Off to Spain today, to work on the LP Spain walking guide–basically the same turf as my April trip, but an enforced slower pace.
As I leave for the airport, there is still a kerfuffle over the title of mine and Tamara’s cookbook, which some of you may’ve heard about via Facebook last week. I am still deep-down appalled at the idea that American book-buyers allegedly can’t handle seeing the letters “f-ing” on the cover of a book (let me be clear: nowhere on the cover would “the fuck-word,” as the witty Joanna calls it, actually have appeared), and yet many much broader social indecencies seem to be no problem at all. Also, that plenty of men have books with bad words in the title, but apparently it’s just too shocking over in the girly cookbook stacks.
Also, though, I live in New York City, where expletives hang in the air thick as smog. So what do I know?
But crisis = opportunity, and all that. So the boss of a friend of ours suggested Forking Delicious. Dorktastic! We went with that.
Alas. Some ladies in Philadelphia have been using the phrase for many years, and even though I don’t see any step toward copyrighting or trademarking on their website, well, I guess it wouldn’t be fair. Plus, they only live in Philly, so it’s just a train ride away to rough us up in a dark alley. There are more of them than there are of us.
So, now. Leaving for airport in one hour. Title still up in the air. Fucking, arg, I mean Forking Fantastic is the top choice.
The one nice thing about this whole process (have I mentioned, the title had been settled for more than a year? and the last time we got nervous about it, three months ago, they assured us it would be totally fine?) is a friend of mine dug up this book, while searching for other obscene titles:
Premise is that “fuck it” is the Western equivalent of Eastern Buddhist detachment, etc. I feel so enlightened already! I’ll be breathing deep and saying “fuck it” all the way to the airport.
Probably not too much posting in Spain. We’ll be in the ass of nowhere most of the time, getting sunburned and eating ham.
Just entertain yourself by answering this poll, please. I’m curious…
My mother has this saying, “It’s hell having a good time.” Best uttered near the tail end of a party, when exhausted, or when the logistics of entertaining oneself prove very challenging.
Also, to oneself when lying in bed, bloated with delicious food.
I signed up for a culinary tour of Syria because I love Syria and I love Syrian food. Makes sense, right? Let’s just say I didn’t really think through the implications of the phrase “group trip”–ie, that we did everything as a group. And that was a lot of things, and never really included naps.
Maybe I do more stuff in a day when I’m on a research trip, but, hey, that’s work. Syria was my big vacation. So when I had to roll out of bed the first day after just five hours of sleep, it felt a little rough. Actually, it felt like karmic payback for nearly wrecking my mother during my research trip to Spain.
Granted, I’m inherently lazy, and there’s something to be said for making me do stuff. But, ohhh, I never thought I would complain about having to eat so much in such a short time. But here I am.
What we ate was remarkable. It happened to be the season for rose-petal jam, so there was quite a lot of that. Also, of artichokes–though I think the Syrians are so into sour that they sometimes forget salty, and artichokes need a lot of salt; some we ate were quite bland and didn’t have that special zing.
It was also the season for desert truffles, or kama’. I’d never had them before, and I started to get worried that we wouldn’t get any, because it was supposedly near the end of the season. Not to worry–at a massive dinner at the Club d’Alep, they were served two ways. I could only muster a couple of bites, though, because yet again, I’d managed to eat too much that day, and each bite of that dinner felt like it might be my last, before a Monty Python-esque explosion.
They were intriguing. Nice dense mushroomy texture, with a mellow, kind of all-purpose spring-vegetable taste that lasted a surprisingly long time. Nothing at all like European truffles, of course, but then neither are Mexican truffles, or huitlacoche. “Truffle” is the new “Riviera,” in terms of creative naming.
We also tasted quite a lot of varieties of kibbeh. I rarely order it myself, because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. But we had a very nice grilled rendition, filled with a molten center of pomegranate molasses and nut paste, and the more I looked around, the more varieties I saw and tasted.
