Life, liberty, and the pursuit of the perfect chili recipe

I know it is somewhat irrational, but I always get mildly annoyed whenever asked the question, “So what kind of food do you cook?” I think this is due to the fact that I cannot answer the question, at least not succinctly. I think of cooking first and foremost in terms of techniques, then in terms of ingredients, and then cuisines. This is to say that in my mind my cooking knowledge is primarily organised in terms of “how-to”s – how to salt-crust a sea bass, how to confit a duck leg – and secondarily in terms of “what”s – I love working with red meats and shellfish, and have a weakness for garlic. It is not often instinctive, for me, to identify a dish I make with its country or culture of origin.

Yet it is almost always the case that its place of origin is central to the dish itself, and cannot be ignored. Take Texas-style chili, for example. For me at least, it conjures images of a chilly December evening somewhere in the Lone Star State – with gray skies and fast fading light at five o’clock in the afternoon and a pot of chili simmering on the stove. Now I have never lived in Texas, but it is almost as if I did not need to. Here is my adaptation of Texas-style chili – traditionally made with beef but in this case with the addition of gamier meats – using cooking techniques I have picked up along the years that may not necessarily be traditional to making chili. Simon, Joanna and I made this recipe for this year's edition of Frank's Chili Bowl, our annual DC chili cookoff. It was, I'd like to think, very well received, but we still came in second to a team who not only bribed the judges with a round of shots, but who had also added corn to their chili. The humanity!

Yes, I am bitter. Deal with it.

Three-Meat, Three-Bean, "Team Gravedigga-digga-digga" Chili

2 pounds venison, ground
2 pounds wild boar, ground
1 pound beef (at least 90% lean), ground
2 bay leaves
Peppercorns
1 can Guinness
1 can black beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 can pinto beans

1 head garlic
2 leeks, diced
1 large onion, diced
2 sticks celery, diced
3 bell peppers, roasted and diced
4 habanero peppers, diced
4 jalapeno peppers, diced
4 poblano peppers, diced
3 tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1½ cups beef broth

Paprika
Cayenne
Cumin
Chili Powder
Nutmeg
Oregano
Old Bay seasoning
Hot Sauce

2 strips bacon
½ stick butter
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
Honey
1 tsp espresso beans, ground
1 square unsweetened baking chocolate


Mix the ground meats and rub thoroughly with the dry spices, salt and pepper, moistening slightly with hot sauce if needed. Leave the meats to sit for 45 minutes to half an hour. Add the Guinness, making sure to submerge the meats. Add two bay leaves and a handful of loose peppercorns to the mixture and refrigerate at least 3 hours and preferably overnight. The beer marinade helps to soften the gaminess of the venison, and is an important step not to be rushed.

Pre-heat oven to 400F.

Cut the top of the head of garlic and roast in tin foil with a drizzle of olive oil for 15 to 20 minutes, till browned. Remove and set aside till cool enough to be handled. Meanwhile, place the leeks, onions, celery and tomatoes in a baking pan, drizzle with olive oil and season lightly with all of the dry spices. Roast at 400F for 25 to 30 minutes. Roasting vegetables before adding them to the chili helps to bring out and intensify their flavours.

While the vegetables are roasting, render the fat from the bacon in a large pot and then brown the meat in batches, removing when done. Reserve any drippings. In the same pot, melt the butter on high heat – you should smell a nutty aroma from the burning butter – taking care not to let it get too hot. Once butter is entirely melted, remove from heat and stir in flour. Mix well into a thick, gooey brown paste. This is called making a roux. Keep mixing and bring the roux back onto low heat. Ideally you want to cook your roux to a honey nut brown colour, which usually takes 10 to 12 minutes.

Once you have made your roux, add the vegetables and diced peppers and cook well, about 6 to 8 minutes. Smash and mince the roasted garlic and add to the pot. Season with the dry spices. It is important to allow the vegetables to cook for a little while before seasoning or adding the other ingredients, to create a good soffritto, or flavour base.

Add the meats, drippings, beef broth, honey, tomato paste, espresso grounds and baking chocolate; and season to taste with the dry spices and hot sauce. Bring to a gentle boil and then allow the chili to cook at a simmer for at least 3 hours. About 1 and a half hours before your scheduled end, add the beans to the mixture. This will ensure that the beans cook through, but are still somewhat firm to the bite.

Makes roughly 5 quarts of chili – which probably serves about 10-15 people.

Variation: Different meats can be used if venison or wild boar are not readily available. However, one should take care to use different meats, or if restricted to one particular meat, at least different cuts of the same meat (eg. chuck, top loin, and oxtail of beef). This gives the chili depth of flavour.

Note: I have left out quantities of the dry spices because I do not know exactly how much we used, and because I also believe, anyway, that this is a matter of tasting for personal preference and should be left up to the individual chef to decide.

The comfort of strangers

Toro
1704 Washington St
Boston, MA 02118
617-536-4300

I read Michael Ruhlman’s The Soul of a Chef recently, and was astounded by the bit in which he reveals that on a particular night, Tom Keller and his kitchen at the French Laundry had produced a total of nearly seventy different dishes. At a restaurant where dishes are known to be diverse, innovative, and laborious to prepare, this feat is quite humbling. It is even more humbling when you figure that a significant number of those dishes were probably made up on the spot. It made me wonder just how well-oiled a machine the kitchen line can be when at its best, and gave me a newfound respect for restaurants that offer tasting menus, even multiple tasting menus – as the French Laundry does – or, otherwise, serve dishes tapas-style.

It was in this frame of mind, then, that I visited Toro – a Ken Oringer establishment in the South End of Boston’s Back Bay – that had been highly recommended by two dear friends. I had been instructed to “whatever you do, get the ceviche” by Reed, while Margaret had personally agreed to come along, but not before the requisite raving about the place. I roped in Allison – new to the area – and Jeffrey – who had lived in Cambridge for a year but was a self-confessed novice to the areas across the Charles. I was a little worried that they would not get along, but these fears were soon proved to be unfounded.

I got off work early – which always puts me in a good mood – and after some orchestration via cellphone, was soon on my way to meet Jeffrey and Allison for a pre-dinner coffee. The air was crisp with the smell of a newly-arrived fall, and the conversation flowed easily as we crowded around a small table top in a coffee place on Massachusetts Ave. There is a poignancy about the cusps of seasons – as if the world is flush with the hope of a new beginning, yet silently struggling to close the chapter on the old.

