vegans need not apply

In addition, or rather, in contrast to being the racial mixing pot that is my immediate and extended nephews and nieces, I have discovered that each has his/her distinct food preferences. 

(1) The fish-lover: my niece Ashlynn. Absolutely loved all my fish market pictures, too. "That's so funny!" she says. Although I am not sure exactly what she finds funny. 

(2) The meat-eater: my niece Sophie. Already notorious for a voracious appetite that belies her diminutive stature. AKA, "vacuum cleaner." Favorite word is "more!"

(3) The vegetarian: my nephew Pierce, aka "chocolate" (so dubbed by my grandparents, who exclaim Obama's election victory as particularly significant for our little "blackasian"). Loves fruits and vegetables.

duck, duck, goose

starfruit, yum

more international fine dining

A couple of years ago my family went on African safari.

I quickly discovered how to tell how long someone has been at a camp:

(a) Noobie status (0-2 days): Will diligently pick out the insects that inevitably bonzai dive-bomb into your soup.

(b) Veteran (2-3 days): Carefully spoons mouthfuls of soup around the drowning insects.

(c) Bushmaster: (4+ days, has read "Out of Africa"): Treats the insects as part of the soup.

Typical table setting:



Animals like it raw:

eating my way around the world: TPE and HK

Ah, pomelos. So delishhhh ...

Taipei food excursions:

Yeh Sushi, Hsinyi and Dunhwa Roads intersection, Taipei (click to enlarge)

Traditional tatami sit-down style:

Best beef noodles IN THE WORD:


More to come from this trip.

desparately seeking shawarma

"Good luck finding good shawarma [in Hawaii]," she said.

Challenge taken. Cut and paste from my reply to shawarma-girl:


I asked my friend who lived in Bahrain and married a Lebanese girl, and this is what he had to say:

"My Mariposa said Schwarmas are Greek, Turkish and Arabic…anyone that wants to open a shop…ha-ha. She claims it actually originated in the Middle East however it is mostly Turkish who specialize in it. Yes, Greeks eat schwarmas…don’t forget to make the yogurt or humus that normally accompanies it. I would analogize it to humus, in that it’s a matter of contention between Arabs, Greeks and Turkish on the founder of schwarma and humus."

Then I recruited my friend who grew up in Michigan, which apparently has the largest Arabic diaspora in the US, to go to this restaurant with me. I think its supposed to be Egyptian (Pyramids is the name of the place ...). They served shawarma ... but, with the bread and meat on separate plates. My friend says that is definitely not authentic.

So next I asked a pretty well-traveled chef I know, dave millen, and he said "go to Olive Tree. It's owned by this guy I think his name is Youbas, and he claims he's Greek but he isn't" (Almost like a well-known local surfboard shaper, Kimo Green, except you go order a board from the guy and find out he is really a haole boy from Philly originally and his real name is Jeff). The key, chef says, is good pita bread - not the fluffy stuff they sell at supermarkets - and good marinade.

I'm at Olive Tree and the shawarma is served inside the bread this time, BUT, in a patty. I thought the meat was supposedly shaved off a rotisserie (which reminds me, really, of Taiwanese sao-way-ma). when i bring this up to millen, he says the shave meat is gyros, but otherwise shawarma and gyros are pretty much the same thing.



Now I'm all wrapped up about shawarma, so I have to go borrow this other chef's book, The Arab Table (she got this book as a gift from another chef, who is a corporate chef for J.W. Marriot, and he'd just returned from a trip to the Middle East -- apparently, this guy's gig is to travel the world opening kitchens at Marriot Hotels). According to The Arab Table, shawarmas are supposed to have shredded meat off a rotisserie, but then the author provides that you can make it at home without shredding the meat, and the key is, indeed, marinating for 2-3 days.

I don't know.

I am surprised that I never had it in Iraq. According to wikipedia, shawarma has been made popular in the United States particularly by American troops returning from deployments in the Middle East. Do you see shawarma? I don't.