Sweets
One night mid-trip, I was lying in bed, again in some digestive misery, and it dawned on me that my money would probably have been better spent on, say, a trip to China, where I really do need someone to lead me around and translate, and to explain the food to me.
And then I woke up the next day, and we went to Pistache d’Alep, a fancy bakery, and visited the kitchens. Not being a huge sweets fan, I wasn’t expecting much. But, whoa. Words cannot begin to convey the complete niftiness of the industrial equipment at work, and the depth of craftsmanship in all the meticulous handwork. I put up a whole separate Flickr set just for the bakery trip. Don’t skip the videos.
After having my mind boggled by all the weird sweets-producing technology, we had coffee (and more sweets!) with Willy Wonka himself, who used to live on Long Island. His right-hand man, Hassan, expounded on food in a philosophical way that reminded me of Ali.
We absolutely must eat seasonally, he said, because our health comes from nature–not only is it wrong to eat oranges in the summer, he said, it’s bad for your health too. While he was saying this, however, this was going on outside the windows of the cafe:
I cannot explain…
Getting Schooled
The other really outstanding thing we did was go to the house of a woman chef for a cooking demonstration and big lunch. I could’ve sat there for days and watched her stuff eggplants. We occasionally were put to work, but kind of botched it. Here she is impatiently emptying out a mis-stuffed eggplant and refilling it the proper way.
I also learned the dirty secret to muhammara, the red-pepper-and-walnut paste: sugar. Loads of it. Also, citric acid. Apparently all the restaurants use citric acid instead of lemon juice, because the flavor doesn’t go off as fast. Of course purists frown on this, but still fascinating to know. Will mentally file with judicious use of MSG.
Solo in Damascus
After that was all over, and I bid fond adieu to my fellow travelers (the actual group part of the ‘group trip’ was excellent), I got on a train back to Damascus. On previous trips, I’ve spent just about all my time in Aleppo, so aside from a memorable nap in the Umayyad Mosque and some excellent blackberry juice just outside it, I had little impression of Damascus.
So it was a double treat to explore a new city, and to do it completely on my own terms with no schedule whatsoever. I really just wandered aimlessly for three days, eating street snacks and taking photos.
I did get a good scrub at a hammam, and drank myself nearly sick on frozen lemonades and mulberry juice. My last night in Damascus, after the one lemon slush I really didn’t need, I collapsed on my bed in a mild sugar shock.
Some random observations: Syrian men are exceedingly polite (I even witnessed a man chide his son for making flirtatious noises at me–export to Egypt, please!), but they are also giant hams. Some of the most fun I had was taking pictures of all the guys who begged me to. I was very glad to have a digital camera.
Syria seems like a notably less paranoid place than when I first visited 10 years ago. Change is happening. And here’s hoping the US doesn’t somehow screw it up with some ham-fisted negotiations.
It’s also a far less cheap place than when I first visited. That’s probably rough for Syrians, but OK by me–it used to be embarrassing how cheap it was. Now it’s on par with Egypt, roughly.
Syria is still the only place in the world I’ve gone back to just because I like it so much–if it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I suppose I do. And I’d still go back–maybe next time in the fall, for a whole range of different seasonal treats.
I leave for Syria on Wednesday, for a week of dining with Anissa Helou and a gang of other people who think this is a delicious idea. It is my third trip to Syria, and I cannot wait. I’m looking forward to green almonds, buttery sweets, passing kindnesses and maybe the elusive desert truffle. I will probably be too stuffed too blog regularly, but believe you me, I will let you know in the end.
In the meantime, you may content yourself with SALTS: The Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine. The helpful folks sent me a link months ago–I’m finally leaping into action. I’m a huge canned sardine fan, having been raised on them enthusiastically enough that I thought it was normal to take them for school lunch. No one ever wanted to swap with me, but their loss.
