persia in peckham


Axis of Evil Shopping, originally uploaded by Mr Jaded.

i just bought a really special book called persia in peckham, by sally butcher.

so far, my favorite part is the chapter on medicinal foods:

"iranians love [pills], and they love doctors. all parents secretly want their children to be doctors. all iranians also secretly believe that they themselves know better than the doctor. their relationship with the profession is very much love-hate."

has this woman met my family?

la befana


La Befana, originally uploaded by organicc.



i forgot to write about the befana on january 6th. the befana is one of my favorite things about italy.

she's a fabulous old woman, not exactly a witch, who rides around on a broom and brings children presents on the day of the epiphany, which is january 6th. in italy, kids don't really get presents on christmas. instead, they leave out the biggest, most worn out socks they can find on the night of the 5th, along with a glass of wine and a plate with some delicious leftovers, and hope that she'll come fill them with candies, oranges and gifts (and not lumps of coal).

because she's extremely polite, she'll sweep your floor on her way out with your broom, too.

unusual


tomatoes01, originally uploaded by swardraws.

i gave mp and his wife some canned tomato sauce for her birthday last fall.

the other day, he told me in an email that he and his family had just enjoyed it at dinner the other night. he said that it was "delicious and unusual."

i'm really worried--what was so unusual about it? yikes. was it bad? i'd like to hope that if it were bad, they'd know and not eat it. i mean, there would be foam or mold, or a tingling sensation in their mouths when they tasted it.

i started to think, is mp's whole family dead at the dinner table? did i kill the great american hero at the start of his nationwide book tour?

uh-oh.

i tried to remember which batch of sauce i gave him jars from, and opened some to taste it. it tasted fine. no fizzing, no mold, no tingling tongue. no botulism.

today, one of the farmers i was ordering from told me that she bribed her way into a talk he was giving last night in santa cruz with her organic produce. she said gave him a bunch of carrots afterward, and he's still alive and kicking.

i'm just really curious about what was so unusual about it.

Recipe: Flo Braker's Buttermilk Cake

blue egg

, originally uploaded by

mistubako

.

this recipe is from "the simple art of perfect baking," and it's wonderful--the apotheosis of birthday cake.

makes two 8" layers

try to seek out full fat buttermilk for this recipe.

2 1/2 cups (250 g) sifted cake flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs, room temperature

6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups (300 g) granulated sugar

1 cup buttermilk, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

position the rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

butter, flour the pans and line with parchment.

triple sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt onto a sheet of parchment and set aside.

crack the eggs into a small bowl and whisk.

pour the buttermilk into a liquid measuring cup. add the vanilla and stir to combine.

place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. cream the butter with the paddle on medium speed (#5) until it is light in color, clings to the sides of the bowl, and looks satiny (this should take about 30-45 seconds).

at the same speed, add the sugar in a steady stream. when all of the sugar is added, turn off the machine and scrape the gritty, sandy mixture clinging to the sides into the center of the bowl. continue to cream at the same speed for 4-5 minutes, or until the mixture is very light in color and fluffy in appearance.

with the mixer still on medium speed, add the eggs a tablespoon at a time. continue to cream, stopping the mixer and scraping the sides of the bowl at least once. when the mixture is fluffy, white and increased in volume (it should look like whipped cream cheese and the graininess should disappear) take the paddle and bowl off of the mixer.

add 1/4 of the dry ingredients, sprinkling over the top of the creamed butter. fold it in with a rubber spatula, then add 1/3 of the buttermilk mixture. repeat, alternating dry and wet ingredients. with each addition, scrape the sides of the bowl and continue mixing until smooth.

spoon equal amounts of batter into each pan. with a rubber spatula, spread the batter, working from the center outward, creating a slightly raised ridge around the outside rim.

bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the baked surface springs back slightly when touched lightly in the center and the sides begin to contract from the pan.

place the cake pans on racks and cool for 5-10 minutes before removing cakes from the pans. cool cakes completely before icing or cutting.

yum!


