Shrimp and Shitake in Black Bean Sauce

In a hot wok, heat up some peanut or canola oil.

Stir fry a sliced onion.
Add chopped garlic and a stalk of lemon grass, cut into two inch segments and smashed with the edge of your knife.
Add sliced shiitake caps (and the finely chopped stems).
When they are done, transfer to a bowl.
Add more oil.
Stir fry peeled shrimp (I reserve the shells to make a quick shrimp stock for seafood risotto).
Add the vegetables, a splash of dry sherry, and a big dollop of black bean sauce.
Simmer briefly and finish with finely chopped cilantro.
Serve with short grain (you want it to be sticky) rice and cold beer.

To my old neighbor Susan...

To my readers, please forgive this intrusion into the normal content, but you know how it goes!

Susan, thank you for your comment. I tried to email you, but it did not go through. Please email me at EKeilholtz [at] aol [period] com, so I can simply hit "reply."

Interview Questions

The questions, from MamaT of Summamamas, are in bold. My (egads, lengthy) answers are in plain text:

1. Not for you something ordinary, is it? Bull-fighting????? How did you get started as a bull-fighting aficionado?

It all started when I was twelve years old. I was in Spain with my family and was somewhat curious about the whole thing, so I begged my parents to take me to one. My father had been to bullfights in Mexico City, but found them boring and my mother had never been but was willing to go once. I can’t say that I liked that first one, a novillada in Madrid. But I was certainly not horrified by the thing, rather I was more overwhelmed by everything. So I decided to learn more about it and turned to the book that is everyone’s first text in bullfighting, Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. From that Sunday afternoon in Madrid to the following Thursday I read the whole thing, including the entire glossary, the supplemental notes, the interviews with people who had seen the bullfight for the first time, etc. Cover to cover. The Whole Enchilada. I had copied all of the action and livestock photographs (and how I wish I could find those drawings).

So, it was that Thursday that we were driving very late into Valencia. We went into some roadside restaurant (I think calling it a restaurant dignifies it too much) for dinner. There was a bullfight on the television, and I was mesmerized. All of a sudden those motions all made sense. I could identify several lances and passes: the Veronica, the Mariposa, the Natural, the Derrechazo, and a few others. A week and a half later we were in Barcelona and were going to be in Barcelona on a Sunday. Somehow I convinced my parents to go to the bullfight again (the one in Madrid did not fulfill their worst expectations: my father was not bored silly and my mother was not as horrified as she was planning to be), this time in Barcelona’s rather Byzantine Plaza Monumental de Toros. The cartel featured Emilio Muñoz, Paco Ojeda, and Espartaco. I did not like Muñoz’s style, but loved watching Ojeda and Espartaco. I was just learning photography that year, so I was having fun trying my hand at bullfight photos. Ojeda and Espartaco both cut ears (Espartaco was especially good with his first bull, although his second bull broke a horn on the wall, and the president refused to change the bull, resulting in a volley of seat cushions and a nothing faena). That was it. I was hooked.

Living in California meant that Mexico has been fairly accessible, so I have been able to fuel my aficion by trips to Mexico City, Tijuana and Mexicali. In college I used to go to a taqueria that often had bullfights on the television, so I could somewhat keep up with the rising stars. I also read a lot more about it, talked to other aficionados, and have come to realize that Hemingway was wrong about much of the bullfight. I will not trash Hemingway, though, because I respect him greatly as a writer, and appreciate that he led many people into the aficion, most of whom (at least the ones who stuck with it) learned more later and grew beyond Death in the Afternoon. Also, if it weren’t for Hemingway, I would not have tasted percebes (goose barnacles), which are some of the best seafood I have ever had.

A number of years back I stumbled on a website that talked about the bloodless bullfights in California. I had to go, so Melanie and I drove off to Tracy one June afternoon and had a blast. The funny thing is that I am related to a lot of Portuguese folks in the Central Valley, including some involved in the bullfights, but I had never heard about this. I guess that they assumed that since I was not Portuguese myself, I would not be interested, and never told me. Anyway, during the summer I go almost every week, and have grown to appreciate the Portuguese style much more, and my Portuguese has gotten better (although I still follow my old rule of speaking Spanish with a French accent when I can’t remember the correct word – it usually works).

So that brings me to today, where I sit, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, because it is only a couple of months now to the start of the temporada! I will hopefully be going to Tijuana a couple of times this summer, because a diet of all velcro gets tedious.

2. I read somewhere that you can learn to like any food if you just make yourself eat it for 6 weeks. Do you think that's true? Can picky eaters become more adventurous eaters? How?

Yes. I do think that it is true, because I have systematically worked to eliminate all but one of my food prejudices. What I did was make a list of the foods that I did not like. Then for each one I did a lot of research to find the best recipe out there (quite possibly the reason I did not like something was that I had never had it properly cooked – turned out to be true in several cases as most people do not know how to cook vegetables), then I cooked it and that was its final chance. Guess what? Nothing failed. I regularly eat all of the vegetables from the list.

I would do this approach rather than the force yourself to eat it for 6 weeks, unless you have the discipline to cook it differently, to really get to know it, then the 6 weeks rule might be ideal, although if you are doing this correctly it was probably the first time that really did it, the next times were just to reinforce. In a way I do this, because once I decide that something is not of the devil, then I want to explore it and really get to know it.

