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Kitchen Sink Summer Pasta

Pictured: July 4th grilled vegetables (yellow squash, yellow zucchini, and green zucchini), homemade meatballs (from an Alton Brown recipe that I modified to include bacon and kale), turkey sausage (sweet), leftover grilled chicken from a Jersey diner sandwich, fresh tomato wedges, roasted red pepper strips, baby spinach that was about to go bad, juice from half a lemon, fresh basil ribbons, rosemary, and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano tossed with Pappardelle noodles and extra virgin olive oil.

Because nothing says happy birthday to our great nation like garish summer pastas with half the barnyard's livestock and a farm's worth of veggies.

Masaman Curry -- Culinary Distractions for our Crap Economy, Part Three

Whereas some regard President's Day as an opportunity to load up on steeply discounted electronics, my wife and I spent this last one shopping for weird groceries in Chinatown, where things are steeply discounted no matter what day it is. After meeting a pal for some sumptuous dim sum at Triple 8 Palace, we spent the next several hours bouncing from one Asian grocer to the next, and the bounty we arrived home with is what formed the crux of last night's incredibly satisfying (and cheap) dinner.

We hit Kam Man Market for some essentials, and also to ponder what we might do with a child-sized jar of dried sea scallops, were we to, y'know, just happen into one. From there, we detoured to Aji Ichiban to take advantage of their free samples of unusual (and in several cases, gross) candies and snacks. Although I was more than willing to toss a few preserved olive and honey slices down the gullet, the dried crab flakes and fishy pineapple bits were less of a success -- a fact reinforced by my wife's refusal to come anywhere near me and my new bad breath for about an hour afterwards.

From the Mott Street storefront, we headed back into the brisk February air to pass countless restaurants, vegetable stands, and cooking supply stores. In all the years I've spent lurking around Chinatown, I still think my favorite personalities are the scrappy old Chinese ladies who seem to live in a perpetual state of grocery shopping. I love watching them muscle their way up to the front of an open air grocer to bark some orders at a hapless guy with a cigarette who, in turn, wraps an entire fish in a sheet of newspaper, and fires it like a fastball into the woman's open shopping bag. Unlike a number of ill-informed tourists I've witnessed over the years, I know better than to tangle with these ladies, so when one of them shoves me out of the way, I take it as a point of pride.

With so many ethnic shops and food markets condensed into such a small geography, one might assume the available goods would be pretty much the same from one store to the next. But speaking as someone who once threw a major hissyfit on Pell Street after hours of searching for a jar of freakin' palm sugar, let me stress that each market definitely has a particular specialty, though it may not be immediately evident just by perusing its shelves. You should consider yourself lucky if you can find a guide who's able to confidently navigate Chinatown's steam-filled alleyways and dubious-looking basement bazaars. If you're a recent transplant or just a newbie to Asian groceries, start getting comfortable with the idea of lots of trial and error.

At a nameless shopfront somewhere on Doyers Street, this meal's lynchpin ingredients eventually revealed themselves in the form of one small can of Maesri brand Masaman Curry Paste, one bag of dried Thai rice noodles, and two cans of Chaokoh coconut milk (all for much better prices than you'd pay at the regular grocery store, let alone somewhere stupid like Whole Foods.) Perhaps intuiting our culinary ambitions, the shopkeeper (who had been undulating to a techno version of "Smuggler's Blues") asked if we desired lime leaves to round out our shopping expedition. Now, my wife has taught me most of what I know about proper Asian cooking, and by following her orders and poaching the notes from the numerous Thai cooking classes she took back in Boston, I've learned that lime leaves are like the secret weapon ingredient to distinguish your creation from a P.F. Chang's disaster. As such, we were happy to accept the small ziploc baggie of green foliage the shopkeeper produced from beneath the counter, and what follows is a play-by-play of how we put everything together to create the final dish. (Pause to admire author's resistance to obvious joke regarding additional types of green foliage commonly dispursed via ziploc baggie.)