Also, if you need some more home-cooking inspiration, visit Cathy Erway at Not Eating Out in New York. If you’re not hopelessly out of the Brooklyn food loop like I am, you probably already know about her. But it is great to see someone take the leap to home cooking (especially in NYC), and rock it in such a short time. Totally coincidentally, she has a book coming out this fall, from the same publisher as ours and Tamara’s. And I like that a lot of her food skews Asian-y, because I don’t cook that way much.
And in that same vein, yowza, thanks Eric Gower, aka The Breakaway Cook! His food is the kick in the pants I need–I’ve got a pantry full of spices, condiments and assorted syrups, and a lot of days I do precious little with it. His blog might also be the way I break into Japanese food, which I’ve failed with before because I can’t get the underlying rules. I promptly ordered his cookbook, and am very excited to see it.
Between that and my Syria trip, this summer, it’s gonna be hot in my kitchen, for sure.
First, I was planning a big trash-talk smackdown, pro-wrestling style. I’d gotten halfway into my spandex unitard and was starting to tease out my hair, and then I had a twinge. That developed into more of grad-school-y relativist approach. Now I’ve backed down from saying the Amateur Gourmet’s omelette was WRONG. It’s just different. Different in a way I wouldn’t want to eat.
Don’t get me wrong–I love the Amateur Gourmet video. It’s totally entertaining. Adam Roberts is hilarious, and so is his neighbor. The clip is goofy, and I’m a sucker for goofy. There should be more TV shows with talking pasta boxes and not-slick-looking people.
It’s just that…uh, if you follow the AG’s advice–and that of Chef Dude Whoever–you’ll wind up with a crappy omelette. (Unless it’s Opposite Day–in which case their advice will turn out a lovely tender omelette with perfectly melted cheese and a nice soft texture in the middle!)
Fine, I understand–TV is entertainment first. Or, really, money-making first, then entertaining, then maybe if you learn a little something you’re lucky. But caring so little about the end result (whether your omelette is nice and fluffy and soft or just a blob of scrambled eggs shaped in a circle with some cheese slapped in there) seems like bad practice.
If the Food Network cares so little about the actual food, perhaps it can change its name to the Fun and Money Network? I’d settle for that.
I also get that the Food Network has to cover its ass and tell you to cook your eggs all the way through. But if you do that…well, again, you wind up with something that’s a bad omelette.
But, good lord, there is no legal reason to tell people to beat their eggs for 2 or 3 minutes! That is just a silly waste of time. See the video for the right different way.
There’s a counter with 12 seats, and we all sat around watching three cooks make our meal. There’s an awkward fourth-wall problem. The cooks don’t really talk–they don’t need to, because it’s a set menu, and they know the drill. The customers don’t need to order, so that banter is gone. We could talk amongst ourselves, of course, but you feel like you have to be kind of quiet otherwise you’ll disturb the whole gestalt. And you don’t want to talk about totally inane stuff, because the poor cooks have to listen to the customers chatter all night. Not that that stopped us–we debated the merits of dishwashers for 45 minutes.
Fortunately, unlike DiFara’s, there’s music to fill the void. And in the second (and final) dessert course, the guy sitting next to me was so moved that he had to break the invisible barrier between all of us. “You were talking about which course was your favorite?!” he said to me. (I had not, but whatever.) “I assume you weren’t even counting this thing!” he went on with a swoon.
“This thing” was funnel cake with black-sesame ice cream and lemon curd. And I guess he felt like he had to talk to me about it, because his date was not eating hers. I guess I had signaled my overall enthusiasm earlier by dragging my finger through my buttermilk dressing repeatedly and licking it.
Anyway, I totally appreciate David Chang’s effort to give restaurant cooks some dignity and a good work environment. It was great to watch people cook without the hopped-up vibe in most pro kitchens. It was like the anti-Top Chef, thank god. But I wound up feeling a little stoned because all the cooks were moving so slowly.