Margaret soon arrived to pick us all up, and we crowded excitedly into the car. She had evidently just taken a shower; for she smelled of flowers and minerals and her hair was wet and streaky. She looked lovely. We barreled forward to the restaurant, and Jeff filled the car with his chatter about the buildings on either side of us. He is doing a Masters in Urban Planning, and having seen and heard the way he talks and thinks about buildings and spaces and his whole conception of place, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone else doing anything so true to his or her calling.

Toro does not take reservations, so we stood by the bar to wait for a table of 4 to open up. It is housed in what used to be a meat market, and has dark sensuous walls of exposed brick. There is a fireplace in the back, behind the bread counter, and the semi-open kitchen next to it flows uninterrupted into an elegant bar area. Large mirrors adorn the walls, making the space appear bigger than it actually is, and there are two long communal tables in the center of the room for cafeteria-style dining. Jeff ordered some red wine sangria, which needed a little more sugar and a whole lot more wine, but was quite delicious nonetheless.

The wait extended far beyond the promised 20 minutes, which would have rankled more if not for the easy conversation. The hostess was also exceedingly pleasant and acceded to our request to start ordering. Once we had done so, however, the food arrived almost instantaneously. It was a curious phenomenon. We started with olives, cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in jamon serrano, a potato-onion omelette, and a dish of cuttlefish in squid ink. The latter was my favourite as it reminded me of a dish I used to have as a child, when we would go to my grandmother’s for dinner. For the longest time I always thought that she made it, so when I eventually found out that it was store-bought it marked a critical piece in my jigsaw of growing up.

When we were eventually seated it was near to the kitchen, and we immediately set about the business of ordering more food. The thing about tapas is that it is the perfect food for the indecisive; but leave four indecisive people with a menu of 30-something choices and ask them to whittle that down to 10 or 12, and we could have been there all night. There were some things we couldn’t do without: Reed’s recommendation of the octopus ceviche, the grilled corn with alioli and contija cheese which Margaret said was the restaurant’s signature, and the deep-fried salt-cod fritters that I had a fixing for. But the other choices were tough ones to make, and once the die had been cast and the orders placed I immediately felt a tinge or two of regret.

The tapas started arriving immediately, which suited our ravenous selves very well indeed. The ceviche was, as promised, out of this world. It was flavoured in a yellow pepper sauce, with plenty of cilantro and mint and had a tangy but not caustic aftertaste. That, and the corn, justified their recommendations; the corn being an explosion of buttery and milky flavor accentuated with lime. Other standouts were the Kobe sliders (not even remotely Spanish, but delicious nonetheless) and the smoked duck drumettes. There were a couple of misses too, though, including the wild mushroom sauté – which did not have a precise flavor profile and could also have stood being cooked a little longer – and the sweetbreads, which had been left out for too long and had become slightly soggy once it got to us. We had also ordered the seafood paella, which came in a huge pan that took up most of the precious real estate on the table. It was cooked well even though it could have used more saffron. Yet there was an abundance of clams and mussels to go around, and so we could not complain.

All through dinner the conversation flowed like wine, and I felt genuinely happy to be amongst friends who I had not seen in a while. I did not know how everyone else felt, for meeting new people is a challenge that is both scary and exciting, much less dining with them. But there was no awkwardness, and we each found and fell into a comfortable groove as the night wore on.

The very best dining experiences are predicated on the façade that everything in the here and now – the front of the house, the back of the house, the house itself, décor, ambience, music – is working harmoniously towards the complete enjoyment of the diner. The best restaurants keep up this façade: waitstaff never appear hurried or harried, tables never look like they are uncleaned, and the food is done right, done well, and done with pride.

At the end of the night, I realised why the wait for tables was so long, while the wait for the food was almost non-existent. The way I figure it, the kitchen and waitstaff would have no problem handling more tables and more turns, but because the restaurant is such a great place to linger and the whole concept of tapas encourages this behaviour, actually seating diners is a problem. Despite the wait time, Toro did a good job of keeping up the façade that night, and that only added a welcome gloss to what was a perfectly enjoyable evening.

When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie

La Stanza Diva Fiorentino
315 Main St
Woburn, MA 01801
781-935-3088

“Oh, but you must have some wine.” Her tone was one of grave concern, and the look on her face matched it perfectly. “I’ll see what I can find.”

The hostess at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino bustled away purposefully, and within minutes had returned with two magnum-sized bottles of red wine. “Which would you like?”

“Chianti.” I said, and she smiled as though I had given the right answer, as she filled my glass. Neither of my dining companions that night wanted any wine, and the hostess seemed disappointed. But she brightened almost immediately, and shot me a conspiratorial look. “I’ll just pour another one for you, then, just in case you want more.” It was as if she believed that you should never pour just one drink.

We were at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino, a home-style Italian restaurant nestled in the sleepy Boston suburb of Woburn, MA. The place was BYOB, and does not serve alcohol. I had been lucky that night: there had been a large group present as part of a wedding rehearsal that was winding down, and plenty of unfinished bottles of wine calling out to be drunk, as I was calling out to drink them.

La Stanza Diva is housed in an unassuming brick building, marked from the outside by only its green awning. But once you step inside, though, there is nothing in the restaurant that does not reach out to you. The interior of the restaurant is cavernous and poorly lit, but somehow comforting and welcoming. Home Goods decorations and all manner of baubles and knick-knacks adorn every corner, with no discernible theme – it is like the house of your middle school best friend with the crazy mother with the Zimbabwean horse sculpture thing at the door, where you used to hang out after school. It is kitschy, zany, cluttered, yet at the same time just plain fun.

The menu is made up of disparate photocopied handwritten sheets, stapled together and dog-eared at the corners, the dishes spelled out in a hand that is almost child-like. Yet it is so much fun thumbing through the many sheets – I doubt I have enjoyed myself as much looking through a menu anywhere else. There is all manner of foods available – the classic Italian staples, as well as more exotic game such as alligator and kangaroo and frogs’ legs. I am tempted to try these, but the whole reason for our going there was my craving for Italian, so I settle for a more conservative choice of veal scaloppini. We order calamari for the table to share, and settle back to take in the surroundings.