I might warn you that it is a lot of fun and potentially expensive to get into the exploration of flavors. Once you have gotten into Brussels sprouts, cardoni, radicchio, cauliflower, and so on, the next thing you know you will be hunting for unusual wines, scotches, tobacco, grappe, mescal, and so forth. Of course most folks, when they are trying out their new-found abilities to explore flavors, go through a phase where they are trying all sorts of things (these are the ones who go to a different ethnic market every week, going to scotch tastings, smoking European cigarettes (different brand each time), basically charting a part of their brain that was underutilized). Then you settle down. For one thing, you start to explore a subtler level of nuance in flavors. One day you taste an extra virgin olive oil that was once just “fruity.” But this time something is different. Sure you still get the obvious: green apples, grass, but you start to notice something that you realize was there all along. You have isolated yet another thing in the complex mix of aromas.

Then it happens. You go to taste some junk food item you used to love. One bite is a homecoming, but the second bite tastes, well, fake, one-dimensional, with a nasty aftertaste. Not all junk food is like this. As I have expanded my food universe I have actually gotten to like Cheetos more than I did before (even though I worked at a lab that designed products for the company). It just goes to show that there is craftsmanship in making junkfood, too.

Now, this brings us to my last food prejudice. I think that there are some foods that had such an effect on us that their aroma etches itself into our brains as “toxic,” and there may be no way of undoing that. I had a childhood allergy to egg white. Of course egg white is not a very aromatic ingredient, so my brain identified the yolk as the toxic smell. I ate a meringue cookie when I was about ten and had no ill effects, so I have been eating meringue and other egg white preparations since then. Allergy gone. But the smallest whiff of a hard cooked egg is enough to make me feel queasy. I have been working up the egg dish family, going to dishes that have less and less other stuff in them. So far I am able to do souffle, Spanish tortilla, fritatta, quiche, and will probably have omelet down by the end of the year. I actually ate hard cooked eggs, when they showed up (unexpectedly – a move that would have cost the restaurant a star and a half if I were reviewing it, you don’t lob secret ingredient bombs that are that big) in a spinach and gruyere gratin. The smell of the gruyere completely overpowered the sulfur death smell, so I was able to eat the bits of egg and to enjoy the dish. After omelet I might try something like that again.

3. What's the funniest thing you can remember your sweet Amália saying/doing?

She was looking at a picture of a pasture with a lot of baby horses. She said, “that’s a lot of foalage!”

4. What is your all-time favorite country-western song, and why?

That is really hard, because there are so many good ones. Probably “King of the Road,” because it has a fantastic melody and captures a certain mood. But then there is “Mama Tried”, not to mention “Streets of Bakersfield” and “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Made a Loser Out of Me),” even though that is a bluegrass song (but could work as a c and w number). Then there’s “Ring of Fire” and “Delia” and “I Walk the Line” and a host of other great Johnny Cash tunes.

Recently we have been listening to a lot of Waylon, and I have been finding myself more and more drawn to the pedal steel (something that I have always liked, but it really sounds good these days). Buck and Merle are still at the top of my list, and it is not just out of Californian loyalty.

5. What is your all-time favorite book, and why?

You know, the other four questions, I got done quickly. This one I am still hesitant to answer, because I just don’t know. So, I am going to say, for now: The River Why by David James Duncan. The writing is rock-solid. He creates preposterous, yet somehow believable characters and makes them grow. It is also centered on fishing, which wins it points in my book.

Runners up:

Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
At Play in the Fields of the Lordby Peter Matthiessen
The Little World of Don Camillo By (Antonio?) Guaraschi
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Oh yeah, I think I am supposed to ask for interview subjects, so if you are interested, comment or email me at EKeilholtz [at] aol [period] com, and I will come up with five questions.

Hunter S. Thompson

I suppose that since everyone else has eulogized Hunter Thompson it is probably my turn as well, as I used to really like his books.

His is a sad case, the case of someone who boxed himself into a corner and simply could not let go of the act. Sickness, old age, and all of that, in Thompson's case miraculously late in coming, were not something that the public persona of Hunter S. Thompson could endure.

At his best, Thompson was one of the finest craftsmen of the written word. Hells Angels is a fantastic piece of California History, and in it are some conclusions that should have saved Thompson from his ultimate decay into laziness, despair and suicide. He realized that the Hells Angels' romanticism was a bit of bluster over the fact that they were an increasingly marginalized people. Their rebellion was more an act of cowardice than an act of bravery. The world changed, and they could not fathom it.

So it was with Thompson. As the sort of antics he portrayed (and probably did not engage in as much as he claimed) became painfully obvious as dead ends, Thompson continued on. And why not? Without a clear philosophy he certainly picked a lucrative way. He would show up intoxicated and belligerent to speaking gigs and the kids ate it up. He went from being the great writer he was in his day to sending cassettes of his mumbling to be transcribed and published as his latest pieces.

What would the kids say if he came out and said, "boy, I have become a decadent slob. Total debauchery really is a waste of my talent and life?" So he kept on, plugging away like a soldier who, somehow missing the communique that the war is over, keeps fighting. As long as he dropped gratuitous mention of drug use and guns, the kids loved it. Never mind that he totally exhausted the drug theme in his excellent comic piece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I do not go for that notion that a character like Hunter S. Thompson was a victim of his audience. He made his audience, he built their expectations, and he kept on filling them. The idea of his readers seeing him an invalid with tubes stuck here and there, more concerned with painkillers qua painkillers rather than a cheap high scared him, so he made sure that he never had to deal with that.

Every day offered him an opportunity for self reflection and a chance to recognize that he was created for something better than what he had become, and every day he ignored that opportunity.

The sad thing is that I can only imagine what powerful stuff Hunter S. Thompson could have written had he had any room for introspection. Instead his writing of the last thirty (well, twenty if you consider that he still did some decent stuff every blue moon in the eighties) was mostly crap: cheap parody of himself when he was able to craft a sentence better than most of us will ever do.