The softshell crabs were cleaned in front of us, in a mesmerizing surgical way, then, in the only real cooking noise of the night, pan-fried with Old Bay and fuckloads of butter. (Who can argue with Old Bay?) The frozen foie gras was grated onto my bowl in heaps, atop peanut brittle and lychee gelee, creating a kind of ice-cream sundae that should’ve been delivered by a team of singing angel-waiters. The poached egg was cut open to look like Pac-Man, eating a whole mess of dots in the form of caviar. The short ribs were deep-fried and served not with ramps, because I suppose ramps are played out, but with “spring alliums,” which is the new hipster code for ramps, so that foodies can continue to eat them without feeling like they’re wasting their time with last year’s food fetish.
Oh, and speaking of fetishes, the sweetest sea urchin ever was doled out in a mammoth block, served with sugar-snap peas that were actually twee little balls of cucumber laid in the pea pods–which, I’ve got to say, is a rare brilliant leap in trompe l’oeil cuisine, because sugar-snap peas never taste like anything unless you eat them right off the plant, but the pods taste fine.
It was a great dinner. But not a jubilant night out.
This is the article I should’ve been writing, but I got scooped last fall, alas. Still, it makes me very much look forward to my trip with Anissa in May! I can’t wait for strangers to offer me food–it’s what I love most about Syria.
(PS: Editors: Ix-nay on the “unveiled” in headlines for Mid East stories, k?)
Not much more to say about that, really. Except I sing that to myself (to the tune of “I Love a Parade”) every time I see one in my hotel bathroom. And I do kind of love a bidet. But the separate one? That, what, you have to sort of stay crouched and shuffle over to from the toilet? I have never really understood that procedure.
Anyway, away from the toilet and onto the food. Things are sort of looking up. I all on my own, not cribbing from any guidebook but using only my inborn restaurant Spidey-sense, found us a super-tasty place for lunch in a little village up in the mountains. It looked like a promising village because there were a bunch of small trucks sporting the names of different cheese companies, all with addresses there.
So we wound up with wild mushrooms, all sauteed till crispy and caramelized and drizzled with garlic cream, and some rabbit in an almond sauce and little chicken croquettes to die for. Oh, and extra-nutmeggy chicken croquettes. No green vegetables, but who needs ’em? Name of tiny town and restaurant available on request. (Oh please, oh please don’t tell me it’s already in Fodor’s…)
Then, uh, things got bad again. I stupidly followed the advice of the same book that had led me to the wicker-chair-and-foie-gras horror show. And for my trouble (and it was a fuck of a lot of trouble–there is no parking in Baza!), I got chicken soup that tasted distinctly of margarine. Beverly got some macaroni that was Chef Boyardee-like in its gumminess. And we both got disapproving glowers from the waiter who cleared our main dishes. They were just 10 percent eaten and the rest shoved under a pile of soggy fries.
The cruel part is that I stopped in what smelled and looked like a great restaurant to ask directions to the crappy restaurant.
There was another hideous lunch, too, but I think I’ve just blotted that out.
The last two days, we’ve skipped lunch altogether (I mean, except for that ice cream today…), mostly because I’m sensing a mutiny in the ranks. Beverly goes to bed every night whimpering about how full she feels and saying plaintively, “Tomorrow will be a light eating day, right?”
So I’m a little fried on the food front. Have seen neither hide nor hair of the tortillitas of Bittman fame. Am only semi-hopeful…
On the general charmed-by-a-foreign-land front, though, things are going well.
For instance, the pillows in Spain are all exactly as wide as the beds. Granted, I’ve only slept in twin beds–I don’t know if they expand on larger beds. But very comfy.
Also, in Spain, they have these ingenious electric heaters that fit into the base of a table, which you then cover with a heavy blanket, and stick your feet under the blanket and on top of the heater to get all toasty.
If I’d had one of those when I lived in Cairo, I might’ve actually sat and done my Arabic homework instead of crawling into bed to get warm and feel less depressed. In fact, all those places where they think the weather is balmy enough not to warrant proper indoor heating could benefit.