Would you like a spoon?, originally uploaded by charlotoframboise.




i spent the entire day making, oh, about 2 quarts of blood orange marmalade. and people wonder why june taylor charges $12 for a jar of jam. i do love making marmalade, though. after it sets, if you've done everything right, it turns glassy and bright, and it's just incredible.

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you can check out my friend claire's sweet articles in the london observer here, here and here.

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wish i had something more to say, but i don't. hope you're well.....

coming back to life


Thistles, originally uploaded by karin eriksson.




well, it wasn't the worst illness i've ever had, but this bout with the flu definitely ranks up there. only now, after a full week of being sick, can i really imagine ever feeling fully human again.

things that have made me really happy this week:

a few new books, including the principles of uncertainty, secret ingredients (thanks, alice!), made in italy, and the oxford companion to italian food. there is a really beautiful story in the nyer book by mfk fisher called "the trouble with tripe." she really is one of the most talented people to ever write about food.

after thirteen painful months of crashing, my computer finally kicked the bucket, and miraculously, apple (perhaps just sick of my endless, nagging phone calls) gave me a brand new one. but since they don't make ibooks anymore, and the macbooks only come with 13" screens and my ibook had a 14" screen, they felt it necessary to give me a 15" macbook pro. and they refunded my applecare.

the science of sleep--perhaps my favorite movie, ever.

i've been eating lots of cara cara and blood oranges.

wait wait and nyer podcasts


a typical spice and snacks shop in tehran. i love how ornate it all is. you never see that here.


there's a sweet article on iranian food in the dining out section of the nyt. in part, i find it sweet because something so commonplace as a mother cooking for her kids was deemed interesting enough to write about in the times. i don't think i've ever met one iranian mother who wouldn't do the same.

i was indescribably lucky to be born to a woman who cooked every single day for me and my brothers. my grandmother once told me, exasperated, that ours is the only cuisine that requires the cook to be in the kitchen all day long. that may not be completely true, but i'm willing to bet that only a few other ancient cultures manage to draw out making dinner into a day-long (or sometimes multiple-day-long) ordeal. on top of cooking time, my mom, displaced like so many others, searched high and low around town (or even as far away as l.a.) for the perfect ingredients, ones that could reawaken dormant taste buds that had given up hope of ever meeting with the flavors of the past--of the old world.

i remember feeling an incomparable inferiority to my cousins the first time i went to iran and met them, because there was no way i'd ever be as iranian as they were. and later, i realized that the food i grew up eating wasn't actually the "real thing," but my mother's closest approximation of it--the yogurt my mom made wasn't as sour as the yogurt i tasted at my grandparent's home on the shore of the caspian, and pita bread, the bread i'd eaten for breakfast nearly every day of my life, was nowhere to be found in iran. i also realized that the culture of convenience hasn't spared iran, either, and pre-prepared foods are just as common in kitchens there as they are here. no matter where she was, i saw, the care and time my mom put into making everything for us from scratch was the most authentic part of our meals, something even many iranians didn't have anymore.

i thought of all of the homes of the diaspora i visited during my childhood, with each family's own version of the past set at the table, all slightly different than what we had at home. my mother's obsession with organic produce that led us to hippie coops and natural food stores wasn't caused by any trends or quest for health-foods as much as it was a search for the flavors of her childhood, passed sitting in plum and walnut trees at dusk. for me, my mother's food was always the best (who doesn't feel that way?).

