I Like You Just The Way You Are*

I like the taste of tofu. Plain. I am one of those people (we're fairly rare) who think it has a flavor all its own. As much as I enjoy dressing my tofu in exotic and evocative flavors, I'm happy eating it without anything added. I agree with most people's assessment of this food as bland. I'm unconvinced that's the same as the other adjective I hear used to describe the taste of plain tofu: boring.

A few weeks ago, I attended a screening of Michel Gondry's animated documentary of Noam Chomsky, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?**  During a discussion after the screening, Chomsky (who was there, with Gondry, taking questions) said, "Science, or any kind of inquiry, is the attempt to show that superficial complexity is really simple." As my brain began to object to that statement--some things are "simply" complex in nature, and irreducible that way--Chomsky added, "There are many questions to ask about this. For example, what is 'simple'?"

Indeed. I'd add, along the lines of "one man's meat is another man's poison," that what is simple for one person isn't, for another.

Simplicity, as a concept, tends to attract value judgements. The attached values range widely, from elegant to near-idiotic, cutting-edge minimalist to time-wastingly boring. Going back to "one man's poison," one person's "boring" is another person's, well, plain tofu, in my case.

Those used to highly-flavored food look askance at a plain-tofu eater like me (as they reach for the Sriracha). At such moments, I often feel compelled to explain why "bland" isn't "flavorless," and what it is, exactly, that I like about plain tofu. I hunt for something succinct, some pithy explanation that illuminates this concept for spicy-food addicts everywhere. I could simply say, "I like it." Ah, to be freed from the compulsion to find, analyze, simplify-to-its-essence and then explain the deeper meaning in everything...

Bob Dylan, never a simple man, reportedly said, about the song  "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat," "It's just a song about a hat, man." That song has been over-analyzed, if not to death, then to meaninglessness. Never mind the lyrics, which may or may not be about a hat, one of several women in Dylan's life (or a composite), a Lightnin' Hopkins song. The style, blues, tends to lose its power when analyzed too much. Its power is in its simple repetition, which mimics a very complex thing our brains do when we miss someone or something.

I could try to force a point and say that "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat" is like tofu in that it's something people are rarely content to leave (well enough) alone. I'd rather not go down that path. The quest for simplicity is complex, too often over-analytical. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and plain tofu is just plain tofu--not that either a cigar or tofu is simple, necessarily.

*Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
**A brilliant, brilliant movie, and so much more than an animated documentary. I'm motivated to watch every one of Gondry's films, now.

Accidental Multitasking 

It's that time of year again. The students of Introduction to World Music are throat-singing in the hallways. Throat singing involves the seemingly impossible task of singing two notes at one time, a drone and an overtone. It's a pastime among nomadic peoples of Tuva and Mongolia, made popular in the US by groups like Huun Huur Tu. (You can hear clear examples of throat singing at 3:16 and 6:30 in this video.) With instruction and practice, most people can do this--not at the level of the members of Huun Huur Tu, but satisfyingly enough. The World Music students receive brief instructions, which inspire a few each term to practice as they go from class to class.

Even fewer don't need the instruction. Some people figure out, on their own, how to make one voice into two. The early-twentieth-century American country singer Arthur Miles apparently taught himself to throat sing. Here he is, accompanying his own voice on the song Lonesome Cowboy. I've wondered how Miles came to throat sing. By accident? After hearing someone else doing this? Who could he have heard? How could he have known what to do? I have no idea, and continue to marvel at his ability.

The abilty to produce two things, simultaneously, through one activity is a multitasker's dream. Even those like me, who don't do well with multitasking and try to avoid it, find the concept intriguing. A long time ago. when I was old enough to read but not old enough to use the oven, I read a recipe for "custard-filled cornbread" in my father's Fanny Farmer cookbook. Put together the batter for this bread, the recipe claimed, pour cream over it in the pan, stick it in the oven, and it will transform, "magically," into a layer of custard suspended between two layers of cornbread. I never made the cornbread, but, curious and scientific-minded child that I was, I did spend time trying to figure out the chemistry and physics behind the recipe. How could this two-things-from-one possibly work?

I still don't know. (Can anyone explain it to me in the comments?) And I don't know (or didn't, until yesterday) why it took me over thirty years to try this recipe. True, I moved away from home and I have no idea what happened to that cookbook. But Marion Cunningham re-published the recipe in The Breakfast Book, which I happen to have owned for ten years. A few years ago, the same recipe grew into an internet trend. Certainly, the recipe has been available to me, and yet, I balked, possibly because it isn't the healthiest thing in the world, possibly because I wanted to keep it as The One That Got Away--something I romanticized and thought about with mild longing.

Lately, I've been increasing my efforts to make this recipe. I bought the ingredients for it--twice. I invited some friends over to eat it--only to have to tell them that I hadn't made it; maybe they would like a beer? I vowed to blog about it--only to cook and blog nothing this past week. It took a trip out of my own kitchen to roust me out of my inertia. My friend Deepak graciously provided his kitchen, as well as the enthusiasm I needed to make this cornbread.