The restaurant seems a firm believer that one should never take oneself too seriously. In addition to the décor, it was also playing the soundtrack to the Godfather in the background. Whether or not that was done with a touch of irony, I shall never know. It was almost too much – without being so. Come to think of it, the few patrons that were scattered in pockets around the restaurant when we walked in had eyed us with a wary look of suspicion, almost Mafioso-like in its distrust. If there had been any way to be more conspicuous as out-of-towners, I did not know it.

But once the food arrived my edginess disappeared, and I began – as I am wont to do while eating – to become chattier. Perhaps it was the wine, but I like to think it was the enjoyment of simple, homestyle Italian done well. The calamari was lightly breaded and fried for just the right amount of time so that the squid was still juicy and springy when bit into. The marinara dipping sauce had milk in it, which balanced the acidity of the tomatoes perfectly and made for a sweet and tangy complement to the calamari. It was textbook Italian, and I was loving it.

I had balked a little earlier at the prices listed on the menu, but once the entrées arrived I understood completely. The portions were huge, almost enough for two meals, and were served with a side (!) of spaghetti and meatballs. This was Italian done in the good old days where everyone ate as if it were their last meal, and stayed at the table for hours on end, and nobody left the table anything but completely, utterly and absolutely stuffed. Indeed, there were at least two tables there that had looked as though they were finished with their meals when we sat down to eat, yet had not left when we got up to go.

My veal came done in a rich, brown sauce cooked down to a perfectly nappe consistency, with a hint of sherry. I felt it almost criminal to leave half of the food on the plate, but in my defence I also got further than any of the others at the table. The waitress smiled beatifically – at me, I like to think – when she came by at the end of our meal; I wondered if she was proud of our veritable showings in polishing off whatever had been put in front of us, or merely laughing inside at the pathetic futility of our efforts.

I am a fan of heavy dinners rather than heavy lunches, and I could feel my eyelids drooping in the car ride back to the hotel. I felt as if I had just intruded upon a well-hidden local neighbourhood secret, and yet been welcomed not as the stranger that I was, but as one of the famiglia – well-fed, well taken care of, and sent back on my way well-rested.

A tribute to the Stone Home Wine Bar

As I have written in these pages before – I am a fool for offal. Liver, especially, is one of my favourites. I can remember the look that my father gave me when, as a five year-old, I must have surprised him by displaying a hearty appetite for the pan-fried pork livers that he loved so dearly. My father was a very private man but even he could not disguise the happiness that showed so clearly on his face. In later years he mastered the art of acting all put out – at having to deal with competition at the dinner table for this otherwise unpopular delicacy – but I knew he was secretly pleased that he had been able to share his love for liver with at least one of his children.

What he did not do, though, was share his alleged love for cooking with any of his children at all. Growing up we heard stories – from our mother, our aunts and all manner of others who had had the fortune of tasting my father’s cooking – about how wonderful a chef our father was. There was the story of how, as a ten-year-old, my father averted a near disaster and saved a dinner party for twelve when his mother, my grandmother, was stranded while out running errands. It must have been embellished and retold many times over the years because by the time we heard the story it sounded like my father had, at the last minute, thrown together a multi-course meal with nothing more than a pair of scissors, some tongs, and a paper clip.

But he rarely, if ever, cooked for us – that was left to my mother or our housemaid who ran the kitchen with her own idiosyncratic efficiency. I personally never knew where anything ever was, yet she would be able to produce it out of a hidden cupboard within seconds. It was quite marvelous, really, what else she could whip up at a moment’s notice. She would make me full meals out of nothing at all when I would come home late from rugby practice, and I never thought to question how it was she seemed to have everything prepped at any given time, for whatever I was in the mood for. Years later as I started to cook myself, I wondered how she did it; and I realised just what a feat of organisation running a kitchen actually was.

Yet I digress. The other day I felt in the mood for some liver, so I decided to make a chicken liver mousse – something I had never done before. I had had one that Morgan made at the wine bar he worked at, so I knew that he knew how to do it; and he graciously told me how over the phone as I walked the aisles at Whole Foods. I bought a crusty wheat baguette to go with it, and went on my way.

It is strangely satisfying when you add a new recipe, or a technique, to your repertoire, and it was this satisfied feeling that came over me as I tasted the warm mousse when I was done making it. I had done good.

I was relieved when Mike and Marc both admitted that they liked liver too – for I had not considered the dietary preferences of my guests for the meal at all. The mousse turned out pretty well, if I may say so myself; I had added some port wine to Morgan’s recipe and it worked wonders. It is a crying shame that one can only eat so much liver at a go; especially when there is still a pasta appetiser and a main course of pork to go. I was a happy camper at the end of the meal, and we went off on our way to get ourselves more intoxicated.

Chicken Liver Mousse, or Mousse de foies de volailles
inspired by the Stone Home Wine Bar

1 pound chicken livers, washed and cleaned
1 + ½ stick butter
2 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
½ cup port wine
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp allspice
Salt and pepper

Marinate the livers in the port wine for 30 minutes. Finely dice the garlic and shallot and sauté them in the ½ stick of butter over medium heat. Add the livers and spices, reserving the port marinade and sauté till browned, about 3 minutes each side. Add the port and reduce until half the liquid is gone.

In a blender or food processor, blend the warm liver mixture and add the remaining butter in small pieces. According to Morgan, the butter that is added here should preferably be cold, because it emulsifies better. Once the livers and the butter combine, remove and place in a mold. You should line the mold with saran wrap so that you can pull the mousse out easily when serving. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Serves 6 as an appetiser.

Of pizza and place

Coppi's Organic
1414 U St
Washington, DC 20009
202-319-7773

To borrow a couple of turns of phrases from one of the greats, Coppi’s Organic is the kind of place that you mix your emotions up with. There are places in this world that it is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about but there are some that will make you care. The room is long and narrow and not well-lit; as you walk in you can see the bar at the end of the room and the great wood-fired brick oven glowing insistently. It is high-ceilinged, and there are black and white pictures up on the walls of Italian Grand Prix cyclists from an era gone by. It is as if the owner opened a window into his passion for cycling, opened it for anyone – interested or not.

The last time I was there I was with Jeff and we sat in the middle of the room. I had been looking forward to the meal for a while before and this was a good a place to have it as any other. The murmur of conversation formed a wall around us as we sat and ate, and talked. For that reason alone I am convinced that Coppi’s is the place to go if you want to have a good meal and a good conversation. It is either due to great acoustics or a quirk of fate that no matter how close you are seated to other tables – and they do get pretty close – somehow, the only conversation you will hear at Coppi’s is your own.

