Copyright Infringement?

I just saw a commercial for the new Pringles Stix for the first time. Who do they think they’re fooling? Does anybody else see the uncanny resemblance to the Japanese Pocky from the Glico Company? The ubiquitous Pocky has been around since 1966 and boasts a huge variety of flavors today. Have Pringles made a legitimate licensing deal, or should Glico be kicking their ass in court? This is almost as evil as Disney plagiarizing “Kimba the White Lion” by Osamu Tezuka to make “The Lion King”. Pringles – can’t you invent your own damned snack?

Top Ten Foods

Anyone who can relate to “High Fidelity” (either the book or the movie adaptation) will understand my penchant for top ten lists. These lists give me perspective on who I am at each phase of my life as well as who I’ve been.

I’ve started to wonder what my top ten foods are today. I’ve excluded beverages, condiments and complex/cooked dishes in order to focus on essential ingredients. You would think that this facilitated my choices, but it kept me occupied for hours. Do I choose the foods I couldn’t live without? Or foods that have the greatest versatility? Or maybe I should be picking foods that get me excited when I see them on the ingredient list for a recipe. Can I choose foods that I’ve only had a few times in my lifetime, either because of their price or rarity?

It took me a while but here is my list:

10. lemons
9. umeboshi (sour pickled plums)
8. lemongrass
7. toro (fatty tuna belly)
6. foie gras
5. white truffles
4. cheese, especially soft-ripened varieties
3. Japanese short-grain white rice
2. tororo imo (Japanese mountain yam)
1. natto (fermented soy bean)

The top four were no-brainers because they’ve always been the same. The remaining six actually came as a surprise – I hadn’t realized how much my tastes had changed (evolved?) over the years. All the cooking I’ve done, restaurants I’ve dined at, food porn magazines I’ve drooled through... they’ve formed my idea of “yummy”. And considering how many people have told me that I’m too whitewashed by North American culture to be truly Japanese any more, it’s encouraging that half of the list consists of foods that are particular to Japanese cuisine. The impact of a mother’s home cooking is undeniable.

What are your Top Ten?

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

The problem with living alone, especially if you enjoy cooking, is using up all your groceries before they go bad. There are days when I am forced to polish off the leftovers or unused scraps of food before heading out for any more provisions.

I had five eggs on the verge of expiry. I already had two eggs the day before. I had no flour so I couldn't bake a cake. What to do?

I decided to make a frittata, using up all my leftovers. I thinly sliced some waxy yellow potatoes and lined a pie plate with it. I had enough to lay down two layers, then sprinkled freshly ground salt, pepper, sumac, and drizzled a bit of oil. I roasted the potatoes in the oven until soft. Then I layered some baby spinach, shredded chicken meat left over from cooking the chicken stock, and torn sprigs of rosemary. Over all of this, I poured the five eggs, lightly mixed. I considered the dish done when the egg had set. As a finishing touch, I sprinkled some crumbled blue cheese.

The Life Saver

When I was two, I was hospitalized for a month, plagued by a mysterious ailment. I had high-grade fever and I was red and swelling up. My heart was functioning abnormally. Doctors were at a complete loss and were probably secretly pleased to be presented with a medical mystery. My parents thought I was going to die. My father bought a clunky, analog alarm clock for the long, bedside vigil as I was subjected to an endless series of tests.

(You'll understand why the anecdote related by Ian Holm's character near the end of Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter" moves me to tears. The overhead shot of the father holding his infant daughter dying of an insect bite, pen knife at the ready to perform a tracheotomy should she asphyxiate during the long drive to the hospital, is one of the most powerful images in modern cinema.)

No one knew that I was displaying the symptoms of Kawasaki Disease, an illness that was first identified only a few years earlier. Japanese toddlers are more susceptible to this disease than children of any other ethnicity. Although the cause is still unknown, treatment is fairly straightforward today. I was not so lucky back in 1974.

Given that other symptoms include cracked lips, swollen lymph nodes around the neck, and blisters on the tongue, it's not surprising that I stopped eating. Everyone desperately tried to get food into me but I refused.

I don't know why, but my parents stocked the little fridge in my hospital room with natto. As it happened, that was the one and only food I would eat voluntarily. You could say that natto saved my life.