Hunter S. Thompson did not sacrifice himself for his art. He sacrificed himself AND his art for some strange fame and fortune. It is too bad, because he really could write a good piece in his prime.

Lord have mercy on his soul.

The Return of the Almost Native

We just got back from our whirlwind tour of Northern California. We started in Oakland, spent a night in Sacramento, two nights in Redding, then took a gorgeous and twisty drive through the Trinity Alps to Eureka, spent the night in Eureka, and drove back today, via the Avenue of the Giants (trees, that is), the murderous road between Garberville and Ft. Bragg (it is hard to believe that this road was built because Caltrans engineers found the Lost Coast too much to handle. You would think that if they could build this stretch of Highway One, they could build anything), and the Anderson Valley (now I may have to retract my identification of Big Sur as God's Country. It is, but I forgot how stunning the Anderson Valley is).

Today I had lunch with a friend who moved to Eureka and was surprised to find that we have the same employer.

Anyway, I got home to find that I had not attached an important attachment I thought I sent out Friday (oops), and that the website had some 200+ spam pings.

I also found a request to post something about the tragedy in Florida with Terri Schiavo.

I am more than willing to post whatever is needed, although I suspect that most of my readers are quite familiar with the case, so all I can really say is "pray." I am all in favor of signing petitions, but the most important thing to do is to pray. Terri Schiavo is on the verge of being the victim of court-sanctioned murder, and I have little faith in our politicians to do anything without Divine intervention. So, ask for some Divine intervention. Ask for a lot of Divine intervention.

Anyway, lots to do, and it is getting late. More tomorrow.

Back Under the Volcano

I am travelling in the southern Cascades right now, but it is too stormy and foggy to actually see Mt. Shasta. We had several glimpses of Mt. Lassen on the drive up, but the clouds quickly hid it again.

Amalia, thanks to the Forces of Nature film at the Chabot, is now very interested in volcanoes. She likes to draw pictures of them and has been very exited that we are around several of them, although I think she is disappointed that they are not spewing lava and fire (or at least a little smoke and the occassional lava bomb).

If you have a chance to get to the Northern Central Valley, do so, as the almond orchards are in bloom. Miles of delicate little pink flowers do wonders to make a trip more enjoyable.

Tomorrow we will continue to poke around Redding, then Monday morning we will head through the Trinity Alps to Eureka on the coast.

I am very excited to see the Trinity Alps, since I have never been there, and they are supposed to be quite beautiful. I would ask for suggestions of things to see and do up there, but do not know if I will be back online before I go (although in case I am, please feel free to leave them).

So, while I cannot guarantee another post until mid-week, I will certainly try to find my way onto a computer to write about the area.

Science Movies

Today we spent three hours at The Chabot Science and Space Center high in the Oakland Hills. If you are in the Bay Area, be sure to check this place out, especially if you are or ever have been a space nerd. It is a first class science museum with such amazing things as a perfect Mercury capsule replica that you can sit in, lots of telescopes, and a Megadome Theater.

In that theater we saw what is probably the best Pro-Life film I have ever seen, The Human Body. What was so good about it is that it did not preach, it did not hammer a point home by argument, rather it simply showed the miracle of human life from conception to adulthood (with some amazing CGI renderings). Anyone who sees this film and thinks that abortion is somehow not killing a living, thinking human being is deliberately blinding themselves.

I do not get all excited about political pro-life actions. I think they are good, but do far less to serve the cause of protecting the sanctity of human life than simply showing the course of human life in detail. The abortion battle will not be won by politics. Our "pro-life" politicians lack either the belief in the cause or the fortitude to actually fight it out. They throw us a bone here and there so we think that they are not as bad as the opposition (and in fairness, they aren't), but they have been notoriously bad in the action that follows the "moral values mandate" they get at the polls.

Not to be pessimistic, but the situation after eight years of Bush will be about the same as before.

Eventually a political solution will be viable, but we must change the minds and hearts of many people in order for that to happen. The best way to do that is without preaching, without a consciously pro-life message, but simply showing, in detail, what human life is all about.

So, if you have a chance to get to a Megadome theater (a strange, but cool way to see films, as it covers the entire field of vision, at the expense of straight lines, but it is still cool) to see this film, by all means, do so. It is also worth it for the footage of what happens to food when we eat it (try to find a screening that is not full of junior high students who feel some need to say "ew" at just about anything).

I am not saying that marching and petitioning and all that are wasted, but without the culture being changed, wheels are being spun without traction.

We also saw Destiny of the Stars in the Planetarium. What a great way to contemplate the splendor of God!

For those who hold young Earth theories, you need to think about this stuff in terms of the wedding at Cana. Wine is a product of age. When Christ created wine from water, He was making a product that implies age. If we were to study that wine (which I am thinking more and more was like an old Hermitage), we would be expected to think of it as an old drink, even though it was made instantly very recently. If God created the universe six thousand or so years ago, then He created a much older universe. So, to fully appreciate the majesty of that, we need to study it as if all time were consistant with observed and deducted science.

Personally, I believe that the universe is as old as it seems to be, but I was not around then, and do not find my faith shaken one way or another. Either way it is an amazing miracle beyond my grasp. To think that God, who is beyond time, has created something so utterly vast, so completely complex as our universe is awe-inspiring. Whether He did it ten thousand years ago or billions of years ago is quite irrelevant.

I do, however, take a dim view of such nonsense as Scientific Creationism, which has at its root the notion that God is tricking us all the while setting up little clues for the True Believers (tm) to find. God does not lie. Period. If God made a rock yesterday that is six million years old, then it is six million years old, because God is outside of time. He wants us to experience the rock as a six million year old rock, otherwise He would not have created the physical properties that we can observe and measure.

