madeline may write

The island, it is silent now

But the ghosts still haunts the waves

And the torch lights up a famished man

Who fortune could not save.

*

Did you work upon the railroad?

Did you rid the streets of crime?

Were your dollars from the White House?

Were they from the five and dime?

*

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you,

And did they still make you cry?

Did you count the months and years,

Or did your teardrops quickly dry?

*

Ah, no, says he, ’twas not to be

On a coffin ship I came here

And I never even got so far

That they could change my name.

*

Thousands are sailing, across the western ocean

To a land of opportunity, that some of them will never see.

Fortune prevailing, across the western ocean;

Their bellies full, their spirits free, they’ll break the chains of poverty

And they’ll dance.

*

In Manhattan’s desert twilight,

In the death of afternoon,

We stepped hand in hand down Broadway

Like the first man on the moon.

*

And “The Blackbird” broke the silence

As you whistled it so sweet,

And in Brendan Behan’s footsteps

I danced up and down the street.

*

And we said goodnight to Broadway,

Giving it our best regard.

Tipped our hats to Mr. Cohan,

Dear old Times Square’s favorite bard.

*

Then we raised a glass to JFK,

And a dozen more besides.

When I got back to my empty room,

I suppose I must have cried.

*

Thousands are sailing, again across the ocean

Where the hand of opportunity draws tickets in a lottery.

Postcards we’re mailing of sky-blue skies and oceans,

From rooms the daylight never sees,

Where lights don’t glow on Christmas trees.

But we dance to the music, and we dance…

*

Thousands are sailing, across the western ocean

Where the hand of opportunity draws tickets in a lottery.

Where e’er we go we celebrate the land that makes us refugees

From fear of priests with empty plates, from guilt, and weeping effigies,

*

And we dance.

The Pogues, “Thousands Are Sailing”, If I Should Fall From Grace With God

It’s official: StumbleUpon really, truly knows me. It knows that I don’t use the internet for learning purposes, or to challenge myself, and certainly not for news. StumbleUpon knows that I come to the internet for pretty much one reason:

Cute pictures of animals.

Whether it’s slow-motion dogs catching treats (the greyhound looks even more space-alien-esque than ever), cats with funny captions,or simply Morgan Freeman with a kitten on his head, StumbleUpon has got me pegged.

So bring on the baby animals — I’ll coo over them and rate them against each other for hours on end.

I have to admit: I’m not nuts about vegan baked goods.* If they’re not too dry, they’re too dense; if they’re not too dense, they taste overwhelmingy of banana. They’re made with weird things like tofutti and margerine. I like butter, and eggs, and milk. Agave nectar is nice, but sometimes I like sugar.

Nevertheless, the following vegan cake is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had, and the easiest to make, too. I got the recipe from a friend, who’s vegan, who got it from an eggless-cooking blog. A depression-era food, this chocolate cake’s secret ingredient is vinegar. Look:

• 1 1/2 C flour
• 3/4 C sugar (or 3/8 C honey, or 1/2 C agave nectar)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 C cocoa powder (go ahead — be generous)
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla (or amaretto, or whiskey)
• 1/3 C oil
• 1 C cold water
• (1/2 – 1 C chopped nuts and/or fruit and/or chocolate chips)
• 1 T vinegar (the original recipe calls for white vinegar, but I’ve found that balsamic vinegar adds a nice, rich tang)

Preheat the oven to 350 F and oil an 8 x 8″ (or similar size) pan.

Combine the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients, one at a time, in order. If you want to add nuts or fruit or chocolate, do so before the vinegar. Add the vinegar quickly, then pour your batter into the prepared pan and pop it into the oven. The original recipe says 25-30 minutes but in our oven it seems to take closer to 40 minutes.

The cake is delicious plain, but I’ve taken to glazing it with a blend of amaretto and powdered sugar. You could also dust it with powdered sugar or sprinkle it with nuts, or coconut, or whatever. It’ll stay fluffy and moist for several days — probably just as long as it’ll take you to eat it.

Give this recipe a shot… I promise it’ll be worth it.

*With the exception of cookies, which are somehow more forgiving than cakes, muffins, etc.

Sunday dinners: Indian feast, southern supper, tapas extravaganza. Every week an escalation in sophistication, presentation, and number of dishes. Because it’s not true Entertaining until the table is so packed that we have to bring in spare surfaces.