Natto (納豆) is fermented soy bean, usually served with a bit of Japanese mustard and soy sauce. It is extremely pungent and not universally liked, much like blue cheese and other stinky foods that are an "acquired taste". What puts people off more than the smell is the slick, slimy texture. The more you stir up the natto, the slimier it gets. I love the slime.

So, say what you will about how smelly or gross-looking natto is. I couldn't live without it.

Going Nuts

There is a small mom and pop grocery near me that offers an impressive selection of produce. They've had crates of gorgeous fresh figs, avocados the size of a fat squirrel, bright, firm okra, and the juiciest limes and lemons, just to name a few.

The other day, the shop had bags of raw peanuts in stock. I've never touched a raw peanut before. Purely out of curiosity, I bought one bag. A colleague chided me for getting it without knowing what to do with it. "This is how I learn," I replied.

The shells were moist and crisp like the flesh of a pear. So were the raw nuts inside. Their skins were a soft pink and provided a slick membrane that separated the tightly packed row of nuts. I never fully appreciated the economy of space in the way peanuts grow because when dried out, the nuts shrivel up and rattle around the hollow space they leave behind. Shucking a pound of raw peanuts was a 3-4 hour effort split across two evenings in front of the TV.

My colleague's suggestion and some Googling gave me the idea to do a peanut soup recipe. In Bolivia, the Sopa de Mani is a peanut soup with root vegetables like potatoes and carrots thrown in. In Malaysia, Asam Laksa is a soup augmented with squid or cuttlefish and sometimes pork. There is something very similar in Chinese cuisine as well. Fufu is a porridge originating from Western and Central Africa. Not all Fufu are made with peanuts, but those that do may incorporate rice or okra for extra flavor.

I boiled my raw peanuts in a few cups of chicken stock until relatively soft (they still retain some firmness even when cooked). Using my beloved hand blender, I pureed the mixture. Next, I added 2 tsp of fresh ginger, maybe 2 tsp of sel gris, the juice of one lime, around 1/4 cup of coconut water and 1/2 tsp of ground cumin. Near the end, I added 2-3 tsp of chopped cilantro. Borrowing the idea from the Fufu, I served the soup with a handful of chopped, cooked okra.

The soup had a grainy texture like oatmeal. The okra was a good complement to the acidity in the soup -- the green flesh is relatively bland but the okra seeds contributed a vegetal taste. I'm curious how it would taste with fish or pork, though I may not make this again for a while simply because peeling the peanuts took so long.

Chicken Soup for the Pissed

A few days ago, I got fed up with my unruly hair and decided to have the ponytail lopped off. I popped into a small Korean salon that I had never been to. Places like that don't mind walk-ins and charge very little for a simple cut. What I hadn't counted on was having my jacket stolen by another customer who left before me.

I did some groceries near the salon to dawdle, hoping that it was really just an honest mistake and the twit would come running back to return the jacket. The dawdling stretched to a couple of hours but no one phoned to say my jacket had returned. The twit is most likely a thieving scumbag.

I went home and made chicken stock. I had a chicken carcass in my freezer, left over from a roasted bird cooked the week before. The mirepoix -- coarsely chopped carrots, celery, and yellow onion -- went into the boiling pot of water. My "secret" ingredient for brilliant chicken stock (actually a clever tip borrowed from chef Michael Smith) is to throw in some fresh chicken wings. They are extremely rich in flavor and gelatin and gives the finished stock the correct jelly-like consistency when it cools.

By the time I bundled the bouquet garni in cheesecloth, using fresh rosemary sprigs, black peppercorns, dried oregano, and a bay leaf, I started to feel less irritated about my pilfered jacket. The aroma of home made chicken stock has a marvelous way of warming up a house on a cold night. I let the pot simmer for a steady three hours before straining the liquid. The flesh was literally crumbling off of the wings; they were saved for future use. This made the cats lose their minds and they were pawing at my pants for a sample.

So, I may be one jacket short but I have a giant container of fresh chicken stock in my fridge. Small but reasonable consolation.

