Lisbon, Part 2

The vibe of the city of Lisbon is most intriguing. Everyone seemed to go about at a leisurely pace, yet still with steady purpose. As a Jersey boy I learned to Move, not to meander, so a little adjustment was in order. Taking the time to see the sights was well worth the doing though, and so I submitted myself to the flow of the more relaxing local pace. 

I was put in mind of New Orleans quite early on in my time there, and the comparison never really got out of my head. In another three or four hundred years, I suspect it would look a lot like Lisbon does now. Modern conveniences laid with care upon and alongside the well-polished bones of a vast and complex history.

Churches were huge, yet in addition to the massive basilicas and other sites, many such places were hidden among the streets just like any other building. That felt strange, given how externally ostentatious most churches have been in the places I've lived. Strangely enough, I didn't feel even a little out of place in any of these, even when the chapels were empty. Perhaps it's the history, the shared understanding of age and time that I have, and that the culture in the US really doesn't.

Markets and restaurant rows were plentiful and relentless- each and every one I made it to had a thoroughly raucous vibe, everyone enthusiastically going about their business on both sides of the counters, much and many open to the air. Though the weather was also a bit brisk, no one seemed to mind. There were lots of cookie-cutter souvenir shops with all manner of small, probably quite breakable things. I did, however, pick up some postcards. After mailing them though, I discovered that mail in Portugal can be used to set one's calendar rather than one's watch. So... mom, husky, if either of you read this, you may possibly get a postcard sometime in the next year.

Now touring the streets was made relatively simple with metro passes, so score one for public transit outside of the US. Big surprise, right? Pbbbth. The architecture itself served to make navigation relatively easy, with the buses and trolleys running regularly and plenty of landmarks. Though to my mind the metro stops really need larger signs or more visible onboard route maps. If you aren't counting stops or have a timer set, you've got to keep your eyes and ears open! 

It also seemed like every couple of blocks there was another bakery with the local specialty on offer- Pasteis de Nata, or 'cream tarts'. These suckers were everywhere, and since they're composed of many of my favorite dessert components, they redeemed a lot of the other less than stellar food.

They're actually not too tough to make- it's an infused custard, poured into what's basically kouign-amann dough pressed into a tart shell shape, then baked till crispy, flakey, and decadent. It's rich, buttery, and delicious while not being too sweet. I would cheerfully eat them every day (and very well may have- shhh, don't tell). Also they come most commonly in 6-packs, like the sleeve I'm holding in the picture here. That's why they're dangerous! You think "I'll just get one!", and suddenly you're staring at the empty sleeve, nursing a large cup of coffee, and wanting a nap.

The notion of Portugal having fantastic food is so pervasive, but finding the bulk of the reasons why seemed to want to take more time than I had. A notion, for example, that would not leave my head amidst a questionable lunch decision: "How does a place so well known both for seafood *and* for invading Japan have crappy sushi?" That was certainly A Day all right.

By this time I had more or less fought through the time change, but still groused about it at 3am when I couldn't stay asleep. Having the dreadful Daylight Savings hit me the day before I flew across the world made it a special sort of grumble-inducing. Though all that was nothing compared to the trip back. Never before have I actually wanted a layover for airplane travel, but the trip to SFO definitely had me wishing I had one. If there is ever a next time, perhaps I'll touch down in DC for the night, pester a friend for a couch and a ride, then finish the journey the following day.

Book Review: "Invitation to a Banquet", by Fuchsia Dunlop

I've mentioned before that in the pursuit of knowledge, prejudice goes in all directions. Now as then as always, the notion of 'authenticity' has done great and lasting harm to earnest effort and serious scholarship for no other reason than look, mien, or pedigree. It takes some aggressively enthusiastic commitment and dedication to aspiring scholarship and understanding to adequately deflect or overwhelm those biases- coming from those one might seek to teach as much or more as from those one might seek to learn from.