God's universe is an ordered universe, and we are to understand that order through science.

If God made the world ten thousand years ago, then He made a world that included dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago, insofar as the observable time that we live in can measure it. If He wanted to create a world in which men coexisted with dinosaurs He would have done that, and the real scientific evidence would show that.

Shucks, I am getting all ready to rant and I noticed that it is 2am. More later on Intelligent Design!

Ah, yes!

It is finally raining. We had a good (albeit gray) morning at the park, and I noticed the first sprinkles on the windscreen as we drove home. We just finished lunch, I am finishing my Trader Joe's (in reality Gordon Biersch bottling under the TJ label) Hofbrau Bock, and Amalia is in post-prandial contemplation with a piece of fruit leather. Soon she will be napping, the rain will be pattering on the awning over our door, The Art of the Fugue will be on the stereo, and a pot of Spanish chocolate will be brewing on the stove.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

For a chocolate recommendation, might I suggest Sharffen Berger? Especially their 71% chocolate (we are definitely a bittersweet family, for wimpier types, they also make a 60% as well as a (cough, gag) milk chocolate).

If you cannot find Scharffen Berger, then Valrhona is also quite good.

Music for Gray Days

The next question you might ask, after reading the last entry, is "well, what is the proper music for a gray, non-rainy day?"

I like music that is slightly moody, but not given to intense emotionalism. Or I like music that I can sink my teeth into, particularly if it is fairly austere. I often get nostalgic for the pieces that cemented my love for modernist music, particularly the early electronic pieces.

In many ways, this is the time when I want my comfort music. I am in no mood to be charitable to grinning neo-tonalists. I want my brain to be taxed, not my patience.

In no particular order, I present to you my list of music for a gray day:

1. Any string quartet by Anton Webern
2. String Quartet and Piano by Morton Feldman
3. Rothko Chapel by Morton Feldman
4. Te Deum by Arvo Part
5. Any of the early electronic music pieces by Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varese (particularly Poem Electronique, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Ilhan Mimoroglu (I need to check the spelling on that - don't speak Turkish), John Cage, Iannis Xennakis.
6. Later electronic music pieces by Morton Subotnik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Laurie Anderson, etc.
7. Various baroque recorder consort music
8. Claudio Monteverdi
9. Choral work by Ligeti
10. Frescobaldi
11. French early baroque chamber music
12. Portuguese and Spanish pre-classical harpsichord music
13. Portuguese guitarradas
14. John Coltrane's Crescent
15. Lou Harrison's harpsichord music
16. Lou Harrison's percussion ensemble music
17. Balinese gamelan
18. Iranian classical music
19. Dino Saluzzi (any of his stuff)
20. Alvin Lucier's Music on a Long Thin Wire
21. John Cage prepared piano pieces.
22. Hyperrationalist chamber music by Stockhausen and Boulez
23. Late Franz Liszt, particularly The Lugubrious Gondola and At the Grave of Richard Wagner
24. L'apres midi d'un faun
25. Gordon Mumma's Megaton for William S. Burroughs
26. Harry Partch, particularly And on the seventh day, petals fell on Petaluma
27. Come Out by Steve Reich
28. Smetana's Ma Vlast
29. Dvorak chamber works
30. Berg's Piano Sonata Op. 1, Lyric Suite and
31. Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
32. Stravinsky's , Les Noces, and Petrouchka
33. Erik Satie
34. Johnny Cash's American Recordings
35. George Jones (anything, any period, even his decadent stuff)
36. Roger Miller
37. 1920's blues, rags and other string music, for instance, Suzy Thompson's soon to be released CD on Arhoolie, or the Crumb soundtrack, or John Jackson's Country Blues and Ditties.
38. Mance Lipscomb and other rural acoustic blues (again, for the best in this stuff, go to Arhoolie Records)

If you want more information or specific recording recommendations, holler.

February and March

I like a good storm. Crashing thunder and lighting, driving sheets of rain. That adrenaline rush when you think of something that is perhaps not quite up for the challenge, followed by the physical rush out in the driving rain to check on aforementioned thing. The relaxation of knowing that the thing is finally secure, and you can come back in the house, slap on five hours of Bach on the CD changer, make hot cocoa and read books with Amalia, or paint paintings with Amalia, or whatever.

I like snow, too, so long as I don't have to deal with the daily realities of living with it. I love to watch it fall, I like the look of a fresh snow. I love to ski and snowshoe and all of that.

Beyond those things, winter is for the birds. Or not. They have the sense to fly to Mexico, or at least Northern California (which must seem like Mexico to the poor birds that do not have enough sense to realize that Canada really is uninhabitable).

So you can imagine my elation when the weather turns warm around here in January and February. I forget that it is nothing more than a temporary respite, that we will have more winter in February and even into March. In fact we usually get our last winter storm in March.

But it's not those storms that bug me. It is the gray, the threat of storms that never come, or only come as weaklings, dropping just enough rain to make driving dangerous and being outdoors unpleasant without eskimo gear.

Today was one of those horrid gray days. It ended up fine. We had a discussion after mass about the Creed (part of the Lenten discussion series at The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi) and even had a few good hours in Golden Gate Park. We went to the Queen Wilhelmina Garden, walked on Ocean Beach (one of those sublimely beautiful yet utterly terrifying places that has haunted me in my dreams for years - a wide expanse of sand with threatening waves. This is the edge of North America, and it does indeed feel edgy, and not in a hip, self-conscious way, but in a all-westward-bound-mythology-stops-here sort of way. If you pick up and blaze a new path, you get wet, eaten by sharks or carried out into the bitterly cold ocean by a rip current), crossed every bridge in the Japanese Tea Garden, explored the botanical garden (especially the primitive plant section and the New Zealand section), and chased each other around the park.