I think I am moving on to other big questions for now. Like - people blocking the left lane on highways so you can't pass - but if they are technically within the speed limit (yet impeding the flow of traffic), are you justified in getting annoyed?

the Old Man and the Sea; at the fish market

I believe it was in the introduction to Breakfast of Champions that Kurt Vonnegut summed up his interpretation of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. In The Old Man and the Sea, the old man goes out to sea and, after eight-four days of futility, he comes across and catches a big fish (an eighteen-foot marlin). But the fish being so big, the old man can't haul it into the boat. Instead, he lashes it against the boat and starts heading back to land. Unfortunately, the blood trail of the big fish attracts numerous sharks. By the time the old man reaches land, there is nothing left of the big fish but the bones. The lesson, says Vonnegut, and what the old man should have done upon making his catch, is this: fillet the fish, throw the rest away. 

<*} ) ) > {

Fishing. So instructive.

Having said that, a good fish cutter is hard to find. One who can fillet and get the maximum yield, and quickly. I'd do everything I could to hire that dude if I ran a sushi joint. Nelson shows how its done:

---

Its open season for fishing in the main islands.

Most people are not aware that the Hawaiian islands are more than just Oahu, Hawaii (proper) - aka Big Island, Maui (including Lanai), Kauai (including Nihau), and Molokai. The Western Hawaiian Islands stretch the distance of California to Texas. Takes fishermen about 2 weeks just to get out there.

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PROJECTS/HawaiiReef/hawaiihome.shtml

Some of the goods, including my favorite, TUNA! Grade 1 Bigeye being sashimi quality, followed by Yellowfin (Grade 2), and then Skipjack for poke. The core (small cylindrical extract) allows the buyer to see the fatty content.

The BEST grade 1 tuna is the Bluefin. Unfortunately, the Bluefin is greatly overfished, and quotas, according to the ICCAT, remain too high. Members of "the 46-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas voted in Marrakech, Morocco, to grant a quota of 22,000 tons for 2009. That is 7,000 tons more than what scientists from the same organization had recommended."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/25/new-bluefin-tuna-fishing-quota-criticized-1/

where's the beef?

According to an article in the Economist, Burger King is attempting to challenge Mickey D's status in China as the true "king" of burgers. One problem facing both BK and Mickey D's, however, is the food preferences of the Chinese. The Chinese traditionally are not big fans of beef, preferring, instead, chicken (especially with the mad cow scare some years ago). So, in addition to adding China-specific chicken menu items, BK and Mickey D's are now waging marketing campaigns to promote beef.

Me? I loves me my chicken, too. Fried chicken or herb-roasted. But I am also a fan of beef. Enough so that I am ready to try DK Steakhouse's $79.95, 8oz, kobe-style steak tomorrow night. DK's has its own dry-aging storage, which he's been kind enough to agree to let me take a look at. More from DK's after my visit ...

In the meantime, bringing you the world's most heavily fortified Mickey D's: going to Iraq via Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base ...

Drive-through was not an option.

---

DK's dry-aging unit.

non-foodie status in jeopardy; dispelling myths

I may be jeopardizing my non-foodie status. This potentially happens when you order Thai soup-noodles, and frown disapprovingly when you notice the tomatoes in the soup are not diced evenly.

Dispelling myths

Anthony Bourdain describes what actually goes on in a commercial kitchen, vice, e.g., what you see on celebrity chef tv shows:

"What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that is is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying food repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield circumstances."  

Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, p. 56.

Perhaps more entertainingly, Bourdain had this to say about Rachel Ray:

“We KNOW she can't cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that "Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!" Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell...I could do that. I ain't gonna...but I could--if I wanted!" … Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachel uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing...Just sit there. Have another Triscuit..Sleep...sleep...”

http://www.themillionsblog.com/2007/02/food-fight-anthony-bourdain-slams.html

I have discovered my own likes and dislikes.

Like:  Quantity production - to include butchering, e.g., deboning and trimming the fat off 10lb chucks, cooking 25lbs of beef stew in a tilt kettle and using a 4 foot-long wooden paddle.

Like:  Heat. The heat of the grill, griddle, and frier. Then again, I was a forestry major in college. I walked around Urbana Park District with a drip torch lighting underbrush on fire performing "controlled burns" (prevent too much organic buildup which can lead to uncontrollable fires). I like heat. And I like fire. Throw fire in with knives, and you'll have to find me either in the kitchen, or at the circus.

