It was just that good.
I'm thinking of making this a regular thing—a way of honoring particularly memorable beers I consume, while at the same time devaluing records that wouldn't be worth much if I ever needed to unload them anyway.
Suffice to say, I've got big plans for Skunk's Last American Virgin EP as soon as I finish off this bottle of Allagash White.
OK. As you were.
So... long time, no blog. Perhaps it seems like an easy out, but I blame the one year old. At some point over the last several weeks, she must have crossed some invisible threshold of development which ultimately manifests in me having no time for anything that's not dad-related. Even her daily naptime—previously branded as my chance to blog, further develop my cockeyed business proposal, or even bang out the occasional cover letter/résumé—has lately morphed into my sole opportunity to clean the house, plot out dinner, or make up for the increasing difficulty in getting a full night's sleep of my own.
Anyway, don't read that as a complaint. The Kid is awesome, and short of pulling in a paycheck for it, I really couldn't be happier with the current routine.
Having recently realized that I helmed only a paltry FOUR fill-in shows on WFMU in 2010, I'm happy that there has been so much radio in my life lately. Aside from some perfunctory engineering work during the WNYC and WQXR membership drives, I've also had the opportunity to spend some quality time with two old broadcasting confidantes from my old digs at Princeton's WPRB. And of course, there was the WFMU Marathon which had the best vibe of any since 2007, at least. Congrats to all my pals there for a great job. It remains an honor to occasionally walk in your company, especially as such newsfeed-grabbing calamities as the KUSF debacle unfold with painful reckoning for anyone who appreciates independent broadcasting.
Being part of the WFMU Marathon is an exhausting practice, and I'll freely admit that this was the first one in a decade that I felt somewhat disconnected from. Of course, this is more my own fault than anyone else's, what with my frustratingly uncooperative and financially restrictive schedule preventing me from being as involved as I'd like to be. But on the upside, the 'thon was a great opportunity to catch up with a few old friends, and feel once again like I'm surrounded by My People. Re-visiting an organization that routinely displays its passion for creativity and which (usually) puts its best foot forward can be a little jarring, especially having focused my attentions on more traditional non-profs over the last few years, where said passions are frequently muted by bureaucracy or simple indifference. In other words, it felt great to be reminded of the possibilities.
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, activity has been stunted, but not abandoned. Once again I must cite the demands of caring for The Kid as the primary reason for backing away from the adventurous end of the home cooking scene. She just demands so much attention now, and dinnertime has taken a turn towards a correspondingly more traditional standard. Which isn't to say I'm not enormously proud of having recently whipped up homemade fish paste, Middle Eastern meatballs, or miso marinated flank steak with mirin roasted carrots. (All delicious!) My wife and I are also totally floored to have so effortlessly ditched The Kid's regimen of jarred baby food in favor of pint-sized portions of whatever we happen to be eating (including all of the above mentioned dishes.) Expanding The Kid's palate early on was an important goal for us right out of the gate, and I'm thrilled that she's taken so eagerly to everything from grilled fish and paella, to hummus, balsamic reductions, and pretty much everything else we've plopped down for her to snatch up hungrily. Defying the bland diets we were raised on feels like a healthy and responsible move on our part as parents, not to mention a refreshing break from past traditions that only served us poorly later in our own lives. (I didn't try sushi until I was in my mid-20s, avocado not until several years after that. She's already had both.)
