Cure-all

If I had a dollar for every music critic's lament that, nowadays, to be a pop star you don't actually have to be able to sing, I'd have enough dollars to commission my own voice-processing system. Until that happens, there's Auto-Tune, the voice-processing software that offers hope and trendiness to those born with a mediocre vocal range. Can't sing? Auto-Tune can fix that. Not cool enough to be a star? Auto-Tune's got that covered. Boring lyrics? Auto-Tune can help make those cooler, too. It's a by-now time-tested way to make something out of nothing--even old news,* as the Gregory Brothers demonstrate. They make good on their claim: "everything sounds better Auto-Tuned."

Faced with old news in the kitchen--same old recipe, same uninspired stuff in the fridge--it's easy to turn insipid ingredients into rock stars. Add the culinary Auto-Tune: sesame oil. A few drops of this stuff on plain vegetables work magic. If you start a soup by sauteing garlic in roasted sseame oil, your life might n be forever changed.


It would be nice if we could say everything tastes better Auto-Tuned, but of course that's not true. Just as non-stop Auto-Tuned vocals grow tiresome, all-sesame-oil-flavored food, all the time, begins to lose some of its charm. It's worth thinking about how to make something out of nothing, in cooking, singing, and all sorts of other areas. Also worth thinking about: when not to make something out of nothing. It's a fine line between glam-ing up and over-reacting, sometimes. And we all need a little mediocrity mixed in with our rock-star cool from time to time.


What's your culinary Auto-Tune?

*and scary politics

Striking A Chord Or Four

I'm not sure why I first made pulusu, a tamarind-based curry/stew from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. I think I was looking for something else (culinarily), came across a recipe for egg pulusu, and decided to give it a try. I got lucky: what I tried, on a whim, had an incomparable combination of flavors. To say it struck a chord with me would be an understatement. I became a pulusu convert, determined to learn to cook at least some of its many variations. 

Chance encounters occasionally take off like that. This dish, though, seems to have an effect on many people around here. Every time I've cooked pulusu for people who haven't tried it before, they've fallen for it as strongly and immediately as I did. Of course I don't know what I'm doing; I learned to cook it by vacuuming--sucking up any and all information I could find on it. I was vacuuming in a vacuum, effectively. At the time, I didn't know anyone who could tell me if I was preparing pulusu correctly, or even what the dish is supposed to taste like.

Chef Sanjay Thumma's explanation helped me to understand pulusu as a base to which one adds different ingredients (eggs or okra or taro or fish or eggplant or bottle gourd or potatoes, for example). I still don't know what I'm doing, but I believe it's a bit like Pachelbel's Canon in D.

Do you like this piece? Does it get stuck in your head? Pachelbel's Canon draws a strong response from most listeners. Many fall in love with it, even the first time they hear it, even if they're not accustomed to hearing western classical music. Even if they don't like western classical music. The piece triggers deep emotions. It's the base--in this case, a ground base of eight notes that repeat throughout.

As Rob Paravonian laments, the ground base in Pachelbel's Canon in D causes some to hate the piece, mostly because they grow bored with its simplicity and repetition. But he and The Axis of Awesome point out something else: this is the base for success. Something about the progression of sound speaks to people, not only in Pachelbel's Canon in D, but also in many, many other places. Master these chords and you'll write a hit song, claim the members of Axis of Awesome in another performance.

It's worth noting that the hit songs use four chords, not necessarily the eight-note ground base. That gives me a great deal of hope. I still don't know if I'm making pulusu correctly, and occasionally my quasi-obsession with "real" things* makes me doubt my efforts. But if I take the four-chord-hit-song-from-eight-note-ground-base as an example, I only need to get about 50% of this dish right for it to be fabulous. That should strike a chord with perfectionists everywhere.

Thanks to my friend Pamela for photos of chili peppers and potatoes

 

*note: not a real obsession

 Learning The Real Deal (or Learning: The Real Deal)

Senegalese griot Lamine Toure leads the drum ensemble Rambax at MIT, providing sabar drum and dance enthusiasts the chance to express themselves. It's always a delight to catch one of their concerts.

I'm in awe of the choices Lamine makes with his students and their performances--how he teaches and translates a traditional art form in a different cultural setting. As someone with constant questions about what's real, I used to be jealous of Lamine's sabar students--not because I yearned to play or dance sabar (although I've enjoyed learning a little from Lamine) but because I wanted a mentor to help me with cross-cultural translation. In particular, I wanted someone to mentor me in traditional  Korean cooking, which I've been learning on my own for five or six years. My wish was granted a few months ago; a friend who studied cooking in Korea offered to teach me. Her skill and talent in the kitchen inspire me unendingly.  

My mentor tells me the reasons behind every step of every Korean recipe. Such knowledge helps me follow directions--something I'm not too good at--and also helps me not follow directions. I believe we can bend rules more wisely (and safely) when we know not only what the rules are, but why they're in place. A little knowledge of why helps enormously in translating, following and improvising. The same can be said for sabar; what Lamine has taught me of the tradition helps me appreciate his choices as he brings it from one culture to another. The best mentors--I count mine among them--know that why is crucial to what and how.

Yet when I cook I sometimes take bloody-minded joy in venturing out on my own, anyway, trying to figure stuff out without knowing what's important or why. And so, guided only by online information, I decided to make a vegetarian version of kongbiji jjigae, ground soybean stew. I made vegetarian kimchee; made vegetarian stock; soaked soybeans and pureed them; sauteed garlic, kimchee and shiitake mushrooms for a few minutes before adding some of the stock I'd made. None of this was new to me. I don't own the stone pot this stew is traditionally cooked in, but I've made that cultural translation before, when cooking other Korean stews. The adventure began when I added in the pureed soybeans. They had the consistency of beaten egg whites, and floated over everything else, resembling a cross between a souffle and a volcano as the stew bubbled up through them.

I followed Maangchi's advice and did not stir the soybeans for a minute or two after I'd added them. Even after I stirred them, though, they floated, resisting all my attempts to incorporate them. Until, without warning, everything deflated. Really: the stew lost half its volume. I have yet to learn whether that's supposed to happen. But, good or bad translation--however authentic, or not, my version was--it was one of the most delicious things I've cooked in a long time. By far.

     
What I'd like to know is why one shouldn't stir the stew immediately after adding the pureed soybeans. I will ask my mentor. I did realize the why of something else, though, through the experiment: why I strike out on my own when I have someone to mentor me. I would have known this easily if I'd seen it in a student; sometimes it's harder to see things in ourselves.

Some students can start with no knowledge, receive information from an expert, and absorb that information. Some can't. I am one who has to learn, on my own, before I can be taught. Because, when studying with social anthropologists, I read about the importance of fieldwork and context for "real" learning experiences, I haven't been giving myself credit for the experiences I have on my own. I feel better about them now.

If we are trying to learn something--anything--one of the most important things to learn, first, is how we learn. Then we can be mentored, as suits us.