Love in the Time of Digital Text

I just read a silly essay in the New York Times about literary deal-breakers, as in, "I can't love a man who reads Italo Calvino." Having dated at least one boy-man in college who revered Italo Calvino, I can honestly say that the author is a pretty good indicator of literarily adept, but self-absorbed pretentious fucksticks who cook you tasteless vats of vegetarian curry, but Calvino himself is not the deal breaker. He's an excellent author whose work I happen to dislike. Same with Jonathan Franzen, Umberto Eco, Nathanial Hawthorne (though I do possess a fridge magnet of his likeness, which I won at a faculty shindig), anything manga, and the lesser variety of fantasy literature. I also dislike extremely prolific authors like Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult, because I doubt the literary merit of books that take 2 months to churn out. But all that aside, I would still love a man who loved Jodi Picoult and comic book adaptations of Star Wars if he (1) was not gay and (2) had other great qualities, like strong shoulders and skills of ratiocination. In fact, I'm marrying a man with strong shoulders, who is acutely observant and logical, rarely reads, and when he does loves fantasy novels.

My fiance's interest in dorky literature exorcises all possible pretension out of our literary relationship. I love it; I can go from reading Anna Karenina to A Game of Thrones to bridal magazines and back again without feeling the need to defend my selections. In previous relationships with the Calvinophiles the pressure to be reading Lacan or someone irrepressibly hip like Kundera was ever-present. I wouldn't dare be caught reading The Devil Wears Prada for fear of immediately shedding all sexual and intellectual appeal. This may be indicative of my own insecurities, but still, who wants to spend her life furtively reading copies of Sue Grafton novels on the toilet to escape detection? I hate the side of me that takes classist pleasure in reading Tolstoy on the bus, and love my fiance's absolute indifference to public opinion of his taste in books.

And the best part is that while I wouldn't have deigned to touch George R. R. Martin 5 years ago, I'm now eagerly awaiting the fifth book in the Game of Thrones series. The T-man and I have great conversations about the series' characters and historical rootedness; our shared experiences of reading the books bring us closer. So what if we're dorks? At least we're happy dorks.

And finally, any form of reading that connects a human with a paper page, bound up in a real book, with its book smell and the indulgence of glorying in a story in bed under the covers, nose pressed to page, hands turning without your noticing, is a miracle in a digital age. When you find someone who appreciates the sensuality of literature, any literature, a man who willingly turns away from the glowing allure of his laptop, why argue over whether the book he's holding is Camus or Crichten? Instead, sigh with relief that he still glories in the physical. I doubt such glory stops with the book.

The Great Bread Experiment

Have you ever read the Minimalist? The name sounds like a modernist comic book hero, I know, but the Minimalist is actually a food column in the New York Times that focuses on recipes that require minimal time and ingredients. I loved this summer's article on 100 ten-minute meals--based on simple, healthy ingredients like white beans, olive oil, garlic, fresh tomatoes, chorizo and pimenton, all of which I generally have on hand, the T-man and I ate delicious, quick meals all season long. (T-man, by the way, is the name I have assigned my mon fiance to protect his identity. I hate the ubiquitous DH.)

Tonight, I decided to try a new minimalist recipe: artisan bread. According to the article, using a fraction of the yeast, allowing for a 20-hour rise, and cooking the bread in a dutch oven creates a toothsome crust and moist interior that mimics bakery bread. Hmm. My dough did not look promising as it plopped into the hot Creuset 30 minutes ago (it also looked depressingly triangular), but that could be blamed on the fact that I left it to rise on the top of the stove as I preheated the oven. Who knew the stove top would get so hot? And now the bread smells, well, hot. Kind of metallic from the searingly hot Creuset and kind of burnt crust-ish. But I dare not open the pot until the timer goes off, because I still believe in the magic of this recipe. Despite the rising gaff, I will produce an artisan-quality loaf. The Minimalist said so!

Recipes are wonderful precisely because they hold out the carrot of culinary mastery to all and sundry. One always gets the giddy sense when beginning a recipe that this meal is going to be the best ever. I usually picture myself demurely offering the goods to my friends and family, modestly brushing off the praise while building a reputation for domestic excellence. And, unlike higher education, which dangles the carrot of future happiness and then goes scampering off into the woods with your clothes, leaving you naked, humiliated and working in retail, recipes will eventually make good on their promises. You might have to bake the bread a few times to get it right, but you will, and your friends and family will love you for it and you'll feel like the bee's knees.

And, oh!, I just pulled the bread out of the oven. It's a glorious golden hue and looks just like a crusty ciabatta. On the off chance that it's delicious, I'm providing a link to the recipe. Goodnight, and good eatin'.

Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Hating to be that bride, but...