Going on Break

I won't be able to post very much over the coming week. My basement is undergoing some renovations. Given that my modem hookup in the basement needs to be dismantled in the meantime, I won't have much Net access until the work is done. Not that people are clamoring to see new posts here... but I will keep on cooking and have extra posts prepared for when I get back online.

Curried Carrot Soup

...And one day later, here it is: my own curried carrot soup. It consists of:

• carrots
• chicken broth (stock would have been even better, but I didn't have any fresh stock on hand)
• coconut milk
• lemongrass
  
• cardamom pods
• curry powder
• ground coriander seeds
• fresh cilantro
• fresh ginger
• turmeric
• ground cumin seeds
• fish sauce

The garnish is a crispy fried sage leaf. It has a slight bitterness and crunch that complements the sweet, creamy soup.

The soup is so thick and hearty that it can be a meal on its own. However, if you prefer to cut the calories or have it more liquid, you can omit the coconut milk and use only chicken stock or broth. In the past, I have used potatoes as a thickening agent in place of heavy cream. I've read that sweet potatoes go very well with curry. Alternatively, someone told me that moist bread crumbs could also be used as a reduced-calorie thickening agent.

Obscene Vegetables

I seem to have a knack for picking up batches of vegetables that include mutants. Especially mutants that remind me of something obscene. Or is my mind obscene and I'm just projecting my thoughts onto these little freaks of nature?

Farmer's Market

Whenever I have to show someone around town, I'm naturally inclined to take them to a venue related to food. Even if my guest doesn't cook, I'm sure he or she doesn't mind eating and I will gladly cook for them if they wish. Teens have their malls; dog owners have their parks; jocks have their sports bars. Groceries, butcher shops, patisseries, organic food stores, and other foodie venues are my regular hangouts.

Of all such joints, the Farmer's Market is one of my happiest of Happy Places. Apart from the environmental benefits of eating organic, locally grown produce that have not spent days or weeks in transit on the back of a truck, there is also the exciting sense of adventure: I am guaranteed to find something that I have never seen, tasted or cooked with before. That gets me stoked like the day before my seventh birthday.

Take, for instance, the rainbow carrots pictured here. I didn't even know about them until Ireen took me to the market yesterday. I also didn't know that carrots weren't originally orange -- Noelle who came with us to the market said that it was the Dutch who cultivated the carrot to be what it is today in honour of the House of Orange. The humble carrot began its existence as a bitter root vegetable that came in every color but orange.

And get a load of the gold beets and candy stripe beets. Their names alone tickle the palate. Add to that the exquisite colors and mild sweetness, and you have the inspiration for many recipes to come. Imagine the gold beets pureed into a soup, garnished with herbs. Or a crunchy salad starring the striped beets, accompanied by mixed greens and crumbled goat cheese under a drizzle of golden olive oil.

The unknown poses a thrilling culinary challenge that winds me up like a boxer in the ring. There are ingredients to be discovered, flavor combinations to be surprised by, and new methods of preparation that can transform and elevate the foods we already know.

Grocery shopping without a menu is an example. Although it's not economical for a small household to stock up on fresh produce -- much of which will wilt, rot or over-ripen if not consumed within a few days -- I'll sometimes go to the store without an agenda or preconceptions about what I might find or what I plan to cook. It forces me to experiment, working only with what I have in my kitchen. It's not always successful, but it's an education.

For example, the size and vivid color of the upright carrots (left) kept drawing me in despite other distractions such as plump, ruby-colored raspberries and fresh, baked pies. I'm not crazy about carrots, but I wanted these carrots. I didn't know what I would be doing with them. If nothing else, I'd have lots and lots and lots of carrot sticks this week. My skin might turn orange, my eyesight could improve, and I'd be prodigiously regular.

However, I realized today that I have yellow onions, ginger, sage, curry, coriander seeds, chicken broth and cilantro at home. This gives me a chance to reinvent a recipe I developed some time ago for the cookbook. It was good, but not great. See if it turns out any better tomorrow!

Eating With Your Eyes

I wanted to make Oyako-don (親子丼) for supper today and post the picture on the blog. Oyako means "parent and child" in Japanese, and in this case, it references the use of both chicken and egg in the recipe; don is short for donburi which is the deep ceramic serving bowl used in Japanese dining.