Case in point: two weeks ago, with the help of a Parisian friend, we assembled the most epic Sunday dinner to date. Let the record show that we served…

• three kinds of hummus (tomato basil, roasted red pepper, and plain — all home-made from dry chick peas)
• baba ghanouj (home-made)
• roasted red peppers (roasted with garlic, olive oil, and black pepper — home-made)
• barley salad with beets and butternut squash
• vegan stuffed mushrooms
• asparagus spears wrapped in bacon, with mustard vinaigrette
• chunky Mediterranean vegetable salad with Thai basil
• vegan naan
• a cheese plate with Parmesan and two softer cheeses; plus fig jam and sliced apples and pears
• two kinds of olives and one kind of pickles
• [the quintessential] vegetable crudites

Not to mention the stuff our guests brought, including…

• home-made crackers
• Spanish-style potatoes
• lentil salad
• fruit galette

The table was, as previously mentioned, packed to the gills. The crackers sat on our records cabinet; empty plates were on top of the speakers. There was wine, and beer, and cider. Laughing. Talking. Drinking. Eating. It was a feast of feasts. And then afterward, we all did the dishes together and played a game of cards. Truly the definition of what Sunday dinner is all about.

But goddamn if I didn’t do nothing but cook and clean the whole weekend long. So here’s what we did the following week:

Chili.

One-pot, cheap-ass, hearty bean chili. And when that ran out, because we underestimated attendance, we heated up a macaroni-and-hot-dog casserole. Yup. Mac ‘n’ cheese.

We can do fancy, and fancy is nice. But sometimes a little shift is nice, too.

After a slow start last year, we’ve doubled our brewing efforts and are processing beverages almost every weekend.

Last weekend we bottled our IPA (still nameless, alas) and racked the Hearty Heifer Hefeweizen. The IPA yielded 45 bottles at 4.3% alcohol each. Priming — as always — made us a little nervous, but no bottles have ’sploded yet, and hopefully it’ll stay that way. The Hefeweizen is still chugging along, with a new gravity of 1.012 (or about 4% alcohol). We hope to taste both in the next few weeks.

This weekend it’s all about new projects, starting with our very first original recipe:

Orange Blackberry Ale

It was a process fraught with questions. Should we cut down on fermentables to compensate for the fruit? How much blackberry should we use? How much honey should we add? Should we use Cascade hops or Argentine Cascade? One ounce or two? Finishing hops? How long for the orange peel? It’s one thing to use a beer kit and quite another to make your own way. Nevertheless, after countless phone calls, interweb sessions, and scourings of Papazian’s beer bible, here’s what we came up with:

• 1 1/2 lb organic light malt extract
• 3 1/4 lb amber malt extract*
• 1 1/2 lb wildflower honey
• 1 oz Argentine Cascade hops (alpha 3.5%)

We boiled these ingredients 50 minutes, then added:

• 1/2 oz bitter orange peel (left over from the Hefeweizen)

Finally, at 70 minutes, we turned off the heat and stirred in:

• 1 1/2 lb blackberry puree (the rest of the canister — another 1 1/2 lb — is going to become ice cream topping)

The initial gravity is a surprisingly low 1.044, and the wort is a beautiful (if somewhat opaque) burgundy. The flavor… needs work (it’s a clash between sweet, bitter, and tangy) but hopefully it’ll mellow, like the IPA, with time.

We pitched a packet of Nottingham yeast around 6pm. Nothing but a layer of blackberry pulp by 8pm; light fermentation by midnight. Sometime during the night — whabam! Massive and violent fermentation. Our Orange Blackberry Ale seems to be a go.

*If the malt quantities seem kind of arbitrary, it’s because we killed off a few half-jugs of malt left in the pantry. Suffice to say, we were going for a light-ish ale, so what we had on hand worked just fine.

Ever tried to buy grits in Massachusetts?

Trader Joe’s doesn’t sell them. Star Market doesn’t sell them. Even the Store24, which sells everything from Moon Pies to molasses, doesn’t sell them. The Whole Foods guys didn’t even know what I was talking about — and the one who finally did took us to the corn meal. Yeesh.

Fortunately, I don’t need someone to point grits out to me so long as they get me in the vicinity — and at Whole Foods, that vicinity and the corn meal are one and the same. I thanked Mr. Whole Foods politely, waited for him to walk away, and we  made off with two glorious boxes of that southern staple. Just in time to cook a hearty southern supper:

• Roast Chicken with Bread, Mushroom, and Spinach Stuffing
• Chard and Beet Greens with Garlic and Onion
• Cheesy Grits
• Old Bay Sweet Potato Fries
• Chicken Gravy

With the additions of Paul’s fresh-baked bread and sweet-potato pie, it was an epic, warming feast of carbs and fats. For those of us from south of the Mason-Dixon line (there was a long, involved discussion as to who really qualified), it was a welcome taste of childhood. And for some of us — like our resident Californian and a friend from Paris — it was all brand-new.