Dislike:  Baking, e.g., waiting for the yeast to rise, realizing you were not anal enough with the precise measurements required, and having to start all over. Then there is the whole sterile environment of the bake shop. Sometimes, its like being in chem lab.

daughters and weddings (and WH miscellany)

Until Alice Waters and other notable American chefs successfully lobbied President Clinton to appoint a White House chef who would cook some American, state dinners at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue featured French menus and French ingredients (thanks to Jackie O). Even Paul Bocuse found it "ridiculous" that the White House chef was not American, but typically ... European. But the reality was, just as opera singers, for example, cannot avoid studying the Germanic roots of classical opera (Die Zauberflöte / The Magic Flute, Der Ring des Nibelungen / The Ring of Nibelung, etc.), so too did ambitious American chefs flock across the Atlantic (de riguer) to seek out stagiare (apprenticeship) positions in French kitchens. (N'est ce pas?)

When French-born White House executive chef Pierre Chambrin tendered his resignation, the Clintons accepted and hired California-born, Culinary Institute of America alum, Walter Scheib.



Granddad was not a chef, but likewise chose to travel Europe, though from the other side of the world. Growing up in Taiwan when it was a Japanese colony. he was one of few Taiwanese to be chosen to study at the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University. Even then (before WWII), Japan apparently had close relations with Germany, and after Granddad graduated from medical school, he head to Europe, including a stint Germany, where he learned and still sings German songs. His focus was on medicine – and visiting different hospitals and clinics, and seeing how they were run. Granddad later returned to Taiwan and opened his own clinic, and became a well-known Ob-Gyn doctor.

At one particularly grand and large wedding of the youngest daughter of three from an affluent and prominent Taiwanese family, Granddad was seated at the head table, with the bride and groom and their parents. The casual observer might have wondered who my grandparents were, not being immediate family.

Mom told me later that the bride's parents had always wanted a son. When the friends had their first daughter, they decided to try again. Then they had another baby girl a little over a year later. Though they were disappointed, they were nevertheless happy. The final time, though, was an "accident" five years later. The friends had decided that two kids were enough, even two daughters. And to have a third child and, well, a girl …. They approached Granddad about an abortion.

According to Mom, that’s when Granddad told them: “Keep the baby. If you don’t want her, I’ll raise her.”

So they had the baby, but also kept her as their own. But they never forgot how Granddad had changed their minds.

Pupu platters from Abbey's wedding at the Museum of Modern Art, La Jolla (San Diego):



  
Wedding menu ... and Chinese wedding pastries.

Chilled Spanish Gazpacho

Topped with Roasted Shrimp and Basil Guacamole, Gourmet Tortilla Tuile Garnish over the Top

Beet Orange Salad

Organic Greens, Laura Chenel Goat Cheese, Toasted Almonds, Balsamic vinagrette, Artisan Levain Bread and Plugra Butter

Wild Striped Bass

Braised fennels and Nicoise Olive Tapenade, Herb Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Fava Been Succotash

Hudson Valley Duck Breast

Fanned and Served with a Port Wine Demi Glace, Organic Spinach lightly Sauteed with caramelized Garlic and Chili Oil, Thyme Scented Baby Turnip Wedges

Vanilla Gelato with Raspberry Coulis

Chocolate Shavings, Garnished with a Piece of Kransekake 

WHITE HOUSE executive chefs

- Rene Verdon 1961-1965, French; hired by the Kennedys "to infuse White House dining with French elegance" but resigned when Lyndon Johnson demanded he cook "Texas-ranch style". (C'est la vie ...)

- Henry Haller 1966-1987, Swiss; most famous meal may have been President Nixon's last: one poached egg with corned-beef hash followed immediately by one letter of resignation.

- Jon Hill 1987-1988; first American to serve as White House executive chef, but lasted all of four months before being resigning citing personal reasons ...

- Hans Raffert 1988-1990, German; did not enjoy the Reagans' penchant for "tryout dinners", preferring, instead, to stick with classical menus for state dinners (consistent with the Bushs' own desires, though not his American-born assistants).

