An Effing Foodie

Blame the Blues for Funky Dreams

'Tis true! Scientists across the pond say that eating Stilton thirty minutes before bed will increase your chances of jacked-up dreams.

"While 75% of men in this category experienced odd and vivid dreams, a massive 85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most bizarre dreams of the whole study – although none were described as bad experiences. Highlights included talking soft toys, lifts that move sideways, a vegetarian crocodile upset because it could not eat children, dinner party guests being traded for camels, soldiers fighting with each other with kittens instead of guns and a party in a lunatic asylum."
--British Cheese Board

(Don't you wish you could drink with some of these people???)

Some quick tips on cheese-steered dreaming:

• for dreamless, steady sleep, grab a few crumbles of cheshire
• for pleasurable dreams of sun and pampering, ladies should indulge in brie (men tend to have abstract, talking-animal-types of dreams on brie)
• for dreams that include celebrity cameos, cheddar's the way to go

Dream a Little Dream...

A lot of eaters have been divulging food fantasies lately...many people (wrong-minded people who won't be reading this blog) may argue that thinking longingly of food is self-indulgent and decadent, but I think dreaming of food usually has more to do with context than actual nosh.

Some people associate a certain food with loved ones, who may or many not be around for another 'round.

Some use food to invoke a place and time.

Some particularly cerebral eaters use it to channel the farm-to-table process that most of us take for granted.

Me? I think I'm guilty of a little of each of these.

(And I'm really impressed that all the aforementioned foodies kept their lists so SHORT...I had to cut mine off after 10 minutes of dream-feasting. Apparently, I'm a dream-glut.)

Skyway Restaurant, Chinatown, NYC

The term "comfort food" gets tossed around a lot nowadays, particularly on the covers of food mags during the wintertime.  Though the phrase invokes a universal appeal, the food it calls to mind is highly subjective.

My mom is hands-down the gutsiest eater I know, and her palate can put most to whimpering shame.  While I may never develop her appetite for water beetles, durian, or rice worms, she and I do tend to agree on what constitutes comfort food. 

Hainanese Chicken Rice (above) definitely makes it into our Top Ten Comfort Food contenders.

My Sobering McMoment in Flushing

I think my brain just popped.

One Last Recap on Thanks

...from the inside of a cubicle on the Monday after Thanksgiving, it's hard to retain sentiments of thanks.

So here are a few folks who deserve thanks, to keep it all in perspective.

Thanks to Jorge Muñoz and his mother, Doris Zapata, for remembering what it is to be hungry.

Thanks to all the campaigning presidential candidates for helping us to sleep better at night by pretending to eat like the American everyman.

Thank you, Slate, for standing up to the deluge of increasingly post-modern turkey leftover recipes, and for questioning the ethics and long-term effectiveness of lying to kids about food. Blech.

And most of all, thanks to all the friends and family who have been so supportive of this Effing Foodie.  You guys are the best!

Raw Mussels

Ever wonder why we don't see folks eating mussels raw, the way we do oysters and clams?

Wonder no more!

"...because a mussel isn't easily shucked — Mr. Quain joked that he'd probably break 100 just to get one or two right — and because uncooked mussel meat has a texture like sinewy mucus, if mucus could be sinewy. Although I liked the raw mussel's vivid orange color and super-concentrated mussel flavor, that texture persuaded me to stick to cooked mussels from now on."
-Frank Bruni, NYT

I'm trying not to be pissy that Frank beat me to a bivalve-based vacation.  But he braved sinewy mucus and parasitic infection for us, so I suppose all's forgiven.

Thanksgiving Postmortem

Hmmm...it seems that pulling cooking all-nighters and hunger distraction does terrible things to pictures...which is a shame since my partners in crime, Max and Alex, did such a beautiful job with the spread.

With any luck, one of the other guests will donate piccies to better represent this fabulous feast. (Hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.)

FrankenStuffing, or How to Forage Your Own Recipes

Like any packrat foodie, I’ve accumulated a mess of magazines, cookbooks, newspaper clippings and recipe links.  I’m a firm believer that for any given dish, 4 recipes is always better than one.

And yet best thing I learned as a cooking-school-dropout (besides not being afraid of salt) was how to ditch recipes.  By the end of the 1st semester, we were only allowed a list of ingredients to complete our assignments--no methods or proportions, just a list that indicated first incorporated ingredient to last.

A well-composed recipe is a useful record of someone else’s attempt, and there’s no better place to start picking up ideas.   More often then not, when I look over a recipe, I tend to like some characteristics but not ALL of them. 

So what to do?  Frankenstein your own recipe.

Caprese Confessions

It’s funny how much eaters have in common--with all the choices that we have, we're still privy to certain consumption cues.

Cold Weather = Braised Meats, Bean Soups and Chili, Stuffed Cabbage, all permutations of potatoes, Guinness, bourbon and Scotch. 

Hot Weather = Corn on the Cob, BBQ, all things grilled, raw fish, watermelon and strawberries, rum and vodka.

So I guess it’s no big coinkydink that in the height of tomato time, Mark Bittman was feeling the Tomato Paella, and I was obsessed with something vaguely less refined:

In August and September, I was eating this at least once a week. What is, you ask?

The Steak Politic

Okay...I think I've held my peace long enough.

It's no surprise that gender-biases are alive and well. But restaurants (and restaurant writing!) are among the few arenas where these societal expectations are as glaringly demonstrable as they are widely accepted. Who would have thought that the mundane act of eating--nay, ordering--would be so loaded and closely observed?

I can accept that most folks will look me over and expect me to order a mimosa, a salad, maybe something involving white-meat chicken.  What I have more difficulty accepting are fanfare, incredulousness, or vague disbelief when I fail to do so.

Then one morning, I open the paper to read that my bone-gnawing choices are "in". "Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye" cheers the NYT. I no longer have to live a life of shame! Ordering steak is apparently a "declarative statement", and "ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness".

Sigh. Be yourselves girls...we're just watching, judging, and designing wussified restaurants around whatever you choose to shove in your craw.

Is it too much to ask that those who want to eat salad can eat salad, and those who love red meat eat meat, without public critique or close reading? Did they HAVE to tether food into the already overwrought process of husband-harpooning? Won't a sudden change of diet come as an unnecessary surprise to whatever man has managed to overcome the hurdles of the first few dates?

Don't worry, lady carnivores aren't off the hook yet. The VP of Smith & Wollensky is "shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak." At a steakhouse, mind you. HIS steakhouse.

It seems funny to bring up menu feminization and marvel at this generation of bloodthirsty, beef-eating women in the same breath.  The NYT isn't the only one pulling this trick: the Telegraph called women the "new steakhouse demographic" on one page and THEN told the story of feather-clad Lillie Langtry suing for her right to eat mutton in 1905 on the next page.

Whose idea was it to make women steak-eaters circus freaks? Who benefits from this perception, except maybe men who are hording the ethanol-curtailed prime beef stocks for themselves?