Not bad for poor-people food.

After a few much-needed packages from Northern Brewer and a two-mile jaunt to the Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge yesterday, we finally got around to some beer action this morning.

First, we racked our IPA, which until now had been chillin’ on its dregs with an icky blow-off valve still attached. (Boy, it’s nice to have sterilization supplies.) The gravity has dropped to 1.013, giving us an alcohol content of about 4% so far. The flavor is still sweet, the hops have mellowed, and the color is that of orange cola. Mm. In the past few hours it’s already started bubbling again, so we have high hopes that in a couple weeks we’ll have a reasonably excellent IPA.

After the IPA was squared away, we started in on our Hearty Heifer Hefeweizen:

• 3 gallons tap water
• 6 lb wheat malt syrup (65% wheat, 35% barley)
• 1 lb briess dry extract (65% wheat, 35% barley)

A sixty-minute boil with:

• 1 oz Tettnang hops (4.3% alpha)

A thirty-minute boil with:

• 1 oz whole coriander seed*
• 1/2 oz dry bitter orange peel

The whole mess cooled easily, strained quickly, and with the addition of 2 gallons spring water, we were ready to pitch a packet of Munich yeast. Initial gravity 1.055. By midnight we had the steady glug-glug heartbeat of fermentation (and a whole lot of icky fuzz). Yay!

*Okay, I confess: the fermentables, the hops, and the yeast all came from a Northern Brewer kit. We cheated a bit — although I still argue it’s cheaper to buy the kit than the individual ingredients. But the kit is a Bavarian Hefeweizen, so no spices. Alas! I wanted spice! Hence the trip to Cambridge, to turn our recipe into a Bavarian-Belgian hybrid. Creative license, neh?

Next on the drawing board: a honey-blackberry ale. Maybe honey-blackberry-orange. We’ll see.

God bless StumbleUpon, and the glorious folks at icanhascheezburger.

Here’s to the coming weekend—and for those of you with snow (i.e. none of us in Massachusetts), be safe and drink some cocoa. Cocoa, I say, cocoa!

Typically I don’t accomplish much on the weekends. But for some reason, this week I was struck by a bout of productivity. Even after scouring the bathroom and hallway, bleaching the kitchen floor, and buying flowers for the apartment, I still felt motivated to cook a multi-course Indian feast. Everything, from the accompanying naan to the paneer itself, was home-made, made from recipes that I built myself after a few hours of internet research. A personal achievement, I suppose… something I’ll celebrate with a couple of Magic Hats and a few episodes of Lost (I know the new season is already pissing some folks off, but I have to admit I’m totally satisfied so far—especially when I compare it with Season 2, which John and I are currently re-watching). At any rate. The meal:

Paneer

It all started with the paneer. I brought the milk home on Wednesday, on a whim, and from this mild Indian cheese sprung the idea for an entire, elaborate Indian meal. Look, it’s simple:

• 1 quart whole milk
• 4 T lemon juice
• Peanut oil
• Salt

Bring the milk to a boil; add lemon juice and remove from heat. Allow milk to curdle for about 10-15 minutes; in the meantime, line a colander with cheesecloth or a tea-towel. Pour the curdled milk through the cloth; let drain an hour or so. Fold the cloth over and add a weight of some kind (a plate or mug, a bag of beans, etc). Refrigerate and continue to drain overnight. Remove weight and transfer paneer to a sealed container. Just before serving, cut into cubes and fry in peanut oil (if desired). Salt lightly. The paneer can be added directly to a batch of Palak Paneer (see below) or kept separate as a side-dish if you have vegan friends.

Vegan Garlic Naan

Naan. What’s an Indian meal without it? This batch is vegan, so everyone can enjoy the full experience.

• 2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 C warm water
• 1 T honey
• 6 T soy milk
• 2 tsp salt
• Garlic powder, cumin, and curry powder to taste
• 3½ -4 C flour (3 C white, 1 C whole wheat)
• Olive oil, for grilling

Dissolve yeast in warm water; let stand 10 minutes. Add sugar, milk, salt, and spices. Add flour a little at a time to make a soft dough; less is better. Knead 6-8 minutes; oil, cover, and let rise 1 hour. Punch down and divide into golf ball-sized pieces (about 16 pieces). Place on a baking sheet, cover, and let rise about 3o minutes.

