage in the throat.”

i’m curious about the equation of having something stuck in your throat with an irrational fondness for something, but on some very hard to pin down level, it has a sort of underlying resonance, i think. 

i like the idea of qualifying a preference or desire as both irrational and excessive. is this a liking to be distinguished/divorced from taste (taste as sense, not as predilection) itself? speaking specifically of food, could one have an engouement for a food the taste of which they do not actually appreciate? is this wherein the irrationality lies?

or, considered another way, do i have an engouement for chips? which are admittedly delicious, but my habit of eating way too many and the inevitable sickness and self-loathing which follow should, thinking rationally, steer me away from their consumption. still, i persist.

could it be said of an inappropriate reason for liking something? that one likes a dimension of something that does not ultimately serve as sufficient grounds for that liking (according to, you know, Them)?

but i guess we say this sort of thing all the time. “I like ______ way too much, considering they’re not actually that good,” etc.

 

i’d like to think that liking something out of spite figures into this conversation somehow.

it’s only sufficiently in honour if your drink the whole bottle.

 

i realized today, standing next to a homeless man, that he smelled like dried mushrooms. not that he didn’t smell bad, or that i didn’t find his trail and surround of body odour unpleasant, but the more i thought about it, the more familiar, and undeniably akin to that of dried yellow boletus or morel mushrooms. i am capable of this identification not owing to any exhaustive expertise, rather i just happen to have both of those mushrooms in my kitchenm dried.

so: earthy, distinctly fungal, slightly sour. it is interesting (or perhaps belaboured to the point of utter banality, although at the moment i find myself interested) how tethered are some tastes and smells to context and our own expectations thereof. obviously, obviously.

if one bites into an apple that tastes like roquefort, they will spit it out, presumably. and here i am, faced with a smell to whose properties i in other circumstances attribute comfort, richness and decadence , but in these circumstances i cannot help but wrinkle my nose and seek fresher air (not, i assure you, conspicuously. i do not begrudge the foul-smelling, particularly the foul-smelling homeless, their stink.)

i guess that much depends on from where the tiny particulates that are flying up your nose originate, and your attendent associations with them. to have evoked the mustiness of the earth, damp leaves and fall forests is more pleasant than stale, souring sweat and the best-ignored suspicion that this smell too could be related to fungal growth.
although, further consideration yields another turn – perhaps such a smell encountered in the course of the exploration of another’s body, in an armpit or other crevice, is more likely to conjure a happier association with the delicacy and satisfaction of the food. we can surely see ourselves smiling at the almost-vulgar and shamelessly honest (or at least a stylized, if put-on shameless honesty) writer who tenderly describes their lover “smelling warmly of wine, and mushrooms and rotting pine” or something. right?

 

nathaniel west died in a car accident on december 22nd, 1940, rushing to the funeral of his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
this is unrelated, but i do intend to drink to him on that day, if someone is good enough to remind me.

at a cookie party, maybe? or port and pie, falling as it does so close to christmas? who’s in? port and pie, and a glass raised to the fallen of the jazz age.

december 22d.