Generally speaking, if the name of a Japanese dish ends with "-don", it is a one-bowl meal that features carbs (in the form of rice or noodles), protein (chicken, pork, beef, fish, eel, or whatever else strikes your fancy), and vegetables (sprouts, onion, carrots, mushrooms, etc.). I have a particular fondness for donburi cooking -- it's soothing to cradle a warm bowl in your hands, a whole meal in one vessel, bathing your face in the steam and aroma of the food. And when you're done, there's only one bowl to wash... yay!

The trigger for cooking Oyako-don was watching chef Josh Dechellis challenge Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. The secret ingredient was chicken eggs. Dechellis' specialty is Asian cuisine and one of the dishes he made -- to my delight -- was the Japanese Chawanmushi, an ultra-light egg custard which I associate with fond childhood memories. However, it disappointed me that nobody thought to pair chicken with egg as in the Oyako-don. The more I thought about it, the more I craved it.

What I hadn't counted on was how the Oyako-don would look in a photograph. The sight of it can make my mouth water because I know what's in it and how it tastes. But to a gaijin (foreigner) who has never had it, let alone heard of it, it's actually quite ugly. I tried to take photos but it looked like a pale brown slurry slopped on a bed of rice. Which is so unfair given how intoxicating the smells are and how wonderfully savory and comforting the flavors are. I thought the problem might be with my photography skills but a quick Google search turned up professional photographs that looked just as bad.

Which of course is a reminder that we eat with our eyes as much as with our mouths and noses. A few years ago, I discovered that azuki (sweet red bean) plus cream cheese was a pairing made in heaven. I made some mini tartlets filled with a puree of azuki and cream cheese. The taste was lovely but the filling had the sickly purple-brown hue of squashed earthworm. I would be embarrassed to serve something so revolting to the eye.



It took me nearly a year to reinvent the combination in the form of my Azuki Brownie Cheesecake: by keeping the two ingredients in separate layers of the same dish, the unfortunate melding of the colors was avoided while preserving the flavors. This will be one of the recipes going into the cookbook.

I'm going to see if there is an appetizing way of plating Oyako-don. Stay tuned.

Last Meal

The theme of my cookbook is essentially "comfort food", although I don't like using that term in this context because people often turn to junk food for solace. My focus for the book is on foods that are good for you -- ingredients that are known to elevate moods, increase energy, and provide much-needed nutrition to a person suffering (and likely starving themselves) in a depressed state. There are scientific reasons for stuffing our faces with potato chips or drowning ourselves in alcohol to cope with hardship. Our bodies may be seeking a glycemic high, for example, but without realizing that foods with a high glycemic index will burn out fast and lead to an insulin crash that only makes you hungrier and more worn out.

But I digress. Here's where I'm going with this: the link between comfort food and personal crisis is never more evident than when a death row inmate is asked to choose his or her last meal. I apologize for this morbid association and I mean no disrespect to anyone. The germ for this idea started while I was doing my research for the book. I stumbled upon "My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals". It's one thing to ask the average person what they would like to have as their last meal, but a world class chef is sure to have the most extravagant request... or would he/she? The biggest revelation of the book is that most of these chefs cherish the simplest foods, foods that they've loved since childhood, foods that remind them of happy memories and family. As H.B. points out in his book (I'm not even going to say his name any more because I've quoted him too many times in one week already), the "perfect" food is usually linked with memory and personal preference, not the culinary prowess it takes to make it.

The polar opposite of a star chef's last meal is the last meal request of a hardened criminal on death row. It is interesting but not exactly surprising to me that there are so many websites, articles, books, etc. that track this bit of trivia. Dead Man Eating is a site that compiles and archives the final menus of executed convicts.

Take for example the May 2007 execution of Christpher J. Newton in Ohio. He was imprisoned for burglary but sentenced to death for murdering his cellmate: they had gotten into a row over a game of chess. Newton's final meal request consisted of steak, asparagus, brussels sprouts, feta cheese, a soft drink, cake and watermelon. For those of you who know how much I hate brussels sprouts, you can imagine my bafflement over his choices.