And then of course, there's music—always lurking in the background, like a vengeful aristocrat in a Francisco de Goya painting. Having such limited access to FMU over the past year, my awareness of new stuff has taken an unfortunate nosedive, but it is just such instances which I believe validates ownership of a large and cumbersome record collection. When times are tight, you can always get lost in your own private stash and (re)discover something for jaded ears. After finally accepting that the Audio Technica ATPL-120 turntable I bought several years ago is a fucking LEMON that can not be coaxed away from its predilection for dropped channels and omnipresent hum, I've learned to tolerate the surface-to-noise reality and have lately been cranking older vinyl sides by Konono No. 1, Jesu, and the Fastbacks. Also getting lots of attention these days is the perhaps misleadingly titled Skinhead Revolt comp of early ska and rocksteady, which is just back-to-front brilliant. In stumbling around my own archives, I've also earmarked some releases to be hawked on eBay or Discogs whenever the economy eventually rights itself. Of all the possible futures I can envision for my family and I, none of them involve me owning 80s/90s hardcore records by Stars & Stripes, Moss Icon, or Crucial Youth. If some 22 year old with rich parents wants to elevate his social standing among his peers and simultaneously pay me handsomely for the records that will do it for him, I've got no problem with it. Which, in itself, is a relatively new phenomenon for me—When I was younger and more puritanical about art and commerce, I frequently balked at the idea of selling such releases for large sums of money, often opting to give records that are probably worth a mint now to friends, if not lazily discarding them by some similar means. Many years from now, I expect images of Rough Trade picture sleeves and obscenely rare garage rock 45s will come back to haunt me while trying to explain to The Teenager why mommy and daddy can only pay for the first three semesters of college.
Had enough of me yet? Well, in the interest of closing the circuit of recent activities (and perhaps tantalizing you with my long dormant talents as a karaoke singer), here's an MP3 of me singing with WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia, live at Maxwell's on the last night of the Marathon. The song is "Helicopter Spies", originally by Swell Maps. Although my performance certainly pales in comparison to the original, it is no small accident that I'm posting it almost five years to the day since Nikki Sudden passed away unexpectedly in New York. Intro and vamping by MC Joe Belock. Matt Fiveash on bass, Evan "Funk" Davies behind the drum kit, and the low-slung, six-string talents of Scott Williams, Brian Turner, and Jason Sigal.
[Download]
"Play it like Slade, Evan!"
There is an appealing (yet phony) superiority that goes with thinking of oneself as a "purist". Which is why I always feel a little bit shamed when ordering a Hawaiian pizza—an ordinary pizza with red sauce and mozarella cheese, but also with chunks of pineapple, slabs of ham, and (sometimes) minced up bits of crispy bacon. Isn't that just another example of poorly-thought eclecticism, if not just routinely catering to the LCD crowd? Peruse the slices on display in any college town pizzeria and consider the stomach-churning parade of toppings like baked ziti, falafel chunks, fried chicken, and hard boiled eggs. I don't approve of any of that unless it's 2 AM and you are a drunken fratboy. (In which case, my disapproval delves far deeper than your contemplation of the "He-Man" or "Taco-Bacon Supreme" slice.)
But back to the Hawaiian conundrum. Some quick research reveals that the pineapple and ham phenomenon has nothing to do with actual Hawaiians, but is in fact a creation of the crafty Germans (Strike One!) According to Wikipedia, it is also the most popular pizza in Australia, accounting for a shocking 15% of all pizza sales. (Strike Two!) I was in Hawaii last year, where I sampled the local pizza sold in a nearly empty cocktail lounge. While it was being prepared, I ordered a drink and was chatted up by a damaged-looking woman who in hindsight I believe may have been a prostitute. In spite of the geographic convenience to the Dole plantation, no pineapples were offered as toppings that evening, and even if they had, it would not have changed the fact that said pizza was quite possibly the worst I have ever encountered.
So let's get down to it. In the classic style of content providers who suddenly panic over their lack of an interactive social media plan, I offer the following five second survey. Do pineapples and ham have any business being on top of a pizza? Use the survey box below to choose your answer.
Photo by justin.parmelee [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
My wife is officially crazy. Not because she married me (zing!), but because she stayed up all night to hand craft a swarm of candy butterflies for our daughter's first birthday party cupcakes.
That a woman of such epic patience agreed to spend her life with a man who recently came close to putting his fist through a wall at his inability to assemble a ladybug-shaped tent is a remarkable thing indeed. (Note to non-parents: tasks such as "baking thematic cupcakes" or "assembling whimsical indoor tents" only became regular components of our lives after the arrival of our daughter. You should think very carefully about this before you start easing off the birth control.)
Anyway, chalk these cupcakes up as more proof that I don't have the patience for baking. I work in broad strokes, not pointillism. Nevertheless, I'm happy to stuff my face with the fruits of someone else's labor and find thematically suitable music for the occasion in the FMA. Use the player below to stream or download UK hip-hop trio Godmanwho perform the awesome "Slight Butterflies."