Which is where we run into people like me, who hunker down and do the work while being too poor to go anywhere or do anything but read and research. We also run into people like Fuchsia Dunlop, who dived into the deep end of the practical application side. Her work and efforts are quite familiar to me, and have been for many years- just a day or two ago I put up a review of her 2009 memoir to prime the pump, as it were, for this. 

As a writer, her style is shaped by her study- deeply layered with information in a manner like unto poetry, and very much designed to be as informative as possible in accordance with the level of understanding possessed by the reader. A (non-Chinese) layperson would read this book and learn vast amounts; a mainland Chinese citizen layperson would read it and learn no less, but different things at different levels due to cultural background osmosis; I myself smiled as I turned the pages, knowing full well many of the potential battles involved in being the Token White Person trying to be taken seriously as a well-informed professional in certain matters of Asia. 

The sections of the book are simple enough, with a Prologue, Origins, Ingredients, Techniques, Ideas, and an Epilogue. Clever structuring of subsections, however, is what places Invitation to a Banquet on a pedestal of excellence. Each one uses as its framing structure a different given dish from Chinese culinary history. This in itself is a cleverly complex decision, emphasizing the notion of layered levels of understanding. Whether it's simply recipes, or branching out to histories, art and culture, agriculture, or more notions besides, the chapters do a fantastic job of sharing the essential while opening many diverse windows of opportunity to explore further, and it does so with fluidity and grace. 

While that was a fine self-evident success, a historical analysis also came to mind, and I considered how component parts of the manuscript might have worked as examples of the classical Chinese 'Eight-Legged Essay' format. (I cannot see those words without recalling the class I first learned the term in, and a friend's idle drawing of a pile of grouchy looking pages with spider legs.) I'm still thinking about it, and may yet have thoughts on it, but that's too much for now- that will come in a more in-depth analysis at a later date.

Not only is the manuscript extraordinary, but her bibliography and acknowledgement sections are similarly stellar. Scads of sources in both English and Chinese, historical translations, modern works, familiar and uncommon alike. Then comes the massive list of persons from all parts of the world and all walks of life that helped make her, and thence this book, more clever and comprehensively complete.

Of all Fuchsia's books, this serves best of them all as either an introduction or a capstone. 

Read it with relish. Then read it again, and see how much more you learn!

Book Review: "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper", by Fuchsia Dunlop

I've said it before- stories of foreigners (usually Americans or continental Europeans) getting lost in Asia usually make for a good lure while still being very hit or miss. The same curiosity that compelled the protagonists often compels the prospective readers to keep turning pages. So much depends on the author's ability to not only have grown from the experience, but to be able to adequately express the depth of it in a manner a reader can identify with. No story survives without engaging characterization, and far too many tales of trial and tribulation simply fall flat and make the reader wish for their time back. 

...Looking at you, Clavell.

This time, with Fuchsia Dunlop's 2009 memoir Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, it all turns out beautifully.

What might be the most important part of this book is the immersion factor. The background for the author's journey to the province of Sichuan is set within the first ten pages of chapter 1, and we the reader almost never hear about it again. That, to my mind, is just about perfect.

“Growing up in Oxford, studying in Cambridge, working in London, I had been propped up by  a string of academic and professional credentials that had seemed to define me in the eyes of  other people. But in China none of that mattered.”

That tells you everything you need to know about the author's past, really. And very little else is forthcoming. Someone who picks this book up will probably have some preconceived notions about what's inside, and the importance of imparting Just Enough Detail to enable the story is in many ways a defining factor of the memoir genre as a whole. The pages that follow are full to the brim with luscious and intensely intriguing detail of China as it was after Mao, but before the modernist eruption around the turn of the millennium.

Much of the book's magic comes from the thrill of discovery, so I won't delve into deep detail here. However, several of the author's tales come with recipes at the ends, and the ones I've tried have been superb. Speaking as a chef, the level of detail imparted in the storytelling is enormous, and any trained cook will be nodding knowingly as they turn the pages. There's nothing flowery about the storytelling where food is concerned, it's all very down to earth, realistic, and sensible.