Texas used to publish an online list of last meal requests of the inmates executed in their state. Due to numerous complaints that the list was "in poor taste and too voyeuristic", the page was removed. But is it really so morbid and strange to be curious about it? As I see it, it's one last grasp at the things we loved most in life, at least in terms of food. There's an irony, of course, that they are savoring life as a last act -- the very thing they robbed from their victims.

"Meals to Die For" by Brian Price is a record of the last meals he cooked for 300 death row inmates over 11 years. Price was already in prison for a lesser offense when he earned the job of prison chef as part of a plea bargain. He learned how to cook on the fly and made everything from scratch. Cheeseburger with french fries was apparently the most popular last meal. Most convicts chose dishes rooted in their ethnic or cultural origins. Price tells this anecdote which I find poetic:

"One man ordered butter beans which was difficult to prepare, but it was something his mum made him when he was a kid and I knew it would take him back to a time when it was peaceful. So I cooked them real slow. There was this little old black guy -- a prisoner named Monroe who walked up and smelt the cooking and said: 'Mmm, I love butter beans, who they for?' and I said, 'Well, Monroe, they're for the guy they're fixin' to kill'. And he said: 'Mmmm, don't want no dead man's beans, I got enough problems'."

The 50 ft diet!

Hi there, I'm Lynn - Mugino's friend. I've been very fortunate this year with my veggie crop. Must have been the chicken poo that kept the squirrels off the patch. There is good incentive for the environment to eat food that's grown within 100 miles of your house. For the entire month of August, I committed myself to all things vegetarian (from my garden) and I survived on 7 different kinds of veggies that I grew. I call it the 50 ft diet :) cause that's probably the approximate distance from my garden to the basement kitchen. The dishes were not fancy and kept very simple - the zucchini flower quesadillas had an interesting flavour.

Stage Fright

I've just come from a screening of Richard Linklater's latest film, "Me and Orson Welles". The acting bug is an ailment that has thankfully never bitten me despite numerous amateur performances during my school years. So I couldn't fully relate to the film's notion that actors would put up with Welles' ego and abuse strictly for the love of the craft. I would lose the will to take the stage if a man of his greatness was calling me a "talentless sh*t".

However, after leaving the theatre, it occurred to me that my love of cooking puts me in the same predicament as that of an actor: the perpetual fear that your audience may not like your performance. You see, for all my ambition go get my cookbook published, I don't actually know if my food is any good.

I know what I like. But that's all I know. For example, I am extremely fond of my creation (yet to be named) which involves Jasmine rice steamed in a mixture of coconut milk, green curry paste, lemongrass, lime juice, lime zest, and fish sauce. Sometimes I add greens like baby spinach or rapini to exaggerate the almost all-green list of ingredients. (I could probably call it Emerald Rice but that sounds like the name of Chinese dive that might serve predictable fare like General Tao Chicken.) I find the flavor deeply satisfying and I never tire of making it.

Would I ever serve it to another person? The thought petrifies me. I have absolutely no idea if someone else would like it. Taste and food preferences are so intrinsically subjective. Even Heston Blumenthal (yes, I'm quoting him again) readily admits that his idea of culinary perfection will not necessarily match with anybody else's. How can I predict if someone else would share my enthusiasm for the blend of sweet, salty, sour, spicy and umami in this dish?

You're probably thinking that I should rely on the feedback of my dinner guests. Yet haven't you ever pretended to enjoy a dish that was truly horrible for the sake of the person who cooked it for you? I always ate my plate clean at my parents' house but if you thought that meant I liked boiled brussel sprouts as much as roast chicken, you are sorely mistaken. I just couldn't stomach the guilt of knowing that there were starving children elsewhere, so who was I to refuse food?

I once had a boyfriend who wouldn't hide his distaste for something I made. He made the most contorted grimace when he dunked a pita wedge into a bowl of my home-made hummus. In my defense, I should point out that he had never had hummus before and didn't know what to expect. He later claimed to like hummus which did nothing to mend my self-doubt.

Gordon Ramsay says that you will never be a great chef if you don't care about the person eating your food above all else. Actors and cooks alike are in pursuit of an appreciative audience. They want validation as much as they want to perform. Yet that validation is abstract and ephemeral. Maybe that's why actors have so many awards shows for themselves. I can't fault Sally Field for exclaiming at her Oscar acceptance speech, "you like me right now, you like me!" It's nice to know for sure, at least for a moment, that somebody out there enjoyed your performance.

