with this food i thee wed

Just returned from a sorely needed mini-vacation to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Retrogrouch was at a conference in Canada, so we had to celebrate our tenth anniversary when we returned.  And what better way to do it than by sharing a meal with friends?  Ah yes, sharing the meal we had catered for our wedding ten years ago, with the same wine.

La Méditerranée in Berkeley is still going strong, serving the same pomegranate chicken, fruited garbanzo pilaf, Middle Eastern dips and salads, dolmas and chicken filo fingers it did in 1998.  The 2006 Husch Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley was no 1995, alas, but it was still good enough to remind us of how delicious life can be together.

I decided to pick up the food when I was driving down College Avenue, and saw the restaurant.  Packed in airtight plastic containers, layered with icepacks, and carefully ensconced in the cooler I’ve started taking along with me everywhere I go in the car, it was just fine on the journey back home.  The restaurant didn’t bake the filo, so I just popped it in the oven to crisp up the top, and microwaved the other items that needed heat, and we were good to go.  May the next ten years be as easy as that.

 

eating behind the orange curtain

Having survived in Orange County for three years and lived to tell my silicone-free, pudgy tale, I find the place mostly horrific and sometimes amusing. But is making fun of the nouveau riche ever really funny? I mean, it’s like poking fun at George W.’s butchery of our native tongue: shooting oversized, resource-wasting, born-again fish in a gilded oil barrel. But. Having grown up in a place where I doubted that the beach culture and Beverly Hills ridiculousness actually existed, convinced it was a TV fantasy, I feel obligated to share with the world that Southern California is real, and there are still plenty of guffaws to be had on every street corner.

I bring you Exhibits 1 and 2.

A Gucci suit and a Baccarat gazelle, to match your Baccarat chandelier, of course. In my triennial trip to South Coast Plaza, the absurdist-dream-come-true megamall in Costa Mesa, where I discovered to my great dismay that replacing my wine glasses, purchased 10 years ago from my wedding registry at Williams Sonoma, had jumped in price from about 7 bucks a glass to 18 with a proportionate reduction in quality, I snapped a few shots for posterity. My friend Miss C was surely mortified, and I’m sorry for that. I need GAUDY, I snapped, waving around my camera, work it, girlfriend, work it! We also managed to find similar-looking wine glasses to mine at Crate & Barrel, plain, sturdy, all-purpose balloon glasses that were made for breakin’ at 5 bucks apiece. The glass quality isn’t fine, but it also isn’t Ikea, either, if you know what I mean.

I called Retrogrouch to brag of my success. You didn’t buy varietal glasses, he warned dangerously, because I will divorce you if you wasted my money to buy varietal glasses. With a sigh, I stopped lustfully fingering the Riedel Riesling glasses, and reassured him I hadn’t. And decided to wait before telling him about the shoes.

But this is a post about eating behind the Orange Curtain, not the travails of being a Crate & Barrrel multipurpose glass girl in a Baccarat crystal gazelle world. And eating there, friends, is not at all bad. Sometimes it is even sublime.

Again with the Exhibits. The first is, without question, Thai Nakorn in Stanton (near Garden Grove) the best Thai restaurant I’ve ever patronized, except for well, maybe one vegetarian one in Bangkok.

But why is it that I’m always eating Thai with vegetarians? Although my companion generously offered to share a meat dish (if I recall correctly, she was drooling over Thai sausage), I told her to preserve her chastitity; I could deal. So we ordered Pad Thai and Chinese Water Grass with Bean Sauce, and I partook in the Crab Egg Roll, which was a fresh crab stuffing inside a tofu skin roll. So much yum. I’m only devastated that I’m just now discovering I lived so close to such a wondrous place.

But we couldn’t stop there. We also ate at Felix’s Continental Café in Orange for breakfast, just because we couldn’t fit in one more dinner, one more lunch. Felix’s has terrific roasted meat, one of my raisons d’être, but the breakfast isn’t bad, either. We were able to sit outside on yet another beautiful day, right smack dab on the circle in Olde Towne Orange, looking at the peaches, er, oranges growing impossibly on the trees around the central fountain. Soon enough we stopped noticing the people, and dug into our carbohydrate-laden grub. That’s me with the Eggs Hussarde, with not only Hollandaise but also

Marchand de Vin sauce. Oddly, Felix’s replaces the latter with their bittersweet, orange-marmaladey white wine interpretation, but it was still good, and the fried potatoes and eggs were divine. For dessert was a picture-perfect fruit fritter with some kind of red berry glaze, but not being much of a sweets girl, I only nibbled at it. My lovely companion chose smartly: Cuban huevos ranchero with black beans, rice, and extra sauce. And dear heavens, did I mention the price?