So, all in all, it was a very good day. But there was some melancholic note to the whole thing, with the gray skies and cold wind.

We watched a large, fully laden container ship enter the Golden Gate. It was like a menacing ghost ship, big, dark, and plodding. I could imagine a swarm of ravens over it, like some Romantic effect in a Disney film. There were a couple of homeless men huddled against the leeward side of the sea wall (a scary structure of reinforced curving concrete that invites the imagination to picture all sorts of monster storm waves pounding the Great Highway).

Even earlier, in warm and comfortable North Beach, there was a melancholia in the air. I was an usher and went outside to hand out programs. My thoughts got lost in a field of gray, only to be snapped out of it when some friends came up the stairs. I went in with them to notice that mass had already begun. Not too far into it, just the Collect, but I never do that. Somehow I missed the bell, did not look in to see the procession gathering, etc.

And so it will be for another month or so. Sure we will get some amazing spells of warm weather, with warm evenings, even, but they will fade and the next gray spell will come as a surprise. Again.

At this point I would welcome a good rain storm. Nothing disastrous (we have had enough of those in the last few years around here), but something to really say, "it is raining. For real. Not just threatening."

I have some Bach that I want to listen to.

So that is my motto for the day, "Give me Bach or give me 100 degree weather!"

Pretzels and Lent

A friend of mine and I talk about food, the culture of food, and the history of food quite a bit. He is suspicious of food history, because much of it seems to be nothing more than urban legends, repeated until they are accepted.

I tend to agree with him, but I want to read real food history, as I see the culture of the table as vitally significant to understanding the general culture.

So, what I want to know is: on several blogs I have read about the Lenten origin of pretzels, how they are simple Lenten breads (no fat, meat, etc.), bent into the shape of arms in prayer. Sure, it sounds good, and some folks even suggest a century, but I want to know: what is the source of this tidbit? Even a good secondary source would be good, as I can follow the footnotes to see where this comes from.

So, if you have any information on this, please let me know, as I am curious as to whether or not this is just another urban legend passing as food history, or if it was at least noted somewhere in some document near to the alleged source.

Sorry to be a spoilsport!

Herb Caen Memorial Martini Society

Someone found my site Googling "Herb Caen Memorial Martini Society". Guess who came in first? Although, until now, I did not realize that there was such a society (although I am not surprised), I am quite honored to find my ranking here. It would seem that there is a Herb Caen Martini Appreciation Society or perhaps a Herb Caen Martini Society, but I must be the first Herb Caen Memorial Martini Society.

Herb Caen was wrong on two points, one of them involving the Catholic Church and the other involving the martini, which he thought ought to be made with his beloved Vitamin V, rather than good, proper, upstanding and wholesome gin (oh Lent, oh Lent, only, what, 38 days to go?!?).

However, no one, and I mean no one, captured the spirit and feeling of San Francisco like Herb Caen. So, to come in first for Herb Caen Memorial Martini Society is quite an honor.

Now, about that other Google search.

I have no idea what one would be hoping to find by looking for this, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I certainly had no intention of linking our fine bishop to the dark one!

Strange Dreams

Last night I did not sleep very well, mostly (I think) due to the fact that I went from working rather intensely on something to going bed without much decompression (normally I try to get a half an hour of light fiction (Rumpole, Don Camillo, Ian Shoales, etc.) reading in to keep this sort of thing from happening). As a result I dreamt about the project all night, but not in really helpful ways. Instead I had dreams of things that were supposed to be relevant to the project, but were not at all, so that when I woke up (which seemed to be every half hour) I was just scratching my head with "huh?!? How is that supposed to make sense?" Then back to sleep only to have the same sort of thing pop back in my head.

Of course I had to get up to get Amalia to Italian school, so I didn't do the logical thing, which would have been to get up, work on the project for an hour, then do a half hour of light fiction reading. Instead I turned on the radio to the classical music station.

So, then my dreams turned to harpsichord playing, complete with the sort of anxiety dreams that plagued me in college: I sit down at the instrument at a concert only to find it completely out of tune, with one of the jacks stuck. I ask to borrow a tuning fork, which turns out to be some strange mobile-like contraption that takes too long to get a good pitch out of, then I forget how to tune the thing.

Radio OFF!

Another silly dream about walking around in the museum and leaving bookmarks on the floor of galleries that are useful to the project (huh?!?), and I wake up twenty minutes before I have to.

Amalia is part shark. She sniffs blood, and can tell when her potential prey is weak. Naturally today is when we have to have a complete meltdown at the end of Italian class! Yippee!

I have a headache. Don't expect any great blog posts today (not that you do anyway, but especially don't go looking for insights and analysis).

I WANT MY NAP!!!

Fresno?

To answer Mr. Green's question here, all I can say is that when you are in the Bay Area (and people in Shallow Alto do think they are in the Bay Area, even though they aren't), anything between the Berkeley Hills and Lake Tahoe is "Fresno." It is more a state of mind than a specific place.

Now, for those of us who know the Central Valley and can tell the difference between Merced and Modesto (Modesto has a sign that says "Water=Wealth=Prosperity=Health" or maybe it is Merced that has that sign), we know that it isn't all Fresno.