In a small bowl, add 2 cloves minced garlic to a few tablespoons olive oil. One at a time, flatten the dough balls into discs, brush with oil, and fry on a hot griddle 2 minutes per side*. Pat the cooked naan with a paper towel and transfer them to a paper bag; if you’re not eating them right away, wrap the paper bag in plastic.

*Alternatively, bake 8 minutes (or until golden and puffy) at 400F.

Curry Yogurt

Great as a topping and a dip, with naan and with curry. A very, very flexible recipe.

• 2 C plain yogurt
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt (more to taste)
• Black pepper, cumin, curry powder, and garlic powder to taste

Blend the ingredients thoroughly. Add chopped fresh cilantro for a little something special.

Coconut Cilantro Rice

A spicy rice to accompany curry. I cooked the rice itself early in the day and added the veggies and seasoning paste later; the rice by itself (cooked in water and coconut milk) smelled sublime first thing in the morning. With a little cinnamon and some raisins it’d make a hell of a breakfast. Still, once you add the cilantro and the ginger and the garlic, this dish tastes like the very essence of fresh. Mm. Oh yeah, and it makes a ton. Feel free to halve the recipe.

• 2 C rice
• 1 1/2 C coconut milk
• 2½ C cilantro
• 3 green chilies
• 5 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 2-inch chunk ginger, peeled
• A pinch of cloves
• A pinch of cinnamon
• 1 large onion, chopped
• (1-2 C vegetables of choice—I used chopped carrots and frozen peas)
• Juice of one lemon

Cook the rice in 3 C water, 1 C coconut milk. Do your best to keep the grains separate and fluffy; remove from heat. Meanwhile, combine cilantro, chilies, garlic, ginger, cloves and cinnamon in the food processor with just enough coconut milk to make a paste. Puree to your heart’s content, and don’t forget to admire the lovely green color.

In a separate pan from the rice, sauté the onion and veggies in oil. Season with salt, then add the paste and toss together. Add more oil if necessary. Add the cooked rice and mix well; it should be evenly—and brilliantly—green. As soon as the rice is warmed through, remove from heat; add the juice of one lemon and mix. Serve with curry or by itself. Should be a bit spicy!

Palak Paneer

Surprisingly, the main dish of my Indian evening was the easiest to make. My version is pretty mild, but you can make it spicier. You can also add ghee (clarified butter) or cream if you want a creamier dish. Also, note that this recipe was the smallest of all the courses; to match the quantity of rice I would either double this recipe or halve that one. Oh—and don’t forget to remove the bay leaves!

• 2-3 T vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, medium-diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp grated ginger root
• 1 red or green chili, chopped
• 3 small bay leaves
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp cumin
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp turmeric
• A pinch of cloves
• 1 bag frozen spinach, thawed
• 1 medium tomato, diced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Paneer, cubed and fried in peanut oil
• ½ C fresh cilantro, chopped

Saute onion in oil until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, chili, bay leaves, and spices. Saute 10 more minutes. Finally, add tomato, spinach, and seasonings to taste; top off with water if the mixture is too dry. Cook until well blended. Serve on rice, with paneer or alone. Garnish with yogurt and chopped cilantro.

- – -

The final verdict: tasty! Worth four days of planning and an entire day of cooking. Not as spicy as some would like, but that’s why God invented sriracha.

Kitchen-tastic Saturday. Paul’s delicious brunch (scrambled eggs and North African potatoes), followed by a trip to the overwhelmingly awesome Asian grocery Super 88*, followed by some invigorating kitchen adventures.

*Super 88 is fantastic for cheap and obscure eats, but is also a hell of a good time if you’ve got an afternoon to kill. We took the whole gang (about six of us) and spent probably an hour shopping. For about $50 we managed to pick up produce (3 eggplants, 3 tomatoes, a couple pounds of onions, 5 grapefruits, 4 onions, broccoli, 6 small heads bok choi, snap peas, 5 apples, a bunch of scallions, 1 lemon, a bunch of cilantro, a bag of carrots, 2 cucumbers, 2 huge avocados, 4 hot peppers, and a peach) and some other odds and ends: barley, dry rice noodles, chili paste, udon noodles, potstickers, sesame seeds, and two kinds of Pocky (coconut and “men’s”). Always crowded, always a trip, Super 88 is an amazing grocery store. Need to go more often.

The kitchen adventures:

Baba Ghanoush

Trader Joe’s baba ghanoush has too much tahini in it, so I’ve taken to making my own batches of this delectable dip. Love, love, love it. This recipe makes about 3 cups.