And I can’t forget to mention Taco Rosa in Newport Beach, for that Cali-Mex upscale cantina taste you (inexplicably) can’t find anywhere but Cali. Carnitas Baked in Banana Leaf with Pibil Sauce and a corn tamale, Portobello mushroom quesadillas, and a trio of bocadillos (marinated carrot, a tostadita with beans, a mini beef chimichanga) sure do go down easy with a few margaritas.

But believe it or not (o ye who knowst me), I didn’t eat at my absolutely favorite Orange County fine dining establishment, Wholesome Choice Supermarket. If it weren’t for my adorable ex-roomie and departmental homegirl sublettor who made me dinner in the ‘hood, Irvine’s graduate ghetto, I would have. (My ex-roomie, a Chilean, is a fantastic cook, and one of the main reasons I survived my return to The OC last fall. We ate Chilean comfort food — a type of shepherd’s pie and homemade bread, and a big Greek salad, and I got to spend an evening with two beautiful ladies, so who’s complaining? )

But I must speak on the wonder that is the Persian hot food deli counter at Wholesome Choice. I have eaten so many kebabs from the Persian deli there that I swear to you that at least 50 lbs. of my body is made of fillet mignon seasoned with a juiced half-lemon and sumac, topped with yogurt-cucumber dressing, and snuggled up next to buttered Basmati rice pilaf with a crust of fried Persian bread and rice.

This time, however, this last time I might ever be in Irvine, I merely took a longing look and said my goodbyes with a bag full of citrus salt pistachios, Persian pistachio-rosewater ice cream, and a big jar of Morello cherries in syrup. Could there be a better way to say thanks to my last, best graduate school? I think not.

 

couscous for the slow cooker, in desperation

I make couscous frequently. It’s one of our favorite meals. It can be vegetarian or carnivorous, depending on what’s at hand. One can make bountiful substitutions and it still tastes good. In fact, every time I make it it’s a new dish. The bright colors and root-veggie goodness are fantastic pick-me-ups in the dreary PNW late-winter, like little chunks of sun we’re promised will come again.

Last year, after we bought our fixer-upper house, a cute little post-WWII cottage with great bones but needing a major face lift, I discovered that the worthless previous owners had been cooking on a stove that had caught on fire. The wires connecting the burners were frazzled and burnt. The electrician advised not using the stove, wisely, so I waited for a couple of months until we could afford to convert to gas and buy a new unit.

This was the middle of a cold winter, so, with trepidation, I bought a slow cooker for my winter stews. The crock pot was a major feature of my childhood. We had crock pot meals all year ’round, at least twice a week. Sometimes the reek of sauerkraut and kielbasa would be so bad that I’d get a headache, because there’s nothing quite like cooking sauerkraut all day long, even if you live in a large two-story house. I still associate crock pot smells with nausea. It’s so deeply ingrained in me that I actually felt a bit sick when the odor of my couscous permeated the house. Ah, le temps perdu. Proust had his madeleines, I get crock pot meals.

Anyhoo. The couscous turned out pretty well, and I’m far more sensitive now to those with compromised kitchens. For those of you who are similarly compromised, or if you just like the crock pot, the adjusted recipe follows.

I’ll have to admit that I like couscous better on my new stove, so I give notes that allow you to cook this recipe on the stove, as well. Lately, I’ve been forgoing the meat and simplifying the spices to only cinnamon, salt, red pepper flakes and cumin. We also had a version adding ground lamb and green beans that was good. See? Flexible as can be.

Slow Cookin’ Couscous Stew

Note:  I usually cook this stew on the stove, so you can easily modify it for stovetop cooking by browning the beef and onions, then adding stock/water and seasonings.  The root vegetables should be added after about an hour (if you’re using chuck beef) and the other vegetables near the end of cooking (about two hours or so).