The restaurant specialises in Ligurian cuisine, which Jeff informs me is superb. Liguria is a coastal strip in north-western Italy, famous for its focaccia and pesto among other specialties. Its influence is clear in Coppi’s menu – which is dominated by greens, mozzarella and sweet basil. Their antipasti is passable, and the home-made pasta good without being exceptional. These flavours and foods are all wonderful things, but what I really like the most about the place is its pizza.

The pizza at Coppi’s is made in a large-domed brick oven at the far end of the room, a large beast of an oven that defines the room. Wood-fired ovens are far superior to others for the cooking of most foods in general, and pizza in particular. This is not only because they can reach temperatures far higher than conventional ovens, but also because the food is evenly cooked by the wood-fired floor below as well as the heat radiated from the dome above. This ensures that pizza, in particular, can be browned to a crisp on the outside and yet remain light and fluffy on the inside.

But all the technology in the world will not save you if you do not care about the food, and that Coppi’s does. Its dedication to local and organic ingredients means that it can be a little expensive, but this is all completely forgotten once the pizza is served. The pastry had that taste of simplicity that most Italian cuisine has, with more than a strong hint of high quality olive oil. Yet the refusal to complicate the bread-making process ensured that it still predominantly had that old fashioned doughy goodness that I like in my bread.

I had had the lamb sausage pizza before, and I did it again, knowing it would not disappoint. When I called two days earlier I had asked if they were still serving it, knowing that the menu rotated with the seasons. The woman on the other end of the line laughed at the preposterousness of my question, and said, “Absolutely. That’s my favourite too, and I promise you, they’ll never take it off.”

It tasted like a thousand lambs had been killed to make that sausage, and their meats had been seasoned with the spices carried by a thousand merchant ships, across a thousand oceans. The garlic was strong but not overpowering, and there were hints of rosemary and thyme. Jeff chose the Genovese pesto pizza, wanting to see how Coppi’s would take local ingredients from the here and now, to recreate a tradition from many miles away, and many years ago. The pesto had been salted heavily and had a lovely crunchy texture. Both pizzas were, naturally, gone all too quickly.

With the turnover so characteristic of the restaurant industry it is sometimes difficult to create that familial atmosphere among the hostesses, waitresses, cooks and bartenders and all the other lovely people that help put the food on our table and make sure we have a smashing time. This did not seem like a problem at Coppi’s, the banter was obvious between everyone on the floor, and most of the people looked genuinely happy to be there. The one time I was there with Mira we had a delightful waitress – I think her name was Jamie – tall and dark-haired with an uncommon beauty; she spoke with a lilting, abrupt delivery and walked with the awkward grace of one who is still discovering the beauty of her own body. One is always discovering, it seems. She was charming beyond measure and I think I kind of fell for her a little. I asked about her this time I was there but she was not working that night, and somehow that made me fall for her a little more.

As we left we had that feeling of leaving a party that we knew would go on for long after our departure, and that saddened us a little. The winelist is decent and the other food is very, very good but not great. The dessert selection was also a little disappointing, but the pizza, with its well-chosen combinations of intense flavours, with its superior pastry baked to wood-oven perfection – the pizza alone, is reason enough to go back.

Of beets, vanilla custards, and restaurants named for women

I have not written for quite some time – and while I would like to say this is due to laziness, that is only partly true. The fact of the matter is that I simply have not had many dining experiences worth annotating in a while – I have been on the road much, and have also had too much taken out of me to sit down and write. But this week is Restaurant Week in DC, and that in itself is probably enough to prompt an entry.

In retrospect, to say that I have not had experiences worth annotating is probably harsh – I did have one meal about a month ago at a place called Acacia in Princeton, NJ at Laura’s recommendation – that was very, very good without being great. The mascarpone polenta that came with my shrimp appetiser was creamy and light and very tasty, and clearly bore the hand of a skilled chef. Also, I was in Torrance, CA recently and ate at a lovely little resto called Restaurant Christine, which was a quiet little place with a greenery-adorned patio and an inside decked in shades of persimmon. I have a weird thing for anything – restaurants, bars, boats – named after women. I sat inside, in a booth on the first floor instead of the mezzanine, and had a delightful salad with beets and duck confit and pecans. It was the best salad I’d had in a long while, and I cleaned my plate. But it also meant that I had no room for my entrée – prosciutto-wrapped beef tenderloin medallions, which came in a rich, creamy sauce and left me completely and utterly defeated. I threw my hands up after three of the six medallions and sighed a sigh of contentment.

But back to Restaurant Week. I had scheduled two dinners for the week, one for tonight and another for tomorrow – and I will write about them – but early in the week I decided that in the spirit of things I would do a Restaurant Week myself, chez moi: three courses, with wine pairings. The idea started as a passing fancy, but slowly grew to take hold of me; and once Kellyn and Hunter had announced that they were down, I sent out the invites.

Hunter wound up not being able to make it – I suspect he was put off by my jokingly announcing that he would have to give me $30.07 for dinner, that cheap bastard. Work dinner, my ass. But Brian and Jenna gave me the thumbs up, as did Amanda and Clayton, and I had a guest list of some of my favourite people in DC.

Everyone arrived at almost exactly the same time as each other – which never happens – and Kellyn hung out with me in the kitchen while I put the finishing touches on the first course. I had made a sherry-glazed filet of cod, and was going to pair it with a blue cheese riso with caramelized onions, grape tomatoes and artichoke hearts. I pan-seared the cod in a pat of butter, flipping it very carefully, and then finished it off in the oven while I assembled the riso. Feeling very self-conscious as Kellyn scrutinised my every move, I tossed the riso with olive oil, then the tomatoes and artichokes and onions, and then folded in the crumbled blue cheese. The pasta took on a silvery, slippery hue as the cheese melted on it, and I could hardly wait to eat it. I had not kept track of time as I did this, but when I checked on the fish I could tell with a single look that it needed about a minute more, no more, and no less. I prodded it with my finger after a minute and, satisfied, plated it with the riso and sprinkled chopped parsley generously over both.

This was the course I was the most satisfied with because the fish was cooked almost to perfection, moist and crumbly and probably just about one shade this side of opaque. I could probably have finished it off with another pat of butter, or adorned it with a sherry reduction, but it turned out very well as it was, and I dare say nobody was disappointed. Also, the colours made for a great presentation, and that always pleases me. We had a 2006 Jacques & Francois Lurton Les Fumées Blanches Chardonnay with it, and it worked pretty well.