I took the recipe and its introduction, word for word, from Marion C. Cunningham's The Breakfast Book (page 52):

Custard-Filled Cornbread
eight servings

This recipe is magic. When the cornbread is done, a creamy, barely-set custard will have formed inside, and everyone will try to figure out how you got it there. Jane Salfass Freiman rediscovered this recipe, which was popular in the thirties; for instance, it appeared in Marjorie Kinnan Rowlings' Cross Creek Country in a much sweeter version.

2 eggs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar
i cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350*. Butter an eight-inch-square baking dish or pan that is about two inches deep. Put the buttered dish or pan in the oven and let it get hot while you mix the batter.

Put the eggs in a mixing bowl and add the melted butter. Beat until the mixture is well blended. Add the sugar, salt, milk and vinegar and beat well. Sift into a bowl or stir together in a bowl the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and baking soda and add to the egg mixture. Mix just until the batter is smooth and no lumps appear.

Pour the batter into the heated dish, then pour the cream into the center of the batter--don't stir. Bake for one hour, or until lightly browned. Serve warm.

This stuff is good. It really does have a layer of custard in the middle, although the photograph doesn't showcase it. And yes, that is more fruit salad, or fruit salad of sorts: oranges, mint and chopped jalapeno pepper to enliven the custardy, buttery mildness of the cornbread.

Deepak asked me for the name of the orange-mint-jalapeno concoction. "Uh," I said. "Um. I don't know. I just made it up." He thought we should give it a significant name (an inspiring idea for someone who titles her recipes things like "Not Pho" and "Kumquat Experiment II"). We decided to name it for its qualities. Mint cools; hot pepper warms. All three ingredients refresh and invigorate. With that in mind, we came up with "Hot Cold Recharge Medley."

"Custard-filled cornbread" falls flat in comparison, so we got to work on renaming that one. "Remind," Deepak suggested. He has vivid memories of eating custard as a child. "And that's your story, too," he said. I was baffled for a moment. I don't remember ever eating custard when I was little, although I must have eaten some. "You're fulfilling a childhood dream." he explained. He's right. I would never have thought of it, but this cornbread isn't just a multitasker's dream.

My first memory of custard-filled cornbread is a visual one; I can see the opened page of the Fanny Farmer cookbook. That cookbook was only open on the occasions when my father baked banana bread--some of the happiest memories of my childhood. Since my father's death, I have been both averse to moving certain things about him from idealized memory into reality, and, at the same time, desperate to do so. Thanks to Deepak's insight, I identified this recipe as one of those things. I don't believe Deepak could have known all of the significance of his comments, although I wouldn't put it past him to have sensed, on some level.

Such thinking aligns with questions raised by Nancy Mairs in her essay "On Touching by Accident." In the essay, Mairs writes of her own suicide attempt one Hallowe'en, interrupted by a teenage girl in a clown costume who rings Mairs' doorbell in search of a bathroom. In the last paragraph, Mairs says:

I have thought about her often [...]. She entered my life so innocently, [...] at just the moment when I was planning to leave, though she couldn't have known that. And I wonder whether I have done just the same thing myself, wandering through some other's desolation in my costume--tight jeans, soft shirt, dusky velveteen blazer, cane--needing some quick favor on my way. How many times? And when?

There's the kind of multitasking that happens when we walk and chew gum, sing two notes with one voice, or prepare one batter that turns into both bread and custard. There's another kind, the touching-by-accident kind. We ask for one thing, but, in the asking, give something entirely different. Or we find that, somehow, in preparing (or preparing for) one thing, we've also prepared ourselves, or someone else, (for) another.

I'm very glad to have been freed to make this recipe. We named it "New-world Reminder Bread," by the way. "New-world" is for the corn, but I think this is another food that transports those who investigate it to other worlds--old, new, past, future. Throat singing does that, too, some students tell me. 

Transport

As it's more the dead of winter than ever, here, I'll take refuge in the song Omana Penne, and fruit salad. A friend sent me the song because listening to it transports him to another place. "This song--" he said, "The whole movie has such amazing songs. I cannot even explain what paradise I go to..."

The song is from Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (Will You Cross the Skies with Me is the English translation), a movie that is, itself, a series of journeys to possible worlds. We're never quite sure which world we're in, watching it. The main character, a would-be movie director, acts out what we discover is his own script, occasionally interjecting directorial comments, or changing or cutting scenes. While all movies provide an escape--one reason we watch them--this one offers multiple types of escape, on multiple levels.

So it is, or should be, with fruit salad. The authors of one of the Moosewood cookbooks--I wish I could remember which one, so I could quote and credit them properly--say that fruit salad is meant to transport diners away from the cares of the world. For this reason, they advocate cutting all citrus fruit segments out of their potentially bitter and tough membranes. I agree. A bowl of membrane-free citrus segments is a lovely gift. The care involved in its preparation benefits both giver and receiver.