Ingredients:

• Approx. 3 cups of coconut milk
• 1 1/2 - 2 lbs of boneless chicken thighs or breast (we used some of both) or beef, cut into 2" cubes.
• 1 small tin of Masaman Curry Paste
• 4-5 small red potatoes cut into fourths (we forgot to buy these, so we used two large baking potatoes.)
• 1 medium sized onion, cut into fourths
• 1/2 cup roasted peanuts (unsalted)
• 3 tablespoons of fish sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 lime leaves
• 3 tablespoons of fried shallots slices (optional)
• Fresh Thai basil leaves (for garnish)

Directions:

1. Heat oil in large wok and brown the meat well.
2. Add the coconut milk, bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes.
3. Scoop 1 & 1/2 cups of the hot milk mixture into a small frying pan. Over medium heat, whisk in the curry paste until the fat from the coconut milk rises to the top and it looks like this.
4. Pour hot curry mixture back into the wok and mix well. Add fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, lime leaves, onions, potato wedges, and peanuts. Cover and cook on low for 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are cooked through.
5. Remove from heat, remove lime leaves, and serve on top of rice or Thai rice noodles (see above). Garnish with shallots and lots of fresh Thai basil.

Presto. Dinner was piping hot, comfortably spicy, plentiful enough to produce two subsequent lunches, and only slightly more complicated than making English muffin pizzas. And the total cost of all the non-staple ingredients clocks in somewhere refreshingly below 10 bucks, which evens out to two bucks and change per food coma.

After making our final purchases below Canal Street, we ambled uptown and stopped at a bar on Houston for late afternoon drinks and a grim discussion of the current economy. After a few rounds, we marched further north towards Union Square. Passing through the East Village, we started sentimentally namechecking stores and restaurants that have been recent victims of the local financial meltdown (Mondo Kim's, Old Devil Moon, Marion's on Continental), until a vision of utter absurdity snapped things back into focus for us: A group of 10-12 crusty punks -- the kind with studded leather jackets and CRASS t-shirts that I used to see and routinely crash into at the ABC no RIO hardcore matinees of my early 20s -- all seated outside a Starbucks cafe, looking despondent, and sipping lattes.

Yes, lattes.

The world is a mess.

New Year's Dismissal, 2009 Edition

As you may have guessed, I'm not one for big parties, let alone New Year's celebrations that involve riding home on the subway with hundreds of drunks. Call me a pansy, but I think I'm still emotionally scarred from the New Year's Eve during which the packed train crapped out underneath the East River about two hours after the ball had dropped. The lights went out momentarily, and in the cramped darkness, a number of people vomited from the combination of intoxication and anxiety. This caused other riders to begin screaming and pushing one another in a panic that seemed without end. Trust me, you don't know the first thing about having a really bad time until you've been locked in a pitch black underground vomitorium.

New Year's Eve is amateur hour anyway, especially in New York, where the city routinely floods with bridge and tunnelers who are hellbent on depositing their celebration on someone else's shoes. If that's what you're into, have at it and god bless you, but I'll be once again hangin' with my homeboys Ryan Seacrest and the sushi delivery guy, as well as my extremely tolerant and understanding wife.

In years gone by, when weekly radio duties were a regular feature of my life, I would always look forward to airing the (few) songs I liked that are applicable to this most maligned of holidays. Since I haven't got a sniff of a radio gig happening this year, I shall instead point you towards the best two in my iTunes shuffle. Like the Styrenes song I wrote about a few entries ago, these tracks are perhaps only marginally related to the holidays anyway, but in my mind, they easily trump all the sparkly eyeglasses, noisemakers, and related hooey that'll become the focus across town in a few short hours. Like every proper cynic, it's my place to note that for all its soaring highs and rock-bottom lows, 2008 was a year much like any other, and one that many of us would no doubt be pleased to drag down to the river with a burlap sack and a few heavy stones. But if our species insists on taking time out of one box and shoving it hastily into another, I say let's dim the lights in anticipation of Warner Wolf's year-end highlights reel, and get ready to grab 2009 by the shirt and push it up against the wall. Somebody pop open the bubbly -- goddamnit, we've got work to do.

To brighter days ahead.

The Dismemberment Plan - The Ice of Boston

Margo vs. Eiffel Tower - Tonight is my New Year

The Dismemberment Plan song is from their "...Is Terrified" CD on DeSoto Records. Buy it direct from the label here, or on iTunes here.

The Margo vs. Eiffel Tower song is from "The My Pal God Holiday Record Vol. 1" CD on My Pal God Records. It is no longer available in physical form, but can be had in digital magnificence on iTunes.