The prose itself is also deeply thoughtful in its detail, giving a comprehensive mix of history, geography, family life, and all manner of Chinese customs past and present, deftly mingled through tales of the author's daily life in China. Her thorough exploration of first Sichuan then Hunan is sometimes tempered by sobering lessons from the natives, but that's to be expected. No story is all smiles.

For anyone wanting an engaging story, replete with information and rich with perspective, swing by the library and pick this one up for an entertaining read that's full of history, culture, and life lessons that will stick with you long after you're finished with the book. Perhaps it'll even inspire you to dig a little deeper into the bottomless well that is China.

Lisbon, Part 1

 So, I recently spent a week or so in Lisbon.

I should open by noting I don’t speak a word of viable Portuguese. My Spanish has a fair bit of utilitarian vocabulary due to my many years in kitchens, and my French is at least sufficient for bakeries and pastry shops, but I admit to a great deal of trouble with the native tongue. The fluidity of it coupled with the Ss and elongated Js made it parse like mingled Russian and Spanish in my head- thus utterly incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the phraseology and diction. I found it much easier to work in English or Spanish- both quite commonly used. Got a little lucky there.

The flight safety video for air Portugal clued me in on that before my arrival, and also gave me a perfect followup at about the 1:40 mark. “In Portugal it’s not always easy to keep your belt fastened- the food is just too good!” Weeeeeell... airplane seat belt safety aside, let's just say I’ve crossed off a lot of possible places where people might have gotten that notion about the food. 

One of their best-known signature dishes / traditional specialties, the croqueta bacalhau, is a stellar example of things that, to my mind, might be better off left to history rather than remain a component of the everyday, even for the tourists.
For those not familiar, it's an offshoot of a once-necessary method for preservation- You take a fish (in this case cod, which is essentially all bacalhau refers to in Portugal) and unleash a combination of drying and salting on it. It's an extremely aggressive method, to the point that to render the fish edible again after the process is complete, it must be soaked for multiple days in multiple changes of water to leech out the salt and rehydrate it. While the technique itself is supposedly Basque, it has the feel of a method you'd see in Scandinavia, land of vaguely terrifying preservation methods.

Once you have your mummified-and-then-reconstituted fish, you then flake it like pork sung, mix it with a bit of binder, wrap it around something, and fry it till it's crispy. The filling that got the most play in the many places offering them as I passed by was a type of cheese (which I'm reasonably sure was Serra de Estrela), and as someone who loves Scotch Eggs, it tempted me enough to try. The result was basically the worst variation on a mozzarella stick that I've ever even conceptualized, let alone tasted. Not going for those again, thanks.

The most unexpectedly delicious piece of seafood I ate was simple deep-fried cuttlefish(?). But it was the underlying preparation that truly let it shine. Uncertain exactly what that was, but I suspect vigorous marination, perhaps even a quick-pickle, and pressure cooked to tenderness long ahead of time before being ordered, battered, and fried. The vigorous, salty twang struck more of a chord than almost anything that day or a few around it. Most else I ate seemed to suffer from serious flavor anemia by comparison.

The Itis: The Sandwich

Another dish where I noticed that more was in the Francesinha, a modernish, localized variant on the French classic Croque-Monsieur. On paper, this thing is a dream. Dude food, hangover food, drunk food, it ticks every box for me. It's an afternoon nap on a high-sided plate.

Many sorts of meat- marinated grilled or seared beef (of uncertain cut but with the loose grain of skirt or flank), along with linguiça, coppa or chorizo, and some sort of deli ham, all tucked in a sandwich, crisped like a grilled cheese, topped with lots of cheese and broiled, then drowned in a rich and spicy sauce of what was probably onion, garlic, madeira, tomato, and beer. And a fried egg on top, because sure, why not, we'll go full Croque-Madame with it.