- Pierre Chambrin 1990-1994, French; claimed to have been fired for being fat and speaking with a heavy French accent. (Au revoir!)

- Walter Scheib 1994-2005, American.

- Cristeta Comerford 2005- 2009?, Filipina; first female White House executive chef (sacre bleu!), served on Walter Scheib's staff as an assistant.

the kitchen brigade, and history of food in 5 bullets

Georges Auguste Escoffier - proclaimed the "King of Chefs" by Kaiser Wilhelm II - and one of the most influential names in culinary history. Random stories of Escoffier also have him training Ho Chih Minh as a pastry chef when running the London Carlton.

Though the King of Chef's name in the pages of modern history is less well known than that of Wilhem II, or than that of his legendary business partner at the Carlton, Cesar Ritz, Escoffier did leave the legacy of the kitchen brigade.

With the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Escoffier was called to serve in the French Army, and appointed Chef de Cuisine at the fortress of Metz, which the Germans laid siege to for seventy days. The experience of being cut off from fresh food supplies (and without the benefit of MREs, of course) led Escoffier to study the technique of canning meat, vegetables and sauces. But his experiences in the Army probably inspired him in other ways as well, to include organizing his kitchen staff into "brigades" - the system widely duplicated today in many larger restaurants, and in reference to military organization.

Incidentally, Escoffier was later also a consultant to a shipping company, and created the menu served on the last, ill-fated voyage of White Star Line's RMS Titanic.

All but one of the chefs on board perished, including Escoffier's previous garde-manger et poisson chef at the Carlton, whom a Henry Clay Frick, the steel king of America, had persuaded Escoffier to release to serve as the his personal chef. Escoffier would ensure that obituaries of each chef, with their photographs, were published in Le Carnet d'Epicure.

Only three known, preserved, copies of the Titanic's first-class menu from its final evening exist. The last sold at an auction for 88,500 dollars.

An explanation of the menu can be found here: here.

History of Food in 5 bullets:

- 4000 BC: Sumerians introduce taverns and booze, making Marines retroactively proud

- 2000 BC - 476 AD:  Pursuit of spices propels trade, Pyramids become first tourist attraction, roads built, common currency and lingua franca established, first by the Greeks, and subsequently the Romans.

- 476  - 1600 AD:  "Dark Age" deals international trade a close-to-fatal blow, with roads becoming dangerous with the fall of the Roman Empire, the Church and monasteries fill the "hospitality" vacuum somewhat, until 1350 (-1600), when the Renaissance witnessed a return to safe travel, commerce, and the debated assertion that Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) brought Florentine/Italian sensibilities to what would become French haute cuisine.

- 1600 - 1800 AD:  Industrial Revolution in England and the railroad leads to an explosion in the hospitality industry; across the channel, France becomes embroiled in revolution (1789-1799), at the end of which professional chefs no longer remain in the exclusive service of nobility, in addition to uprooting of the guild system's monopoly on specialty food items, spurring a commercial culinary industry on the continent.

- 1800 - modern times:  Nouveau cuisine, new equipment, cars, Upton Sinclair and safety and sanition awareness, nutrition,  Ray Kroc, Alice Waters successfully petitioning President Bill Clinton to actually put an American chef in the White House (no more French menus!) ... its all COWABANGA.

feeding an army ... with space-age technology

For those who did not know, the MRE owes its evolution to the space program during the 60's and 70's:

"The MRE was originally developed for the military, but it was NASA that nudged it to a higher form of nutrition, and made it more palatable and easier to use .... The MRE was a boon to Apollo astronauts, who were surely tiring of squeezing food paste from a tube." Mark Hawver, Serving Them Right: MREs, Water Purification, Food Prep & Utensils

Indeed, the science behind the retort pouch sounds some like rocket science, but what do the kids think of these "savory, self-contained, cuisines"-in-a-box:

And there you have it . . . MRE: Meals Rejected by Everyone.

c h o w (eponymous)

Alohas - welcome to my food blog. Like the typical, first day of class, occupied by handing out course outlines and other administrative mumbo-jumbo, I suppose I'll start by un-ambitiously explaining the title of my blog, "c h o w." According to Websters:

chow (chou), Informal -n. 1. food, esp. hearty dishes or a meal . . .