Why is wedding hair so awful? I've been engaged for almost five months now; I have the dress, I have the location, the food, the invitations (almost), the bridal party, the bridal tea, the groom, but I can't find a decent hairstyle that doesn't look self-consciously retro and alternative, sculpted, or trashy-mid-Western-I-love-my-curling-iron-and-it-loves-me. I know that this is a trifling matter, and I really do concern myself with more worldly matters (Obama or Hillary, roast or risotto, spend the rest of my life as a depressed bookstore lackey or pursue a full time teaching career despite the extra effort, etc.), but damn it I'm a girl and I want to look GORGEOUS when I marry. Especially since I think I'm going to have to give up on the whole having heaving breasts goal. Good hair is more attainable, if more ephemeral, than growing breasts on my tiny frame. And it bounces! So the two are not inseparable. I can displace my desire for flowing, soft, luscious breasts onto my already flowing, soft, wavy (messy, dirty) hair. I'm thinking of either a spritely fairy look augmented by one hot pink blossom or a more muted but still romantic updo decorated with leaves, vines, or little flowers (see middle photo). I love my dress for its romantic, vintage, ethereal simplicity, and my hair should follow suit.

Abrupt subject change. Someone wrote a comment on my blog! This is very exciting. I was a little turned off by the commentator's possessiveness over a "catchphrase mark" that's apparently all over my blog (what is it, I wonder?), but pleased as punch that someone other than my cousin read my blog, and wasn't completely turned off by my interest in breasts, Battlestar Gallactica, food and pretentious vocabulary words. Actually, I bet there are a lot of men out there who would love a girl with sci-fi, breast, food, and language hobbies. You know what? I'm a frickin' hot nerd!

My only quibble with this self-identification is that nerds are traditionally good at math and science, and my math and science skills are abysmal. Science is okay, actually, as long as it remains theoretical or is biology. But math? Ew. Truly unpleasant. I'd actually rather eat a cooked raisin.

Which brings me to the food portion of this evening's blog. I haven't made anything interesting in the last couple of days, but I'm planning on making a magnificent cake next week (red velvet, maybe, or a chocolate coconut) and a savory bread pudding that I found in a Moosewood Cookbook. It uses stale bread, which is great because I baked a huge cottage loaf that I'll never finish in time, eggs, milk, cheese, scallions, and salt and pepper. I might throw in some ham or sausage and serve a salad. I had sausage tonight, roasted until crisp, with very thin toasted slices of cottage loaf spread thinly with sweet-spicy Russian mustard, and served alongside roasted carrots and asparagus. A big glass of chardonnay completed the meal, as did a handful of chocolate chips (I'm out of breast cake). I missed the fiance's company, but it was also nice to just read and eat. I'm reading Anna Karenina right now and the meal complemented the chapter I was reading on hunting and picnicking.

I love crafting my meals based on the books I'm reading. Karenina makes me want to cook blini, and eat pirogi and asparagus and champagne. Fantasy novels make me crave sharp cheese, apples and bread, and Indian novels definitely ramp up my curry production. Even English novels make me hungry for tea and biscuits. Speaking of which, I wish I had some McCavites digestives right now. I think I'll go in search of a late night snack.

Until next time, Little Chef

Hamentashen: Getting to the hat of the matter

I should be cleaning up the dinner and hamentashen dishes, and then reorganizing my closet (the contents on which are now on the bed in an effort to force me to reorganize the closet), so of course here I am, entering the blogosphere and honing my procrastinatory skills.

I do feel the need to say that I'm pretty responsible and don't procrastinate too badly. But it's Friday night and I'm at home washing dishes and reorganizing my closet. Not too appealing. In fact, such behavior is downright dowagerish. Reorganizing the closet is made especially unappealing since the cat will snuggle up in the closet as soon as I'm done, wreaking havoc with the linens. (I bet she's already salivating with naughty anticipation--she's a very destructive being.)

So in an effort to stave off the inevitable reorganization and feline indifference to human productivity, I'm going to write about hamentashen. Hamentashen are butter cookies baked into triangles filled with jam (yum!), poppy seed filling (ick), or chocolate (completely unnecessary, but loved by children). The triangle shape commemorates Persian Jewry's ancient and apocryphal nemesis, Haman, who wanted to eradicate the Jewish people. According to legend Haman either wore a triangular hat or had triangular ears. I hope for his sake it was the former, but the latter would go a long way towards explaining his misanthropic behavior. At any rate, on Purim, the anniversary of Jewry's miraculous rescue by the Jewish Princess Esther, Jews the world over eat miniature Hamans in a show of collective defiance and mock cannibalism. Actually, when you delve into the significance of eating one's enemy you either end up with a psychoanalytic feminist-sexual reason (likening the receptive, consumed hamentashen to the feminine victimization of the Jews, OR to the Jews' feminizing and masculine vanquishing of the apparently bi-gendered Haman) or with something equally grotesque. Obviously the vanquishing of evil before harm comes to the Jews is central to the hamentashen tradition; otherwise why not eat Fuhrer mustaches or cookies shaped like the Kossacks?