I fell back on an old favourite for the entrée – beef in chimichurri. To be honest, the butcher at Whole Foods gave me the idea – we were talking about cost-efficient ways to feed six people without buying six individual steaks or six individual chops, and he suggested searing or grilling a large cut of sirloin, rare to medium rare, and then cutting it into thin strips to serve. This worked so well that I was a little mad I hadn’t thought of it before. Okay, so probably nobody was overly full, but I do speak for myself when I say I was content. I paired it with a 2004 Bodega Norton Malbec Riserva which was in keeping with the Argentinean theme, and had a heft and body that complemented the dish perfectly. As a side I made a potato-beet gratin that I had probably mis-timed and overcooked by about five to ten minutes; and might also have used a little more cream, a la dauphinoise, but was quite tasty nonetheless. I love beets. For the life of me I cannot understand why more people do not like them. To me they are extremely underrated. They are delicious and low in calories, and also very good for you. My friend Laura is vegetarian and hates beets, which amazes me. Really, Laura, I should imagine that the last thing you want to do is to cut down on your already limited options.

For dessert I made strawberry napoleons, which were quite a great hit. I do not typically try my hand at making dessert, for I am atrocious at it. But I had had a conversation recently about Pastiche in Providence and their amazing fruit tarts, and was inspired to make a custard to rival theirs. The one I made didn’t even come close, but it was very good. For good measure I sprinkled a healthy helping of confectioner’s sugar over the napoleons for that professional and aesthetic touch. They were good to look at, and I am kicking myself for not taking a photo, but they were also good to eat, which made me happy. Incredibly enough, there were leftovers, which Clayton and I polished off the next morning for breakfast. They were even better then than at dinner, which leads me to conclude that I should make the custard 24 hours in advance the next time. We live and we learn.

It was a very enjoyable night, with excellent company, and I was very happy with how everything turned out. I wondered what it was that had separated that night from all the other mediocre dinners I had made in the past, and I can only conclude that food always tastes better when you are making it for people that you really care about.

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If you must know:

Acacia
2637 Main St
Lawrenceville, NJ
609-895-9885

Restaurant Christine
24530 Hawthorne Boulevard
Torrance, CA
310-373-1952

Feast like kings, and drink like sailors

When it comes to putting food on the table, the ingredients however ordinary or wonderful they may be, are no worse or better than the intentions of the cook. It is intentions that really matter. - Marcella Hazan

Cooking, like any other act of love, begins first with desire. Most times, this desire is rooted in the necessity of sustenance, of self-preservation. People cook, to put food on the table. But sometimes, this desire springs from something other than just survival instinct. It springs from that longing to dine rather than just to eat, to savour rather than just to swallow. It springs from the desire to connect, to share, with someone like-minded, from the desire to satisfy the ones you are cooking for. And when the intentions of the cook begin with this higher desire, then the food is prepared with care, with inspiration and – dare I say it – love. Food cooked with a sincere, unconditional love for the ones eating it then becomes, even despite the limitations of the tools, the ingredients or the chef’s ability, a medium for passing that love on. And in all my years of messing around in the kitchen, I have not found a seasoning or a spice that can replicate that flavour.

I had wanted, for as long as I had been cooking, to invite some good friends over and prepare for them a feast of multiple courses, most if not all of them prepared à la minute. It was an idea that Jose first gave to me (in the history of my culinary education – Morgan taught me passion and purpose, Jose taught me technique and expression, and clearly nobody has yet taught me humility). I had never done anything like it, but I figured that all the times making multiple different dishes at the same time would prepare me well for the task of making one single dish at a time, six or seven times in a row. Imagine what I could do with my attention undivided!

And so it was that we gathered the “home team”, as she herself calls it, to commemorate Allison’s departure from the fair shores of Washington DC. There was little room in the apartment, but we went ahead anyway, and I dare say nobody minded the squeeze. I had thought up a menu of six courses earlier in the week, and when I returned from the store I found Allison and Clayton sprawled on the couch, exhausted from an entire day of doing nothing. It is one of the greatest paradoxes in the world how doing nothing can be so very, very tiring.

Despite the contagion of sloth that was in the air I got down to prepping and I felt that familiar excitement – I call it cooking’s version of the lover’s anxiety. It is the same feeling you get when you are about to leave the house to meet a loved one. The glances at the clock, the last-minute checks in the mirror – the kitchen equivalents of which would be the consistent thumbing of ingredients, and the repeated sips of wine (for what is the point of cooking when you cannot drink while you are doing it?). There are vivid moments in all the times I have been cooking that I remember feeling this way – stirring risotto milanese for Amanda that one night she came over with MBJ; chopping garlic as I made dinner, already half drunk, for Jimmy and Jose during our 2pm – 2am drinking marathon. Of course, that one time Alethea came over for dinner I was practically jumping out of my pants, and also I remember testing the pasta for that meal with Elisabeth and Jacob. I remember these particular moments – they seem to be frozen in time for me – and this past Saturday I experienced one, or a few, of them again.

Like with any other act of love, cooking depletes you. Physically and spiritually, little by little, it takes from you. It is very simple – destruction is as much a part of the act of creating as any other. It is as natural as can be.

At the end of it all we were a contented bunch; I had impressed even myself with some of the courses (the pan-seared scallops in avocado cream especially) but not others (the pear tart at the end left much to be desired). I am many things, but a baker I am not. In truth the entire meal had been what these meals usually were – an expression of appreciation for good friends, friends worthy enough to cook for. And like most sincere declarations of love they had been at times eloquent, at times clumsy, but always well-meaning.


Pan-seared Scallops with Avocado Cream (Photograph courtesy of K. Blossom): I liked how this turned out - especially the avocado cream, to which I added a generous dash of pepper for a blend of sweet and savoury. The secret to cooking scallops to the perfect consistency is to sear them, in very little butter, at very high heat for two minutes each side, then remove from heat immediately.


Cucumber Gazpacho (Photograph courtesy of K. Blossom): I made this a day in advance and remembered, this time, to over-season. Cucumbers are very refreshing, I wonder why I do not use them more often. The splash of white on top was a little lemon yoghurt, a last minute addition that I thought turned out pretty well.

