a la recherche...

This month I ate a lot of food that did not make it up here due to apartment + job hunt + Gothamist + social obligations. Seeing as one of the main points of this enterprise is to serve as a sort of eating and cooking scrapbook--to combat the continually dismaying dissolution of one day into the next--I am as ever a bit disappointed in myself. But I'll try to be plucky: pack up leftovers, wash dishes, wipe down counters, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow. Here are some of the things I made.

Soupy rice with peas from Fast Food My Way. Blandly comforting; much improved by addition of salt and pepper.

Basic muffins from The Joy of Cooking. Did not compare to more interesting muffins from last fall, the heyday of muffin making. Need to keep more berries-oatmeal-etc. on hand.

Baked ziti from an old Mark Bittman piece. Unbelievably satisfying and tasty, thanks to spicy Italian pork sausage from Whole Foods. Prompted the suggestion, "we should make baked ziti every Friday night so we can eat it all weekend long." The pound cake of pasta recipes: 1lb. sausage, 1lb. mozzarella, 1lb. pasta. Yikes.

Baked chicken with chili powder and honey from May Gourmet. Recipe here. Solid weeknight food. Baked on a bed of sweet potatoes, which became wonderfully greasy and spicy.

Succotash with edamame instead of lima beans from May Gourmet. Recipe here. Better received by some than others. Frozen, shelled edamame nice to have around.

Soba noodles with shitake mushrooms from Encore with Claudine. Including ginger, garlic, and jalapeno, a bit more complicated than the Nigella version I am accustomed to. But just as clean and earthy tasting and filling.

Tuna with tapenade from Encore with Claudine. More on this later, most likely. We overcooked the tuna, but that couldn't spoil it. Went surprisingly well with the soba and shitake--all strong, earthy flavors.

Poached pears with chocolate sauce from Encore with Claudine. A little too sweet, perhaps because I bought the wrong chocolate, but you can't argue with pears and chocolate sauce.

Baked skinless chicken thighs smeared with adobo sauce and canned chipotles to use in tacos, quesadillas, and nachos. Inspired by Gourmet...exciting new discovery: you can smear anything on chicken thighs and cook them at 425 for 30 or 35 minutes. Yum.

I bought real parmesean cheese for something and can't remember what; it was only because I had that that I made the soupy rice with peas. Hmmm.

Comments

[James]

home*economics writes, "Seeing as one of the main points of this enterprise is to serve as a sort of eating and cooking scrapbook--to combat the continually dismaying dissolution of one day into the next--I am as ever a bit disappointed in myself. But I'll try to be plucky"

Everyday experiments in philosophy, many involving food/kitchen, in Roger-Pol Driot's _Astonish Yourself!_ aim to "provoke tiny moments of awareness... a systematic discrepancy, a step to one side, a change of viewpoint--perhaps a very slight one to being with--which can reveal the landscape under a quite different angle." Here are some other culinary exercises to combat that dissolution.

17) Peal an apple in your head
Duration: 20-30 minutes; Effect: concentrating
30) Eat a nameless substance
Duration: a few minutes; Effect: troubling
33) Overeat
Duration: 2-3 hours; Effect: dyspeptic
45) Light a fire in the hearth
Duration: 15-20 minutes; Effect: primitive
59) Get used to eating something you don't like
Duration: a few years; Effect: civilizing
64) Look for a blue food
Duration: indefinite; Effect: imprecise
79) Believe in the existence of a smell
Duration: btwn epsilon and infinity; Eff: canine
86) Vanish at a pavement cafe
Duration: 30 to 40 minutes; Effect: diaphanous

Each of these comes with a description. E.g. About looking for a blue food:

"Seen from space, we inhabit the blue planet. It's true that there is, on earth, a phenomenal amount of blue. The sky in daytime, when unclouded; the oceans. We are ceaselessly immersed in blue, we see and breathe it. But we cannot eat it. Blue is inedible. It escapes our devouring.
"This is a very straightforward and yet a very considerable mystery. Food exists in all colors. Almost all of them can whet our appetite. But nothing blue can be eaten, and the presence of a pale blue food, or even one in ultramarine, runs a good chance of looking repulsive. the sight of royal blue icing sugar gives one the impression not only of extreme artificiality, but can also provoke a kind of indefinable malaise.
"A few very rare exceptions exist. They are not especially convincing. Stilton or Roquefort frequently shades into green or black. Blue Curacao belongs among those sad, fake-tropical, lagoonlike cocktails. The liqueur known as Lorraine Thistle has fallen into a discreet desuetude. The Vosges "Blue Line," and old French speciality, is almost entirely forgotten. In any case, it was only ever consumed by the eyes.
"So, you can always go on looking. There is nothing blue to eat. Or at any rate, not commonly and with appetite. Not like green, red, yellow, orange, even black or white, which are all copiously ingested. What are we to make of this? That we can't digest the sky, the ocean, the planet itself? Need one recall that blue is also associated with royalty and with death? Mysteries, nothing but mysteries!"

Mysteries, indeed. But a step to one side in the kitchen, and some of the mystery is revealed.