Luckily Jews never talk about the deeper issues surrounding hamenstashen. We just bake and eat them. This year's baking has been more difficult than others because I have to account for one of my Hebrew school students, whose mother doesn't let him eat sugar. I'm a little worried that my dough (currently chilling) will suffer from the substitution of honey, making it too sticky to roll or triangulate properly. (In which case Haman wins, and we can't have that.) I also have to reduce frozen berries with some honey and cornstarch, because I couldn't find sugar-free jam and I refuse to use artificial sweeteners. Oy gevalt! I think this whole "my child can't eat any sugar" is stupid. First of all, sugar and honey have similar levels of glucose. Secondly, what is this mother saving her child from? Cavities? A few additional calories? I understand and encourage restricting sweets, but forbidding them altogether is silly. It just means a less satisfying hamentashen for the rest of us, and the child's eventual sugar orgy when he establishes independence from his parents' gustatory authority.

So...want to vanquish Haman along with all the other Jews? Of course you do! And here's how:

1. Combine 2 Cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1/8 tsp salt in a small bowl.
2. In a mixer cream together 1/2 lb unsalted butter or vegetable shortening, 1 Cup sugar (or 3/4 C honey, but in that case keep adding extra tablespoons of flour to the dough until it seems not too sticky), 1 large egg, 2 packed tsp of orange zest (use an organic orange), and 1 Tb orange juice.
3. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until a dough forms.
4. Form dough into a ball, pat into a disk, and chill in plastic wrap for at least 2 hours and up to 2 days.
5. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
6. Split dough in half. Keep the second 1/2 in fridge while working with the first 1/2.
7. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface (it will be very sticky), to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into 3-inch circles, and place on cookie sheet.
8. Spoon a scant tsp of filling (jam is best, but melted chocolate will do--I suppose you could put a Hershey kiss in the middle) and (here's the important part): Fold in three sides of the circle to form a triangle. BE SURE TO PINCH THE SIDES TOGETHER TIGHTLY. Otherwise the jam will spill out, creating a miserable hamenstashen with gruesome analytical potential.
9. Bake about 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Cool and enjoy.

And with that Little Chef should sign out, so that I can clean and organize, get to bed, and spend another cheery day as a bookstore peon. On the plus side, I had the most marvelous dream about the Naked Chef last night. Staring at his chummy face all those hours at the store must be building subconscious desires.

Better not tell the fiance.

Battlestar, engage!

Entering the blogosphere. This is uncharted territory for me; I feel hubristic and expansive, extending thought tentacles into cyberspace. I doubt anyone will read my blog, but it still makes possible that secret fantasy of every diarist that the diary will be discovered, read, and found exhilarating. And the cyberspace aspect, well, that's just the cherry on the cake--not only am I, Little Chef, an emissary of words (my pronouns and adverbs alien beings, probing the universe), but a tiny Major Adama commanding my ship through unknown and dangerous territories.

Will I find Earth? Perhaps the metaphor should end here before I dissolve into unadulterated dorkiness and lose sight of the blog's primary aim, which is to discuss cooking and my opinion on sundry matters. I've just finished baking a chocolate cake and am waiting for it to cool so that I can eat a big, delicious slice with a glass of milk and watch Battlestar Gallactica.

I know you're thinking that I'm an overweight "sorry I'm just weird like that" woman, of indiscriminate age, with a Final Fantasy account and an overly educated C.V. (and probably stringy, yellowish hair), but I'm not (overweight, agey, gamey, or stringy--the overeducated C.V. applies). The chocolate cake is actually part of my plan to acquire breasts before my summer wedding. Yes, breasts! Beautiful, pale globes that will quiver in faux-maidenly anticipation of my nuptials.

Which is exactly why I need this blog. No one really wants to hear about my quivering orbs, nor will they likely materialize no matter how much chocolate cake I eat by August. Besides, I'm too health-conscious to really eat two breasts worth of cake. I work in a warehouse (surprise number two! why is a self-professed overly educated individual working in a warehouse? well, because life is ridiculous), go to the gym, and am generally very fidgety. And each fidget costs calories.

But how those calories can be regained! The possibilities for recovering calories are sumptuous; spicy, creamy, aromatic, fuggy, astringent, green and sweet, each calorie is a precious jewel mined in my kitchen and turned into finery. On my good days I am a glittering Cleopatra (or Diana Troy) of the Kitchen! And on the bad I feed my future in-laws cake without leavening and saute ground turkey with the absorbent paper still attached.

True stories. Ugly dinners.

But every captain loses battles; Cylons and those weird wrinkly-nosed creatures from Star Trek are just the interspace versions of fallen souffles and runny quiches. They will be vanquished eventually, and until then, it's a hell of a ride.

Hold onto the seat of your pants, reader. This is Little Chef, blasting off.