The Falafel Revolution

I invited Kerry and Allison over for dinner the other night, and it wound up gnawing at me for quite a while after. Kerry has always been a hard one to cook for – she is mildly allergic to wheat and dairy. Among other things this means no butter and no cream, no bread and no pasta. How she stays alive, much less manage to once be a varsity tennis rockstar, is beyond me. It is kind of like an Iron Chef challenge cooking for her. I comfort myself by reasoning that working with these obstructions makes me a better cook. Sometimes this is the case, sometimes not. This past Sunday she sprang another surprise on me – when, barely eight hours before dinner, she announced that she had also turned vegan recently.

It was a good thing I hadn’t planned the meal yet, but as I wandered the aisles of Whole Foods I despaired over and over again. Was honey vegan? Could I add it to the pesto I wanted to make? I had planned on an onion and apple tart until I realised that I couldn’t use pastry dough. At least I didn’t need to stop at the meat or seafood counters – the two areas I usually spend the most time in.

As I made the meal it struck me how much my level of comfort with unfamiliar ingredients translated into more work. With onions, for example, I know how to cut them quickly and easily. I can sense how long and at what heat I need to cook them for them to caramelize beautifully – and what to do to aid in the process (periodically adding teaspoons of brown sugar after at least ten minutes of cooking; it brings out the natural sweetness in the onions). I know that thyme goes well with onions. To me they are dependable, like trusted lieutenants, for I know exactly what I get from them and how to get it. When I work with them – I don’t think, I just do.

This is not quite so for other ingredients that I seldom work with. Lentils are an example – I have to keep checking on them to make sure I do not over-boil them. What kind of lentils are the best, or what should I use for soups or to eat loose? I am still trying to work out how much I should spice them – the lentil patties that I made this time lacked a kick – perhaps more cumin the next time?

That night I made an onion soup for Kerry, as well as lentil patties and Brussels sprouts marinated in balsamic vinegar, both grilled over high heat. For the meat-eaters and lovers, I made squid, lightly sautéed with pesto and tomatoes and lots of olive oil. Everything came with a side of polenta. I had made a fist of it, but after everyone left it hurt me how I could have done better with the food, and how everyone had been too nice to say so to my face. The basil I used for the pesto, for example, was not strong enough – on hindsight I ought to have salted it more or used less pinenuts. Just about the only thing that was enjoyable was the polenta, which was probably because there was a minimum to be done there.

The story of the night was, unsurprisingly, one that revolved around food – somewhat. I had been on a train coming back to DC recently, when I had sat next to a young lady who had had a sweatshirt on that said FAIRFIELD, in large block ivy-print letters. I can only suppose she went to school there. But as I sat down and glanced over at her, the way her sweatshirt folded about made me think that it said FALAFEL, and I burst into quite uncontrollable laughter. It was a good thing that the lady had a sense of humour, and I had just about enough charm to convince her that I wasn’t staring at her chest and laughing. When I finally calmed down I texted Margaret, and we agreed that we both had to now somehow procure sweatshirts that did say FALAFEL on them. This is now a work in progress.

The company was delightful and that saved the evening, but I got to thinking about all the foods I just had no experience in working with. Winter is beginning to turn into spring here, and I am looking forward to working with spring foods. Beets and figs are next up on my list, and with enough luck and a whole lot of practice, I may be able to call myself a halfway decent cook.

Be the best at what you do, and be kind to those who are not

Java House
1645 Q St NW
Washington DC 20009
202-387-6622

There is a coffee shop a few blocks down from where I live that I frequent, and hold dear to my heart. In the past year they have tried to diversify their menu, adding an array of wraps, melts and sandwiches to the pastries that they offered before. They even do homemade seasonal soups now – a turkey three-bean chili in the cold months, and chilled gazpacho when it is nice out. I have tried, with every fiber of my being, to bring myself to like their offerings, for I like writing and working there, and am addicted to their coffee. But – and the finality of this pronouncement pains me – but nothing is really very good there.

When I first discovered the Java House and made it my local coffee place, it was the final piece in me being able to call myself a resident of this fine city (the other prerequisites being a local dive bar and a magazine subscription). It had filled a void in my life created by the move away from Providence and with it, Coffee Exchange on Wickenden. I had shopped around – there are options aplenty around where I live, but none with the personality of the Java House. The wonderful lady who ran the counter had a conspiratorial sparkle in her eyes that made me feel young and restless again, and our first conversation centered around the days when she used to live in Ethiopia and roast her own coffee beans out of a saucepan. These days, there is a coffee roaster – the first thing you see walking in – and they roast their own beans daily in the late mornings, after the morning rush. If you stop by the machine and take a deep breath as it is going, you can catch – if you concentrate hard enough – a whiff of the heavenly.

It is hard to say just quite when, and why, a coffee place, or a restaurant, or a bar, becomes more than the sum of its four walls, but it is a joy to experience when it does happen. The Java House is sparsely decorated and functionally equipped at best, and is less than overwhelming at first blush. There are no couches, only stiff-backed counter-style chairs. I have spent long periods of time in the corner where the outlets are, and I want to say that they only have five mix CDs in their repertoire. Needless to say I have heard them all multiple times. Yet in spite of all that, there is a charm about the place that transcends its physical space. The regulars are quirky and include a whole slew of families and housewives who bring their babies in, complete with strollers and bonnets. There is almost always a meaningful conversation going on in the place, as there is almost always someone tippy-tapping away at their computers. The waitress does this cute thing where she raises her speaking voice when she is on her cell phone, as if distrustful of the technological capability of the modern-day cellular telephone. It kind of makes me feel like I am in a bad movie set in 1982. The place, really, is like the ungainly kid who dresses badly and is average at everything, but who you want on your team anyway because he is just such a stand-up guy.

And then there is the coffee. God, the coffee. The house blend has a distinctive sweetness layered over the bitter coffee bean taste; not quite nearly as bitter or dark or powerful as I would like, but it comes closer than almost anything else I have tried within a six-block radius. It has a wholeness of flavour that is consistent from the second it hits your lips through to the swallow. The roasting gives it a burnt taste which lingers on your tongue for minutes. I usually have a double shot of espresso, but it drinks as smooth as a latte with whole milk would.

Apart from that though, as my original point was, nothing else is really very good there. The oatmeal cookie is baked hard and crunchy, rather than crumbly and chewy the way I like it. The sandwiches are basic and unimpressive. The chili is watery and too sweet; also, it has bits of corn in it. There is no greater faux pas. I could go on, but it pains me almost as much to write this as it did to actually eat their food.