Still, I cook... in spite of my insecurities. For me, it's an expression of affection. I wouldn't be cooking for you if I didn't like you. Hopefully that's good enough reason for you to come to the table.

I Say Tomato

My good friend and fellow foodie Ireen picked up some heirloom tomatoes for me from a farmer's market she discovered near work. The range of colors, shapes, sizes and the shiny flesh makes me think of gumballs.

Lately, I've been developing a passion for the smaller varieties of tomato, like grape, cherry and plum. Not only do they physically explode on contact, they hold a concentrated flavor that explodes on the tongue. My favorite thing to do with them is to halve them, spread them out on a baking sheet, sprinkle tiny pinches of salt and sugar, drizzle olive oil, then slowly roast them until they dry out. They are phenomenal on their own, but also in sandwiches, with pasta, on rice, or whatever else you can think to do with them.

My imaginary boyfriend, Heston Blumenthal, believes that the ultimate tomato flavor can be achieved by extracting the gelatinous bits and seeds from the hollow locular cavities within the tomato, passing the gooey mess through a sieve, then slowly reducing the liquid over low heat until it has a ketchup-like texture. I've yet to try this but you can bet I'm itching to. I've made my own home-made ketchup in the past and I wonder how it would compare.

Granola people and purists believe that heirloom tomatoes are the best. Almost all the tomato varieties we see in supermarkets are actually genetically engineered hybrids. Tomatoes cultivated from the original, untampered seeds are called heirlooms. To be honest, I haven't been able to taste a difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes of the same size. Like I said, my choice of tomato is more dictated by size (and water content) than genetic strain. While I love the candy-sized varieties, I also like a good beefsteak tomato on a hamburger. And what better to use in a pasta sauce than Roma tomatoes?

The emerald green tomatillo is something I have yet to cook with. It comes from the same family of plants as the tomato but belongs in a different genus (thanks Wiki!). I'm not sure if the tomatillo is the fruit used in "fried green tomatoes" (or is it simply an unripe tomato?) but ever since I saw the movie of the same name, I've been salivating over the idea of frying some up.

Music for Foodies

For three days now I've had a song stuck in my head on permanent rotation: the bubblegum gangsta tune "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. It was used in the trailers for "Pineapple Express" and in "Slumdog Millionaire" when the slum kids are hustling people for cash.



As the tune bounced around my head on the subway ride home, I pondered if there were any foodie songs -- songs that can evoke the sensory experience of eating something delicious. At first, I dismissed this idea as a random brain fart. But it hardly took any effort to come up with a few titles.

The very first thing I thought of was Cibo Matto's debut album, "Viva! La Woman". Every song on the record is related to food. Take the song "White Pepper Ice Cream", for example:

White pepper ice cream
It's like a line drawing
It snipped my heart
White pepper ice cream
In my mouth
It stings my lips
It's like an eclipse

It instantly evokes the clash of creamy sweetness on the tongue contrasted with the slow burn on the lips. Combined with Miho Hattori's adorable Japanese accent, the song acquires a gamine charm. Then there's the heart-breaking "Artichoke":

My heart is like an artichoke
I eat petals myself one by one
Until I feel enough
Until I lose to laugh [...]

I keep asking for you more and more
Can you peel my petals one by one?
Your hands are like a rusty knife
Are you gonna keep on peeling me?

For absurdist foodie music, there's the classic "Lollipop" by the Chordettes, which is more sugary than the candy itself. And of course, "Coconut" by Harry Nilsson:

Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime
His sister had another one, she paid it for the lime
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up [repeat 3 times]

There's something about saying "lime in the coconut" 26 times in one song that invokes the grassy hard shell of the fruit and the milk swishing around inside.



The wacky Montreal band Les Amis Au Pakistan has goofy bilingual songs like "Beautiful Hamburger" and "Pomme Segara". But the song that's bugging me right now is "Cendrillon Lave Le Poêle" (Cinderella Washes the Stove). Yeah, yeah, I'll clean my bloody oven.