Update: I have just spent an unsuccessful 45 minutes trying to convert the brilliant Dismemberment Plan tour diary that vocalist Travis Morrison wrote for my old zine into a single, downloadable PDF. (Problem area: I don't have Adobe Acrobat. Does anyone have suggestions for another method by which to turn six individual jpegs into a continuous PDF?) Here are the links to view the tour diary one page at a time:

Dismemberment Plan tour diary from Green Means Go! Fanzine, circa 1996.

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six

Jon Solomon's 24 Hour Holiday Radio Program, 2008 Edition

Here's a brief programming note for this coming week. My good pal Jon Solomon will be hosting the 21st annual edition of his 24 hour holiday radio program beginning Christmas Eve at 6 PM, and continuing through the following day at 6 PM. The show will air on WPRB, 103.3 FM, throughout Jersey Centralia and the Delaware Valley, or can be heard online at wprb.com.

Jon's holiday program has become something of a legend to the WPRB listenership, and beyond. Over the years, it's been written up in nearly every Philadelphia alt-weekly, as well as earning acclaim from Idolator, NJ Monthly, and the New York Times. A few years back, even Pseu and Monica called Jon during their show on WFMU, and interviewed him while he was in the midst of his show on 'PRB. (That had to be some kind of broadcasting first... I'm still surprised that the transmission between the two overlapping radio signals didn't create a feedback loop powerful enough to blow Metuchen clean off the map.)

Jon's selection and presentation of left-field holiday music is utterly without peer, so you'll be unloading a pretty great present on you and your own band of merrymakers just by tuning in. For my part, I can say with confidence that it would never be a proper holiday for me if Jon wasn't introducing a Christmas number by the 60s garage band The Wailers during the final moments of the show. You're sure to feel likewise, especially if the buildup includes signature holiday tracks from the likes of Billy Childish, The Dickies, Hasil Adkins, Couch Flambeau, Curtis Mayfield, Crass, Low, Cheech & Chong, Galaxie 500, Kurtis Blow, Loretta Lynn, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, John Fahey, Peanut Butter Wolf, The Hybrid Kids, Esquivel, Sun Ra, and Fishbone. Looky here for last year's complete playlist, and start your regimen of squat thrusts for the main event.

Note: the above photo is of Jon in the midst of the 1993 edition of the holiday program. Visible in the foreground are a Born Against 7", and the more overtly Christmas-y "We Three Bings" compilation LP. Jon would presumably want it known that he still has (and wears) that shirt.

The Simple Elegance of the Wine Key

Here's a free holiday tip that might help you find the right gift for that uncooperative friend or family member that's impossible to shop for. For the moment, we'll ignore the fact that these people are usually regarded as such because they have no observable talents or interests, and therefore leave you and I wandering the shops deciding between expensive junk like an electric golf ball detector or a hamster-operated desk calendar. On the contrary, the gift I'm suggesting is very inexpensive, extremely useful, and widely available in most liquor stores -- from the very posh, all the way down to those where requests must be shouted through 3 inches of bulletproof glass. The gift I am suggesting is a wine key.

Every year around holiday time, you can observe an all-new arsenal of complicated corkscrews and bottle openers unleashed upon the gift-buying public. So elaborate are many of these contraptions, that a visiting alien might assume that the act of opening a bottle of wine is an arduous task which calls upon the efforts of many thousands. These devices are often named after cute and/or furry animals, whereas others look like they could be used during surgery to remove pesky ribs or skull fragments. Still others require battery or electric power and vaguely resemble intimate favorites from the Xandria Collection. Another hilarious detail I've noticed this year is that many of these devices are now emblazoned with the word "professional", in extravagant and loopy cursive -- As if that would convince me that the waiters at L'Espalier routinely lug these ridiculous accessories to and from the kitchen whenever someone orders a bottle of wine. I have news for you: I've never been to L'Espalier. I've also never been to French Laundry, nor have I enjoyed the wine at most other famously exclusive restaurants in this world. But I can bet you a 2003 bottle of Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon that the employees of such places do not use The Rabbit, The Corkenator, The Bottle Slave, or The Auto-Drunkener to uncork their customer's wine, so the 'professional' argument is something of a non-starter.