In the imaginary world to which I often find myself retreating, traditional holiday meals are replaced with a series of small-plate dishes, all based around one thematic ingredient. Turkey, for instance. In its traditional Thanksgiving/Christmas permutation, it can be good, but is rarely exciting or adventurous in any way. (To me, at least. I'm well aware of the vast turkey-n-giblets army that exists out there in meatspace, and they are no doubt currently mobilizing to exact an ugly revenge upon me for disrespecting their traditions.)
Call it blasphemy, but I think (and have repeatedly called for) traditional Thanksgiving food to submit itself to a radical re-thinking. For my part, I think the turkey should be cooked a day or two prior to the big familial gathering, to enable the serving of multiple turkey-themed appetizers with something of an international flare. And if my wife and I ever gather enough cache with our normaloid relatives to host the big holiday at our place, I'd like the lead-off dish to be Sichuan-Style Hot and Numbing Sliced Turkey.
"Numbing" being the key term here, friends. This dish is H-O-T, but the heat is balanced wonderfully by the sweetness of the vinegar and cilantro-based dressing. Furthermore, we switched out the Chinkiang vinegar for the plain old rice wine variety, and also substituted almond slivers for crushed peanuts (simply to avoid a market run on a brick-ass cold day.) No matter: the results were far beyond delicious even with said tinkering. Foolishly, I only made enough for one serving, but we've still got a pile of leftover Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer and a ramekin full of homemade chili oil. So guess who's coming to dinner? (Again.)
[Photo: Serious Eats]
Here's a picture of the utterly badass apple pie that my wife made for Thanksgiving. As you may have figured out from the general lack of dessert-chatter on this blog, I'm not much of a sweets guy. Choosing sides in the eternal bloody war between sweets and savories is a no brainer as far as I'm concerned, but this was the rare exception to that unpopular opinion of mine.
I used to enjoy baking pies and other sweets because I (incorrectly) assumed it was easier than cooking. Nowadays, I much prefer the latter because no matter how badly you butcher or intentionally veer from a recipe, you can almost always salvage/correct things with a bit of creativity and be thrilled with the results. Baking doesn't usually work that way: You laboriously measure every ingredient, follow the directions word-for-word, toss it in the oven with a panicked prayer, and then fifteen minutes later discover that you've accidentally omitted some critical component. In most cases, you are now officially screwed, and I have found myself in precisely that situation too many times to call myself a serious baker anymore. I'm in awe of those who can submit to baking's militaristic nature, but I prefer measuring by guesstimation, adding wine to the pot even when none is called for, and irresponsibly changing or skipping steps for no reason other than to satisfy my own whimsy.
HOWEVER: When my honey is doing the legwork, I am floored to act as wide receiver for her feats of sugary wonder, and that's where this pie steps into the arena. It would be fair to liken the crust to classic, Jersey shore Elephant Ears, and the apple/cranberry/maple filling was nothing shy of straight-up gooey godhead. Here are the Eaters revealing even more universal truths where matters of "Them Fucking Apples" are concerned. [Stream or download using the player below. Actually, grab the whole album while you're there, especially if you dig waaaay left-of-center hip hop a la Curse ov Dialect.]
The act of glazing a pig part seems inherently dirty to me. Come to think of it, glazing just about anything seems like a green light for utterances not suitable for the kids, grandma, or anyone else with a delicate sensibility in the kitchen. I'd never glazed so much as a doughnut hole before trying this recipe, but going forward, I will be heading up the Department of Glazing's international summit in Heidelberg, and booking a variety of glazing's most outspoken practitioners as keynote speakers. Well... At the very least, I'm going to make this dish again because it was real good.
The recipe arrives via America's Test Kitchen, which is hosted by mildly cantankerous bow-tie enthusiast Christopher Kimball. I once had the honor of engineering mic levels for him when he was interviewed on the radio, which obviously was not half as exciting as the time I did the same for Nigella Lawson. (She smiled at me through the studio glass and I felt my complexion go beet red. The producer teased me about it for the rest of the week.)