The video for God Lives Underwater's "From Your Mouth" directed by Roman Coppola features the improbably skinny hot-dog eating champ Hirofumi Nakajima. Nakajima consumes a vast amount of food but the film is shown in reverse. The song is about the lies and gossip that people tell, but frankly it was the video that made a huge impression on the MTV crowd. To this day, I'm not sure if watching it makes me more or less inclined to eat.



What are your favorite foodie tunes?

Why?

I suppose I ought to explain why I'm doing this blog, especially since I'm not totally sold on the whole blog concept to begin with. I have no problem with celebrities and other smart or talented people doing blogs. They're interesting people with interesting things to say, even if they don't write very well. Those of you maintaining your own blogs are interesting. I'm about as interesting as Charlie Brown on tranquilizers. (Then again if good ol' Chuck took drugs, that might actually be interesting... so perhaps I need a better analogy.)

But this blog isn't about me. This is about a childhood friend who died soon after his wedding in a horrible accident. This is about his devastated bride and his heart-broken mother. This is about my sudden compulsion to cook for them when I couldn't think of anything right to say or do. The end result of this blog -- I'm hoping -- will be a cookbook dedicated to them, crammed with recipes that can nourish the heart as well as the stomach. I work better and faster with a fire lit under me. The scrutiny of blog readers might be the fire I need to stay on track. If you get something out of it too, then this wasn't a waste of time.

Inspiration from Perfection

The Heston Blumenthal books arrived today! It's like Christmas except the present came from me. I could hardly contain myself as I tore open the Amazon box.

When I first heard of it, molecular gastronomy blew my mind. Synonymous with molecular gastronomy is Heston Blumenthal. I became aware of him when he was featured on Gourmet magazine's TV series, "Diary of a Foodie". His signature creations include "Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream" and "Hot and Iced Tea" (in which the beverage is simultaneously hot and cold within the same cup, without any physical partition). For more, just take a look at his current tasting menu at The Fat Duck. Is it any wonder that the restaurant has earned three Michelin stars every year since 2004?

Now that I finally have access to the Food Network, I'm able to catch his weekly BBC series, "In Search of Perfection". This show is like crack cocaine for me. I love Blumenthal for the same reasons I worship Jacques Pepin: he is a master of his craft but isn't above sharing his knowledge with the average joe. Furthermore, he is a fantastic teacher because he can make the culinary arts accessible to all. He explains techniques and his thought processes as a discerning chef in the clearest language possible. He comes across as genuine, thoughtful and unpretentious. Best of all, he's open about his mistakes and various kitchen disasters -- this helps me feel less afraid to experiment, to try something daring because it just might taste good.

His two books, "In Search of Perfection" and "Further Adventures in Search of Perfection" are companions to the TV series. In great detail, he recounts his travels, research and experiments in pursuit of the perfect steak, the perfect hamburger, the perfect pizza, the perfect meal. I was astonished the first time I leafed through the pages in the bookstore: this guy wrote a lot about food in a very short time. And it's all quality material that makes my mouth salivate even just looking at the text, never mind the pictures. How does he do it???

Step One: Cleaning

This isn't a medieval torture chamber. It's the interior of the stove I inherited from my house's previous owners. This photo doesn't do justice to the level of grime and corrosion I found inside. The bottom drawer is even worse: I found filthy roasting pans and rotting pieces of food.

It's been just over a month since I moved in, and I've scrubbed, mopped, rinsed, scraped and disinfected almost every corner of this house. I've plucked out dessicated bug carcasses from the inside of my door chime. I've fished out clumps of hair from the bath drain. I've even washed a garbage can that reeked of rotting meat. But I've yet to work up the nerve to tackle the oven.

I hate cleaning ovens. Correction: I really hate cleaning ovens. Which is crippling for me as a foodie because I haven't been able to bake, roast or broil anything since moving in. There is something truly revolting about a cleaning task that requires getting down on your knees and sticking your head into the contaminated space. And let's not forget the toxicity of the oven cleaner and its nasty fumes. Anything that needs that kind of cleaning power is not something you want to get close to.

This is proving to be a serious test of my passion for cooking. Can it overcome my absolute dread of cleaning the oven?

Well obviously it's going to have to. I'm determined to finish my cookbook.