It certainly can be divided up into broad categories: North (Chico, Paradise, Williams, Willows, Marysville, Yuba City), Central (Sacramento, Davis, Dixon, Vacaville), San Joaquin (Stockton, Tracy, Turlock, Merced, Stevinson, Gustine, Los Banos), and South San Joaquin (Fresno, Tulare). Now, for those who really know the South San Joaquin Valley, they probably will identify a regional feel between Buttonwillow and Fresno, but it eludes those of us who just think of endless fields of cotton and alkali flats.

As for the border areas (Galt and Lodi come to mind), well, I leave that to the locals as to which way they identify.

What are they teaching the little...darlings?

I often get people finding this site because they do a Google search for "baroque recipes," mainly because I have written about baroque music and post recipes. So, as a courtesy I posted something that says basically, "look, you are barking up the wrong tree, but if you want a good idea of baroque cooking, then try this or that..." nothing too detailed, because if I am going to delve deeply into culinary archaeology, then it will probably be the 1920's Italy, rather than the baroque era. I have nothing against the baroque, but when it comes to food history, I am far more interested in tracing several dishes of modern Italian cuisine to the Italian Futurist movement.

However, I have had a few children find this site while doing "research" for their school projects. They get angry when they don't find exactly what they are looking for.

One of the little darlings recently left this message (cut and pasted verbatim):

I agree with Sara! It's hard to do a school on a damned near non-existant thing when all you talk about is crap!!!

Since the little Einstein did not want to look stupid, he corrected himself:

I mean I school report.

Ah, thought I, it must be a member of the Rastafarian Youth Brigade: I and I school report, mon!

But, no, it probably is just another fine product of our educational system. Lynn has addressed this, too, but here we go again:

Let me offer this wayward child some advice on research:

1. The Internet is a decent place to start, but you will need to learn to use a library and real resources.

2. Google is not a "magic find it" resource. Take a few minutes to learn the language of search engines in order to refine your queries. You will understand why Google (or Yahoo or Altavista or any of the other search engines) will return things that are listed as matches when they aren't .

3. Do not choose topics for papers that are out of your league. My guess is that you probably don't even know the years that make up the baroque era, let alone have a particular country in mind.

4. When you are whining that a blog has not done your school work for you, use proper grammar and spelling, so you won't look like an idiot.

Laissez les bons temps rouler

Happy Mardi Gras to you and Happy Birthday to me!

One last Cajun joke for the season:

Boudreaux and Marie, alas, succumbed to the spirit of the times and got a divorce.

After hearing all of Boudreaux's transgressions the judge was incensed. He said, "Boudreaux, after hearing all of your misdeeds that were directly responsible for this marriage falling apart, I am giving Marie $800 a month in support!"

To this Boudreaux replied, "that's mighty kind of you, your Honor, and once in a while I might send along something too."

So, if you have a Boudreaux and Marie joke you would like to share (but only today, tomorrow is time for sterner stuff), post it in the comments box!

Celts and Civilization

The Irish did not save civilization. The Scottish did. Unfortunately, they aren't spending a penny of it! Nae after all that work savin' it! Ya think civilization just grows on trees?!?!

Gumbo, Gumbo, I've Got Gumbo on the Brain!

Last night I discovered two things: it takes a really long time to cool a gigantic cauldron of hot gumbo and that I am too old to sleep on the floor any more. Long story, but after waking up on a beautiful morning, surprisingly refreshed after five hours of fitful sleep under a table (at 1am I realized that I was not going to be done until at least 2am, and did not want to even think about walking to the bus, riding the bus, then walking through our little corner of the edge of the ghetto at that hour, so I wrote my review long hand and camped out under a table in the church hall), it feels really good to be home, to have taken a shower (I no longer smell of crab and onion, yipee!), and to know that when we go back to the church, there will be two giant pots of yummy gumbo awaiting my finishing touches!

Once again, if you are in the Bay Area, don't miss out! On Vallejo Ave, between Grant and Columbus. The best Mardi Gras party in town (and, yes, we know that we are two days early, but it works best for us to do it on Sundays).

And that will have to do...

With that last post, you will hear little from me for the rest of the weekend. Tomorrow I will be cooking gumbo for the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi's Mardi Gras party, which is on Sunday. After we finish the gumbo, I will be off to review a restaurant (with one of those nightmarish overnight turns on the review). Then Sunday after mass I will be in the kitchen until the night.

If you are in the Bay Area, there are still tickets available for the party, which should be a good one: Zydeco music, decorations, as well as great Creole food (some catered and some prepared by us).

Laissez les bons temps roulet (or is it laissez les bons tons roula, as I have seen Louisiana folks spell it? Remind me to tell you a Boudreaux and Marie joke later)!

The Violin Concerto

I must admit that my least favorite genre of music is the post-baroque concerto. There are some that I like, and plenty that I admire, but if I were never to hear another one again, well, there is enough other music out there that I would not grieve. OK, I would miss Berg's, but beyond that, not much.

Today we were listening to some 19th century violin concerto and it hit me: it is a preposterous image. You have the soloist as hero, and I have known too many violinists. A piano concerto is more plausible, at least most pianists think of themselves as heroes of some sorts (after all, their instrument is a gigantic beast of cast iron), but violinists? They are the skinny ones who have "Peace Through Music" stickers on their cars. And if they aren't, their instrument sounds like it should be played by those who do.

The violin is at its most heroic when it is totally alone: slightly mournful, really exposed, setting up a tremendous power against a certain austerity. The violin is the anti-accordion. An accordion is a self-contained orchestra. One player can play all sorts of chords and harmonies, but a violinist is forced to resort to tricks to hold any sort of counterpoint. A triple stop here, a double stop there, but for the most part, it is about forcing the ear to hear one tone longer than it actually does.

But when you have a lush orchestra providing the harmonies, the violinist as hero becomes preposterous. He is a shrill and effete officer, standing on the hillside while the troops muck it out, only to take credit for their courage.