I could eat one of those every day. I might die of it, but I also wouldn't really mind. So rarely have I the freedom to pursue the privilege of pleasure I qualify for, it might well serve as a common earned indulgence.

Alongside, one cannot talk food there without talking wine. Whoof. It’s everywhere, it's all sorts of affordable, and, by and large, it's very much not to my tastes. I didn’t pay more than a fiver for a bottle of wine all week… and given how they tasted I certainly wouldn’t have. I am not a regular wine drinker, even if I am conversant in how to, but the general willingness to kick back with a bottle of quaffable vinho over lunch had me a little impressed. Despite deflecting proffered pours as readily and often as able, I still drank more wine that week than in probably the previous five years.

At a very enthusiastic and informative wine tasting in a Lisbon museum, I found that it’s not uncommon to ignore the norm about blending grape varietals. In brief: The requirement to label a bottle as say, ‘Merlot’ requires a guaranteed minimum percentage of that grape to be used. While the required number varies from place to place, 75% is the minimum here in California, so I'm sure the EU has stricter standards for it.

The interesting approach I was talked through forsakes that opportunity to blend, and so I thought it worth a mention. Using blending grapes is more or less standard viticultural practice- it aids in more consistent, readily replicable product from year to year, but it does so at a potential cost. Using 100% of a given grape varietal ensures the distinct characteristics of it are in no way altered, muddled or smoothed out. I say it thus because some of those characteristics are potentially quite objectionable to the untrained palate, far more so than I might have considered to ensure them marketable.

Eating and drinking in Portugal is not for the faint of heart or flimsy of constitution.
More to come soon!

Cookbook Review: "Dorie's Cookies" by Dorie Greenspan

Come on, Dorie. Your book's title is Dorie's Cookies, so why is the first recipe a brownie?

Okay, now that I've got that out of my system, I can be serious.

It meets all the professional and casual expectations I consider important to a reader. Having worked alongside her in the past, I'm certainly not surprised. She's practical, reasonable, and fantastic to work with, all of which translates quite well into the book.

The first section is Techniques, Ingredients, and Gear, which is always important. Notions for getting the most out of your methods aren't something I turn down in a specialty cookbook like this. Minutiae on ingredients I can take or leave, but that's because I'm a professional too- the average home baker will likely find some useful tidbits. Equipment is vital- if you don't have the usual suspects, you'll know what you do need or want to get the job done. That's something cookbooks are notoriously bad at, and while baking-centric volumes have better odds, they still tend to be a little more “Well of course you need this- you're baking!”, which I don't like. Dorie doesn't do that.

Tools that remove variables are always a blessing in baking, so it's no surprise that most of them do that in some form or another. Some choices are obvious- the hand tools like like a rolling pin, a scale, or cookie scoops (just ice cream scoops with tiered measures). Then there's the heavies like the stand mixer or hand mixer, and the food processor. Most of the people looking at this book as something beyond a display piece will probably have most of this stuff. But there's also things like an oven thermometer (don't trust the number on the oven display), or what she calls 'cheaters', for your rolling pin. Elegantly simple- they're bands of set thicknesses to wrap around the edges of your rolling pin to insure your dough's also uniform. Don't underestimate the benefits, believe me.

Now we get to the proverbial meat of the book, wherein there's something for everybody. Lots of these I'd never see myself baking except to sell or send as gifts. Certainly not a problem though, there are plenty I'd happily bake every day (though of course I shouldn't- I like being the exact same weight I was in high school). But whether they're to my taste or not, they're thoughtfully constructed and intuitive to make. That's what really matters, right? No matter how delicious, the balance of “is this too much of a hassle” should always be a consideration, and Dorie does so from start to finish, sometimes so subtly you'd hardly notice.