I suppose, though, the same is true of almost all coffee places. I do not recall going to one which had both fabulous coffee and good food. Even the pastries at Coffee Exchange were less than spectacular. It must be either one or the other, all or nothing. They are, after all, coffee places that dabble in food on the side. Coffee is their core competency, and most if not all their energy, one would hope, should go into scouring the depths of Ethiopia and Rwanda and Sumatra and Brazil and Colombia for the finest beans available. For that, I am thankful.

I still go to the Java House, unwavering in my loyalty. Perhaps it is out of habit more than anything else, but the fact is that I forgive them their mediocrities.

I do want to say, though: is it really so hard to get a decent cookie around here?

Lunch in the Afternoon

Persimmon
7003 Wisconsin Avenue
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
301-654-9860

It seems a great pity that few people take the time for lunch any more; I myself have often been guilty of this trespass. Yet lunch is a meal too, which makes it one of only so many we get in a lifetime, and it is rather a waste to ignore it or not to give it its due. For – assuming quality as a given, naturally – the one thing I ask of my meals is that they be unhurried.

Simon was in town yesterday briefly before he headed back to Providence, and we caught up over lunch. He chose, at his mother’s suggestion, Persimmon – remarking as we sat down that this was an old favourite and that they served a lunch worthy of a proper meal. For my part, I was just glad to sit down to lunch, a lunch complete with water glasses and multiple forks and starched napkins.

Persimmon is in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area, an area that smacks somewhat of the new and artificial. I always think that there isn’t anything up there but hotels and chain retail and restaurants, but I am often pleasantly surprised. The restaurant is dubbed as a ‘New American bistro’ – which makes me wince a little, but I recover in time to appreciate the warm golden-orange walls – persimmon, from the name of the restaurant – with splashes of inviting yellows. The hostess, an older woman, had a light, pattering step and an eager manner, and her silvery tresses danced just atop her shoulders as she led us to our table.

I have known Simon for a long time now, and when I first met him he had that infectious, boyish brashness of youth, quite arresting in its warmth, its unguardedness and lack of pretense; capable of putting anyone at ease. His was a personality that reached out to you, singular in its eccentricities, and he possessed that uncommon inability to leave a room unmarked by his entry. He spoke with a wonderful turn of phrase, and was a lovely conversationalist. Later when I met his mother for the first of many times I understood where it all came from. Yet as the years had gone by he had mellowed somewhat, and had become more considered in his speech, more deliberate in his manner. At times during the meal he took on that absent air of one who has great responsibility. He was still Simon, but perhaps he had grown up a little.

I have a great affection for him though, and as the conversation fell into step I felt that relief that comes with eating at a familiar table. The calamari was superb, sautéd lightly and adorned with nicoise tomatoes and a pumpkin seed pesto, served atop a bed of rosemary polenta. The polenta was rich and creamy yet bore a lightness that betrayed the skill of the chef’s hand. Together they made for a wonderful combination of flavours. Simon and I also shared the duck confit appetiser with flageolet beans, a dish perhaps too heavy for lunch but nevertheless extremely tasty.

We owe the concept of a bistro to the French, whose country is littered with small cafés or restaurants that serve simple, modest and down-to-earth fare which warms the body as much as it does the soul. Persimmon had on its menu a nicoise salad and the classic steak frites – both nods to traditional bistro fare – as well as a bouillabaisse that hinted at the chef’s fascination with all things French. It was the latter that Simon made me get, recommending it with a raw enthusiasm I have learnt to distrust in people. Knowledge begets consideration; most often those who are overly animated are also overly ignorant. When the dish came it was a massive plate of mussels and shrimp and squid in a golden broth, daunting just to look at. It went quickly, though - I made a veritable fist of finishing it - and I was impressed by the freshness of the ingredients.

When I used to wait tables, I always had a soft spot for that bittersweet moment after dinner had been eaten and cleared. I probably did not wait enough tables to get jaded, and so I would always involuntarily share a little in the dining experience of those I waited on. There is something about that little window after the busboy cleared the plates away – and on slow nights I would always try to check myself and time my reappearance to allow for that extra beat, so that people could tie up loose ends, could find the last, definitive word on the night’s conversation. On busy nights however, as any waiter worth his salt can tell you, just getting to the table at all is an admirable feat. As a diner, I am more than familiar with the feeling: it is like having an unspeakable loss hit you, and realising that the loss had been, little by little, a long time coming. Whatever the case, I almost always felt like the absolute devil when I would return to a table, not because of the temptation I represented through the offering of the dessert menu, but because I was, in some sense, the one who drew the line at the end of their night.

Certainly that was how Simon and I viewed our waitress, who had been pleasantly anonymous until she came back and uttered those immortal words. She was, unwittingly, a cruel reminder that there was work to be done, and still a large part of the day to get through. That is, then, perhaps the only drawback to enjoying a good meal at lunchtime. Simon and I were stuffed, leaning back in our seats and making ungodly noises under our breath – but it always seems almost criminal not to at least take a look at the dessert menu. The rum-raisin bread pudding sounded divine, and Simon had wonderful things to say about the pumpkin cheesecake. I had no doubt about the quality of the offerings, but it was the middle of the day, and I had a girlish figure to maintain.

It was a good meal, with a good friend – and the restaurant is more than conducive to that. As we left we kept up the chatter, which in turn was prime evidence that the food, the surroundings, the service – the meal, essentially – had lightened our spirits. It had allowed us to connect in the most meaningful of ways, and to do that which only true friends do: make fun of one another. It was a charming place, and served good, hearty food. Who was it that once wrote that he liked his meals heavy and his women light? At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I concur fully.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig

As a child in Singapore, Sunday mornings were always pleasant. My parents would rise before us, and make their weekly trip to the market for the week’s groceries. They would come back with all manner of foodstuff, raw and cooked, including a mini-feast which we would then have for breakfast. I remember lying in my bed, long wide awake but not yet ready to climb out; listening intently for the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. After breakfast we would all crawl guiltily back into our parents’ massive bed and laze together as a family, a tangle of arms and legs and full bellies as we half-slept, half-listened to the radio – or read our favourite section of the paper – equally comfortable in silence as in banter.