Flu, originally uploaded by urbanphotographer.




despite trying to outrun it, the flu has caught up with me. i have felt awful for the past three days and it doesn't show any signs of letting up. actually, i get new, exciting symptoms each and every day. so fun!

patterns


texture5, originally uploaded by devinemom.






i'm trying to take advantage of this time to change a lot of things about my life.

i want to be healthier. i want to stop eating out at sketchy ethnic food places (until now, my only exception to knowing where everything i eat comes from), and spend less time on the internet. i want to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier and go for a walk every morning before work.

i want to cut most of the white stuff out of my diet and replace it with brown stuff. i want to replace household chemically stuff with natural stuff, and body chemically stuff with natural stuff. and i want to start drinking a lot more water.

i want to read more, listen to more music, and write on a daily basis. i'm not sure, but i might also want to do the artist's way, or at least morning pages. and i want to be nicer to people (especially at work). i sort of want to force myself to be less snooty, but will i be myself anymore if i'm not a snob about most things?

a huge part of my motivation is all of the cancer in my family (and beyond). i'm surrounded by it, and i don't want cancer to be a forgone conclusion for me.

but i also just realize that i can't let tough stuff leave me without any motivation and force me to float through life as if i have no choice. i need to actively pursue becoming the person i want to be.

a few of my favorites



a partial list of my favorite things of the past year:

robert plant and alison kraus: especially #7.

following the food chain and all of the wonderful people it led me to.

moro blood oranges, royal blenheim apricots, kishus, cherries, dgeg tomatoes, sweet potatoes, little potatoes, imperial black beauty eggplant.

novella and the piggies.

the farm (catering, sleepovers, zoe, my birthday party, ellemagazine, woodworking, pickups, dexter beef, flavia, class field trip, canning, cp party).

finishing my project.

the lesson i learned from the paella lady.

chocolate and tapioca puddings (tartine recipe and whole foods).

sheepsmilk cheeses: especially panache d'aramits, tomette d'helette, abbaye de belloc and the sheep/cow blend gabietou.

tart yogurt, frozen and total

salty chocolate

hawaii with alice and terry (peanut butter mochi, swimming daily, shaved ice--NOT!, misubi, the reppun brothers)

canning so much stuff: marmalade in january. nocino. limoncello. lemon verbena syrup and liqueur. tomato everything. peaches. apricots. strawberry jam. peppers. fennel pollen. fennel liqueur. vin d'orange.

better photos. flickr. i heart flickr.

juj moving to town.

the births of hazel and alexandra.

visiting coach in washington, and making hand-cranked ice cream every. single. day. (mt. baker. log cabin. mt. vernon farmer's market.)

de young wire sculptures and trompe l'oeil.

kerry cassill.

finally feeling like the short fiction in the new yorker doesn't suck balls anymore.

meeting and getting to know some amazing writers, including mp, novella, and ar.

because it deserves its own separate mention: my birthday party.

the guru and my excellent palm-reading.

fiber.

the potato chip movie.

local call...


local call..., originally uploaded by DraconianRain.




tjy, how are you? everything ok? are you home or in london or some other far away place? wherever you are, i hope you're safe. leave me a comment or send an email to let me know--i know you check in here almost every day. shall we meet somewhere exotic this spring? love and miss you.




i've been thinking about my resolutions for next year, and i already have several in mind. i did pretty well, overall, with my 2007 resolutions. this was the first year that i've actually done anything like that, and i'm proud of myself. i think i chose wisely, which is what i hope to do again this time:

make a "boo blogs" folder and stay away from sites that make me feel upset, inferior, or insecure. this includes too much of facebook, and food blogs.

apart from the sugar in my tea each morning, eat no more than one sweet thing per day.

look into switching from synthetic thyroid medicine to chinese herbs or another natural treatment.

read understanding exposure from cover to cover, and take notes!

publish at least one article or essay.

get out of the country!

keep a special food journal, like my friend's mother, who has documented special meals as far back as the 70s.

happy shabe yalda


Yalda night in Tehran, originally uploaded by Sogol Saidi.






tonight is shabe yalda, the ancient iranian celebration of the triumph of light over darkness.

i hope your night is filled with pomegranates, fires, warmth, stories, music, friends and family.