Finally, in Spain, as if it needs to be said, they are into the ham. Creepily so. I saw a cartoon mural in one town of a Catholic king and a Muslim emir sitting down to a giant pig dinner. Sort of malevolent, no?
More heartwarming, though, are the words I’ll leave you with. Overheard on a street one morning in Laujar de Andarax, from one old Spanish man in a cardigan to another old man in a cardigan:
It’s because, sadly, hungry women (and men) are sitting at their desks, or up late at night at the family computer, staring moonily at food they’ve decided they can’t eat. And even if they did, they’d never have the gumption to make it themselves.
People, they call it food porn for a reason.
Staring at pictures of inaccessible food gets you all titillated and salivating. But when you click away, you feel empty inside.
To understand the true insidiousness, let’s look at real porn. (No, wait–not yet! Click back here, you!)
Real porn does not help you get laid. No one ever jumped up from watching a porno and said, “Gosh darn it, I’m going to a bar, and chatting someone up, and telling my best jokes, and then having terrific sex!”
No–they just shuffle off to bed, where the not-dirty-enough-to-wash clothes need to be swept off to one side, and the magazines are piling up.
Likewise, anyone watching the Food Network for more than ten minutes is not going to leap up and start cooking dinner. No, they’re going to sit there, glum, eating Frosted Flakes. And then shuffle off to bed.
“Maybe tomorrow I’ll cook,” they think. “I’ll cook something fresh and healthy, but also really satisfying–something kinda Giada, not all Paula Deen.” Yup, just like the avid porn consumer wakes up the next day and meets the hot chick of his dreams, who’s smart and sweet but just a little nasty.
And just as porn fashion has inspired boob jobs and merciless muff waxing, food porn has given every would-be cook the idea that what they make has to be artfully plated and garnished with edible flowers.
I’m telling you, the food porn is soul-killing. You must switch off the TV set now. You must stop idly surfing the twee, pretty-picture food blogs and flipping through the glossy mags. Put it all away, and just go into the kitchen.
Real pleasure of the culinary kind is going to be dull and a little hard to begin with–and, like sex the first few times, it will seem messy and maybe not worth all the trouble. But trust me, it gets a lot better.
And if you happen to have overlapping needs–you’re not getting laid and you’re not eating well–this is actually handy. Not having sex means you have plenty of time to learn to cook. And learning a new skill like cooking makes you confident–hence sexy, hence more likely to catch someone’s eye. (Also, you’ll probably give yourself a couple of burns or scars–also pretty damn sexy.)
And when you cook up a hot meal for that someone–straight ticket to the sack.
What you can do
This is all leading up to: my new podcast! It’s been a long time coming, but the wheels are finally in motion over at Cooking in Real Time. There’s just a little intro post there now, explaining the premise–give a listen, subscribe and get ready for next week, when I actually cook something.
Funny, I was just wondering whatever happened to Louisiana’s attempt to promote the eradication of nutria through eating it.
Apparently, it went belly-up, as it were. Now people are just encouraged to shoot them on sight–as I learned from Showdown at the West Esplanade Canal, a piece by Darrin DuFord in the new issue of Perceptive Travel.
Once you get past the gunfire, there’s a bit of info in there about the earlier attempted culinary makeover.
I don’t think I’d be too grossed out to eat nutria; and I think I’ve eaten a big rodent before, and it didn’t taste so bad. I’ve eaten pigeon, which many consider one step away from rat, and it was damn delicious.
But then I don’t have to live with nutria every day. And in the right light, they’re not so much ugly ratty vermin as otter-cute. The twin poles of inedibility, in a single animal. Confounding!
So, 
And just as porn fashion has inspired boob jobs and merciless muff waxing, food porn has given every would-be cook the idea that what they make has to be artfully plated and garnished with edible flowers.
Funny, I was just wondering whatever happened to Louisiana’s attempt to promote the eradication of