Until October 3, 2004, I had never used the word "chow." But since that day, when I arrived at Quantico, Virginia, and stepped onto the parade deck at Officer Candidate School, food has been referred to as chow.

Chow. Say it to yourself. Now ask yourself this: Is this a word that gives you the same reaction as, say ... cordon bleu. Or saucier, or, I dunno, escargot? Now try it compared to these other words:

Chow.  Patisserie. 

Chow.  Petit four.

Chow.  Ratatouille.

Chow.  Fois gras.

Chow.  Aperitif.

Chow.  Table d'hote 

Chow . . . not a particularly inspiring word, right?

Chow. Fiorentina.

Chow. Soffritto.

Chow. Prosciutto.

Chow. Just doesn't quite ooze succulence, does it.

Okay, okay. Maybe I am cheating a little here. I mean, maybe its not fair to say "Mary Jane" and then "Anna Kournikova" or "Elena Dementieva" and expect you to say, "Oooh, they all sound equally sexy." You just don't throw foreign names around and not fall prey to seduction by the exotic-ness of it all. But what about:

Chow. ... Esculent.

We talk English here. 

And, by definition, "esculent" suggests barely passable fare: "1. suitable for use as food; edible. -n. 2. something edible, esp. a vegetable." And here again we have chow: "food, esp. hearty dishes ..."

Oh well.

But I guess that's the point, or my point. This is a blog for me to post random thoughts about food. I am not a chef, I am not a "foodie," and my opinions won't be driving Michelin 3-star chefs to suicide.

The adoption by the military of the word "chow" may be a reflection of the mentality that food is, simply, "sustenance." No frills, no thrills. Such were days in the field where instructors admonished officer candidates with "chow is continuous" - indeed, I tried to eat from my packs of Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) and random snacks stuffed in my spare magazine pouches, and constantly - though not because I was hungry, but because I was always cold during the Northern Virginia winter, and recognized that I needed calories to burn to stay warm(er). (Having said that, it seems that an increasing emphasis on providing, not just nutritious food, but tasteful food, to American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines -- just witness the private food service 3d-country-national contractors in bow-ties serving icecream at DFACs in Iraq -- a story for another time.) 

So, alohas again. No frills, no thrills. 

Chow. 3. culinary excursions of a non-foodie.

---

SATURDAY, JULY 16, 2005

Loud and Vicious

It's almost 0530. It's still dark out, but you can almost feel the crack of light. OCS candidates have already woken up ("count, off!"), dressed ("put your left boot on now! 20, 19, 18, 14, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1!"), cleaned the squad bays ("scuzzbrush the bulkhead!"), scampered (moonbeams clanking against their warbelts) onto the parade deck for formation ("Report!"), marched ("Road guards! Post!") across the damn bridge to Bobo Hall ("1, 2, 3 attack the chow hall!"), and are now standing in line holding their trays with elbows tight and to their sides, side-stepping through the chow line ("Eggs please, ma'am!").

They will be eating with feet flat on the floor, at a 45-degree angle, backs straight and off the seat rests, bringing their food to their mouths, and not their mouths to their food. There will be no talking unless spoken to first. And then they will reply loud and vicious. Sergeant instructors are yelling. Some candidates will be assigned 300-word "remedial" essays for transgressions such as walking with food in their mouths ("daggon heinous!"). This will probably fall under the subject heading "failure to follow simple instructions." The platoons that finish first will go sit outside in front of Bobo Hall, facing the Potomac. Some candidates make a "head call" (which evolves into social time at OCS). The rest will unfold and sit down on their campstools and bury their faces in their candidate regulations. But really, each is staring at the Potomac as the sun soon breaks the horizon. A precious moment of peace, perhaps the only moment of peace, in a day in candidate land. It's about 0545, and all they can think of is "what the fuck am I doing here?!"

"Aye aye candidates! Aye aye gunnery sergeant! Carry on candidates! Kill!"

Something similar is probably happening at MCRDs San Diego and Parris Island.

While most of our society sleeps, the Corps is making Marines.