A singer at least has to deal with the fact that, deep down, the musicians hate her. When a singer goes against the orchestra, especially in Wagner, she is the lone soprano standing against the enemy cavalry. Like a Therimin player, she has no frets or keys or even a fingerboard. Unlike every musician, with the possible exeption of guitarists, she goes to bed with her instrument. When a fiddle player has a cold, he can take drugs and slog through it. When a singer has so much as a tickle in the throat, it can mean a career ending move to appear.

But a violinist plays with the orchestra that is usually dominated by his fellow violinists. So, when the premise of a competition between soloist and orchestra comes out, he is not only the enemy, but a traitor. The meanest trick a composer can play on a violin soloist is to give small solos to the concertmaster, those little reminders that, yes, any one of the fiddle players here could probably make it through the soloist's part.

Of course the rhetoric of the concerto is that the soloist triumphs, but then goes on to make beautiful music with the orchestra anyhow. So, then you have the vanquished troops having to grin and cooperate with the traitor, then to suffer the humiliation of having the soloist take the big bow.

At least with singers the poor musicians have the satisfaction of knowing all along that it is an enemy in their midst, not some turncoat. They fought the battle, and let the Battle win, because everyone knows what musicians can do to an overbearing singer. The singer, if she is to be cast as the winner in this antagonistic role, is best seen as a tamer of savage beasts, or a charmer of vipers, or, yes, even a bullfighter who has encountered a bull that, having had several chances to gore her, decided to cooperate for the good of the faena.

And now you know why singers can be so neurotic.

Pollock and the Problem of Reproductions

I was asked to comment on Jackson Pollock, a painter that I find myself admiring more and more these days. I started to write something, but realized that a big problem that I was having was that I have not seen much of his work in a long time. SFMOMA has a very interesting painting called Guardians of the Spirit, which is worth looking at, but the stuff that I really want to delve into are the "drip" paintings, which are the ones that get most people to scratch their heads.

There are two problems with discussing Pollock: first, it is essential to discuss Pollock and not Clement Greenberg, who fundamentally misunderstood Abstract Expressionism in general and Pollock in particular. Greenberg is fun to read, but maddening as well, and he has far too much of a share in the discussion of this period. For those who believe in progress in painting, there is not much point in discussing Pollock except in terms of where his ideas went. As I have written in the past, the idea is not the crux of the matter, rather it is the painting itself.

A pair of farmers with dour expressions in front of a barn. The be-spectacled man holds a pitchfork.

Not really fodder for discussion, unless we are going to wallow in Jungian symbolism, which we don't allow on this blog.

Maybe we can take it a step beyond that and discuss composition, color, texture, etc., but then we are into ideas that transcend what most people think of when we talk about the "idea" behind a painting. A good painting cannot be reduced to an idea. American Gothic is not a great painting because of what it is "about." The same subject could have made a wretched work that never etched itself into the imagination if it were painted by a lesser painter (or even a greater painter on a bad day).

Likewise, if we were to take Greenberg's notions to their logical conclusion, American Gothic is all about illusion of depth (it must be if flatness is the central idea to Pollock's drip paintings). Of course it isn't, any more than Rembrandt was primarily concerned with depth.

Flatness is one of those unfortunate buzz words that was gushed about, but rarely looked at critically, because if you spend some time in front of one of
Pollock's dripped masterpieces, you will realize that flatness is not even what is going on there. Pollock created an amazing space without the tools of perspective. Like Marden, Pollock did this by using the white (and subtle hues) between the drips, in a sort of exploded aerial perspective. There were holes all over that picture plane, and that is what makes the pieces so delicious. Our eye is drawn in and thrown forward in a strange pictorial space that rapidly moves between the surface, deep space and shallow space. Pollock has achieved the effect on eyes willing to take the time to see that the Italian Futurists only dreamed of: of radical motion, the central defining experience of the modern age.

Of course this is part of the fun: if you take a television-conditioned quick view of one of these canvases, you miss it. In order to get the excitement you have to have the patience of someone used to contemplation, of careful study. I daresay that the one who can get the most out of one of these paintings is someone who is well-schooled in classical drawing.

We can get to spectacular wildflower blooms in Death Valley only because of the speed of the motor car, but once we are there, we have to get out of the motorcar to see the richness of the flowers beneath the dessert sunflower, which looks like mustard to the eye whizzing past at 60mph.

So it is with Pollock. To get this uniquely modern experience of the world, we have to do so with eyes capable of pre-modern contemplation, and that is difficult.

But this is all I am going to say on the matter for now, due to the second problem, which is that Pollock's work depend on directness. You really have to see the thing (and to spend some time in front of it) to delve into its mysteries and revelations. Reproductions without the reflections and hints of shadow created by texture, and without the large scale, simply do not do it.

Now, it is perfectly fair to complain that a work that only works in large scale is somewhat deficient. I would argue that ALL works lose something by being reduced or enlarged, and I would argue that it is still possible to discuss Pollock only after seeing reproductions, but that it is difficult. The same is true of Michaelangelo, of Caravaggio, of Rubens, of just about any painter who relied on large scale to impart some of the drama of the painting. We can discuss them, but it is a far too abstract thing to talk about the Sistine Chapel without having at least taken a short look at those walls and ceiling.

So, until I get another chance to spend some time in front of a great drip painting (and I have been itching to get to MOMA to see what I think of the changes, so I might work in a trip sooner than later, but probably not until next year), this will have to do. I simply do not have the experience of the paintings fresh enough in my head to be able to rely on small reproductions in my art books. If I had seen these within the last two years that would work, but it has been longer than that.