Sometimes my parents would bring me or us along on these trips to the market, which I now remember to be loud and crowded and boisterous – a veritable assault on all the senses – as well as being very, very wet. They would divvy up the tasks between them and then split up, reconvening later for a spot of breakfast or a drink. I remember my father always being extremely focused, going about his tasks with great efficiency and minimal pause. When I went along on these trips to the market, I would always tag along with him; he was a big man with an easy gait, but he walked in large strides which as a child I struggled to keep up with. He would try to always finish his tasks before my mother finished hers and then sit down to wait for her; hiding his irritation whenever I held him up. I used to think this was perhaps because he was the sort of person always so dedicated in his dealings that he did not like to spend any more time on anything than absolutely necessary; or perhaps he was a fiercely private person who cherished his time with himself in the few moments he had – alone with his thoughts – while waiting. These may all be true to some degree. But I realise now that he did this because he loved my mother very much, and had made it his prerogative in his life with her never to make her wait for him. I suppose it must have brought him joy each time, as he sat there enjoying his coffee, to see her striding towards him – as if he had let her go and she had come back to him.

The wet market is a worldwide phenomenon, but distinctly different everywhere. In Asia at least, these markets are a collection of stalls and booths – earthy and noisy, throbbing with a communal gaiety. Through narrow and crowded alleys that are either dimly lit or flooded with fluorescent light – never in between – one may find all manner of comestibles for sale, from fresh produce to live poultry. Periodically the floors and surroundings are sprayed and washed with water – sometimes to the extent of flooding – all in the name of keeping the premises clean and sanitary and thus giving the wet markets their name and defining characteristic. There are stalls upon stalls of cabbages and cauliflower, the occasional cage of squawking chickens or tank of live fish; pushcarts of produce appearing out of nowhere with drivers both raucous and reckless. Transactions are carried out at top voice, as if shouting were the only way of getting things done.

Wet markets in Singapore are typically laid out into separate and distinct areas – method in the madness, perhaps. The heart of the wet market – stalls arranged in grids with vendors selling fruits, vegetables, meat and fish and dairy and live animals – is where the madness is at its most intense. This is where the ballet of human traffic, and the cacophony of human interaction, is at its fiercest and most relentless. Beyond this section is usually a buffer zone of vendors selling dried goods and sundry items. Here, it is usually calmer and quieter, and one may find anything from herbal medicine to household supplies. Beyond that even are the cooked food vendors – each hawking a different dish or delicacy as is their specialty. There are tables to sit at, and the sounds of chatter and conversation are always in the air; for it is as much a meeting place as it is an eating place. It is a curious phenomenon, however, in Singapore that in areas with al fresco dining – as is often the case in these areas of the wet market – the tables, chairs and stools are invariably affixed to the ground. I suppose one cannot trust Singaporeans to leave well enough alone and not make off with these items.

I was home recently for a holiday, and made up my mind to follow my mother on one of her excursions to the wet market. There had been transformations aplenty in the Singaporean landscape since I was last back, and I felt as one would coming back to a friend, maybe a lover, after one has been away from a long time. In this as in so much else I was discovering that less and less was to be taken for granted. I was curious to see what changes had been wrought on the wet market – seemingly a relic of the past, struggling to remain relevant as the demographic grew younger and more inclined towards the pre-packaged convenience that supermarkets offer. Besides, my mother and I were going to make a feast that night, and there was much to be done in the way of preparation.

The market that my mother got her fish from – she has different favourites for different things – was temporarily closed for renovation, and the vendors had been relocated en masse to an interim structure. It was a large shelter-type construct spanning about three city blocks, with a corrugated zinc roof – the kind that amplifies the sound of raindrops whenever it rains. The ceilings were high, and spotted with fans that spun lazily and not at all in any sort of tandem. There were no walls to speak of, and one could wander into the market through any number of entrances, and exit through any number of others. It had been neatly broken into sections to accommodate the different vendors, and from the volume of the chatter and the dampness of the ground in each, one could easily tell where one was.

We started, then, by looking for fish. Seafood played a large part in my diet growing up; they do weird and wonderful things to it where I am from. Sometimes they do nothing at all to it, and it is enough. There were stalls lined up next to each other with their cleaned, gutted and filleted wares laid out, with tanks of murky water on the ground containing more fish. I was taught to look at the eyes of the fish to tell how fresh it is, and as I handled those available for sale, thumbing the area behind the gills, even I could tell that all the fish for sale had been caught not too long ago, and killed the day of. In markets like these you can request that the vendor kill and prepare a fresh fish for you; and then go away and do the rest of your shopping to come back later to fillets that are washed, scaled, cut and wrapped in newspaper for you.

Or you can stay and watch the carnage. I saw an old woman of nearly sixty engrossed in her task of preparing a fish, to the point of being oblivious to all that was going around her – which was in itself quite a feat. She had that hunch that people develop after years of intense concentration on something, her shoulders arching forward and upward ever slightly and contorting her wide frame. She held a large meat cleaver with a blade about the size of my face, and that was all she really needed. As I watched, she did not switch knives as she moved from task to task, but rather wielded her cleaver expertly – now a series of short, swift flicks and thrusts, now long graceful arcs up and down with the weight of habit, later sliding neatly through the meat in quick successive wrist motions – adjusting to the delicacy of the cut required. She moved with great economy and it was a pleasure to watch. There was a familiarity in the manner of her work that betrayed a comfort in her natural environment. I stood by, mesmerised in the audience of one as the usual market clamouring went on about the two of us. I felt a great happiness for her as I realised that she was in her element every day that she was at work.

Walking on through the market I was struck by how bright and inviting the colours seemed to be. The juicy greens of vegetables, brilliant purples of eggplants; even the beige shells of the eggs on sale seemed to be more vivid than I recalled of specimens elsewhere. The woman next to us at the egg stall spent an eternity picking and choosing a dozen eggs from the many cartons laid out in front of us – feeling each egg in the small of her hand, running her thumb lightly across its surface, with a troubled look on her face as she contemplated the worthiness of each contender. She was only going to buy a dozen eggs, but by golly they were going to be the best 12 eggs that were available.

The woman’s simple, insistent dedication to freshness and ingredient quality was heart-warming, and reaffirmed, for me, the relevance of wet markets such as these in the modern age. As long as there are restaurateurs and home cooks who would rather select and prepare some of – if not all – their own ingredients rather than use items store-bought and prepackaged; as long as people resist compromising quality for convenience – the wet market will survive. As long as cooking, and eating, retains its soul – and remains more a salve to the human spirit than just a means of survival – there will always be the wet market.