I made this fruit salad from cara-cara oranges, pink grapefruit, blueberries, persimmon, mint and pistachios. On some levels, it provides a similar escape-from-winter-through-color-and-flavor to last week's kumquats. The labor of freeing the citrus fruit from its membranes provides escape on other levels.

A new personality

What is the antidote for toxic levels of frozen dreariness?

Tropical vacation, yes, but when that's not available in the instant, people like me look for solutions in the grocery store. It seems the most practical answer to the question, e.g.:

The best antidote for winter doldrums is

A) leaving for the tropics 

B) a lobotomy 

C) hibernation 

D) kumquats

The key to answering multiple-choice questions, I learned in grade school, is to weed out the less probable answers. Answer A isn't really convenient when one has to teach in Massachusetts most days of the week. Answer B isn't really in fashion these days and, therefore, isn't likely to be covered by health insurance. C isn't really feasible, biologically, if one is human. Due to these practical considerations, I chose answer D.

I didn't go to the grocery store to seek out kumquats, specifically. I went there for a more general kind of therapy. A friend was in a food rut, and I was more than a little unhappy about being stuck in the dead of winter. I thought we should investigate a grocery store together, and each buy something we'd never think to select in our current state. 

Neither my friend (who suggested I refer to her in this post as Kumquat Ninja) nor I had much experience with kumquats. We made vague plans for what to do with them, but agreed that part of the therapy, here, was the unknown, experimental nature of the thing.* 

A day later, my friend emailed:

The Kumquat Report

Don't ever cook a kumquat
Not even once or twice
Cuz the kumquat doesn't like it
It's better to eat rice

My tongue ith pickled.

"The kumquats were so sour they took over," she said, in a dish of red lentils, couscous, quinoa, lemongrass, soy sauce, mirin, ginger, garlic, carrots, peppers and tofu.

I tried two experiments. I liked the second, better than the first, because of its balance of flavors. Kumquats are sour, but that isn't my objection to them. I was expecting sour. I like sour food. My issue is with their bitterness. I like bitter food, too. (I love bitter melon.) Kumquats have a slight sweetness, though, that makes their bitter flavor tricky to balance in savory dishes. At least that was my conclusion. Please let me know what you think.

Kumquat Experiment 1

This recipe came to me out of nowhere; I thought the combination of flavorings might be interesting. It is, but if you don't like the slightly-bitter taste of marmalade, use lemon juice instead of kumquats. I didn't cook the kumquats, at all. In hindsight, I'd cook them for a few minutes next time. I'd also use fresh chili pepper instead of dried. The dried chili peppers weren't spicy enough to balance the kumquats' sweet-sour-bitter flavor.

10 kumquats, sliced thinly or diced

1 1/2 C sprouted green lentils

1 T peanut oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 scallions or 1 small onion, diced 

3-4 fresh bay leaves

1-2 dried red chili peppers

3-4 pods green cardamom

salt

1 1/2 C water

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. When it's hot, put in the dried chili and the bay leaves. Stir them around for a minute or so and then add the garlic, scallions/onion and the cardamom pods (or seeds--I like to take the seeds out of the pods, but that's not necessary). Stir for another minute or two and add the lentils. Stir them around, then add the water and salt. Bring to a boil, cover and cook on medium-low for about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the kumquats.

Serve with something mild-mannered, like rice, bread or potatoes.

Kumquat Experiment 2

This recipe also came to me out of nowhere, or almost nowhere. Having tried Experiment 1, I was thinking about what might balance the kumquats' flavors better. This is what I came up with, based (as usual) on what I had on hand. 

about 1/4 of an onion, diced

3 kumquats, diced

2 (smallish) heads broccoli with stems, diced

about a tablespoon of olive oil

salt to taste

about 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, dry-roasted over medium heat until fragrant and ground

1 teaspoon black or white pepper, dry roasted and ground

Note: I used a lot of pepper--enough to make the dish spicy.

Saute the onion in olive oil over medium heat for a few minutes, until translucent. Add everything else and continue to cook for about four minutes, or until the broccoli is tender but still slightly crisp, and bright green.

The experiments cheered me. Until I move to a warmer climate, I'll take refuge in the grocery store, and in the colors and flavors I find there.

I'm not the first person to seek therapy in a grocery store. Ask The Clash. As they imply, expectations are key. One of my favorite pieces of advice, passed down to me third-hand from Al-Anon, is "Don't go to the hardware store for oranges." Although meant for human-to-human interactions, the advice applies, on levels other than the literal purchasing of citrus fruit, to human-retail situations, too. Don't go to the grocery store for a new personality. It's not impossible to find one there, or anywhere else, but that isn't the most probable of outcomes. Don't expect kumquats to take away winter. They can tip the balance of a bad day, though, or pickle your tongue**, inspire a poem or provide good distraction during yet another snow storm.




*We were, I believe, managing our expectations by expecting the unexpected.
**My friend has recovered and is back to Kumquat Ninja duties as usual.