I could happily run through the many chocolate, coffee, and almond variations and nothing else without a moment's regret- I actually stopped reading at one point to bake a recipe and see if it worked (Chocolate Chip Not-Quite Madelbrot, p. 104). Not only was it effortless, I cut it back by a third and it scaled perfectly. Recipes designed to scale up or down well are also rather uncommon, something she mentions here and there, so trusting one to halve or double isn't a big deal and there are usually notes if a recipe will make it difficult.

Several times throughout the book I'd be eyeing a cookie and think “Hmm, I wonder why she didn't add XYZ flavor/component”. Then I'd look at the next recipe or two and see one that did. Her flexibility with ingredients and flavor combinations is excellent, and serves quite nicely to fill out the book. (I've actually got another new baking book that does this very well too. Probably have a review on it by the end of the month.)

There's one thing that threw me a bit, but it's just perspective. There are a goodly number of savory cookie recipes in here, and my brain didn't immediately want to associate 'savory' with 'cookie', jumping instead to 'cracker', 'scone', or 'biscuit'. Don't let it get into your head, and nothing else will bug you.

Overall, this is an excellent volume on cookies. It give you what you need, what you want, and what you might try for yourself.

Cupboard Shortcuts and Time Savers

As someone who prefers to do most of the actual work of cooking myself, I still acknowledge the need for handling things in a hurry, whether it's for savory or sweet applications. As such, there are a number of things I like to have on hand as 'just in case' ingredients that I use to take some time lag out of delicious, or just save me time washing dishes.

Puff pastry. An expensive but essential part of my freezer, I always have at least one box on hand- usually the brand made with actual butter. Near to limitless in its utility, I've made meals out of samosas, pot pies, quiches, or rissoles, desserts ranging from palmiers and cinnamon twists to napoleons and curd cups, even snacks like herb and cheese breadsticks or mini turnovers.

Salsa. While I tend to make my own for direct applications, I also usually keep one of the cheapish canned supermarket ones in the cupboard. I could use it to bulk out my own batch, but frequently it'll get added as a liquid component to soups, stews, or braises. Don't have stock on hand? Thin out your salsa and get your work done. Ditto for making rice, though that may not look pretty.

Beer. This one's a little odder, but important. Rather like salsa, it serves as a foundational flavorful liquid for poaching, braising, or other techniques. Typically my go-to is a 12-pack of Sapporo cans, but most mild beers will serve just fine. Most recently, I blended it into a dark roux that later became a rather nice gumbo. Many of the other components had sweet and spicy notes, so the faint bitterness served very well to round out the flavors and bring depth to the whole.

Curry bricks. Yes, I use them too- and not just the curry ones either. I often keep the prefab brick for what the manufacturer calls Hayashi Rice on hand as well. While important to be aware of potential allergens, they make it so much easier to bring out massive flavor with hardly any work, and have food on the table in a matter of minutes.

Frozen vegetables. It might sound obvious, but growing seasons don't last forever. Many things with fairly short prominence periods are best preserved by modern freezing technology, but my freezer is small so my choices are limited. For utility's sake I keep peas, corn, and spinach available. They all make for suitable vegetable sides in a hurry, and can also be used to enrich soups, stews, sauces, or other amalgamations like fried rice.
Tip: when making a batch of soup you want to cool and store, add the frozen vegetables after you have the soup is done and exactly where you want it. That way the cooling process happens faster and more efficiently.

Applesauce. Odd one, no? But it's always in my cupboard. Moisture and flavor for any forcemeat, a foundation for dips, dressings, baking, sauce work, and if need be you can just put it alongside a sandwich to bulk out your lunch.

Miso (and/or Doubanjiang). These are in the category of essential because they're literally better than bouillon. Fermented soy products with tons of flavor, they can be used in marinades, dressings, soups, sauces, and almost anywhere you'd put salt- even on the sweet side of things. For example, I don't really like peanut butter cookies, but adding a little white miso to the dough creates a transcendent thing indeed.