America's Test Kitchen is a perfect example of why I prefer public television cooking shows to those aired on the Food Network: There's more to learn from the PBS variety. Most of the Food Network's "In the Kitchen" series seems more devoted to cultivating the hosts' personalities, zooming in on their boobs (if available), or endlessly tarting up their studio sets. With the exception of Alton Brown and Giada DeLaurentis (but only when her mom guest-hosts), FoodNet shows tend to try my patience more than provide any inspiration or enlightenment. Public Television, as part of the east coast-Jewish-liberal-elitist-socialist-Obamacare plot, is decidedly more low budget, and less focused on selling something (whether it be a product, a lifestyle, or a line of shitty mall cookware), and Kimball is sort of the king of that realm. He regularly earns my attention and respect, whimsical neckwear and all.
But back to the pig parts. Glazes are sweet by nature, and this one is no exception. Mercifully, however, there is no Karo Syrup involved -- If there were, you would be reading some other blog right now because that stuff gives me the creeps. But the expected accents of a traditional glaze are all accounted for in the ingredient rundown: cinnamon, cloves, cayenne, a splash of booze, and a wonderfully seedy, whole grain mustard. All of that balances out the sweetness, appearing here courtesy of pure maple syrup and molasses. Bust out the digital meat thermometer and get to it! Here's the glazed pork tenderloin recipe. [Requires free registration with an active email address, but so far, ATK has not pawned off my digits to any advertisers/spammers that I am aware of. I'm not so sure I'd expect such admirable restraint from Rachael Ray's marketing team.]
My wife got me a digital meat thermometer for our anniversary, and I'm more than a little bit alarmed by how excited I am by it. The base is about the size of a 1st generation iPod, and it connects to a long cord with a menacing needle on the end of it—the sight of which would surely send terror into the hearts of any animal corpses that might happen across it, were they not already dead. Anyway, the thing has been a revelation for me, as I am something of a salmonella-phobe thanks to a nasty bout of food poisoning I acquired via one of those low-temperature poultry recipes that were trendy for a brief but terrible moment back in the 80s.
As a result, I've inflicted some of history's driest and most comically overcooked roast chickens upon the unfortunate masses, not trusting myself enough to rely on the clear-juice test. ("How can I tell if the juice is clear when it's running down a char-blackened bird?", I have sobbed aloud to no one on many occasions.) Well, those days are gone, and with them the eras of overdone pork, unevenly cooked burgers, and beef tenderloins that resemble a horrific crime scene. In the case of roast chickens—which I have always been embarrassed by my inability to make, as it is the first thing that most people learn how to cook—I now insert the thermometer just before the bird meets the heat, run the cord out the oven door, and watch as the digital readout on the base ticks upwards. Three cheers for science! Can I thank Carl Sagan for this, or maybe the guys at CERN? Because the excitement of being able to serve up this utterly phenomenal Jamie Oliver recipe for roast chicken with flawless results is, for me, just as exciting as miniature black holes are. Believe, yo. Here's "Chicken Head Man" by T-Model Ford to help drive the point home. Stream or download it using the player below.
I had grand expectations for this, but the results were only slightly better than "good". Like many of the most popular slow-cooker recipes, it requires absolutely zilch in the talent department, but after a full day of stewing in a combination of the ribs' own juices and a fragrant blend of sweet curry and mango chutney, these meaty treats just weren't flavorful enough to warrant the time investment. The collected sauce left in the bottom of the pot was heavenly, but not enough of the flavor had transferred to the ribs, and each bite left me craving something either more curry-ish or mango-ey. Preferably both.
In any case, it's a promising start, and I'll probably try it again with some substantial tweaking. Here's the ingredient/procedural rundown, assuming you might like to get a head start:
1. Brown 2-3 pounds of beef short ribs in your cast iron skillet and pour off the excess fat.
2. In a bowl, combine and mix 1 cup of mango chutney, 1 minced clove of garlic, 1 tbsp of curry powder, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp. kosher salt.
3. Rub this gooey concoction all over the ribs and place in slow cooker, drizzling any leftover sauce on top.
4. Cover, dial up low heat, disappear for 6-8 hours. The grumbling in your stomach will grow in direct proportion to the increasingly wondrous smell wafting out of your kitchen. Best served with cloth napkins on laundry night.