Which brings us to the wine key. It is a simple and elegant device whose configuration is certainly deserving of inclusion in Phaidon's Design Classics series. It has a comfortable handle. It has a retractable, serrated blade for slicing away foil. It has a long, twirly bit on a hinge. And it fits conveniently in your purse, back pocket, or glove compartment. I'm not a wine expert by any stretch of truth, but I can navigate my way around the ten-dollar-and-under display table with reasonable talent, and I've been known to turn up my nose at the idea of Merlot. But that being said, I have long argued that there is way too much artificial exclusivity associated with the drinking of what is tantamount to old grape juice. Never mind that it's been fermented and consumed by us lucky bipeds for thousands of years. That's no reason for it to be marketed as a luxury item, or endorsed solely by creepy, rich-looking guys with graying temples and polo shirts tucked into their khakis. That kind of imagery makes me feel like I need a drink, and not the kind that you find waiting for you underneath a cork. I believe that wine should be enjoyed by people of all economic classes, so I'm therefore drawn to the wine key for its socially leveling potential as much as for its flawless utility. It is of that rare class of human achievements that technology can not improve upon. As in wine making, it requires skill, determination, and the use of one's hands.

Being thirsty is also a plus.

All the Wrong People are Dying

In keeping with the somewhat guarded and uncertain tone of the current holiday season, I wanted to throw a light on my favorite left-of-center Christmas song: "All the Wrong People are Dying", by the Styrenes. While it's true that its holiday sentiments are limited to a brief mention of It's a Wonderful Life, I've been annually inspired to play it on the radio towards the end of every December since it came out in 1996. I'll be honoring the tradition again this Monday, December 22nd (8-11 PM), when I fill in for Trent Wolbe and his excellent Sound and Safe program. The Styrenes EP from which the song comes is already packed away in the record bag I'll be bringing along for the evening's festivities.

A quick summary of the Styrenes would be next to impossible, but there's a classy and informative overview available on their MySpace page that'll get any newcomers sniffing in the right direction. For my part, I've been a proud fan since first discovering a split-spined copy of their "A Monster and the Devil" LP in the record stacks back at WPRB. From that starting point -- an imagined soundtrack to an urban noir fantasy -- I worked backwards through their earlier recordings, albums by their artpunk affiliates in the Electric Eels and Mirrors, and wound up anticipating the Styrenes' We Care, So You Don't Have To with a kind of excitement that I'm usually something of a stranger to. Good rock bands come and go all the time, but the Styrenes' endurance and forever-changing lineups and sonic explorations have made me a fan for life. It was a distinct honor to invite their participation in WFMU's Sinister Moody benefit concert back in 2002, and then something even more gratifying when they performed on my show a few weeks later. [Archive here.]

"All the Wrong People are Dying" is an epic tragedy that addresses the complex emotions and anxieties that the death of a trusted friend often inspires in those they leave behind. It also weighs in on the redistribution of personal obligations that tend to follow such events, and the drunken or medicated haze in which we sometimes reconcile them. Although the song is shored upon a funerary dirge, the narrative moves quickly from the plague of sorrow to the appealing clarity that an arrogance towards our own mortality can offer. There's an impressive list of departed musicians and artists namechecked in the song (Stiv Bators and Johnny Thunders among them), and their legacies are admiringly reflected upon through unexpected comparisons to It's a Wonderful Life's George Bailey and Clarence the Angel. Aided by storylines both real and imagined, "the affirmation that life is good and worth living" strikes a unique pose at center stage, and summons a kind of holiday warmth that's a million miles away from the usual Hallmark hokum. I believe I very nearly wept during the first Christmas radio show on which I aired this track.

For this recording, the Styrenes were:

Mike Hudson (vocals), Paul Marotta (piano), Jamie Klimek (guitar), Paul Laurence (drums), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), and David Newman (bass). The Drag City EP from which the song originally comes is out of print, but the song can now be had on a CD that also includes "A Monster and the Devil". Buy it here from Insound.com. Other Styrenes records, including the brilliant "We Care So You Don't Have To" are likewise available, or can be had via eMusic.

Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and Pelé summon further electoral anxiety.

Bet you forgot about that movie, didn't you.

All Yvonne, All the Time

In keeping with the usual pagan rituals around here, the wife and I loaded up our Jesus Christ Superstar DVD over Easter weekend, since we're both of the opinion that it's much more theologically stimulating than... say... church. In deference to yet another ritual, I fell asleep on the couch before the movie was even halfway through, but what I saw was enough to inspire repeat sessions with the soundtrack for the next several days.

Even casual enthusiasts of JCS will admit that it effortlessly shoves all

Bad News for Linus Van Pelt

 

Streaming Real Audio:
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Dream Syndicate - Halloween [Listen]