2 lbs. cubed beef chuck (or pork shoulder, or lamb, or chicken thighs…)
1 large onion, chopped

Seasonings: 1 T. cinnamon, 2 t. salt, 1 t. coriander, 1/2 t. turmeric, 1 t. cumin, 1 t. allspice, 1 t. onion powder, ground pepper.

At least 3 root vegetables, 1 each, cut into largish (2-inch) chunks. I use turnip, rutabaga, yam, white potato, winter squash, leeks, carrot, parsnip. Cabbage works too, cut into 3-4 inch wedges, but it isn’t very pretty because the wedges fall apart. Russet potatoes and sweet potatoes will dissolve and make broth thicker, which is fine, but may be disappointing if you want chunks.

1 andouille sausage, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 can chick peas, drained
1 cup large raisins (white ones if you can get them)
3-4 dried red hot peppers

1 zucchini, cut into 2-inch long fingers
1 red pepper
1 green pepper (Retrogrouch likes these — I’d rather use roasted pasilla peppers I keep in the freezer or nothing at all)

harissa

about 4 cups chicken stock or water

In a 6-quart or larger slow cooker, layer beef, onion, seasonings, root vegetables, sausage, chick peas and raisins, in that order. Don’t mix. Add enough chicken stock or water to cover most of the vegetables (about 1/2 full?). Cook on high for first hour or so, then cook on low for 5-6 hours.

In last hour of cooking, mix in zucchini, red pepper and green pepper, plus a spoonful of harissa and some chopped preserved lemon, if you have some. Taste for salt and heat. Serve with couscous. If you want to be fancy, mix couscous with cilantro and chick peas. Makes a huge pot.

 

happy paczki day!

It’s Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras. We celebrate the Polish version — Paczki Day. Paczki, pronounced basically /PONCH-key/, are jam-filled donuts with a fine crumb and a rich taste. One article I read describes them as “tennis ball-sized pastries deepfried in lard.” Paczki Day is celebrated mostly in the Polish-American enclaves of the Midwest, although we did manage to score a great box of genyooine paczki at the Big Y in Mansfield, CT, one fine year. This article provides history and some recipes, which are probably better than the one in my first Polish cookbook, which yielded what could only be called paczki crepes. One of these years I’ll try to make them again, especially since all we can get around here is donuts at Safeway. We have the Zolotoy Petushok Russian deli in Eugene (and of course, the nearby Albany institution, Novak’s Hungarian Restaurant), but no Polish bakery.

I grew up in the Detroit suburbs, but didn’t really celebrate Paczki Day until high school, when I began with the zeal of a born-again paczki-thumper and haven’t stopped since. My great-grandparents came to Michigan and raised their children in Detroit, like many Polish families around the turn of the twentieth century, forming a community that still spoke Polish at home and kept Polish traditions alive in schools, shops and churches. By the time I came around, the families had long since moved into the suburbs and Polish neighborhoods like Hamtramck were in decline, as was much of Detroit. My exposure to Polish-ness was a few phrases and songs and my grandma’s cooking. Mmmm…Easter soup, kielbasa, city chicken, Polish rye bread, fresh horseradish. And it was the message to stay away from Detroit because it was dangerous.

Still, I get an ancestral pang when I see images of Detroit, a city that’s been swallowed up by a recession and its insidious opiate– the casino culture that I find truly horrifying. It’s the ache of being unwanted and misused. It’s horror at the wasteland of a once-vibrant midwestern city, and worse yet, one that bred my people and gave them a safe place to land when they began their American journey and rests their bones in forgotten cemeteries on odd lots in the city. It’s the loss of one particular community at one place and one time. It’s hopes that were scattered far beyond the streets of Hamtramck, falling into the crevices and furrows of other neighborhoods and other cities. It’s my America.

So here I am. I collect international cookbooks and live in Oregon and sit in California chairs and drive Japanese cars and celebrate Passover with the zeal of a born-again brisket-thumper. Hamtramck, I hear, has undergone a bit of a revitalization, and there is a hipster community of musicians and artists, many folks who care very much about the place. I encourage everyone, therefore, to reach into that bakery box for some paczki, because some things in life are worth tradition and some things beg to be reinterpreted, renewed, reborn. Make mine a Marionberry.