Meanwhile, I will have some time to look at the latest exhibit of French realists that is at the Legion of Honor, and probably in the next couple of weeks, so I will be posting my thoughts on that. If you want me to go deeper into Pollock, well, it will cost you: airfare and room in a city that has a fair number of these paintings for me and my family, to be precise. Otherwise, you will have to wait.

Sweetbreads with Chestnuts and Port Wine sauce

Last night I was up until 3:45am. I was up a few short hours later. I have not taken a nap. I am a bit worried about my general health, though, as there might be some blood in my espresso-stream. It is 12:23 and I am still not tired, and I have had a busy day.

Normally I cannot use espresso as a substitute for sleep. It just doesn't work. Partly because caffeine does not seem to keep me up at all, unless I am well-rested, in which case I don't really need it anyway. I generally have my last two shots of espresso right before bed. What gives tonight?

Oh well, I might as well post a recipe, since my latest art posts have become way too long and rambling, and will require substantial editing to turn them into something of interest to the general public.

Speaking of General Public, are any of my readers fond of them, too? I mean, they, like Fun Boy Three and several others, were not nearly as good as their former Two Tone band, but they knew how to craft a good pop tune.

But I digress.

I am going to talk about glands.

Sweetbreads, for those of you who do not know them, have nothing to do with Pao Dolce, the wonderful fluffy stuff that my local linguica factory bakes on Friday. They are the Thymus glands of calves. When properly prepared, they are delicious.

For this recipe, you start by trimming and soaking them according to Julia Child's recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Then you parboil them in acidulated water (again, following the master recipe). When they are ready, you cut them into bite sized pieces and saute them in butter. Add cooked chestnuts (canned are fine), deglaze with port, reduce and add creme fraiche. Finish with a dash of port, and salt and white pepper to taste.

Now, one time my variety meats supplier slipped in brains with the sweetbreads (they were frozen and carelessly marked). Technically you can do the same thing for brains as you can for sweetbreads, except brains have too soft a texture, if you ask me.

So, there you have it: a variety meat that I will pass on.

Next up: tripe, glorious tripe!

Penne with Duck Confit Sauce

OK, there is no better way to get Variety Meats Week off to a roaring start than by posting a non-variety meats recipe! Yippeee!

I made duck confit for the dinner party the other night. I highly recommend doing this, because it takes a minimum of work and yields a ready-to-eat marvel that will keep for several weeks. Basically you buy duck legs (with the thighs attached), and you salt them with herbs and spices overnight, then you slowly cook them in rendered duck or goose fat or home-rendered lard (DO NOT use the horrid hydrogenated stuff that is shelf-stable). What happens is that the fat replaces the water in the salted meat, and you can keep the confit, packed in the duck fat, for three weeks. To serve you crisp up the legs on a hot skillet.

We had two legs of confit left, not quite enough for a meal for the three of us, but enough to be used as a base for pasta sauce.

First, trim the meat from the bones and chop into bite sized pieces. Then, fry them in a skillet (no need to add fat, because even if you are meticulous about scraping the fat off the legs, there will be plenty) with a clove of crushed garlic. Deglaze with dry white vermouth and cook down. Add creme fraiche and a crumbled bay leaf and let simmer. Finish with reggiano parmiggiana and freshly cracked pepper. Toss your almost ready pasta in the sauce and finish cooking the pasta in the sauce over moderate flame.

Here is what I didn't do, but would have made the dish much better (it was good, but had room for improvement):

Sliced arugula into thin strips and tossed that in the pasta, along with some chopped parsley.

Next time!

It's Variety Meats Week!

Normally I would have had my annual Variety Meats Festival this past weekend, in which I cook up all the interesting stuff off of pigs, lambs, and cattle. Past dishes have included homemade French headcheese, trippa alla fiorentina, kidneys, sweetbreads with chestnuts, cream and port wine sauce, lamb tongue salad, beef tongue in sweet and sour sauce, etc.

Last year I was too booked up on any of the weekends that fall before the weekend immediately before Mardi Gras, and this year Mardi Gras came too soon, so instead, I will be offering recipes here until my birthday, which happens to be on Mardi Gras this year.

So, please read, enjoy, post your own recipes for the tastier cuts of meat, and, if you experiment, please report!

Friday Five

List five foods that remind you of home or your childhood (from Happy Catholic):

1. As we approach my birthday, I have to start thinking of my favorite birthday treat: Fondue!

2. Gringo Tacos

3. Fresh pasta with homemade pesto

4. Boef bourguignon.

5. Rigatoni alla bolognese

Mushrooms!

Spring has certainly sprung here in the Bay Area. It might be a false alarm, but I hope not. If it really is upon us, then watch this spot for green garlic, asparagus, and so forth. If the groundhog lets us down, then, well, more root vegetables and citrus fruit.

The other day we had dinner with a couple of other families, and one of them made some excellent dishes, including these little quesadillas with mushrooms.

I wanted to try to make them, but wanted to first strike out on my own before I broke down and asked for the recipe. Mine came out very good, but they were different (I do need to work on my tortillas, though):

Saute some chopped brown mushrooms in goose fat with some crushed garlic, a generous pinch of Mexican oregano, a dash of ground cumin, and half a chopped chipotle. Deglaze with dry sherry, cook off excess moisture, and finish with creme fraiche.

Heat up your tortilla and put a spoonful of the mushroom mixture on it. Top with melting cheese and cover with another tortilla (our friend folded her tortillas over, but mine were too thick and crumbly - like I said, I need to work on these). Flip midway. When the cheese is melty, serve with homemade guacamole and other salsas.