Copper Pots, originally uploaded by Ian Wright.

i've had the great luck of befriending the manager of the yuppie cookware shop next door. he knows exactly how big of a cheapskate i am. he is also aware of my love of copper cookware.

even though i'm majorly cheap, i'll pay a lot for something if i know it's forever. and antique copper cookware is by definition forever. so is the heavy duty cast-iron handled mauviel stuff. that's why those two are the only ones i'd buy.

still, there's expensive, and then there's expensive.

that's where my friend comes in. he flagged me down today in the parking lot to tell me that someone had returned a mauviel pot because of a scratch. a scratch that was invisible to him, and me.

and then he sold me the pot for 55% off.

this is the second time this has happened. i'm collecting a little army.



forgive me for the lighting in this picture and the last--i'm still working on figuring out how to take good photos in low light situations. both of the photos are from the party i worked at on saturday. these cheeses are some of the most expensive i know of, and that stack was just one of about ten. i nearly fell over in shock when i saw so much of this particular beauty--

this cheese is called "renata," and it comes from an amazing producer in eastern washington named sally jackson. when i first heard of renata, i was kind of confused, and thought that it might be named for some sort of musical terminology, like soyoung's cheeses, but then i learned something that endeared sally and this cheese to me more than i ever thought possible:

renata is the name of one cow--a brown swiss--and all of her milk goes into making this cheese (that's why that huge stack of cheese in the photo is so impressive).

though sally jackson has been making cheese for nearly thirty years, she didn't get electricity on her farm until 14 years ago. she gets the chestnut and grape leaves she uses to wrap her cheeses from local friends, and she makes every batch of cheese herself, by hand on an antique gas stove. she and her husband roger still take all of their orders by phone or mail--to see such beauty and success on this scale in this day and age is so rare, and inspiring.

where i was vs. where i wish i were




i've really been wanting to go to the monterey bay aquarium and visit the jellyfish. if only i could have gone yesterday, instead of working at a party for people so wealthy that i felt disgusting doing the work i did. there is no such thing as moderation in their world, and being essentially a 6-year old child housed in a 28-year old's body, i had a really hard time myself. i ate so much candy i think i am still on a sugar high. blech.

i sometimes think that when i leave restaurants, and begin to work more seriously on writing, i can support myself by doing more of this uberfancy catering for the rich and famous. but it is such soul-sucking work that i think i'd be left with less inspiration to write than i have even now. in many ways, it's doing exactly the opposite of what i want to be doing. yuck. and, even though it's not exactly my goal to be rich and famous myself, when you work for them, even if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (as some cooks i know do), you still work for them. you're not one of them. you're not at the party, you're cleaning up after the party. i'd rather not spend the rest of my life (or the bulk of it) being someone's servant, no matter how much i get paid.

soon, soon, i will go see the jellies. anyone want to come?

fruits on pam's porch, originally uploaded by abchao.


i'm caught in a weird place--with my hand still healing, i'm not really supposed to do anything where it could get infected. that means i can't work at a level even close to my full capacity (which is a lot. a coworker once told me i do the work of 2.5 others).

i've lost focus. work is a strange no man's land--the one place where i once had a perfectly clear sense of purpose and duty is now as confusing as the rest of my world. i don't really know what to do most of the time.

i have always done so much, and been expected to do so much, that it is really disconcerting not to be able to do that much. i've been ordered to stay out of the kitchen (which i am able to manage about 75% of the time), but i worry that the others look at me wondering why i'm not doing anything. working in a kitchen is about constantly doing something--a good cook will multitask, and multitask well, the entire day.

at a glance, my hand looks healed, so if you didn't know what's going on, you'd probably think i am just lazy.

the truth is, i am exhausted inside.

and tomorrow, i have a job in the city--one of those fancy jobs where i usually work extra hard to prove i'm worth what they're paying me. not sure how i'll fare, i told them i'm not supposed to do anything too strenuous or use my hand too much, so we'll see what job they give me, and how i deal with my inadequacies.