• 3 medium eggplants
• 2 T tahini
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 1 T lemon juice
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 T olive oil

Pierce the eggplant and roast approximately 1 hour at 400F (until wrinkly and squishy and brown). Peel the eggplant and wrap the flesh in a tea-towel; strain excess water. Puree with remaining ingredients and season to taste. Chill and enjoy with pretzels, veggies, or warm pita.

Udon Soup

Udon soup—with its cartoonishly huge noodles and simple flavors—has been an obsession of mine since I ordered it from a Chinese restaurant in the middle of the night a few weeks ago. Didn’t know what it was before then; can’t live without it now. The noodles themselves, which are Japanese, come pre-cooked in a plastic package, like little carb-based worms. Yum. But believe me when I say the soup itself is sublime.

• 3-4 C chicken stock
• 1-2 C water
• Seasonings: red pepper flakes, ginger (powdered or fresh-grated), garlic (powdered or fresh-minced), soy sauce, ground black pepper, sesame oil and wasabi*
• Vegetables: carrots, celery, broccoli, shelled edamame, snap or snow peas, baby bok choi, green onions
• 1 package udon (or frozen potstickers, in a pinch—makes a different soup, but still awesome)

Bring stock and water to a boil; add seasonings and adjust flavors to your preferences. Add vegetables in stages: carrots and celery; broccoli, edamame, and bok choi; peas and onions. Add noodles and bring back to a simmer. Serve while veggies are still a little crunchy. Goes great with a dessert of green tea Mochi ice cream (available, surprise surprise, at Trader Joe’s—and if you haven’t tried it, do so immediately).

*Trader Joe’s has a nice Sesame-Wasabi drizzling sauce. Not absolutely necessary, but it adds a nice bit of dimension to the flavors in the soup. Peanut oil would probably also be delectable.

Sesame Cookies

I modified the classic Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie recipe to approximate something from the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market in Maryland (it may have been from Atwater Breads?). I used to buy their sesame cookies for lunch and eat them dipped in Keswick Creamery yogurt. They taste like halvah but more palatable, with a nice crisp from the seeds. And don’t worry if they get a little burnt on the bottom; I singed mine and the sesame flavor does a glorious job of hiding it for me.

• 1 C raw sugar
• 1/2 C tahini
• 1/2 C butter
• 1 egg
• 2-3 T molasses
• 1 1/4 C flour
• 3/4 tsp soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 C sesame seeds (or more…)

Cream together sugar, tahini, butter, egg, and molasses. Add dry ingredients and sesame seeds. Mix well, then roll into balls and dip in additional sesame seeds. Place on ungreased baking sheet; flatten and bake 9-10 minutes at 375F. Cool 5 minutes on the cookie sheet before removing. Try them with vanilla ice cream or sweetened yogurt.

Benoit’s Kitchen Adventures

Benoit, in an inspiring move, has taken to fiddling in the kitchen. It’s always awesome to watch someone’s enthusiasm grow—to watch them learn**, to watch them teach themselves things—and it certainly doesn’t hurt when the results are delicious. At any rate, Benoit’s creations have been a welcome addition to the fridge. Late night snacks, sandwich spreads… Cooking is a beautiful thing, and I’m glad to have one more person to share it with.

• Pumpkin-Tofu Cheesecake. Tofu, canned pumpkin, cream cheese, maple syrup and spices; baked in a graham cracker crust. A creamier version of pumpkin pie, although until it’s been thoroughly chilled it’s a wee bit runny. We enjoyed ours while watching a completely bizarre anime film. How will you enjoy yours?
• Nut butters. We all know peanut butter. Most of us know almond butter. Benoit has made both of these, plus pecan butter (with maple syrup—sublime on cinnamon raisin bread) and, get this, pistachio butter (think peanut butter, but greener; think essence of baklava). Mm. Perfection. Gonna be buying way less nut butter in the future.
• Hummus. Black olive, jalapeño, red pepper-infused oil. Great food for experimentation, great food for snacking. I almost feel bad about how much of his hummus I’ve downed—it may be time to stock up on dry garbanzos, just to save a little cash.
• Vegan baked goods. Don’t normally buy into them, but damn in Benoit’s cookies weren’t fine and dandy, fresh-baked and days later. And this morning, pancakes. Applesauce, cinnamon, walnut. I can get on board with that.

**Since I figured he’d be interested, I shared my dad’s famous “Virgil Goes Shopping,” a document I’ve had since high school, whose main function is to teach young fools how to grocery shop. Beyond that, it’s a hell of a manifesto, with useful information on how to stock a pantry, what cuts of meat to buy, what to get pre-made, and so on. I don’t usually like to tell people how to spend their money, but if somebody wants to learn about food, well…